Marcel Carné on Children of Paradise: Forty-Five Years Later – Part One

A major work in world cinema, Les enfants du paradis (Children of Paradise) is Marcel Carné's best-known and most-loved film. From the moment a stage curtain opens to reveal the entire expanse of an 1820s Paris boulevard's clutter, disarray, the reciprocity between art and life is evident. Its enduring appeal stems less from individual talents and personalities (although Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, and Pierre Brasseur were never better) and more from the film's intense ethos of invention and quality, Carné's poised compositional sense, and, most importantly, the film's "warmth and kindness." Carné's theatricalized melodramatic universe, essentially a film about actors performing, blends many performance genres – tragedy, Shakespeare, pantomime – while retaining Poetic Realism's combination of pessimism and romanticism. As Pauline Kael acknowledged, this is a cinema poetry "about the nature and forms of love - sacred and profane, unselfish and possessive." 

The film was completed after two years of delayed production at the Victorine studios in Nice. The building needs for the Boulevard du Crime alone were astonishing, as this is where the majority of the external action occurs. Three months were spent removing 800 cubic metres of earth and replacing it with 35 tonnes of scaffolding. The fifty facades of theatres and other structures required 350 tonnes of plaster and 500 square metres of glass. When Carné learned of the Allies' Normandy invasion in May 1944, he purposefully held down the post-production process. He intuitively recognised that Les enfants du paradis, rather than being the final film of the Occupation, could be the first film of the Liberation. Such a method was appropriate for a film that emphasised the individual's freedom in the face of social constraints: upon its premiere in March 1945, the film became a major economic success, screening in Paris for nearly a year and grossing 41 million francs. According to Jill Forbes, the film's primary significance was its contribution to a nationalist effort, as filmmakers, Vichy sympathisers, and French patriots all desired "to beat the Americans at their own game by producing a stunning film that was distinctively French." If Les enfants du paradis was an overt attempt to rehabilitate the French film industry, it was also a covert attempt to utilise film to confront the horrors of the Occupation. It exemplifies a sort of 'symbolic resistance' in which an occupied populace reclaims its self-respect through "uplifting displays of national narcissism and self-esteem." Indeed, what is particularly remarkable is how Carné and Prévert managed to cloak an allegory of French resistance against German occupation. The picture threw a pall over the careers of everyone involved - unlike Carné, few of its cast members ever achieved such heights again. Nonetheless, its audacious sexual exploration, subversive cultural strategy, and proto-postmodernist blending of high and low art earn it a position in cinema's pantheon.

The following is excerpted from a 1990 audio interview that originally appeared on the Criterion Collection’s laserdisc edition of Children of Paradise. It was conducted by Brian Stonehill, who was a communications and media studies professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California, and the author of the 1998 book The Self-Conscious Novel: Artifice in Fiction from Joyce to Pynchon. Translation by Bona Flecchia and Alexandre Mabilon.

Brian Stonehill: What are your fondest memories of the making of Children of Paradise?

Marcel Carné: I shot the film during World War II. I was very bold then, and thinking about it now, it was madness to make such a film in a country lacking the bare necessities. Anyway, I started working on Children of Paradise, and the producer told me that, given the enormous success of Les visiteurs du soir—it had been a big hit at the box office—he now wanted a great film with great impact. It’s rare for a producer to come to a director with such a proposal, so of course I began to think. [Jacques Prévert and I] were living near Nice then, and one day, walking along the promenade des Anglais, scouring for ideas, we ran into Jean-Louis Barrault. I hadn’t seen him since the war began, and we went for a drink. Naturally, we talked nonstop about the theater, and he started to tell us about what had happened to the mime [Jean-Gaspard] Deburau. The artist was at the height of his fame—not that he was world-renowned, because at the time news didn’t travel so fast, but he was very famous in Paris and even in the French provinces. He was walking arm in arm with his mistress—he was wealthy then—when a drunkard called out to him and insulted the woman profusely, calling her a whore and all sorts of names. Seeing that the man was drunk, Deburau pushed him aside. The man, with that insistence peculiar to drunkards, came back at him. Finally, Deburau, exasperated, hit the man with his cane and, by some fluke, killed him. So he was tried, and it was a very public trial. But the reason we were so taken by the story, and why we would have liked to do it, was that the whole of Paris attended the trial only to hear the mime speak, to know what his voice sounded like. We thought it was a fantastic idea. We went back to our country retreat, near Nice, and started thinking. We soon realized that it wasn’t a good idea for a movie, that if we chose Barrault to play the part of Deburau, the audience would already be familiar with his voice. There was no suspense. And on the other hand, if we chose some unknown actor, people would have mocked his voice. So we gave up the idea . . . Well, actually, Prévert wanted to give up, but I said no, because I felt that the period in question—the boulevard du Crime, the theater—and a film paying tribute to it sounded good to me. So I went to the great Musée Carnavalet in Paris, to the prints department, sure that I would bring back some stuff. I also wanted to go to Saint-Germain-des-Prés, to a little bookstore I knew about a hundred yards from here, and to another one right behind it, to look for books about that period and its theater. I went to the Carnavalet and had copies of two hundred prints made. I found three or four books about the theater, and in one of those I found out that the upper balcony was called “Paradise.”

BS: And that wasn’t a common expression at the time.

MC: Not common at all. Nobody used it. Now people call it the henhouse, in common terms . . . So we played around with words. There was a toy store that no longer exists, on the rue Saint-Honoré, close to the Madeleine. It was called the Paradise of Children. So we called the film Children of Paradise, but it can bear a double meaning. The children could be the dead, so they are in heaven/paradise, or they could be the actors who play those characters. Also, the actors can be the children of the audience up there in Paradise.

BS: Was the Grand Théâtre actually directly facing the Théâtre des Funambules, the way it is [in the film]?

MC: No, it’s not facing it, it’s next to it. If you look at the boulevard du Crime, the Funambules is farther down, and the Grand Théâtre is on the left. Everything is on the left. There’s nothing on the right except panels of buildings for background shots. But we couldn’t build anything too spectacular, since the set was eighty to a hundred yards long . . . So we worked, we discussed the actors we could use. The great thing about Jacques was that we had the same taste when it came to actors. We liked and hated—well, “hated” may be a bit much, but we liked and disliked the same ones. And that was always the case. There was never a time when I mentioned using an actor and he’d say no because he didn’t like him or her.

So we started working suddenly and furiously. We realized that the film was going to be very long. See, people said that the performers on the boulevard du Crime were geniuses. We had to show that. It’s too easy to say that Mr. So-and-so is a genius. You have to express that he was a genius, was well respected, brilliant, and so on. You have to show it somehow, and that takes up reel time. French movies are generally about an hour and forty minutes long. We realized we had an additional twenty to thirty minutes of footage. People said that there was too much dialogue, although thirty-seven minutes of the film is pantomime. Anyway, we had to add those thirty-seven minutes to the hour and forty minutes. I said I didn’t want that responsibility. The producer was the director of the Studios de la Victorine in Nice. So I went down to Nice to see the producer. I told him everything was going well, that we were happy, and he was enthusiastic about the subject we’d chosen. Then I told him, “There’s a small problem, André [Paulvé]. The film is going to be very long.” He said, “What do you mean by very long?” I replied, “It’s going to be two hours and ten or fifteen minutes.” Of course, he replied, “But that’s going to cost a lot more money. And I’m not going to have any returns.” We thought about it, and he said to me, “Do you want to do it in two parts? Because I could manage that.” Two hours and fifteen minutes does not amount to two parts, so I said, “Listen, I can’t agree to make two parts all by myself. I’m going back to the country to see Prévert.” I had to take a tiny little train. It took three or four hours to travel six or seven miles. It was ridiculous. Jacques and I thought about it, and he finally said, “Yes, we can do it.” I went back down to Nice; the phone didn’t work, or at least not very well, so I had to go back down to tell André whether or not I accepted. I did, on the condition that in Paris, at least at first, they would project both parts in the same movie theater.

When we showed the film to Gaumont, which ended up becoming the final distributor, I said, “This is what the first producer promised me.” They told me they were under no obligation to honor the original producer’s commitment and asked me if I had any documents. I told them that I didn’t, that I simply trusted the producer’s word. We went through what seemed the longest negotiation. They eventually agreed. So we doubled the ticket price. I also asked them, “When you show the three-hour-and-ten-minute film, if I’m right, you’ll show it at 2:00, 5:30, and 9:00.” They said, “Yes.” So I went on, “I’d like for people to be able to buy tickets from the box office at 9:00 p.m.” They said, “That’s impossible—we’ll need one more person.” I said, “Come on, don’t make me laugh.” “Even worse, we’ll need two, since there are two theaters.” But I got them to agree because I had noticed that movies were doing very well during the war. We had no entertainment—no more television, no restaurants. The only thing left was the performing arts. That’s why cinema suddenly took off. French people discovered dance, classical music; they went to concerts and plays . . . I told the producers to do this: we’d sell the tickets at eighty francs apiece, which was double the normal price, and if, at the end of two weeks, revenues were lower, then they could do what they wanted. Revenues didn’t decrease for forty-five weeks. So the film stayed in its original cut.

I don’t know what it’s like in New York, in America, but I had assembled two versions of the movie: one where the film ran all at once, and another where it ran in two parts. The two-parter was shown over two different weeks, so we ran the opening score and a synopsis of what had happened in the first part. When it ran all at once, we didn’t need the synopsis. There was a five-minute intermission, and people would have a beer and come back into the theater, and it would start with Part Two. Pathé always ran the film in two parts, with the synopsis, even if they showed the whole thing at once. The audience got a bit upset, booed a little when they saw the synopsis, but I was never able to get them to show the single-segment version.

BS: What was it like to shoot during the occupation?

MC: It was a bit troublesome. We met with a lot of obstacles when we shot Les visiteurs du soir, in terms of materials—costumes, sets that needed a coat of shiny paint, or staff, which, you know, is made of plaster and horsehair. Horsehair was hard to come by in those days, so we used grass. Furthermore, we needed insulation material to coat the plaster, so we could paint over it before it dried. But we couldn’t find coating material either—it was requisitioned—so we just painted over the wet plaster, and we’d get big splotches forming on it. So we’d stop the take and cover the splotches. Also, we had a shiny paint for the pavement, and the actors would chip it with their shoes. We had ways of fixing it, but it was aggravating. What’s more, people were famished. We’d put fruit on the table, and the fruit was eaten even before we finished setting up. In the end, sadly enough, we had to inject fruit with phenol so the crew wouldn’t eat it. But we still had to put real fruit there for the takes, so the actors could use it. We warned everyone not to eat the fake fruit—it gave them diarrhea—and said that we’d put fresh fruit on the table only when we started shooting. There was a property man who’d set up the fruit plate. We had huge loaves of bread, and once, during a take, a loaf of bread was in my way, so I pushed it away to remove it from the shot, and it felt surprisingly light. I turned it over—there was a hole as big as my hand. The cameramen had eaten the entire inside of the loaf. Things like this happened every day. Satin, silk, velvet, we couldn’t find any of that stuff.

Children of Paradise, miraculously, was much easier. We didn’t need staff so much as wood for the decor, and we found people willing to sell materials—at outrageous prices, of course. A famous English tailor from the Lanvin store was wonderful about providing us with material for Arletty’s dresses. There were people who had materials that you couldn’t find. There were three or four stores of that kind, but those products were reserved for the German officers. Similarly, there were four or five restaurants in Paris for the superior officers, meaning lieutenant colonels and above. A commander was not allowed to go. I went there, even though the prices were exorbitant, but I liked a good meal. I made a pretty good living . . . Well, I did for a while, and then it got a little worse because, while we were shooting the movie, they asked us to make concessions, and I worked for free for six months or so and had to sell my parents’ house.

BS: Did you have any problems with censorship during the making of the film?

MC: Not at all. And yet we feared we might because people had said as much. In Les visiteurs du soir, there was some political innuendo—like the heart beating under the rock represented the heart of France beating under the occupation. The devil was Hitler. All kinds of things like that were interpreted as symbols, while neither Prévert nor myself had even thought about it.

BS: And during Children of Paradise?

MC: We were very scared. Since the film wasn’t finished, we had to be slyer than they were. What was really annoying was when we had scenes with extras, and God knows there were a lot. In the morning, the Germans came in with their own extras, from the unions, and made us use them. So we had to talk them out of it, since we didn’t like them—they were collaborators, you understand. We didn’t want them, so we invented excuses, saying that they didn’t have the right physique for nineteenth-century France. I’d say, “I have nothing against this gentleman, but I can’t use him.” We cheated like that all the time . . . I mean, it wasn’t all that terrible. What was absolutely terrible was that we were closely watched, because of the Resistance.

One day, I asked for one of the production directors—there were two of them—and I was told he would be back in an hour. I said, “He’s not here?” “No, he went to run an errand.” So I said, “Fine.” An hour passed, and then another. So I asked for the production director again—I forget his name. Finally, I found out that he had run off because there were two Gestapo agents waiting for him downstairs in our second-floor studio. We had opened a garage behind the studio to make it into a costume shop, and he fled that way. If, by chance, we hadn’t, the Gestapo would have seized him. I had an assistant director who—he never told me, but I learned later—was one of the leaders of the Resistance. I was upset, but there were obviously a lot of partisans in the crew.

Anyway, I had some problems because Arletty, as we all know, was the mistress of a Gestapo officer. A well-known one, actually, whom I met by chance once—handsome, intelligent, well educated. People despised her because of the affair, and she used to receive threats, like little wooden coffins.

BS: People say that she was even imprisoned at the time of—

MC: She was. Not exactly imprisoned . . . I had a friend who played a page in Les visiteurs du soir and who was good friends with Arletty. When the Resistance began to surface, she hid at this friend’s house. So he called me on the phone, saying, “Marcel, I have to talk to you.” I told him to come by, and he replied, “No, I can’t leave the apartment. I can only meet you at the bistro downstairs.” I asked him what was wrong, and he told me that he would tell me when we met. So I went right away, since he lived close by. He lived on the other side of the Moulin Rouge; it was about a half-mile walk. When I met him, he said, “Arletty’s hiding out in my home.” I said, “That’s a problem. What should we do? Be careful . . . Can’t she go anywhere else?” During that period, there were snipers on the roofs of Montmartre, and they went into homes and searched apartments. Anyway, he left, and two days later, I got a phone call from him saying that Arletty had been arrested in his house. A bunch of partisans knocked at his door. My friend, like an idiot, opened the door, and one of the partisans suddenly said, “Oh, look at the whore over there! Do you see Arletty over there?” So they arrested her, took her away; they came close to shaving her head at the station. They never hit her, but they were very lewd toward her, called her all kinds of nasty names and put her under house arrest outside Paris. There, she had to go see some kind of judge on a daily basis. The judge began to fancy her. Every day she went, and he joked around with her. One morning he said, “How do you feel this morning, Ms. Arletty?” She answered, “Not very ‘resistant.’”

BS: How was it working with her on Children of Paradise?

MC: She was wonderful. She had such stage presence with that double role. You see, Children was infinitely less hassle than Les visiteurs du soir. That’s what you call luck. I had a fantastic crew, because if the crew hadn’t been so solid and tight, since I don’t have a fascist streak in me, nor am I a born leader . . . I mean, you need a center of gravity. You have all the responsibilities, and people have to respond to you. And I never . . . Well, I had some arguments with the technicians, but even those were very mild. I never had serious arguments, and never argued at all with the actors.

BS: How was it working with Jean-Louis Barrault?

MC: He had a lot of input into the pantomime scenes. I chose him because he was a well-known and remarkable mime. [Étienne] Decroux had trained Barrault for a short while too.

BS: Yes, he was his professor—but there was a bit of friction between the two, wasn’t there?

MC: Yes, there was. There was some in the story, but also offstage.

BS: Is there a parallel between the actors’ lives and their roles in the film? Like when we spoke of Arletty earlier, she was also the victim of a judicial blunder.

MC: She clearly was. It was a perfect ending for the first part. It held together pretty well, especially because the first part is a bit longer than the second, and the opposite is usually no good. There are some rules when directing, you know. While shooting, you think the footage is flowing smoothly, but it’s not all usable. I learned about that with [Jacques] Feyder. He said, “See, I showed this scene at length, but when we come to this set, it’ll have to be shorter.”

BS: Did you learn a lot from Feyder?

MC: Not really . . . Well, yes. I did learn how to direct actors. The main influences in my work come especially from German directors, like Fritz Lang, Murnau, Pabst, and Sternberg, mostly for lighting and such. I’m also a fanatic for American cinema. I often watch B movies on television, and there’s always something. I can watch any stupid movie because of the lighting and photography. In France, we can’t work as well with color as we did with black and white. All the colors are very realistic, which is quite strange. If there’s a lamp here, the light has to come from that lamp. [Eugen] Schüfftan showed—as one of his students noticed—a lighted lamp and no light, just a surreal ray above it. That’s what I mean: if you can’t interpret light, then you have amateur photography. It’s so easy today with these new cameras to shoot a beautiful picture.

For the second and third part of this interview see here and here

– Marcel Carné on Children of Paradise: Forty-Five Years Later. For further resources on Marcel Carné and Children of Paradise, visit www.marcel-carne.com.

Theo Angelopoulos: Landscape and History

The Travelling Players (Directed by Theo Angelopoulos)

“The Travelling Players may be thought of as a meditation with three dimensions: history, myth and aesthetics. The viewer is constantly invited to alternate between emotional engagement and intellectual analysis.”

– Dan Georgakas, The Last Modernist: The Films of Theo Angelopoulos, 1997

Made under the watchful eyes of the last days of the Greek military junta, Theo Angelopoulos’s formally and thematically ambitious masterpiece follows an acting troupe in the war-torn years between 1939 and 1952 as they attempt to stage a production of the pastoral play Golfo the Shepherdess.

Highly stylised in its pageant-like movement through history, encompassing the Metaxas dictatorship, World War II and the Greek Civil War, the film is notable for its protracted and elaborately choreographed tracking shots. Reminiscent of the technique of filmmakers such as Max Ophuls and the Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó, these labyrinthine long takes wind tortuously around the actors and action, sometimes switching historical era within the same shot. The result is a radical and challenging chronicle of a nation’s recent history.

These same travelling players are encountered on the road by two vagrant children in search of their father in Angelopoulos’s later classic, Landscape in the Mist (1988).

The following is an extract from an interview with Theo Angelopoulos in 1974.

Q: When did you decide to shoot The Travelling Players, and what were the political circumstances at the time?

TA: We launched the film on the eve of the Polytechnic events. In any case, since the film deals with the 1939-52 period and refers to all sorts of unmentionable historical episodes, the Papadopoulos censors wouldn’t have been very likely to approve it. Nevertheless, we decided to go ahead and shoot the film. Shortly before we started, the Polytechnic incidents erupted in all their vio­lence followed by the Ioannides putsch. At this point we wondered whether it was worth making a film that might very well never be shown in Greece. And what would be the sense of such a decision? We discussed the matter with the producer, and he agreed with us that even if the film was to be banned in Greece, it would achieve its purpose through the echoes of its screenings abroad. In January and February 1974, as the terror was reaching its peak, we decided to go ahead with the film. We were prepared to make our film disregarding any censorship threats whatsoever.

Q: What was the original idea?

TA: I first thought about a travelling company touring the smaller towns around the country. A journey through the Greek landscape and history, following a group of actors from one town square to the next. Later, more elements were added like, for example, using the myth of the Atrides for the relations between the actors. I used an existing formula-father, son, mother, lover, their children . . . power . . . murder - which functions both as a myth and as a basis for the plot. It was a liberating decision, since I had made up my mind from the very beginning this was not supposed to be a lesson in history. The myth of the Atrides offered the option of a social unit that I could observe all through the period from 1939 to 1952. The Days of ’36 revealed the portrait of a dictatorship. The Travelling Players is a kind of se­ quel, giving names and specifications to this portrait. It goes up only until 1952, because I believe that year’s massacres put an end to the civil war and consecrated the triumph of the right wing and the victory of Papagos. That is, the story covers the period between the overt dictatorship of a general to the veiled dictatorship of a field marshal, who was viewed by many Greeks, exhausted by all the catastrophes they had experienced before, as a liberator.

There were a number of obstacles I had to overcome in order to achieve my purpose. First, to combine all these elements into one structure, but also to avoid conventional scenes of the kind you encounter so often in these cir­cumstances: hunger, death, persecutions, etc. For this reason, the film begins in 1952 with Pagagos’s election campaign. I wanted to portray the generation of the Resistance, the people who were against the Metaxas dictatorship, who fought in WW2, who joined the National Front of Liberation and retreated later into the mountains. All those who were forced by the events to take a stand and, finally, were considered the "Resistance generation" from the left­ist point of view, naturally. Three persons represent this generation in the film: the older 1939 militant and two younger persons suspected of sympa­thizing with this man and his opinions. All three of them join the Resistance and are arrested. One of them is deported and released in 1950 after signing an anti-communist declaration. The second is executed in 1951 for refusing to give up the armed struggle. The third falls ill in prison, is released for "health reasons," and will carry with him the "revolution trauma" for the rest of his life. Time has stopped for him in 1944; he constantly projects the events of that year into the future. The entire picture bears the stamp of this trauma. All the characters suffer from it. Some have signed the declaration, others have died in prison or lost their minds.

Q: You claim you used the myth of the Atrides to avoid the artificiality of a con­ventional arbitrary form. Aren’t you worried that such a myth, so deeply entrenched in the cultural traditions of our civilization, would create an opposite effect, by imposing on the film an inexorable fatality? You obviously wish to use the myth as an historical model, but it could lead to the wrong conclusions. Some people might take the film as another interpretation of the myth.

TA: To begin with, the presence of the myth is not that evident in the film. We do not use names, there is no Agamemnon, no Electra, no Pylade, not even a Nikos or Pavlos. The only name in it is Orestes, who for me is a con­cept more than a character: the concept of the revolution so many dream of. The affection many of the characters lavish on him represents their yearning for the ideal notion of the revolution. Orestes is the only one who remains faithful to himself and his goals, and is willing to die for them.

Q: Isn’t there a risk in identifying your protagonists with the heroes of the myth (Electra, Orestes, Aegisthus, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra) and then placing them in a different historical context?

TA: The motivations are different, the circumstances are not the same. His­ tory affects them, changes and transforms them. All I did is sketch them, and this helps me to define more accurately the historical space in which they are allowed to move. In the film, Aegisthus is a militant for the August 4 party and finds himself involved in pseudo-collaboration with the Germans. The concept of power is revealed in him by his attitude to the other actors, after the death of Agamemnon. Attempting to analyze his personal motivation would lead to a psychological drama about the primal reasons that made Aegisthus what he is. And that does not interest me at all. What I was trying to achieve is a kind of Brechtian epic, where no psychological interpretation is necessary.

Q: How did you put the script together?How did you use the myth in it?

TA: First of all, I tried to use the 1952 events as a point of departure. From that point, I looked back, but not in the classical flashback tradition, because these are not personal recollections of one definite character, but collective memories, giving me the freedom to plant inside the 1952 sequence certain historical episodes from the past. The first scene takes place in 1952, the last in 1939. As you can see, I am progressing in the opposite direction. In the final scene we see all the characters who participate in the film. Some of them, we know, have been already killed in action; others are in jail. The survivors are old by now; they have broken up, have been barely released from prison. They walk towards each other, they stop in front of the camera, and we hear the text of the beginning: "In the summer of 1939 we reached Aigion. We were exhausted, we hadn’t slept for two nights." The only differ­ence is the year-instead of 1952 in the opening scene it is now 1939. The characters here are still full of hope for the future, but we know what is in store for them. It’s like an old family picture we look at, knowing only too well what is going to happen to each of the persons in it.

Q: How did you select the historical events you wanted to show on screen?

TA: The choice of some dates and events is evident at first glance. The first "historical fact" we run into, in 1939, is the declaration of WW2. This "fact" affects everybody and is therefore introduced at a popular festivity, the actors and many other people being there at the same time. The German victory is represented by the capitulation of a small Greek garrison. The Liberation is seen through a popular revolt. Later, in December 1944, we have the mea­sures against possession of weapons, the civil war, and the elections of 1952. Also, when selecting the events, I preferred those I found to be most repre­sentative of Greek characteristics. For the 1944 events, it was the people in the street and the dimensions of their reaction I was concerned with, not the governmental decisions as such. The people consider December 1944 as their revolution, a revolution that was cut off in the middle, before it reached its natural conclusion. Why? My film does not offer a straightforward answer to the question, but there is plenty of evidence in it to find the answer. For instance, why didn’t the ELAS [The Greek Popular Army of Liberation] reach Athens? And there are more events we all know are part of the historical background of that period. Everything is shown through the perspective of simple people-the same people who have to bear the effects of these events. The film is a popular epic much more than an analysis of recent Greek his­tory.

Q: Unlike your first two films, the erotic element is of major importance in The Travelling Players. What is its significance in relation to the political elements in the picture?

TA: The sexual element is integrated in the characters. Clytemnestra’s affair with Aegisthus and Electra’s reaction are all based on their respective personali­ties. There is however a point when these relations stop being only personal, for Aegisthus is more than just the lover of the mother. He is also a traitor. He is killed not only because of his affair with Clytemnestra or because he has successfully ridded himself of Agamemnon, but for betraying Agammem­non and his son to the Germans. Electra’s rape is a political act as well. I believe that at the origins of every act of violence there is some kind of sexual impulse. Since Electra is raped in interrogation, the act becomes automati­cally political. The film also introduces the concept of prostitution. Chryso­temis is a prostitute who later marries an American soldier. This kind of marriage may solve a certain problem, but at the same time it represents the bankruptcy of moral values. The sexual element is therefore transferred to a political-ideological level.

Q: What does the stage play Golfo the Shepherdess, produced by the players in your film all over Greece, mean to you?

TA: The play functions on several levels. First, it is the means for these play­ers to make a living. But it is also art, since they perform it on stage. Then there is the text they use and the myth of the Atrides. The text is always interrupted at some stage and never completed on screen. And finally, add­ ing the historical background, the play itself gains another dimension. Let’s take, for example, one line from the play: "Are we being watched?" This doesn’t have anything to do with the popular drama anymore; it refers to the fate of the actors themselves, the characters of the film.

Q: It seems as if Golfo is the only play they ever perform. And you have to agree that both thematically and dramatically this is a very conventional play. Politically speaking, it rather mystifies instead of clarifying the true antagonism between so­cial classes. Don’t you feel there is a contradiction between the distinct political position of the actors themselves and the reactionary ideology of the play they keep producing?

TA: Golfo in nothing more than a convention, a Greek version of Romeo and Juliet. The actors are not really conscious of the conflict between their per­sonal politics and the ideology of the play. All they want is to make a living by offering their audience the kind of fare they like to see.

Q: What about the relations between theater and cinema? The stage sequences raise the question of realism, in the sense that an actor plays an actor who plays a role in a play, so what is real in all this?

TA: I have given a lot of thought to this matter. The actors play actors. Masks, costumes, sets, they are all extremely important elements. The change of costumes, for example. When the Englishman puts an actor’s beret on his head and gives the actor another hat in exchange, he becomes an actor in the play as well. When the British perform on the improvised set or sing "Tipperary," the actors are the audience. When Golfo is supposed to fall down, dead, a British soldier falls too, killed by a bullet, as if he, at this spe­cific moment, was playing the part of Golfo. Certain acts and events are re­peated all through the film and given more than one sense, and the performance of the play is never concluded because it is always interrupted by the political events taking place at the same time.

Q: Does your film adhere to a clear aesthetic concept established beforehand?

TA: Despite rumors that I have a definite aesthetic concept with which I will stick through hell and high water, I would like to insist on the fact that I do improvise a lot. In the film there are a certain number of very dynamic scenes featuring a large variety of actions, and also static scenes, the three mono­logues. Since I wanted to have one distinct aesthetic approach, I tried to com­pensate through camera movements in every possible instance, except for the theater production and the three tales. For these scenes, the camera stood still, facing the actors. The basic principle governing all the film is the se­quence shot, whether the camera is moving (which it is most of the time) or immobile. This way, the scenes gain much in depth and detail, with the edit­ ing being done inside the camera. We never shot two scenes, if we had the option of doing it in one.

Q: You feel much more comfortable with the sequence shot and prefer it to the traditional editing process.

TA: It is my own notion, possibly a very personal one. The sequence shot offers, as far as I am concerned, much more freedom, but it is true that the spectator needs to be more involved in it. There is another advantage I like in the sequence shot that you cannot have in traditional editing: the empty screen, when the action is implied, taking place elsewhere.

Q: We could say the sequence shot adopts the concept of montage but instead of using traditional editing, it combines together various elements in one scene, which, through the movement of the camera, stimulate the imagination of your spectators.

TA: It is equally important to mention that through the sequence shot it is possible to preserve both unity of space and unity of time. The film does not acquire an artificial pace at the editing table. Also, once you change the frame, it is as if you’re telling your audience to look elsewhere. By refusing to cut in the middle, I invite the spectator to better analyze the image I show him, and to focus, time and again, on the elements that he feels are the most significant in it.

Q: Did you encounter any difficulties during the production of the film?

TA: First of all, the weather. I was persecuted by beautiful weather. I needed a clouded sky-I couldn’t imagine the occupation under sunny skies. But Greece is well known for its magnificent weather and sunny sky, summer and winter alike. You can’t imagine how much trouble this was! When you have scenes where the first part is shot in Athens and the second in Amfissa, you need to have similar meteorological conditions; the mood, the atmo­sphere have to be as close as possible. And that is rarely evident in a film. On top of that, we went over budget, and worst of all, we were afraid of shooting this kind of film under the present conditions you are only too familiar with.

– A journey through Greek Landscape and History: The Travelling Players. Interview with Theo Angelopoulos by Michel Demopoulos and Frida Liappas, 1974.

Writing ‘Hud’: A Conversation

Hud (Directed by Martin Ritt)

The distinguished screenwriting team of Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr., first met as young writers at MGM and were married in 1946. Irving Ravetch, born in Newark, New Jersey, was an aspiring playwright, who’d attended UCLA before coming to MGM. Harriet Frank, Jr., was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, and eventually attended UCLA while her mother was working as a Hollywood story editor. After their marriage, the Ravetches worked independently for over ten years before beginning their first collaboration on Martin Ritt’s The Long Hot Summer (1958) starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. This experience initiated a remarkable series of collaborations with Martin Ritt that extended over eight films and included Hud (1963), starring Paul Newman and Patricia Neal, for which the Ravetches were nominated for an Academy Award; Hombre (1967), also with Paul Newman; Norma Rae, featuring Sally Field, for which the Ravetches received their second Oscar nomination; and Stanley and Iris (1990), starring Robert De Niro and Jane Fonda. They also wrote various scripts for other directors, including an adaptation of William Inge’s The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960), directed by Delbert Mann and starring Robert Preston and Dorothy McGuire, and an adaptation of William Faulkner’s The Reivers (1969), directed by Mark Rydell and featuring Steve McQueen.


For Hud they took a minor character from Larry McMurtry’s first novel Horseman, Pass By, and transformed him into one of the most eerily compelling characters in motion picture history. The Ravetches’ uniquely close relation with the film’s director Martin Ritt, and also with its leading actor, Paul Newman, led to a devastating cinematic character study of evil and self-absorption.

– The following extract is from a conversation with William Baer in which Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr. discuss their screenwriting collaboration, working with Martin Ritt and the depiction of evil in Hud:


BAER: After the success of ‘The Long Hot Summer’ (1958), you wrote your second film for Martin Ritt, an adaptation of Faulkner’s ‘The Sound and the Fury’ (1959). Then you wrote screenplays for Vincente Minnelli (‘Home from the Hill’, 1960) and Delbert Mann (‘The Dark at the Top of the Stairs’, 1960). How did you come upon the source material for your next film, Larry McMurtry’s first novel, ‘Horseman, Pass By’?


RAVETCH: I found the book in a bookstore, took it home, and read it. Then I asked Harriet to read it.


FRANK: It’s a beautifully written book. McMurtry was very young at the time, and it was clear that he was a very gifted writer.


RAVETCH: And since we’d enjoyed working with Marty and Paul so much, we wanted to do it again, and we thought the book could be adapted in such a way as to create a leading role for Paul. So we acquired the rights to the book.

BAER: Before we get to the specifics about writing ‘Hud’, I’d like to ask you about your approach to literary adaptation and literary collaboration. First, let’s talk about adaptation. In the past, you’ve referred to your scripts based on other literary sources as being more like ‘hybrids’ than adaptations.


RAVETCH: Yes, very much so. The Long Hot Summer, for example, was probably 95 percent ours and only 5 percent Faulkner. The Hamlet’s a marvelous book—brilliant and hysterical—and Faulkner’s Barn Burning is one of the great American short stories, but in actually writing the film, we basically took one of the characters from the novel, altered him drastically, and then created a new story around him. On the other hand, The Reivers, which we did many years later, is almost entirely from the book. It’s 100 percent Faulkner because we found it readily adaptable to film. So our approach to adaptations, whether it be Faulkner or someone else, really runs the gamut because it’s always crucial to focus on what’s best for the film.

BAER: Faulkner, who was a screenwriter himself, seemed to understand that approach since he called ‘The Long Hot Summer’ a ‘charmin’ little movie.’


RAVETCH: Well, I’m glad to hear that. Faulkner is absolutely our favorite novelist of all American novelists, and we always worried that he might have hated what we did in The Long Hot Summer.


FRANK: Faulkner’s definitely America’s glorious writer, but you’re right. He knew all about screen adaptation. He’d worked with Howard Hawks, and he worked on the screen adaptation of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not, so he knew from personal experience that film and fiction are two very different mediums.


BAER: So how do you collaborate? How do you actually go about creating a script together?


FRANK: First, we talk out an outline, and since we want to stay married, we talk it out very amiably. At that point, we’re not laying out an absolute chapter-and-verse for every single moment in the screenplay; we’re, instead, creating large blocks of organization, so we can visualize the line of the story, and get ready to go. We usually start with a one-page outline listing about thirty-five to forty-five major scenes.


BAER: Irving once said that ‘The script is not so much written as it’s talked onto the page.’


FRANK: That’s right. That’s how we do it. Once we’re ready to begin, we start ‘talking’ the screenplay to each other. Out loud. It’s a line-for- line conversation. In truth, we get so involved that we can’t even tell who starts a line or who finishes it. It’s a very animated, running conversation where we act out the lines – Irving’s a very good actor and I’m not! – along with a running commentary like, ‘That’s good,’ or ‘That’s lousy,’ or ‘Why not try this?’


RAVETCH: And there’s no ego involved. None. Over the years, we’ve heard about a number of other collaborators who do a lot of screaming at each other, but we never raise our voices.


FRANK: We want to stay married!


RAVETCH: Yes, but as conscientious writers, we can’t let our egos get in the way; otherwise, it will start to interfere with the work and ruin it.

FRANK: And from many years of experience, I can tell you that Irving is never a man of ego. He’s never aggressively critical, although, if he hates something, he’s very honest and plainspoken. So we have none of that push-me-pull-me business. We work things out amicably, and we don’t waste time arguing.


RAVETCH: Who was that married couple at Metro who collaborated on so many scripts? They did The Thin Man and It’s a Wonderful Life.


FRANK: Hackett and Goodrich.


RAVETCH: Yes, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. Apparently, they also had a seamless and unegotistical collaboration.


BAER: So who types the script?


RAVETCH: I do. I sit at the typewriter, and Hank paces around. We always work in the mornings, nine to one, five days a week. Usually, we’d get about three pages done each day, and those pages are finished pages. We’d polish them as we go, over and over again, doing our revising as we proceed. So when we’re finished, we’re really finished. We very seldom do any revising.


BAER: How long does a script usually take?


FRANK: About ten weeks.


BAER: Now the McMurtry project, which was eventually titled ‘Hud’, was the first film in a three-picture deal for the newly-formed Salem Pictures, which was established by Martin Ritt and Paul Newman in agreement with Paramount and Columbia. Were you partners in Salem Pictures?


RAVETCH: No, we weren’t.


BAER: But Irving was listed as a producer on the film?


RAVETCH: Well, you know that Hollywood is always pretty loose with the term ‘producer.’ All I did was find the source material.

BAER: But I think you’re being too modest. The whole idea for the picture came from the both of you. Weren’t you involved in the casting?


RAVETCH: Yes, Marty always kept us with him, from the beginning to the end.


FRANK: Yes, he truly embraced us as collaborators. It was a very unusual relationship. Just glorious!

BAER: Let’s talk about that relationship.


RAVETCH: We made eight films with Marty Ritt, and on every single one of those pictures, we were with Marty from the pre-production and casting to the final advertising campaign. We were also on the set every single day, and he invited us to the rushes every single morning. It was a true collaboration, and we always had a marvelous time. Marty Ritt was an extraordinary man in many ways, and unlike most directors, he never insisted on a vanity credit.


FRANK: That’s right, Marty’s films never opened with the credit, ‘Film by Martin Ritt.’ Never. He was a class act, and he was never concerned with ego.


RAVETCH: And he was always willing to try something new, something ‘difficult.’



BAER: Well, ‘Hud’ was certainly a unique picture in many ways, but, most significantly, it dared to portray a central character who was a ‘pure bastard’ – and who remained totally unredeemed and unrepentant at the end of the picture.


RAVETCH: Yes, we sensed a change in American society back then. We felt that the country was gradually moving into a kind of self-absorption, and indulgence, and greed – which, of course, fully blossomed in the eighties and the nineties. So, we made Hud a greedy, self-absorbed man, who ruthlessly strives for things, and gains a lot materially, but really loses everything that’s important. But he doesn’t care. He’s still unrepentant.


FRANK: In our society, there’s always been a fascination with the ‘charming’ villain, and we wanted to say that if something’s corrupt, it’s still corrupt, no matter how charming it might seem – even if it’s Paul Newman with his beautiful blue eyes. But things didn’t work out like we planned.

BAER: It actually backfired.


RAVETCH: Yes, it did, and it was a terrible shock to all of us. Here’s a man – Hud – who tries to rape his housekeeper, who wants to sell his neighbors’ poisoned cattle, and who stops at nothing to take control of his father’s property. And all the time, he’s completely unrepentant. Then, at the first screenings, the preview cards asked the audiences, ‘Which character did you most admire?’ and many of them answered, ‘Hud.’ We were completely astonished. Obviously, audiences loved Hud, and it sent us into a tailspin. The whole point of all our work on that picture was apparently undone because Paul was so charismatic.


BAER: Paul Newman actually took much of the blame on himself, feeling that he’d portrayed Hud as far too vital and appealing and charming. But Martin Ritt disagreed, saying that the film clearly revealed Hud for exactly what he was, and denying that any of the film’s creators could have possibly anticipated the rising cynicism of the baby-boom generation. How do you feel about that?


RAVETCH: I think they were both right, and both innocent. We could have never anticipated the reaction of those audiences, especially the young people, and if we had known beforehand, we would have definitely done things differently.


BAER: That was a time when young people were looking for rebels to emulate.


FRANK: That’s right.


RAVETCH: That’s true, but Hud’s more than just a bit rebellious. He’s truly villainous. But, of course, that’s the way things have gone in our society. In many movies today, there’s a stream of endless violence and murder and high-tech fireballs, and the young audiences are eagerly clapping, and laughing, and banging their feet. They love it. So what have we created? What kind of society is that? Back in the early sixties, we knew something was in the air, but we never could have anticipated what’s come to pass.

BAER: In McMurtry’s novel, Hud’s a minor and infrequently seen character, so one of the key changes in the script is the expansion of Hud’s role. Was that alteration made to accommodate Paul Newman?


RAVETCH: Yes, we were specifically trying to create material that would interest both Paul and Marty. So we enlarged the character of Hud and wrote the part with Paul in mind.


BAER: Many critics have drawn comparisons between ‘Hud’ and ‘Shane’ since, in both films, a young boy is attracted to a charismatic man. Shane, of course, despite his past, is an admirable western hero, but Hud is not, and young Lon must decide whether he will be lured into the immoral but seemingly exciting lifestyle of Hud, or whether he’ll eventually side with his grandfather, Homer Bannon, a man of high integrity and old-fashioned values. Was it a complete coincidence that the role of Lon was played by Brandon de Wilde, who’d also played the part of Joey Starrett, the young boy in ‘Shane’?


RAVETCH: I never thought about that before.


FRANK: I don’t think it ever crossed our minds.


RAVETCH: I can certainly see that there’s lots of parallels in the two stories, but the casting of Brandon in Hud was just a coincidence. He was the only young actor we could find who we felt was right for the part...


BAER: Alma’s an excellent counterpart to Hud, who, as his father clearly states, is an ‘unprincipled man.’ But in the novel, Hud’s even worse, and I’d like to ask you about two important changes that you made in the script. The first is the fact that in the novel, Hud actually rapes Halmea, whereas in the script his assault on Alma is thwarted by Lon’s intervention.


RAVETCH: Well, the change highlights Lon’s significance in the film, and it also helps to keep Hud human. We didn’t want to create a character who was totally and simplistically evil, so Lon’s intervention prevents the drunken Hud from going too far.

FRANK: Also, in the film, Alma’s definitely attracted to Hud. There’s a real chemistry between them – there’s clearly something in the air – and the two of them are playing a very sophisticated, sexual ‘card game.’ But when Hud gets drunk, he ruins everything, and his attempted rape both insults and violates Alma, and she decides to leave. But up to that point, things might have worked out if Hud hadn’t been so crude and vile. At the bus station, Alma clearly admits it, saying, ‘You want to know something funny? It would have happened eventually without the roughhouse,’ and Hud’s final comment to the departing Alma is: ‘I’ll remember you, honey. You’re the one that got away.’ So thwarting the rape in the film allowed for much more subtlety in their relationship.


BAER: Similarly, at the end of the novel, Hud actually shoots his wounded father-in-law, claiming it to be a mercy killing, and he ends up indicted for ‘murder without malice’ – although he expects to get a suspended sentence. In the script, however, Hud doesn’t kill his father, who dies of his injuries and a broken will.


RAVETCH: That’s another attempt to humanize Hud, so he wouldn’t be one-dimensionally evil. In that scene at the end, with his father dying in his lap, there’s a subtle sense of unspoken grief. Hud’s a villain, but he’s a villain with seeds of something worth preserving.


FRANK: What? Leave the room! We’ll have none of that, Mr. Ravetch!


RAVETCH: But he’s human; he’s not all dark.


FRANK: We can discuss that tomorrow morning in divorce court!


RAVETCH: But in that crucial scene with Lon and his dying father, Hud tries in some way – a very laconic way – to give the young boy some kind of consolation. There’s something decent going on.


FRANK: But not nearly enough. There’s something in the American psyche that’s sadly attracted to the dangerous, the flamboyant, and the immoral. And that’s exactly what we were trying to show in that film.


RAVETCH: Well, now you can see how we collaborate!


FRANK: Yes-no, yes-no, back-and-forth.


BAER: Let’s try another important topic. One of the most famous scenes in the film is the killing of Homer’s herd of cattle to prevent the spread of hoof-and-mouth disease. The scene is expertly directed by Martin Ritt and powerfully shot by James Wong Howe. A number of critics have suggested that the scene, in some way, recalls the terrible human genocides of the twentieth century. Was that on your minds when you were writing the scene?


RAVETCH: Yes, we certainly had that in mind when we were writing that scene.


FRANK: Yes, the undertone was clearly intended.


RAVETCH: Definitely...


BAER: Let’s talk about the end of the script. Just like in the novel, young Lon leaves the ranch to get away from Hud, and he hitches a ride with a trucker who recalls Lon’s grandfather, Homer, and refers to him as the ‘old gentleman.’ But this scene was eventually cut from the movie. Do you know why?


RAVETCH: It was too much of a dying fall. Marty always had a gutsy, muscular attack on life in general – and, in his films, he would always opt for the punchiest moments he could get. And it definitely seemed more dramatic to end the film with Hud shutting the door and making his ‘The hell with you’ gesture.


BAER: Was the script ending ever shot?


RAVETCH: No, Marty was satisfied with closing on Paul, and so were we.


BAER: Let’s talk some more about that final scene. The film ends with Hud completely alone on the deserted ranch. He goes into the empty house, gets a beer, and comes back to the screen door. Then he looks out, as if wondering if he should go after Lon, but then he shrugs, makes a dismissive hand gesture – as if to say, ‘the hell with it’ – and shuts the door. It’s a very powerful ending – reminiscent of the Greek tragedies and so many of Faulkner’s novels – illustrating the fall of a once-great household. Did you think about that larger theme as you were writing the script?


RAVETCH: Not specifically, although it’s clear that the film is about the fall of Homer Bannon and everything he’d built and stood for. But in writing the very end of the film, we relied more on a gut instinct that that’s exactly how Hud would have reacted under those circumstances. He’d be consistent. He’d be Hud. It’s an odd movie in a way because Lon is the central character in that he’s the one who has to make the crucial choice, but Hud’s also the main character since he’s always at the center of everything. So Marty decided – we all did, in fact – to end the film with Hud...


– William Baer: Hud: A Conversation with Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr. Michigan Quarterly Review vol. XLII, no. 2, Spring 2003. For the full article see here

  

Theo Angelopoulos: Writing and History

Ulysses’ Gaze (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

The script is the raw material for cinema, as soon as it is written I forget all about it. A script becomes something else when it is transferred to film… For example, the script for ‘Voyage To Cythera’ and the actual movie have a distant relationship. Scripts remain much closer to the original idea behind a movie. Nevertheless, their role, their meaning alters significantly as soon as filming begins or, to put it in a slightly different way, a script is the movie up until the moment when the first scene is shot. As soon as this happens, the script and the movie go their separate, often considerably different pathways.  – Theo Angelopoulos

The great Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos collaborated with Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra and the Greek novelist Petros Markaris on several of his films. In the following extract from an interview with Dan Fainaru in 1999, Angelopoulos discusses his writing methods and the personal and political background to his work:

Q: This is a strange relationship, him [Tonino Guerra] being an Italian who does not speak Greek, while you do not speak Italian. And yet, it is with him you start writing your scripts.


A: It is true we do not need to speak the same language, but we are both men of the South. I believe that all the Mediterranean people have some­thing in common. Not only because there are ancient roots common to all of us, having been in contact with each other for thousands of years, but also because of the proximity of the sea and the similitude of the climate. I never feel abroad when I am in Italy.

With Tonino, it was an instant relationship. He was working at the time with Andrei Tarkovski in Rome on Nostalghia. Andrei and I shared the same flat for a couple of weeks, a flat owned by an assistant director who worked with me on Megalexandros and with Tarkovski on Nostalghia. All I knew about Tonino at the time was his work with people like Fellini and Antonioni, but Andrei seemed to be very happy with their collaboration. I asked my assistant, the owner of the flat, to introduce us, and he arranged for me to go over to Tonino’s place. I intended to meet him, get to know him, and then see whether there was a way for us to cooperate.

Five minutes after I stepped into his flat, we were already at work. We immediately realized we were speaking the same language – in film terms of course, because when we met I spoke French and he spoke Italian but we understood each other perfectly. We also discovered there are many things for which we share the same affection and love. What I like about Tonino is not only the fact that he is a poet, but also that earthly, peasant side, which for me, is very important.

The Travelling Players (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Q: In practice, how do you proceed when you meet to work on a script?


A: I must first explain that while basically, I am the author of my own scripts, I always need another person who will play the devil’s advocate, the psychoanalyst or whatever, to give me a different perspective of the things I have in mind. He is to be the first person to hear my ideas in the raw, and his feedback helps me choose the right direction. In the case of Tonino, most of the time he acts the part of the psychoanalyst. I am not sure many people work together the way we do.

Once a film is finished and I feel I am ready to start the next one, I go to his village in the mountains. We sit down, talk about everything and any­thing, have a drink, and then go to lunch. Later, as we sit down and relax, he will ask me whether I have anything in mind I would like to work on. At this point I am still doubtful. I start talking, telling him different stories I had been reflecting upon, ideas that caught my fancy, images that stuck in my mind, nothing yet very organized one way or another. I am walking back and forth; he listens to me, sitting down. When there is something he con­siders to be of particular interest, he stops me and writes it down...

The Hunters (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Later, we go through all the things he has noted, and we try to see whether there is a coherent idea in there. To do this, I take the notes, go to the room he has prepared for me, pore over them for a few hours, then come back to the sitting room, and suggest a way to proceed. We go out, have a coffee, talk about the direction I proposed. He would tell me whether he likes it or not and add a few other related ideas he had in the afternoon while I was working in my room. Out of it comes another version, an im­proved one, of the same idea, and we go on like this for three, four days, discussing various options for the script.

But we do not do it all the time, from morning till night. We eat, we go for long walks, we meet people in the village, and we also talk about the script. When I leave, I already have in mind a first draft. I call him and tell him about it, or I put it on paper and send him a copy. But he, too, prefers to hear me tell it, rather than read it. He gives me his opinion, and then I start working with a second person.

Tonino assists at the birth of the original idea. And sometimes he can be quite insistent on certain details. For instance, he once called me in Greece after we had already completed the script for Landscape in the Mist, and he told me: ‘Listen Theo, we absolutely have to have a hen in the movie.’ ‘Where do you want me to put it?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know where,’ he re­plied, ‘but I feel we have to put a hen, somewhere.’ He was right and one of the scenes in the film opens with a hen.

O Megalexandros (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

The second person I work with is my first reader. In the past it was Tha­nassis Valtinos; these days it is Petros Markaris. Through him I get a first reaction to my script. Markaris, by the way, has written a whole book in which he describes our cooperation on Eternity and a Day. He never told me, but he documented everything we did, all our phone conversations, our dis­cussions – he didn’t leave anything out.

Part of his job is to take the script I have written by hand and type it into a computer – I still can’t use a type­writer, let alone a computer. He sends me this draft, and I put in my own corrections and additional remarks, and send it back to him. This goes on for some time, we either meet or exchange faxes of the drafts as they progress from one stage to the next, until I reach the point when I feel the others have given me everything they can, and I put in the last touches on my own. But the final shooting script you will find only if you take it off the finished print of the film. If you compare that with the script I have when I start shooting, you will find there are huge discrepancies between them.

O Megalexandros (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Q: You have often talked in the past about the possibility of your adapting a literary work but until now it has never happened. All your screenplays are based on original scripts.


A: I tried my hand at adaptations several times, but every single time, I gave up in the middle. It is difficult to adapt a book, certainly a book you love, without losing some of its original flavor and qualities. I can’t think of a successful adaptation of a great novel. I believe the best novels to turn into films are either thrillers or second-class literature.

Orson Welles, for instance, took a rather routine crime story and made a masterpiece out of it in Touch of Evil. There are many more examples of this kind, for instance several of Godard’s films. As for myself, right now I do not feel like doing a crime story, though I am still tempted by Malraux’s Human Condition. But I realize that there will be always something missing in the transition to the screen...

Voyage To Cythera (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Q: Your parents are from the South, the Peloponnesus and Crete. And yet you seem to be obsessed with the North, with dark skies, cold winters, heavy rains.


A: It’s a question I am often asked. I have no explanation. I have often tried in the past to find one, but couldn’t really. Maybe one has to look far back; a psychoanalyst might unveil the real sources. What I can tell you is that when I set out to make my first feature film, Reconstruction, I remember one after­noon, in the small village where the story took place. The landscape was all shades of gray, the dark sky, the drab little houses, the stony hills. It was raining, just a drizzle; a thin fog was covering the mountain, and the village was practically deserted. Most people had gone to Germany like so many other Greeks in the fifties, in search of a better life. Only a few old women dressed in black, barely visible in the gloomy light, sneaked silently through the narrow streets.

Suddenly I heard an old, cracked voice, singing a very old song. It was an ancient old man, singing ‘Oh, little lemon tree . . . Oh, little lemon tree . . . ,’ the song I finally used in the film. It was a magic moment which marked me for life: the rain, the fog, the gray stones, the women in black looking like ghosts, and the old man singing. This deserted village, a forgotten corner in a land ruled by military dictatorship, was for me the image of a country drained out by the constant flow of departing emigrants, and the only thing left in it is an old love song.

This image has probably imprinted itself in my subconscious, the matrix for all the films to follow. This is the reason I believe the first film is the original seed. Everything that comes later is either a variation, a development, or an elaboration evolving from that first theme. For me, Reconstruction contains all the themes I later developed. I really think one always does the same film, over and over again. Lately I watched again a number of Bergman films, and this is true for him as well.

Landscape In The Mist (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Q: Was it at home, from your parents, that you first acquired the love for culture?

A : Not really. My father was a shopkeeper, my mother was a simple house­wife mostly concerned with the well-being of her children. I don’t remember the origins, but I know I started writing for the first time during the civil war, in Athens, towards the end of 1944, a period we still call ‘The Red Decem­ber.’ The communists, who suspected him of being a liberal, arrested my father. As a matter of fact, the person who arrested him was my own cousin, because you have to know that my family – like the rest of the country – was divided in two, part liberal and part communist. During my father’s absence, for reasons that are still not very clear to me, I wrote my first poems. And since that time, I sincerely believe that poetry was the foremost influence in my life...

He was away for a few months, kept somewhere in the center of Greece, and once he was released, he had to walk all the way home, half the length of the country. I remember seeing him at the end of the street, at the time children were still playing in the street, walking slowly towards us. I rushed home and called my mother. We knew he was supposed to come home, but when I told her I’d seen him, she rushed into the street to greet him. Once back inside, we were in such a state, no one could utter a single word. We sat around the table, drank our soup looking at each other in silence. We all felt like crying but kept back our tears. This is, as you may remember, the opening scene of Reconstruction.

Ulysses’ Gaze (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Q: Do you remember anything of the German occupation?


A: I have said it often enough – I am a war child. When I was born, Greece was ruled by a dictator, General Metaxas. In 1940, the Italians invaded Greece. The first sound I remember is that of the war sirens. And the first image is that of Germans entering Athens, just as I painted it in the opening sequence of Voyage to Cythera. It’s all there, including the episode of the young German soldier directing traffic, the child touching his shoulder, and then running away into a maze of narrow streets with the soldier chasing him. One way or another, I have the feeling that we always dip into our own reservoir of memories and relive certain episodes we have experienced in real life. My work is full of all those special moments of my childhood and adolescence, my emotions and dreams at that time. I believe the one source for everything we do is there.

Q: When did you first take on a distinct political stand?


A: As long as I was in Greece, I considered myself apolitical. Only when I got to Paris did I choose, consciously, to join the Left. Of course, in the fifties, I took part in all sorts of student demonstrations, for instance to support Cyprus, but there was no political conscience behind it. I stayed away when­ ever left-wing and right-wing students would fight on the campus.

At the same time, that is after I graduated high school, I was beginning to realize that my interest in cinema was gradually growing almost into an obsession. I was frequenting all-day cinemas showing detective stories of which I saw a lot. Naturally, the American classics of the genre – Huston, Polonski, Hawks, Walsh – figured at the top of the list. But the first film I ever saw was Michael Curtiz’s Angels with Dirty Faces. I still remember the scene where James Cag­ney is taken to the electric chair, the shadows on the wall, his scream: ‘I don’t want to die.’ I must have been nine or ten at the time. This may ex­plain my fascination to this day with detective stories, be they novels or films...

The Suspended Step Of The Stork (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Q: History and  politics were once in the forefront of every film you made. Now, they are still there, very evident, but much more in the background. Not to mention the quote from ‘The Suspended Step of the Stork’ which says: ‘Politics is nothing more than a career.’ You said earlier you were a man of the left; you certainly still are, but not in the same way.

A: I think many things have changed around us through the years that have been making film. Already in Megalexandros I tried to portray a freedom fighter that turns into a tyrant. I felt that everything we believed in changes once it touches power. The film was a reflection on two themes, power and property. They corrupt all those who, to start with, may have been sincere idealistic socialists. I saw all around me the things that were happening under socialist regimes. I couldn’t help noticing the changes taking place in all those people who were behind May ‘68. All the ideals we once had were being twisted and fading away.

My first film to move history from the fore­front to the background was Voyage to Cythera. It deals with people who be­lieved once in historical perspective and political change, only to discover, thirty years after sacrificing practically everything they had for the revolu­tion, that they are rejected by one and all. It is a political odyssey that ends with the old man, the hero who once dreamed of changing the world, and his wife, the only one who remained at his side, drifting out into the sea...

The Suspended Step Of The Stork (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Q: It has been often said that each one of your films is a sequel of the previous one. Do you agree?


A: It’s true. This is the reason you will never find the word ‘End’ at the end of any of my films. As far as I am concerned, these are chapters of one and the same film that goes on and will never be finished, for there is never a final word on anything. I believe we never manage to do more than a frac­tion of the things we’d like to do. My last film, Eternity and a Day, is attempt­ing to convey the idea that a few words, acquired here and there, are never enough to complete a whole poem.

Q: Your films seem to be very personal not only because your way of doing them is so different from all others, but also because they really talk about yourself, all through. One is often under the impression that your protagonist, even though an actor plays the part, is a reflection of yourself projected in a dramatic context quite close to certain aspects of your life. You even told me once that you seriously consid­ered playing one of the parts, yourself.

A: Yes, it is a bit like that. There are of course directors who play in their own films, like Orson Welles. Sometimes one cannot avoid the feeling, particularly when the film is very close to yourself, that no actor could do justice to the part. I felt like this in Eternity and a Day. In the early stages, I was uneasy with Bruno Ganz in the lead, but deep down it was my own identification with the part that generated my fear that no actor could fully satisfy my expectations.

This is the reason that, at a certain point, I stopped the shoot. I needed to put myself at a certain distance from the script, put it in perspective and see the character wearing the features of another person. One could say the same things when discussing Voyage to Cythera or Ulysses’ Gaze. The truth is that these characters are composite images. There is a smaller or greater part of yourself in each one of them, but there are also other persons you have known. It is never quite you but certainly some of you is always there. And the deeper you go into those characters, the closer they are to your intimate self.

Eternity And A Day (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Q: Another constant concern in your films is the father-son relationship.


A: As I have told you before when we talked about my childhood, the father figure is very important in my own past. The absence of the father who has been taken away – and we had no idea whether he was still alive or not – has been a heavy load on all of us. Since my very first film, it was a crucially important point. Reconstruction opens with the return of the father. Later films deal with the search for the father figure, whether a real or a fictitious father, one who could be a point of reference for the entire film and its pro­tagonist.

Q: Another characteristic of your films – practically all of them are road movies.

A: Yes, but with a difference. Usually, in road movies, the characters roam from one place to another without a definite purpose. In my films, these journeys always have a goal. In Voyage to Cythera, for instance, it is the journey to the imaginary island of one’s dreams, the island of peace and happiness. In Landscape in the Mist the children are looking for their father. The reporter in The Suspended Step of the Stork is travelling around for a definite reason; he is trying to unveil the mystery of the politician who disappeared. In Ulysses’ Gaze the entire trip through the Balkans is determined by the wish to find some pieces of lost film.

Q: You said once that some films come from the heart, others from the mind. Is it true in your case?


A: Some films have at their origins an intellectual premise. In others, it is sentiment. For instance, The Hunters was almost entirely conceived intellec­tually. The same for Days of ‘36. The Beekeeper comes straight from the heart. Most of my films are in-between, a combination of both.

Eternity And A Day (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Q: There are, in your films, whether they come from the heart or the mind, magi­cal moments that will stay with me forever. The party in ‘The Travelling Players’, the last shot of the old couple on the raft in ‘Voyage to Cythera’, the rape in ‘Land­scape in the Mist’, the wedding in ‘The Suspended Step of the Stork’, the New Year party and Lenin’s statue on the barge in ‘Ulysses’ Gaze’, the bus ride in ‘Eter­nity and a Day’. And these are only a very few examples. Every time they occur, one is left amazed again and again by their originality, their imagination and poetry. Is it something that just happens while you’re shooting the film or is it carefully prepared beforehand?


A: Both. The bus ride was not at all written this way. Originally, in this scene, there were just the writer and the boy. It was an almost realistic scene, which could, of course, be very moving. Two persons in an empty bus, cross­ing the city in the rain. But somehow, I had the feeling it was not enough. This is why it took so long to shoot this scene. As we were shooting, I was gradually changing it. Finally, I did the scene twice, once following the script, a second time throwing the script away. The second version is the one we used. The scene of the party in The Travelling Players, when two men are dancing the tango together, had originally a few lines of dialog. Once we started rehearsing it, I decided to change it.

The scene was taking place in 1946 – people were still wearing at the time bowler hats, striped suits, and so on. At a certain moment, during a break in the rehearsal, I noticed two men, both wearing bowler hats, standing next to each other. The pianist was play­ing a few notes of a tango, one of them approached the other, and they started dancing together. That was completely unexpected. I had not written it in the script, not even thought of it, but that is how I rounded up this scene, and I believe it was the right way to do it. Sometimes, it’s this kind of improvisation on the spot; sometimes you know what you’re going to do a few days early. For the rape scene in Landscape in the Mist, it was like that. It was not in the script, but I had it already in mind several days before we shot it.

Eternity And A Day (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

As for the marriage scene in The Suspended Step of the Stork with the bride on one side of the river, the bridegroom on the other – when I wrote the script, the scene was different, but I felt something was missing there. Then, one day, I was in New York on a bus going to Bronx through Harlem. At a stop, I saw a small black boy improvising some dance steps on one side of the street, and on the other side, there was another small black boy, who was answering him with his own dance steps. Nothing out of the ordinary, maybe, but I immediately saw the river in the middle.

And there is some­thing else, something I read in 1958 about an island near Crete, a very small one, completely isolated in the winter. During those long months, the shep­herds who live there use a sign language to communicate with a Cretan priest, who would watch for them at certain hours. They would inform him if someone was dead on their side, he would say mass in Crete for the de­ceased person, and they would bury the corpse on the small island. The combination of these two sources of inspiration resulted in the marriage as you see it in The Suspended Step of the Stork. The New Year party in Ulysses’ Gaze was written more or less the way it is played. I knew it was all going to be in one shot, but I felt, when writing it, there was something missing, and as we were rehearsing, I added light touches here and there.

As for the barge with Lenin’s statue on it, this marks for me the end of an era. I had prepared the sequence beforehand, but the idea of having the peasants watching it float down the Danube and crossing themselves as it went by originated with something I saw in Constanza, a Romanian port on the Black Sea. A crane was moving a huge head of Lenin from a ship to a barge, when a fishing boat just happened by. The couple on it, a man and a woman, stood up, shocked, as if Lenin had just come back to life. The woman covered the man’s eyes and instinctively made the sign of the cross.

But I have to say that strangely enough there are scenes you believe are crucial when you write the script, but do not seem at all like this once you have shot them. While other scenes, which you may not have been very keen on, turn out to be key moments in the film.

– Extracted from ‘Dan Fainaru: And About All The Rest’ in Theo Angelopoulos: Interviews (Ed. Dan Fainaru, University Press of Mississippi, 2001)