Photos: Classiq Journal
“Suddenly his face opened, his features softening,
and he became quiet and gentle, a moment of grace.
And the camera was there. And it was running.”
Ingmar Bergman, The Magic Lantern
Wild Strawberries, 1957
Ingmar Bergman
Dr. Isak Borg (Victor Sjöström), an aging professor, takes a car trip to receive an honorary award. He is accompanied by his daughter-in-law and, as they drive though the Swedish countryside, he also takes a trip down the memory lane, visiting childhood places and his mother. The black and white in Ingmar’s films is the most beautiful in the whole of cinema. And in Wild Strawberries, where we are taken on a journey into the youth of this elderly character, the black and white is incredibly poetic. “When a film is not a document, it is a dream… At the editing table, when I run the strip of film through, frame by frame, I still feel that dizzy sense of magic of my childhood.”
This film evokes childhood, too, the magic of childhood, and the way people get closer again to their childhood as they get older. Unsurprisingly, the most beautiful moment of the film comes towards the end, when Isak is lying in bed in his son’s home, after the long day’s journey, and you can see him starting to drift off as he lies looking at the camera, and as the camera moves into his eyes, we cut to him back in his childhood. He is worried that he can’t find his parents and he tells a lady friend. She assures him that she will take him to them. They go hand in hand into a meadow and then she points into the distance. Isak sees a little boy – it’s him – running across the field and up to an embankment, where there is a canal. The little boy looks across it and sees, sitting on the other side, a young woman with a parasol and a man standing next to her – obviously his parents – and they look across and wave at him. “It’s incredibly moving when the boy looks across and smiles at the young couple,” Nicolas Roeg writes in his book, The World Is Ever Changing, “and knows he’s safe and turns and runs away. And then we cut to the old man in bed, smiling as he shuts his eyes. A beautiful moment in the most superb film. That is movie storytelling. How can you possibly do that on the page?”
About this very moment, Ingmar Bergman recounted in his book, The Magic Lantern, something that encompasses the unique language of cinema. And everything happened almost accidentally. Bergman remembers how Sjöström was grumpy and nervous throughout the shooting of the film, despite the attention and appreciation the actor/director received from everyone in the crew and cast. Bergman confessed that “it struck me much later that the fuss Victor created around my promise of whisky at half-past four and his senile anger were nothing but an ungovernable fear of finding himself inadequate, of being too tired or indisposed or simply not good enough. […] Perhaps that was what he was thinking, the histrionic old fellow. I did not understand the content of his rage until now, when I find myself in almost exactly the same predicament. All light-hearted games are irretrievably at an end and boredom stares me in the face. Fear of inability attacks and sabotages ability. In the past, I flew unhindered and lifted others. Now I need others’ credence and appetite, others will have to lift me for me to wish to fly.”
That was the Victor Sjöström Bergman had to film and this is how he arrived at that defining moment in the film: “As he walked through the sunlit grass with Bibi in a long shot, he was grumbling and rejecting all friendly approaches. The close-up was rigged up and he went to one side and sat with his head sunk between his shoulders, dismissing scornfully the offer of a whisky on the spot. When everything was ready, he came staggering over, supported by a production assistant, exhausted by his bad temper. The camera ran and the clapper clacked. Suddenly his face opened, the features softening, and he became quiet and gentle, a moment of grace. And the camera was there. And it was running. And the laboratory didn’t muck it up.” In the film, you see his face lighting up in that moment just as described by Bergman and is incredibly moving and beautiful. If you’ve had moments when you have blissfully recounted childhood memories, seeing Victor Sjöström’s face in that moment you feel how everything you yourself felt in those moments as a child rushes back to you. You feel the same as he does, that joy and assurance that you are safe and that everything is alright. Indeed, how can you possibly do that on the page?
Le clan des Sicilian, 1969
Henri Verneuil
Roger Sartet (Alain Delon), a jewellery thief, escapes from a police van with the help of the Manalese mafia family, lead by the patriarch Vittorio (Jean Gabin). Sartet then proposes to them a spectacular diamond heist. Originally planned for Delon and Gabin, the script (by Henri Verneuil, P. Pelegri and José Giovanni after Auguste Le Breton’s novel by the same name), evolved sufficiently enough to include the role of a police commissioner, Le Goff, played by Lino Ventura. With a musical score composed by none other than Ennio Morricone and a clever and suspenseful plot, Le clan des Siciliens is a classic among the classic French polars.
I will be honest and admit that the idea of Delon, Gabin and Ventura on screen together would have garnered the necessary interest for me to watch the film (and I can only imagine how it must have been back in the day, how the public must have felt when they were waiting to see a film with these names on the official poster), and Verneuil certainly knew how to play with the well-honed personae of his three stars – before we see their faces, we see Delon’s hand, Gabin’s feet and Ventura’s back. But any film lover is even happier when they see a film that remains faithful to the medium it is part of. And Verneuil does show true technical prowess in some beautifully crafted scenes, such as the one when Delon escapes from the police van, reminding me of that brilliant and unmatched twenty-nine-minute dialogue-free set piece for the heist in Jules Dassin’s Rififi – incidentally, it was made after a novel by the same Auguste Le Breton. The fun of the escape sequence, aligned with our wanting Delon to be successful, is seeing the ingenuity of his technique. Maybe that’s why we, the viewers, so often root for the bad guys or anti-heroes – their stories always imply some sort of skill and ingenuity, which means we get to see those physical or mental abilities technically being transposed on screen. It’s the visual story, the moving picture we are attracted to. And so it should be.
Reading
One of my favourite books I have read over the last year, or I should very well say one of my favourite books, is Raoul Taburin, by the great writer, illustrator and cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé. I don’t know exactly how to describe this book, or its illustrations, nor do I want to too much. It’s gentle and profound, simple and profoundly humane. Its subtle humour, the minimalistic yet incredibly detailed drawings, there’s always something to discover, completely natural yet poignant, witty yet funny and unforced, always capable of stirring something inside of you, something that’s always been there and yet… It’s genius.
Note: Unfortunately, the English version is no longer available online at the publisher (I don’t link to big retail bookshops), but you can find the French version here or you can check out your own local bookshop or book store of choice.
Listening
The album: Jake Bugg, Jake Bugg.
Making
I would like to stay for a while on Jean-Jacques Sempé and his multi-talent and craft, especially that it was a nice surprise to discover his covers for Marcel Pagnol’s plays and books. I’ve only watched Pagnol’s films, I haven’t read any of his works, but the pairing of Sempé and Pagnol seems so natural.
A generally comic vein ran through many of Pagnol’s films adapted from his own writing, such as the Marseille trilogy (Marius (1931), Fanny (1932) and César (1936)), Topaze (1936), and Heartbeat (1938). “Cinema and I were born in the same day, in the same place,” Pagnol said. And André Bazin rightly remarked: “Pagnol is not a playwright converted to cinema but… one of the greatest directors of talking cinema.” Pagnol’s warmth and wit run through all his films and his portraits of daily community life are piercing and magnificent.
Humour was at the forefront of Sempé’s illustrations in the beginning, but over the years his work evolved. Regardless of theme, humour was no longer the only objective of the drawing. He started to offer a deeper look at society, but always from a place of contented humour, not criticism. That was the human comedy, the daily scenes of ordinary life he liked to observe. Each drawing is a short story, that’s his power and sensitivity.
Exploring
The photography of Fran Mart and the Scottish landscapes and seascapes as seen through his lens.
The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Craig Mod’s newsletters: Roden and Ridgeline. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter. Gone to Timbuktu, Sophy Robert’s podcast on the art of travel. Wachstumsversuche, with Sarah Schill. Sirene, Racquet, and Yolo Journal, all in print.
“I wouldn’t have gotten here if I hadn’t heard
Duke Ellington one day on the radio.
He was a guy that I loved, that I still love.
Thanks to him, I made sense of a lot of music.
Thanks to him, I was mesmerised by the talent of others.
He brought me the joy I needed.”
Jean-Jacques Sempé, Le Monde
”How to catch a cold in Paris”, November, 1961 | Jean-Jacques Sempé
