“That will be it,” she said mysteriously.
I seemed at first to divine that she (like all the professional actors who are employed here) speaking out of contempt for certain others who, without actually needing, but at the same time not despising an easy source of revenue, either from vanity or from predilection, or for some other reason, had managed to have their services accepted by the firm and to take their place among the actors, with no great difficulty, that supreme difficulty being eliminated which it would have been most arduous for them and perhaps impossible to overcome without a long training and a genuine aptitude, I mean the difficulty of speaking in public. We have a number of them at the Kosmograph who are real gentlemen, young fellows between twenty and thirty, either friends of some big shareholder on the Board, or shareholders themselves, who make a hobby of playing some part or other that has taken their fancy in a film, solely for their own amusement; and play their parts in the most gentlemanly fashion, some of them even with a grace that a real actor might envy.
But, reflecting afterwards on the mysterious tone in which she, her face suddenly clouding over, had uttered the words: “That will be it,” the suspicion occurred to me that perhaps she had heard the news that Aldo Nuti, I do not yet know from what part of the horizon, was trying to find an opening here.
This suspicion disturbed me not a little.
Why did she come to ask me, of all people, with Aldo Nuti in her mind, whether I believed that the actor’s profession was such that any animal might consider itself qualified, without preliminary training, to practise it? Did she then know of my friendship with Giorgio Mirelli?
I had not then, nor have I now any reason to think so. At least the questions with which I have adroitly plied her in the hope of enlightenment have brought me no certainty.
I do not know why, but I should dislike intensely her knowing that I was a friend of Giorgio Mirelli, in his boyhood, and a familiar inmate of the villa by Sorrento into which she brought confusion and death.
“I do not know why,” I have said: but it is not true; I do know why, and I have already given a hint of the reason. I feel no love, I repeat again, nor could I feel any, for this woman; hatred, if anything. Everyone hates her here; and that by itself would be an overwhelming reason for me not to hate her. Always, in judging other people, I have endeavoured to break the circle of my own affections, to gather from the clamour of life, composed more of tears than of laughter, as many notes as I could outside the chord of my own feelings. I knew Giorgio Mirelli; but how, in what capacity? Such as he was in his relations with me. He was the sort of person that I liked. But who, and what was he in his relations with this woman? The sort that she could like? I do not know. Certainly he was not, he could not be one and the same person to her and to myself. And how then am I to judge this woman by him? We have all of us a false conception of an individual whole. Every whole consists in the mutual relations of its constituent elements; which means that, by altering those relations however slightly, we are bound to alter the whole. This explains how some one who is reasonably loved by me can reasonably be hated by a third person. I who love and the other who hates are two: not only that, but the one whom I love, and the one whom the third person hates, are by no means identical; they are one and one: therefore they are two also. And we ourselves can never know what reality is accorded to us by other people; who we are to this person and to that.
Now, if the Nesteroff came to hear that I had been a great friend of Giorgio Mirelli, she would perhaps suspect me of a hatred for herself which I do not feel: and this suspicion would be enough to make her at once become another person to me, I myself remaining meanwhile in the same attitude towards her; she would assume in my eyes an aspect that would hide all the rest; and I should no longer be able to study her, as I am now studying her, as a whole.
I spoke to her of the tiger, of the feelings which its presence in this place and the fate in store for it aroused in me; but I at once became aware that she was not in a position to understand me, not perhaps because she was incapable of doing so, but because the relations that have grown up between her and the animal do not allow her to feel either pity for it or anger at the deed that is to be done.
Her answer was shrewd:
“A sham, yes; stupid too, if you like; but when the door of the cage is opened and the animal is driven into the other, bigger cage representing a glade in a forest, with the bars hidden by branches, the hunter, even if he is a sham like the forest, will still be entitled to defend himself against it, simply because it, as you say, is not a sham animal but a real one.”
“But that is just where the harm lies,” I exclaimed: “in using a real animal where everything else is a sham.”
“Where do you get that?” she promptly rejoined. “The part of the hunter will be a sham; but when he is face to face with this real animal he will be a real man! And I can assure you that if he does not kill it with his first shot, or does not wound it so as to bring it down, it will not stop to think that the hunter is a sham and the hunt a sham, but will spring upon him and really tear a real man to pieces.”
I smiled at the acuteness of her logic and said:
“But who will have wished such a thing. Look at her as she lies there. She knows nothing, the beautiful creature, she is not to blame for her ferocity.”
There was a strange look in her eyes, as though she suspected that I was trying to make fun of her; then she smiled as well, shrugged her shoulders slightly and went on:
“Do you feel is to deeply! Tame her! Make her a stage tiger, trained to sham death at a sham bullet from a sham hunter, and then all will be right.”
We should never have come to an understanding; because if my sympathies were with the tiger, hers were with the hunter.
In fact, the hunter appointed to kill the animal is Carlo Ferro. The Nestoroff must be greatly upset by this; and perhaps she comes here not, as her enemies assert, to study her part, but to estimate the risk which her lover will be running.
He too, for all that he shews a scornful indifference, must, in his heart of hearts, feel apprehensive. I know that, in conversation with the General Manager, Commendator Borgalli, and also upstairs in the office, he has put forward a number of claims: the insurance of his life for at least one hundred thousand lire, to be paid to his parents in Sicily, in the event of his death, which heaven forbid; another insurance, for a more modest sum, in the event of his being incapacitated for work by any serious injury, which heaven forbid also; a handsome bonus, if everything, as is to be hoped, turns out well, and lastly—a curious claim, and one that was certainly not suggested, like the rest, by a lawyer—the skin of the dead tiger.
The tigerskin is presumably for the Nestoroff; for her little feet; a costly rug. Oh, she must certainly have warned her lover, with prayers and entreaties, against undertaking so dangerous a part; but then, seeing him determined and bound by contract, she must, she and no one else, have suggested to Ferro that he should claim at least the skin of the tiger. “At least?” you say. Why, yes! That she used the words “at least” seems to me beyond question. At least, that is to say in compensation for the tense anxiety that she must feel for the risk to which he will be exposing himself. It is not possible that the idea can have originated with him, Carlo Ferro, of having the skin of the dead animal to spread under the little feet of his mistress. Carlo Ferro is incapable of such an idea. You have only to look at him to be convinced of it; look at that great black hairy arrogant goat’s head on his shoulders.
He appeared, the other day, and interrupted my conversation with the Nestoroff in front of the cage. He did not even trouble to inquire what we were discussing, as though a conversation with myself could not be of the slightest importance to him. He barely glanced at me, barely raised Ms bamboo cane to the brim of Ms hat in sign of greeting, looked with Ms usual contemptuous indifference at the tiger in the cage, saying to his mistress:
“Come along: Polacco is ready; he is waiting for us.�
�
And he turned his back, confident of being followed by the Nestoroff, as a tyrant by Ms slave.
No one feels or shews so much as he that instinctive antipathy, which as I have said is shared by almost all the actors for myself, and which is to be explained, or so at least I explain it, as an effect, which they themselves do not see clearly, of my profession.
Carlo Ferro feels it more strongly than any of them, because, among all his other advantages, he has that of seriously believing himself to be a great actor.
6
It is not so much for me, Gubbio, this antipathy, as for my machine. It recoils upon me, because I am the man who turns the handle.
They do not realise it clearly, but I, with the handle in my hand, am to them in reality a sort of executioner.
Each of them—I refer, of course, to the real actors, to those, that is to say, who really love their art, whatever their merits may be—is here against his will, is here because he is better paid, and for work which, even if it requires some exertion, does not call for any intellectual effort. Often, as I have said before, they do not even know what part they are playing.
The machine, with the enormous profits that it produces, if it engages them, can reward them far better than any manager or proprietor of a dramatic company. Not only that; but it, with its mechanical reproduction, being able to offer at a low price to the general public a spectacle that is always new, fills the cinematograph halls and empties the theatres, so that all, or nearly all the dramatic companies are now doing wretched business; and the actors, if they are not to starve, see themselves compelled to knock at the doors of the cinematograph companies. But they do not hate the machine merely for the degradation of the stupid and silent work to which it condemns them; they hate it, first and foremost, because they see themselves withdrawn, feel themselves torn from that direct communion with the public from which in the past they derived their richest reward, their greatest satisfaction: that of seeing, of hearing from the stage, in a theatre, an eager, anxious multitude follow their live action, stirred with emotion, tremble, laugh, become excited, break out in applause.
Here they feel as though they were in exile. In exile, not only from the stage, but also in a sense from themselves. Because their action, the live action of their live bodies, there, on the screen of the cinematograph, no longer exists: it is their image alone, caught in a moment, in a gesture, an expression, that flickers and disappears. They are confusedly aware, with a maddening, indefinable sense of emptiness, that their bodies are so to speak subtracted, suppressed, deprived of their reality, of breath, of voice, of the sound that they make in moving about, to become only a dumb image which quivers for a moment on the screen and disappears, in silence, in an instant, like an unsubstantial phantom, the play of illusion upon a dingy sheet of cloth.
They feel that they too are slaves to this strident machine, which suggests on its knock-kneed tripod a huge spider watching for its prey, a spider that sucks in and absorbs their live reality to render it up an evanescent, momentary appearance, the play of a mechanical illusion in the eyes of the public. And the man who strips them of their reality and offers it as food to the machine; who reduces their bodies to phantoms, who is he? It is I, Gubbio.
They remain here, as on a daylight stage, when they rehearse. The first night, for them, never arrives. The public they never see again. The machine is responsible for the performance before the public, with their phantoms; and they have to be content with performing only before it. When they have performed their parts, their performance is film.
Can they feel any affection for me?
A certain comfort they have for their degradation in seeing not themselves only subjugated to the service of this machine, which moves, stirs, attracts ever so many people round it. Eminent authors, dramatists, poets, novelists, come here, all of them regularly and solemnly proposing the “artistic regeneration” of the industry. And to all of them Commendator Borgalli speaks in one tone, and Coc�� Polacco in another: the former, with the gloved hands of a General Manager; the other, openly, as a stage manager. He listens patiently, does Coc�� Polacco, to all their suggestions of plots; but at a certain stage in the discussion he raises his hand, saying:
“Oh no, that is a trifle crude. We must always keep an eye on the English, my dear Sir!”
A most brilliant discovery, this of the English. Indeed the majority of the films produced by the Kosmograph go to England. We must therefore, in selecting our plots, adapt ourselves to English taste. And is there any limit to the things that the English will not have in a film, according to Coc�� Polacco?
“English prudery, you understand! They have only to say’shocking,’ and there’s an end of the matter!”
If the films went straight before the judgment of the public, then, perhaps, many things might pass; but no: for the importation of films into England there are the agents, there is the reef, the pitfall of the agents. They decide, the agents, and there is no appeal. And for every film that will not go, there are hundreds of thousands of lire wasted or not forthcoming.
Or else Coc�� Polacco exclaims:
“Excellent! But that, my dear fellow, is a play, a perfect play! A certain success! Do you want to make a film of it? I won’t hear of it! As a film it won’t go: I tell you, my dear fellow, it’s too subtle, too subtle. That is not the sort of thing we want here! You are too clever, and you know it.”
In short, Coc�� Polacco, if he refuses their plots, pays them a compliment: he tells them that they are not stupid enough to write for the cinematograph. From one point of view, therefore, they would like to understand, would resign themselves to understanding; but, from another, they would like also to have their plots accepted. A hundred, two hundred and fifty, three hundred lire, at certain moments…. The suspicion that this praise of their intelligence and depreciation of the cinematograph as a form of art have been advanced as a polite way of refusing their plots flashes across the minds of some of them; but their dignity is saved and they can go away with their heads erect. As they pass, the actors salute them as companions in misfortune.
“Everyone has to pass through here!” they think to themselves with malicious joy. “Even crowned heads! All of them in here, printed for a moment on a sheet!”
A few days ago, I was with Fantappie in the courtyard on which the rehearsal theatre and the office of the Art Department open, when we noticed an old man with long hair, in a tall hat, with a huge nose and eyes that peered through his gold-rimmed spectacles, and a straggling beard, who seemed to be shrinking into himself with fear at the big coloured posters pasted on the wall, red, yellow, blue, glaring, terrible, of the films that have brought most honour to the firm.
“Illustrious Senator,” Fantappie exclaimed with a bound, springing towards him and then bringing himself to attention, his hand comically raised in the military salute. “Have you come for the rehearsal?”
“Why… yes… they told me ten o’clock,” replied the illustrious Senator, endeavouring to make out whom he was addressing.
“Ten o’clock? Who told you that! The Pole?”
“I don’t understand…”
“The Pole, the producer!”
“No, an Italian… one they call the engineer. …”
“Ah! Now I know: Bertini! He told you ten o’clock? That’s all right. It is half past ten now. He’s sure to be here by eleven.”
It was the venerable Professor Zeme, the eminent astronomer, head of the Observatory and a Member of the Senate, an Academician of the Lincei, covered with ever so many Italian and foreign decorations, invited to all the Court banquets.
“Excuse me, though, Senator,” went on that buffoon Fantappi��. “May I ask one favour: couldn’t you make me go to the Moon?”
“I? To the Moon?”
“Yes, I mean cinematographically, you know … Fantappi�� in the Moon: it would be lovely! Scouting, with a patrol of eight men. Think it over, Senator. I would arrange the
business. … No? You say no?”
Senator Zeme said no, with a wave of the hand, if not contemptuously, certainly with great austerity. A scientist of his standing could not allow himself to place his science at the service of a clown. He has allowed himself, it is true, to be taken in every conceivable attitude in his Observatory; he has even asked to have projected on the screen a page containing the signatures of the most illustrious visitors to the Observatory, so that the public may read there the signatures of T.M. the King and Queen and of T. E. H. the Crown Prince and the Princesses and of H. M. the King of Spain and of other Kings and Cabinet Ministers and Ambassadors; but all this to the greater glory of his science and to give the public some sort of idea of the Marvels of the Heavens (the title of the film) and of the formidable greatness in the midst of which he, Senator Zeme, insignificant little creature as he is, lives and labours.
“Martuf!” muttered Fantappi��, like a good Piedmontese, with one of his characteristic grimaces, as he strolled away with me.
But we turned back, a moment later, at the sound of a great clamour of voices which had arisen in the courtyard.
Actors, actresses, operators, producers, stage hands had come pouring out from the dressing-rooms and rehearsal theatre and were gathered round Senator Zeme at loggerheads with Simone Pau, who is in the habit of coming to see me now and again at the Kosmograph.
“Educating the people, indeed!” shouted Simone Pau. “Do me a favour! Send Fantappi�� to the Moon! Make him play skittles with the stars! Or perhaps you think that they belong to you, the stars? Hand them over here to the divine Folly of man, which has every right to appropriate them and to play skittles with them! Besides… excuse me, but what do you do? What do you suppose you are? You see nothing but the object! You have no consciousness of anything but the object! And so, a religion. And your God is your telescope! You imagine that it is your instrument? Not a bit of it! It is your God, and you worship it! You are like Gubbio here, with his machine! The servant. … I don’t wish to hurt your feelings, let me say the priest, the supreme pontiff (does that satisfy you?) of this God of yours, and you swear by the dogma of its infallibility. Where is Gubbio? Three cheers for Gubbio! Wait, don’t go away, Senator! I came here this morning, to comfort an unhappy man. I made an appointment with him here: he ought to be here by now. An unhappy man, my fellow-lodger in the Falcon Hostelry…. There is no better way of comforting an unhappy man, than by proving to him by actual contact that he is not alone. So I—have invited him here, among these good artist friends. He is an artist too! Here he comes!”
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