by Hugh Hood
On his bicycle Michel came to the last ridge of the lonely hills, straddled his machine and gazed, the audience over his shoulder, down into the valley with the straggling stony village at the bottom. A cart track began to define itself in the grass, and turned itself, as the camera trucked along, into a hillside road. Michel pushed forward and began coasting down into the village faster and faster and the camera watched him go. Change the shot.
He came along at immense speed and leaned back in bravado, first waving his arms, then putting both long legs on the handlebars, bumping perilously over ruts and stones as he flew down into the village. The sky was gray behind and above him and he was a black silhouette. Close on the inn door where Claude stood sullenly, watching him come on.
“Salut, salut, je viens, j’arrive.”
“Oh, ça.”
Jean-Pierre laughed, remembering the dolorous tone in which Claude had first read the line. There had been half an hour of discussion while they tried to clarify the character.
“James Dean, yes, I see that,” Claude had kept saying, “we’re talking about loss and rebellion.”
“But you mustn’t simply sulk, or you won’t be taken seriously.”
“What exactly has happened to me?” Claude wanted to know.
“You’ve come apart, like a clock that’s been broken, and you don’t know why. You could have gone to school like your friend, but he has had the strength, and you haven’t.”
“Am I glad to see him?”
“At first, not afterwards. Later on you beat him badly, when you’re drunk.”
“I wish I knew why.”
“Who knows why some come apart and some don’t? I think that we can show it happening.” They went back to work, and Claude said, “Ça, alors,” and “Oh, Ça,” and numberless other things, and began to get the right tone. In the end he had given a great performance, and Michel had been just as good. The scene of drunken violence struck the New York audience forcibly; they were silent and attentive, and the film was applauded enthusiastically as the FIN came over the broken, slowly spinning bicycle wheel.
He left quickly. Outside there were men on ladders, re-lettering the marquee. Somebody bumped against him, a woman gave a sharp exclamation and her hand took his arm. He peered at her, and saw with mixed feelings that the woman was Peggi Starr.
4
On Bank Street it was deathly still and quiet and dark. Going into the hall of Peggi’s apartment building, Jean-Pierre tripped over a low rise in the floor just at the doorway. As he came inside he saw with faint distaste that a pale greenish light gleamed in the halls; it was like a bomb shelter, the walls crossed and recrossed by rectangular lines, the edges of cement blocks.
When Peggi opened the front door of her place, it was black dark in the living room, and they both stuck their arms out in front of them. Involuntarily they clasped hands and held on for an instant, before Peggi found the light switch and flipped it.
The room was pleasant, plain, severe, almost conventual, which he hadn’t expected. The kitchen smelled of baking and, suddenly starving-hungry, he walked straight in and began to sniff around. There were long rows of spice bottles in little racks, copper-bottomed pans hanging in descending order of size, spatulas, serving forks, all precisely arranged.
Peggi came into the kitchen behind him, and in the full yellow light from above he could see her more clearly than he ever had before. She was wearing a thin blouse which emphasized the solidity and sturdiness of her shoulders and arms. She wore glasses, which he hadn’t remembered seeing before, and her face was plump but firm. Something that surprised him more was an impression she gave of ready sexuality, though she didn’t come close to him.
She said, “You look awful, and where have you been? Rose is worried about you and so am I.”
“I’ve been working,” he said. Nobody ever believed that his bouts of film addiction had anything to do with work. “I’ve been picking up ideas here and there, stealing them, if you want the exact truth.”
Her face relaxed. “You’re not a drinker, and you’re not a chaser, as far as I know.”
“That’s right. You haven’t got any evidence. I’m certainly not a drinker.”
“What about the other?”
“I’m considerably over thirty.”
“And I suppose that’s all you have to say.” She went to the stove and lighted a burner under a coffeepot. “Don’t do anything we’ll all be sorry for. I’ve seen two of your pictures this week, and it hasn’t been easy.”
“Why?”
“They’re almost impossible to find; they don’t play.” She measured out coffee from a bright yellow-and-black can of Medaglia d’Oro.
“They play all right, only not here,” he said, a little annoyed.
“Do you like it very strong?”
“I need it strong. Could you give me a piece of cake?”
“Yes. You ought to eat if you’re really working.”
“I really am.”
“Go and sit down then.” But he watched her as she prepared a tray. She moved quickly, with control, and he admired her self-containment. When the food and the coffee were ready they went into the living room and sat side by side on a divan and began to eat. The coffee was awfully strong; he could feel it stimulating him, and quickly ate some salami on dark bread. Soon he felt better.
“Very strong coffee.”
“Mmmmnn.”
“What did you think of the pictures?”
“A reaction? You certainly are interested in what goes on between men and women.”
“Between friends, just between friends.”
“And they mostly end sadly, don’t they?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“This one tonight,” she said, “that was the first, wasn’t it? I couldn’t understand why they fought, why one boy got drunk and beat up his friend. Was it just because the other had left him and gone to the university? It was so sad.”
“I’m only beginning to understand why. He felt betrayed and useless. Let me try to express it better. Sometimes people find some obscure blank obstruction inside them, which stops them, beyond which they can’t force themselves. They grow to a certain height and stop, and no matter what they do they can’t go any further. Once in a while such a person is sprung free, long after he’s decided that his life is over. But that can never be predicted, and by the time we approach early middle age the rails are fixed; we run on them in our course. It drove him to violence. He couldn’t surrender and couldn’t get free. Do you see?”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“Yes but I can’t talk about it. I can show it in pictures.” He bounced up and down on the divan. “I suppose this turns into a bed.”
“It does. Why?”
“So does mine; there must be millions of these in New York, in little rooms. I hate solitude. I’ve had enough of it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Make another film about it.” She glared at him. “Yes, with Rose, in Europe. Somebody always suffers; there’s always somebody left behind.” He put his arms around her; she was submissive and felt warm and he held her against him for an instant. “I love Rose,” he said softly.
Peggi turned her face to him sorrowfully. She made a small choking noise in her throat. “You’d better,” she said.
5
So Jean-Pierre came back down to East Sixty-first, one dark night a few days later in August, to tell Rose his sad story. She greeted him joyfully at the door, standing beside her somber servant Macha, their arms linked in a sisterly pose. The luxurious block was silent, still, almost deserted in the intensely hot blackness. He thought of the premiere party and laughter surged in his heart.
“Come inside; it’s cooler. Could we have something to drink, Macha? Ask Mrs. Ponsonby. Then you can go as soon as you like.” Sh
e turned to Jean-Pierre. “Macha’s off to see Une femme mariée. She wants to see her namesake.”
“Oh movies, movies. You’ll enjoy it,” he said to the quiet girl. She nodded, and went to get them a drink. She’ll be left behind too, he thought; there is always loss.
“We won’t go upstairs,” said Rose.
“Certainly not.”
He followed her into the little conservatory off the hall, and they sat down and looked happily at each other. Macha came into the room in a few moments and when she saw them broke into laughter. She handed them glasses containing an icy fluid, clear but with a faint cloudiness, vodka with a little lemon.
Jean-Pierre said, “Why are you laughing?”
“I wish you happiness,” said the girl, blushing. It was the first time he had seen colour in her face. “I’m very pleased.”
“Thank you, Macha,” Rose said gravely, and the girl turned and almost ran from the room.
“We have to seize it, when it’s offered,” said Jean-Pierre, “and we’ll see that Macha’s all right. Now listen to my story.”
“Go on.”
“You are a young American woman about twenty-seven years old and you’ve been in one of the provincial university towns—I’m thinking of Aix-en-Provence—about four years, perhaps a little longer. You came to France to study, perhaps history, a serious subject but not a technical one like philosophy or law. You aren’t an intellectual, but a simple woman, intelligent but not aggressive. I think you probably came from somewhere near New York, but not the city itself. You’ve never been rich. You are almost plain; your hair is much brushed and extremely clean and shining and you wear almost no makeup.”
“An innocent.”
“But not a fool. By this time you’ve learned the language as well as anyone does who isn’t a language specialist, and instead of going back to America you have lingered from year to year, made friends, mostly woman friends, and now you know the university town, the countryside; you know the language well enough to work in a small bookstore with a younger girl who is your apartment-mate.”
“Will I be able to handle French dialogue?”
“Oh yes. For one thing I want to keep the American accent, which sounds charming if the French is correct; two or three American actresses have done this. I’ll keep your dialogue very short and simple—there’s never much dialogue in my films anyway, and I want to pay a lot of attention to your face in repose and silence, without makeup, just for the bone structure and the spirit underneath. I think that the American accent and the hesitation in speech will show your defenselessness, something that will have to be clear.”
Rose looked very pensive at this.
“It’s a film, not reportage. The girl in the film has no defenses, she’s trusting, unable to imagine that anyone would want to hurt her. Very good. In the bookstore are the patron, who is a retired professor, yourself, and the girl who shares your apartment. The patron is a shrewd, kindly old man who takes care of you as though you were his daughters, and you are his favourite. He’s helped you with the language and trained you, made you half a Frenchwoman. You are his work of art and he is very fond of you. The younger girl is perhaps twenty-four and she isn’t clever. Not stupid. Hardly anyone is stupid. But she is less intelligent than you are, a little frivolous. You’re very good friends and when the shop is empty or closed you chatter, and make plans for your evenings and weekends and vacations.”
“This is very thorough,” said Rose.
“Wait, just wait. There are men, of course, whom you see in various places, the tennis courts, cafés where you dance to phonograph music, sometimes perhaps in ciné-clubs. There is quite a lot of this towards the beginning of the picture. At one point you and the younger girl are seen dancing in your favourite café; we see the reflection of the disk mirrored in the jukebox glass, spinning round and round as you move to the music. Often you ride on the backs of scooters and in small, broken-down Citroëns, but never in anything more powerful or imposing. The pace of this part of the film will be leisurely, with many shots of the people around and behind you, giving us a sense of your life and the life of your friends: you go to the charcuterie, you have small quarrels, you share your money and your men, and we have the sense of kindness and decency among you. It is a small, kind, quiet life. You have a man for a friend, who is small, a mouse of a man—I have the actor in mind for this—and we understand that you are good to each other, but that there is no passion.”
“You should be a writer.”
“I am a writer. I’ve written all my scripts. I have a better sense of story and character than I do of technique. I’m not much of a technician, but then neither is Truffaut. Story is the great element, story and character. So anyway, your man friend will sometimes come to the window and look in, to show you that he is waiting, but le patron won’t let him come into the store while business is being done, unless to buy something. He shoos him away with a great show of comic authority, which you all accept. Now we begin to establish close-ups of the two young women’s faces. Yours has a graceful oval quality, and you have very pretty frightened eyes. The younger girl has a soft, almost sleepy expression, very contented. In fact,” he said slowly, “you are both waiting for love.”
Rose didn’t speak.
“Very well. We go back to long shots of you walking in the streets, sometimes right at the edge of the town, and now from time to time we see passing in the background a big American car, which stands out because it’s about the only one in the town. Some of your friends always describe it as ‘la belle Américaine’ and then they look at you and laugh, and you laugh with them gently. But this car is not a rich man’s car, not a Cadillac. It’s a Chevrolet, about five- or six-years-old, two-toned, what would be a workingman’s car in America. In Aix-en-Provence it seems enormous and eccentric. First it passes you on the street and the driver makes a noise and a gesture of some sort, not necessarily directed at you. Later on, we have some shots of the car driving along country roads in darkness, immediately recognizable and slightly out of place.
“It gradually becomes clear that the driver of the car is insinuating himself into your background or that of your friends. One night you come along the street very late with your girlfriend and you see the Chevrolet parked a short distance from your door. You stop and giggle together as you look at it; it shines gloriously and has much extra equipment hanging on it, with large red reflectors studded here and there. You and your friend stare at each other, then back to the car. You laugh and shrug and go along home to bed, rather pleased by the incident. As you approach your door you hear the car’s horns, and the sound of its engine, just around the corner. You both smile, and you close the door.
“Later on, the mousy little man comes to the store to see you, hovering outside the window until you feel impelled to do something definite. You ignore le patron and rush out into an alley beside the bookstore. He joins you, and we have a very slowly paced but short scene between you. He asks about tennis, tonight. You say no, casually at first. He wonders why, gently, not insistently, and you really have nothing definite to tell him. You lean your head against the frame of the door, with one arm above you. I can see this shot very vividly. Medium-close to close. You are silent and we insert a quick little shot of the man, from above. He tilts his head and says one or two words; he is hurt. Cut to you. You don’t look at him; you look down and away from him and say nothing, a very still, very feminine pose. I want to show the line of your neck, and I want to be able to see the motion of your eyelashes. The silence continues for some seconds. We cut to the tennis court where your sect, group, coterie, often meet in the evening. There is a great deal of laughter about everyone’s poor play. Shots of flying balls and swinging rackets against the sky. There is no cruel joking, the men teasing the girls or handling them roughly in these games. We still have that sense of active friendships.”
“And the man who owns the
Chevrolet makes his bow.” said Rose.
“How did you know?”
“I’m beginning to see how your imagination works.”
“I’m very glad. Have you guessed the end of the story?”
“I have an idea.”
“This stranger appears and asks for a game. He’s French, by the way, not American, and we see immediately that his car is the greatest thing in his life. He picks up the joke about ‘la belle Américaine’ at once and we suddenly realize that he has his eyes on you most. of the time. We see your spirit quicken and your eyes gleam more brightly, but you don’t say much directly to him; you wait. It’s your habit, by lifelong training, to wait passively until somebody takes action towards you.”
“In the film.”
“In the film.”
“I see.”
“You all leave the tennis courts together when it begins to get dark. I should say that the motorist plays a very powerful game of tennis, much better than the other men in your group, with a big serve. He’s quite short, not much taller than you, but powerfully muscled. On your way home, as you take leave of him, you notice that he wears a very rich-looking, expensive driving coat, very warm, an imperméable. He works constantly at tuning up his car, and we soon learn that he’s the wild son of the town’s principal garagiste, and not a student or a university person. He has a name, quite an ordinary name, I think. I haven’t chosen it yet. It shouldn’t be too unusual. When you see him, after the tennis, you notice the richness and warmth and costliness of his coat, which he carries with him even though it’s summer. You don’t seem to notice that his shoes are worn out, and his other clothes shabby and uncared for. There’s something disjointed about him. A quick series of close-ups of the two of you looking at and away from each other.
“From now on you are lovers, not sexually, you never become his mistress, unless in a very unusual sense, as you’ll see. In the next sequence, he takes you for your first ride in his car, and we establish one of the most important visual points in the film. When you get into the car, you are astonished to see that its entire interior is covered with photographs clipped from American magazines like Life, and from Paris-Match. Pictures of motorcycles and folk singers, the Beatles, racing cars, movie stars, shots of crimes with people lying dead on the streets, pictures of guns and of cowboys. All over the inside of the car. Sitting beside him on the front seat, you show your surprise, and we see his lips twitch slightly as though he were keeping back a laugh. You crane your neck, looking around into the back seat. More and more photographs, in a bizarre montage, a collection of images of modern life. You are half-alarmed and half-captivated by this show because it makes you remember where you came from. In a sense, you are la belle Américaine, just as the Chevrolet is.