Destroy, She Said

by Marguerite Duras

  DURAS: Well, I tried to write the book Destroy . . . how can I put it modestly? I don't know. A basic modesty . . . I have the feeling that I wrote it in a state of imbecility. And in the dark. And that when I went on to the film, the book seemed clearer to me during rehearsal: its lines of force, its intention, above all politically—but that during shooting I was in the dark once again. I don't know if you can put that in . . . And that it was necessary for me to plunge back into the dark so that the camera would have the same sensitivity, if you like, as the pen has when I write. I don't know whether this comes across in the film.

  RIVETTE: To try to go on with this line of questioning, there is one passage where the difference between the book and the film is quite striking: the first long dialogue—or perhaps the very first dialogue of all—between Alissa and Elisabeth, which in the book is interrupted by the gaze and the words, the commentary, of Max Thor and of Stein, and which in the film, on the contrary, is continuous, though the spectator may think that this continuous gaze of the camera corresponds to the point of view of the men, or of one of the two men, on the two women.

  DURAS: Yes, that posed a problem; that is to say, if the men had been shown watching the women, Alissa would have known that she was being watched. And she would have been a bit more cagey with Elisabeth Alione; knowing that she was being watched, and acting as if she were not being watched. I could not bear the least suggestion of caginess on Alissa's part.

  RIVETTE: So it wasn't only so as to avoid parallel montage? Because if I remember rightly, the two women are being watched from quite a distance away in the book: the men are in the hotel, I believe . . .

  DURAS: They are behind a bay window . . . There are voices offscreen during the dialogue between the two women. During the dialogue, there is: “In the bedroom Alissa has no certain age.” “It is the void that she is looking at . . .” And then I wanted the two women to be alone. It's a long scene. No. It isn't too long? I cut a little bit of it . . .

  NARBONI: Yes, in the end, if one takes this scene as it is in the book (though one could take some other scene), there is this overlapping that would tend to suggest two solutions in the film: either putting the characters in the field of the camera (which you didn't want to do because Alissa would then have known that she was being watched) or, another possibility, editing this scene so as to show what this passage is intended to evoke, that is to say a sort of parallel montage . . .

  DURAS: Which, moreover, is already indicated in the typography of the book.

  NARBONI: Which is completely effective in the book, and in my opinion would have completely pulverized the scene onscreen. The moment, I think, that the camera had gone from Alissa and Elisabeth speaking to a shot of Stein and Max Thor commenting as they supposedly watch this scene, submitting them ourselves to another point of view, the future point of view of the spectator, I think the principle of the scene would have fallen all to pieces.

  DURAS: That's right; that's exactly it. That is to say that this long stretch of time . . . Dull. Banal. Dirty and grey . . . would have obviously been broken up. You can imagine how hard I had to fight to keep this scene this long. Many people said to me: “It's impossible; they exchange nothing but banalities.” But that's exactly the point . . .

  RIVETTE: Was it mostly this shot that brought about that sort of reaction?

  DURAS: It's the longest sequence.

  RIVETTE: I for my part could not have said whether it was the longest or not. Whether it was longer than the card-playing scene, for example. But is it for practical reasons, or for completely different reasons that there are a certain number of shifts of scene from the book to the film? Scenes which, for instance, took place in the book in the main dining room of the hotel take place outside in the film, or vice versa.

  DURAS: It was because we had only one room to shoot in, one room and a little adjoining room.

  RIVETTE: That is to say that you in fact didn't have a room representing the main dining room of the hotel?

  DURAS: Yes, but we finally replaced it with a terrace. We didn't have a hotel building. Someone had lent us the grounds, and an old converted stable . . .

  RIVETTE: So it's for purely practical reasons that you shifted various scenes.

  DURAS: Yes, yes. But there were two possibilities—outside or inside—for all the scenes.

  RIVETTE: But did you intentionally change from inside scenes to outside ones, or on the contrary . . .

  DURAS: This was done deliberately, and what is more, I couldn't do anything else because the weather was bad. I took the scene of Alissa's arrival with her husband out of doors, for example, because I had filmed the preceding scene indoors since the weather was bad . . . the scene with the letter.

  RIVETTE: The card-playing scene too.

  DURAS: Yes, and then too there were some scenes that in any case could only be indoors: there are two of them. Because the dialogue would have got lost outside, it seems to me.

  RIVETTE: This is obvious in the case of the second long scene between the two women, which was also indoors in the book, but not in a bedroom, as I remember.

  DURAS: It was in Elisabeth Alione's bedroom. No, it was in the dining room. They both act well in this scene.

  RIVETTE: And all through the film. The card game is a very extraordinary moment. What Catherine Sellers [the actress] does in this scene is really tightrope-walking. But it is beautiful, because you aren't aware that it's tightrope-walking.

  DURAS: It was awesome. Really awesome. Because at the same time there was the way she handles the cards, which changes little by little. She completely forgets everything she knows in a few seconds. But she really did this all by herself: no one can lay down rules for a thing like that. She played cards all by herself at home; she didn't know how to hold a card before the film.

  RIVETTE: I had the feeling that the playing of the hands of the three other players around her was very precise, very closely controlled.

  DURAS: We focused on their hands: the camera came in close and once their hands were in the film frame they were free, except for Stein, who had to stay in the foreground with his cards. So inevitably he was constantly in front of the camera, rooted to the spot . . .

  RIVETTE: I kept watching the way his hands went in and out all through the shot . . . not exactly like attacks on her, but almost . . .

  DURAS: We rehearsed the card game for a month. And at the end of the month I realized that it was completely useless to see the others, that their hands alone were enough . . .

  NARBONI: In the long scene between Alissa and Elisabeth I believe that the mirror enters in quite late in the book, whereas the shot in the film begins a long time before Alissa really enters the space not reflected by the mirror . . .

  DURAS: Do you know how the scene goes? I've forgotten the book now.

  NARBONI: The mirror comes in very late in the scene in the book. They talk at great length and the mirror is mentioned only at the end. It is not present before this mention of it.

  DURAS: Is this the scene you like most? In the film . . .

  RIVETTE: It is not at all a film where one can say: “I prefer such and such a scene.” I think that it is really a continuum.

  DURAS: I screened it for some Parisians who found the card scene too long.

  RIVETTE: Yes, of course, because they really saw it from a . . . a Parisian point of view.

  DURAS: They find that . . .They don't understand. The waltz, for example, of the Italian cities: Naples, Florence . . . I didn't follow Stendhal's order, but almost. . . . A trip to Italy for a bourgeois is a dance where everything is equivalent to everything else, a trip that is completely cut and dried, that no longer means anything. They don't realize this because they are completely involved in it, do you understand? They are completely caught up in bourgeois life. So they found that it dragged a little, that there were repetitions. I don't care. In any case one cannot make cuts.

  RIVETTE: To get back to the question of the role of the camera t
hat we were discussing a while back, there is another moment that struck me, but this time it's a passage that's been cut up, the scene, the next to the last scene, more or less, if one can divide the film into scenes: the dialogue of the five characters around the table, where there is an overall shot that recurs from time to time and punctuates the sequence, and closeups of the five of them; and what especially impressed me was that the closeup of Bernard Alione is from a point of view that seemed to me to be clearly that of Elisabeth, from the very way in which people's gazes are oriented. When the camera looks at him, it is in Elisabeth's place, even during the very long space of time when Elisabeth has left the table . . .

  DURAS: Yes. That is to say, all the other axes have been abandoned; this gave us some trouble, as a matter of fact, during the montage. We abandoned all the other axes in favor of the one that passes through Elisabeth, and . . .

  The scene where they eat together caused me so much trouble . . . I abandoned one axis completely because from the other side of the window that is in view, from the broad grassy plot, there was a window with bars over it. I could not shift the axis; that is to say, this window with bars over it would have reminded the spectator of a mental institution. I didn't want that. So I had a white curtain hung up. But this white curtain was worse than nothing at all because it gave the impression that there was another room, that Bernard Alione, as seen in the axis of the window, was suddenly elsewhere. So removing those two axes resulted in there being only one axis in the end: the one you spoke of.

  NARBONI: But this is where the role you would like the spectator or the reader of the film to take begins—to install Elisabeth in the camera's place, and situate even the absence of Elisabeth there, so that the same axis, the same diagonal continues to run toward Bernard. I had exactly the same impression as Jacques—that there was this sort of axis linking Bernard Alione and Elisabeth, that became even more powerful precisely when Elisabeth is supposed to be in the grounds of the hotel . . .

  DURAS: It's a sort of line of force, right? since Bernard resorts to Elisabeth in order to know what is happening. He often says: “What is happening?” and looks to his wife to tell him what is going on . . .

  RIVETTE: Yes, and at the same time, it's not as if he were judged by her, but still were more than looked at, more than merely observed. It's as if this angle, which has to do with Bernard, made her suddenly see him as if she had never seen him before.

  DURAS: That's exactly it. She discovers him.

  RIVETTE: She discovers him through the medium of the three others. And the role of the camera emphasizes this fact strongly. . . .

  DURAS: She is already inside the dialectic, in a sort of natural dialectic that she has either found anew or discovered . . . But there are two characters who belong entirely to me, and two characters who do not belong to me in the film: I don't know whether this is noticeable. Alissa and Stein are completely familiar to me, whereas Thor and Elisabeth are characters ouside myself.

  RIVETTE: Thor is the most opaque character.

  DURAS: He's asleep.

  RIVETTE: And in the book this is almost more blindingly evident, since the book, more than the film, I find, begins with him, with his point of view, and then the book as it goes along gradually erases him. And it is Stein, who doesn't exactly take his place, but . . .

  DURAS: Thor is in a sort of state of catharsis: he is in this state when he meets Stein, and at the end of the book and the end of the film he still is; they are identical. In the end Thor asks Stein only three questions—and it is all over. After that he talks like Stein. As early as the meal they eat together he talks like Stein. They are interchangeable.

  RIVETTE: They have exactly the same role as regards Alissa . . .

  DURAS: And as regards the Aliones. They are equally indecent. I wanted their indecency to be absolute; I don't know whether I succeeded in showing it to be so. Immodesty and indecency. But natural. . . .

  Shall we talk about the ending?

  NARBONI: Was the ending of the book as noisy for you as the last shot in the film?

  DURAS: No.

  NARBONI: Because in the book there is a notation having to do with the importance of the music that is quite brief, whereas in the last shot of the film the sound effects are very important.

  DURAS: And the poses are different too; in the book Alissa was lying on top of Stein, as if on a plot of ground, a piece of land. She was stretched out on Stein's physical body. This was not possible in the film. A change was necessary because of the image. Because Stein was then completely immobilized by Alissa's body. And the music—in order for the whole thing to take on meaning . . . The music stands for revolution. I had to murder it up to the very end . . . if it had suddenly been very pure and very carefully decanted . . .

  RIVETTE: Yes, if there were just the music . . .

  DURAS: There would have been nothing left for us to do . . .

  RIVETTE: That would have resulted in a purely idealistic aspect, a sort of divine presence descending over the characters.

  DURAS: Yes, that's right; and I wanted to avoid that at all costs.

  RIVETTE: The way it is, one feels that the music is a struggle . . .

  DURAS: I would have liked to distort it even more, but I didn't find any way of doing so. The noise is a piano. It's a Pleyel—what's the name of those big Pleyels—a concert grand? At any rate, one of the big ones. So the scene takes place in a salon in the middle of the hotel grounds, with the windows open and the piano open, and we let the whole weight of the piano lid fall: during the montage the attack of the notes was cut off, and all the harmonics are heard. This is the noise on the sound track. Michael, the sound engineer, and I did it together one evening. But the mixing of the noise on the last reel was rather funny, because the engineer couldn't bring himself to ruin the music. He simply couldn't. I spent twenty minutes urging him to go to it. I gave him superb music and I told him: “Spoil it.” He couldn't. And I said to him: “No, go ahead! Go ahead!” Finally he got desperate and did a thorough job of it.—Don't you want to talk about the political side of the film?

  RIVETTE: Yes, I think we're going to be obliged to . . .

  DURAS: Can I read you what I say in the trailer? I'm going to read it. Someone asks me the question: “Where are we?"—"In a hotel, for example.”—"Could it be some other place?"—"Yes. It is up to the spectator to choose.”—"Don't we ever know what time it is?"—"No, it is either nighttime or daytime.”—"What's the weather like?"—"It's a cold summer.”—"Is there anything sentimental about it?"—"No.”—"Anything intellectual?"—"Perhaps.”—"Are there any bit players?"—"They have been eliminated. The word ‘hotel’ is pronounced, and that ought to be enough to represent a hotel.”—"Is it a political film?"—"Yes, very much so.”—"Is it a film where politics are never spoken of?"—"That's right. Never.”—"I'm completely at sea now . . . what do you mean by ‘capital destruction'?"—"The destruction of someone as a person.”—"As opposed to what?"—"To the unknown. That the communist world of tomorrow will be.”—"What else?"—"The destruction of every power . . .” I'm perhaps going to change that a little . . . “The destruction of all police. Intellectual police. Religious police. Communist police.”—"What else?"—"The destruction of memory.”—"What else?"—"The destruction of judgment.”—"What else?"—"I am in favor of . . . closing schools and universities, of ignorance . . .”—I added the word “obligatory,” but this would amount to decreeing something. Wait a second, I go on: “I'm in favor of closing schools and universities. Of ignorance. Of falling in line with the humblest coolie and starting over again.”—"Of falling in line with madness?"—"Perhaps. A madman is a person whose essential prejudice has been destroyed: the limits of the self.”—"Are they mad?"—"They may be in today's outmoded system of classification. Communist man of the year 2069, who will be the absolute master of his freedom, of his generosity, would be taken for a madman today and put behind bars.”—"Why a German Jew?"—"Please understand: we are all
German Jews, we are all strangers. This is a slogan from the May revolution. We are all strangers to your State, to your society, to your shady deals.”—"What is the forest?"—"It is also Freud.”—"You say that it is classified as a historical monument?"—"That is quite correct. Freud and Marx are already pigeonholed by culture . . .”—"Well, I'm going to . . . Is it a film that expresses hope?"—"Yes. Revolutionary hope. But at the level of the individual, of inner life. Without which . . . look around you. It is completely useless to make revolutions.” That's how it reads. So I'm out gunning for an entire part, a whole sector of the public . . . Isn't this perhaps going too far? Don't you think so?

  NARBONI: No. But this brings up certain questions. I am in agreement with the substance of these points, but . . . do you really think that an inner search, even one that hopes to bring about a communist society, can suffice to bring about some sort of economic struggle?

  DURAS: I am speaking, if you will, of man's passage through a void: the fact is, he forgets everything. So as to be able to start over. I hope that he will thus be reborn, if you will. If this were true, one could return, providing one were exceptionally prudent, to a state of knowingness. Of course. But may it never become a scholastic exercise. An exegesis. Never. I don't know how this will come about. Nor what practical steps to take to bring it about. But I know that, like communism . . . what is communism? I don't know. No one knows. I don't know where this path will lead us. If you like, it's the same way that . . . Knowledge seems to me to be at once suspect and desirable. A certain kind of knowledge. In any case, I am basically against the sort of knowledge that is the province of certain people, the kind of knowledge that is cut and dried—the laws of knowledge.