by Unknown
Must write some more, dull, letters … all love and things to you both … and come and see us soon … the Festival should be fun this year … but I reccomend you miss THAT!
Let me know in good time to change beds and clean room … and shoot the Collie.
Love as ever –
Dirk
Guess what! The Fucking Fixer is on Telly this week – in the series ‘Dossiers de L’Ecran’– V. highbrow! A load of shit in ANY language – the village is agog! D.
To Joseph Losey Clermont
11 April 1974
Dearest Jo – Joe, Joseph – Josef – Josephine –1
Dont panic. I am not starting a correspondance … and I dont want a job. So you are relieved on both counts. However I do have to reply to your superly funny letter and have not replied before only because of a plethora of House Guests and NO kitchen still … If your long suffering secretary lady WILL read my local paper I cant see why she should get the ‘hives’ because her chum only talks of the Hoover on the phone. I mean; if you read Nice Matin, and copy, or clip out, little pieces about Dogs Shit then it has to be a limited mind. N.M. never prints anything about anything at all. Only things like ‘Shocking Double Murder In Pegomas. Wine Presser Castrates Wifes Lover And Presses The Unfortunate Woman In Concrete.’ … or else little sagas about Doggies shitting in odd parts of Holland. Nevertheless she can spell better than I (can) and punctuate too.
Maybe she’d better take ‘Playgirl’ and help her chum out … or else he MAY, possibly, have a Hoover Fixation … all those tubes … and little bits one fits on … and all the sucking and blowing stuff ...... one never can tell. Cant she?Poor dear.
Now. Be sensible for Christs sake. (Me; not you). ‘Night Porter’ is a critical smash. That much we know. Save for that old queen on The Tribune … and Match and Le Point. Everyone else is radient … and what Cavani calls, happily, Sublime … and they are too. I dont think I have read notices like them for a very long time .. and in such vast detail. Our President died, unhappily, on the very day we opened .. but even so we had 6,400 entries … up to 9,000 the next day .. then the day of Mourning .. and then we rocketted up to 11,000. I dare not count our blessings until the end of the second week … which will be a fair old indication I think. We were also completely banned, as I said, in Italy … mainly because of Charlotte’s position as The Dominent Sex … secondly because it was compounded by the fact that A WOMAN had also directed the thing. The Vatican Press came out FOR us by saying that the Bible said, in some remote passage, that it was OK for the Lady to do that2 under very special circumstances. Anyway … Moravia, Bertolucci, Visconti, Antonioni, the whole gang .. some thirty names, made a TREMENDOUS fuss everywhere .. and Lilly went to the Tribunial .. and we got it passed without cuts. Triumph. Especially dotty was the fact that ‘Elle’ had voted the thing film of the month by all it’s women readers! Which made the Italian Lot look sick. We open there this Saturday with a tremendous flurry of political and social cries.
We will wait and see. I have refused to attend. I’m dubbed anyway .. and I dont give a tuppeny shit for that Insular Pininsula … except for V. Naturally. Who started his big epic1 on Monday. Which is very brave and wonderous indeed. I hope he finishes it …
[ … ] Alexis Smith. (If you can remember who she was. Is.2) arrived from Malaga last week and stayed an exhausting five days. Exhausting only because she has more energy than Lotts Road and Battersea3 rolled into one. But loving and dear and fun … and full of all the chatter from a now, for me, distant, land .... funny it was too … she is well and successful and wonderfully pretty and lithe looking. And a remarkable survivor.
We bunged her onto the six am. (AM mark you) flight to N.Y with a very sad feeling, inspite of her exhausting chatter and delight at everything … twenty years counts for something. We had a marvellously happy meal chez the Rouxs4 and Simone in the private Parlour .. and Alexis was bowled over and thrilled … everyone was utterly delightful to her. Anyway .... we also had poor old Maurice Evans in for drinks one night. He was staying in the village and wrote asking if we could meet. I had worked for his company ‘Compass’ in N.Y a couple of times5 .. and we had’nt met. A lonely, ageing, old man whome, it would appear, no one wants anymore. Which is unpleasant. But life.
And what else? Ah yes. Master Wisemans script.6 Came the other day. Difficult to say what I feel. I have only read up to page 71 so far. Rather busy out in me garden. It’s ok I guess. I cant help feeling we have all been there before .. that Author with the Hampstead-Life .... the elevator in a grand hotel … the wandering enigma of a Poet … shades here of better things … Darling .... Pumpkineater … Accident … none of it is very new, really .... and someone seems to have shares in Kentucky Chicken .. but that does’nt matter. Perhaps thats what they ate in richish houses in Hampstead in the early sixties ..... but thats quite flippant. As you well know. I suppose it was a very bad thing to do to read lumps of the Pinter Collection to Alexis the other night .... somehow he ‘sticks’ … and other peoples dialogue reads like the advertisements in the ‘Sunday Times’.… I think ‘O.T.’7 would be super … but no one would go to see it … I imagine they will go to see Master W’s epic .... all that naked romping in the Hampstead Garden Suburb Garden … and the fuck (?) in the lift and the bits and pieces here and there. Thats what they want, I suppose. That and comedy. And there aint a laugh in this one which is intended. I am sure you will have lots to do and lots to re-do … I must get on and read the next 171 pages this evening.
Meanwhile I must finish this, and get back to my cimenting and do a bit of bullying in the New Kitchen. We are nearly ready for the Festival! What a lark! Shall you be here? I DO hope so … really. It makes me feel very put together to see you both again. And this time, or that time, next time I mean, I shall have splendid ice for Mrs Loseyposey.
Incidentally you say that you would not ‘advise’ me to be involved in an ‘epic’ on Nietzche1 … well; I never said it was an ‘epic’ .... and I am comitted to Lilly as deeply as I was to you for ‘Accident’ Remember? So morally I cannot take your advice this time! And I rather gather that her finance is secure after the Paris showings .... she really has rocketted to the heights. And naturally thinks, by this time, that she did it all by herself! But thats ok .... it is very usual I find. And she is a very clever little girl to boot.
Here comes the rain again. Fuck. Love to Patricia and that languishing secretary … and you have always had all mine anyway.…
Dirk.
P.P.S.
Tote reminds me that you may be grumpy, but also pleased, to know that in all the Press about the ‘NP’ thing, Lillys work is not exactly compared to yours, and Viscontis, but ‘suggests’ the ‘mark’ of you both ..... it has happened in most of the ‘intellectual’ ones … reminders of, and they quote, ‘The Servant’ ... ‘Rocco’, ‘Senso’, and to my delighted irritation, moments from even, ‘Secret Ceremony’ … a big load of cods-wallop if ever there was one. (Entirely personal, you understand.) But watching it in the Goetzs2 home, on that great screen behind the Braques and Chagalls and all that and with Claudette Colbert and out of season cyclamen nodding into frame, it was quite hard to be ..... entirely ..... objective. Anyhow; thats what Tote said I had to say … the press werefavourably impressed that Lilly had found overtones of the ‘masters’ ..... she is behaving just as tiresomely as they did as well. But has evolved, as indeed she should, her ‘own’ style. And if she gives a nod or two in your two very splendid directions, all the better for that. Funny that you, and he, should become adjectives .... Viscontisim …. Loseyism … better, by far, than some of the other ‘ism’s.’
Agree?
D.
To Joseph Losey Clermont
14 April 1974
My dear Joe –
Haste reccomends me to write to you again so soon after my last letter .... Just to say that I finished the ‘Romantic’ script the other evening and find that I cannot really change my opinion much. It gets be
tter, of course, after page 71 … but I still think, wistfully, that we have all been there before somehow.
I mean, I know, that there are only seven basic stories .... or permutations of them, but somehow this seems to me to be rather like a fly in amber. It does’nt SAY anything terribly much .... and I think, and it is your teaching, that a Movie SHOULD now adays. And if it disturbes, again your own council to me, then there is a sound reason for doing it. But I cannot, for the life of me, see what this does to disturbe .... the enegmatic lodger-in-the-house ..... the fantasy wife .... the Did He Did He Not Murder .... the Au Pair. (Do they STILL exist outside a Betty Box Epic?) munching her way through yet another cake … (Close on the stamps to show it’s Italian) or perhaps close on the chocolate dripping mouth to show she is really Gluttony As well as unusually sluttish, even for an Italian Au Pair!
Splendid part for Tits Jackson, if thats what she wants … and pretty dreary for Lewis1 .. one of those Yearning Dullards full of patience and very little guile. He has no range, no rage, no true dimensions .... hard to flesh out. Even though I KNOW that that is the Actors job. But somehow it is rather like hanging up a suit of clothes on a nail .... not on a coat hanger, if you know what I mean.
And unless the Poet is of such blinding beauty and strangeness I cant think WHAT you’d do with him. No use using Old Bates or someone … and the days of That Kind Of Terence Stamp are well over. It seems to me, and I am so often terribly off key and wrong about things, that this is a comfortable Movie of the sixties … and that a great many things have happened since then. Forgive me if I irritate you … I know that I often do .... but equally I am aware that you know it is entirely a personal and private re action .. and for your eyes alone. And ears. It was wonderfully good of you to send it to me and to allow me to read it .... As you know I have only made three Movies in about six years … (The Serpant was hardly a movie … it was bread.) so maybe I’m VERY off key. Anyway, for what it is worth, that’s my opinion. Right or, probably, wrong.
Still raining here and Easter is upon us with dripping tourists in sodden camps and muddy trailers … terribly sad to see people who have saved up for a whole year being reduced to misery by the will of God … oh dear! Love, and love …
Dirk –
To Joseph Losey Clermont
3 May 1974
My dear Joe –
The Script1 arrived as hoped for, and safely. And I waited to read it until I was absolutely uncluttered with other things.
I find it marvellous. I think the condensing job utterly incredible. I cannot comprehend how it was ‘managed’ .... and can only understand your joint grief that so much work, and dedication, should be so fearfully delayed.
Naturally it’ll cost a billion-dillion. That is apparent from the very outset. The amount of cast … costumes … not to say locations and colours and things. What I find a little worrying is that it is almost impossible NOT to have read the books before comprehending the scenario. And here, possibly, may lie it’s greatest fault … if fault there be. I cannot see the Yank Orientals on the Coast having an idea as to what it is all about .... unless they had first driven themselves through all twelve volumes. And as it is unlikely that they can read anything heavier than the latest copy of ‘Variety’, or the Menu at the Racketts Club or the Polo Lounge, that is an awesome thought.
And not only the Orientals .... the audiences too … will they know who is who? Or what is what? The significence of the trees … or the towers … or will they know that Marcel is Jewish, middle Class, and an onlooker at a vastly higher strata of life than his own? Do they know, do you think, the meaning of the Vermeer? Or who Swan was to the hero’s life line? Oh! A million questions .... but ones not to be answered in letters. However they are, I feel sure, questions which An Audience will ask .. and grow restless without the answers ..... It is all, of course, too complex for surface letter-writing. Enough that you sent it and that it proved a feast indeed. And forced me back to the books … and also to that excellent book on Proust by Samson … or Sampson2 … which has been vastly entertaining and helpful while one digested the script. Oh dear! What a fucking pity it is .... and especially when one reads the utter crap which comes ones way these days. Luchino said, years ago, that there was nothing for me in Proust. He is right. But I’d be happy even to play a door-knob simply for the sake of the experience. For the Awe. For the love of the writer and his books. Enough. Thank you both for a splendid script. And for sharing it with me. I am truly grateful.
Are you, I wonder, sitting in Morocco now? It’s raining here … and cold, and the Italian Police have confiscated the Negative, Matrix, all prints at hand and apparently all of us, of the ‘Night Porter’ .... not for obscenity … but for the Corruption of Minors .... since no one under 18 can see it anyway, one is bemused, as well as saddned. So much work chucked away .... second biggest money maker in France … and a very real possibility that it will never see the light of day anywhere else.
I am sure that you were trying to be comforting when you said that Julie straddled that rather heavy actor in ‘Dont Look Now’ ..... but alas! our picture is not quite like that. It’s rather like comparing ‘Little Red Ridinghood’ with ‘L’Histoire d’O’1 .... or Disney with Klimt .... never mind; as you and I have had to say so many times, ‘We Did Make It.’
Whatever the hell they finally do with it now. [ … ]
My love always
Dirk
To Penelope Mortimer Clermont
9 August 1974
We bake; we bake; the sky an aching, ashen white. No breeze even .... the earth hard and dry and bracken-coloured. And I dont terribly care for it this hot. It’s been like this, as a matter of fact, since the Circus (the F. Festival) left in May .... and not a titchy peardrop of rain has fallen. Oh. A flurry of plipplops yesterday at breakfast on the terrace … and that was all. And so I am making a big thing of not watering-the-pots this evening and am playing hooky here with you. Writing at you rather, I suppose, than To you. And you dont need to fear a permanent contact … or that’ll be dreadful … I mean, I’m not, actually, really ‘catching’. I dont feel the least obligation to write back to you … appropos your ‘only Sensible’ friend. I just want to. A different thing altogether. And I dont expect a reply either. [ … ]
I have had to re-read the Gide book which everyone wants me to film and I cannot, ever, see why. The Immoralist.2 I thought that now, after ten years, I’d be a bit clearer. But I’m not. I do find Arab boys and Elderly .. or even young .. Gentlemen deadly tedious. I simply cannot take any of it seriously. So No to the Immoralist again .... and then I had a go at something on Pontius Pilate … quite good. Astonishing loot … but tiresome to have to trail about in a nighty all over the Gaza strip where, natch, they’ll shoot. And so on […]
I think what you are doing3 is marvellously good. I do really. I mean if thats what you want and if it makes you work … which it clearly does. I expect today must be Quite A Day there. With Nixon going and all that.4 The woman in the village this morning who said that she sat up till two am (our time) to watch it live on Telly and, having loathed his guts for years, was suddenly surprised to find herself saddened … and gulped down her Olvaltine (can you believe it?) and went tearfully back to bed. But the Postmistress said ‘He’s gone thank God!’ and that seems to be the general feeling among the Frogs. The humiliation of it all has gone quite deep. But as long as you are not weaving and marching about in a goodhumoured group under the sycamores .... thats ok … I suddenly had a clutch of fear. But you re assure me.
[ … Y]ou remember my other sad Laidie1 who died in Connecticut and to whome I wrote for eight years? Well I got all the letters back in the will .. you know that too … but what you dont know is that I found them last month up on the landing when I was doing some plastering things ..... this great box, bursting with letters and postcards and faded, now, telegrams. They were all in chronological order too! From the first .... to the last postcard of this village church … wh
ich arrived on the morning of the evening in which she died. Horridly it says .. ‘Do anything you want with the blasted letters (mine) Send them to Yale or U.C.L.A or will them to the British Museum. I dont care. Writing later. In haste.’
Oh dear. So I started to read and it took three days to do so. Each letter, each card, each telegram … a strange, moving, love affair. And clearly I knew that she was dying all the time … well; from pretty early on .. and just wrote and wrote to her and invented a sort of person who really did not truthfully exist. The me of the letters is almost unbearably AWFUL! I cant believe that she was so diverted … so adoring .. so amused. I thought He was poisonous! For a while I toyed with the idea of editing and publishing them, as she wanted to do herself .... but soon it dawned on me that this was a totally private thing, and to be read by no one other than ourselves. Talk about Giving Ones self away! Christ! This is the most awful load of tinkling, trilling, self conciet I have ever read in all my days.
So back into the landing cupboard. And Dorothy can lie in peace. So, for that matter, can her chum Bogarde. What a VERY NASTY EXPERIENCE it was to sit here for three days and read all that crap.
Which makes me feel that I have gone on here long enough as it is … and you have other things to do.
[…] I’d better go down and do a bit of watering … the sun is still high … five fortyfive … the hills are the colour of pumice stone … the olives still, not moving. Nothing seems to breath. The dogs lie splosh in the shade. I must go … otherwise you’ll screw all this up. Soon as I’v had a ‘go’ at LD2 I’ll let you know. I am enormously curious now that you have filled me in on the background. How splendid to be an imobilised apology! Thats one thing you cant possibly be with me.