by Unknown
I am so glad that you are working hard and that you feel ‘fractionally’ better for doing so. It really is, I fear, the only cure … one does get immersed, one does meet new people, and one does start new memories again. Splendid.
Well .... I’m off. I have just seen the blasted Christmas cards still huddle unseasonably in a corner. This is sixth night .. or twelfth night I mean, so I had better have them down. My sister always said it means bad luck … and I dont want that at this moment.
Always my love to you … as you know …
perhaps you’d like to come to Vienna? Snow and wine and some excellent Opera. I’ll be at the Bristol Hotel if you make a wild decision. Of course you wont. But you could.
I do love you very much …
Dirk.
To Dilys Powell Clermont
27 March 1975
Dearest Dilys —
Home I am: since two weeks today. Sweetpeas tumble in wanton, fat, bundles … tulips and anenomies (cant spell THEM!) and forgetmenots and wallflowers … and the first leaves on the waterlillies uncurling like little crimson handkerchiefs .... Pear, apples and the pomegranit in blossom. Odd after the ice of Gmunden and Vienna .. the stark trees the forced bunches of quick-to-wilt daffodils … the everlasting pine trees and the feeling of the East so near. I got a bit pissed off with Vienna after eight weeks … the constant bottled cabbage, sausages, bits of veal and the interminable Goulash with gherkins .... simply no fresh vegetabls anywhere. I cant think why. And the prices so high they made one cry in disbelief. So getting into my fat Air Austria plane was really a bit of a relief. I felt a titch bit guilty, for I have worked often in Vienna and DID love it very much. But perhaps I was younger … and it was usually in summer or spring and not in the darkest months of the winter. However: the film was fun. Really. Freddy Young1 lighting: a glorious professional of seventy four … delicious, loving, adorable man. Ava G. was in fine form … Dom Perignon at five am at the make-up session … but warm, funny, and GOOD too! And suddenly decided that she got a kick out of acting for the first time. Which is a help.
She really is the last of the Great Stars. And it shows. Her work on the screen may not be up to the standards of, say, Miss Garbo … or Ethel Barrymore! But none the less she is, by God, THERE! And is still incredibly beautiful … really a face of quite glorious planes, and eyes so green that the lakes were dimmed by her. Enough of that. But she was splendid to work with. It was almost like the Old Days of the Cinema and so old fashioned, my dear, that it is almost classical today! You know; the Master Shot and then the two Over The Shoulders bit .... funny. A long way from Visconti and Losey and the beloved under-rated Clayton. But fun actually. And for this idiot picture full of C.I.A and bombs and chases through the airports .... that sort of thing … excellent. Yes I enjoyed it. Far more than ‘Porter’ and nearly as much as ‘Venice’! We’ll see.
Sadly .. and for your private ear only, I have had, this week, to decline the new Cavani script. God knows what will happen now … I also declined Histoir d’O as you know … but I simply will not engage in any more films where people piss into chamber pots, bugger little boys in Railway Lavatories, or indulge in Threesome sex situations. I’m not shocked by any of this. God knows. But bored ridgid. Or rigid … thats the word. And if Nietzsche WAS as hoplessley sexually disorientated, vomited so often, and made long and dreary speeches which make, to me at any rate, no sense at all … then he must have been pretty dull as a chap. And where therefore the Glory we hear so much about. Or do we.
Oh dear. It’s all very complicated indeed. And sad for Lilliana I fear. But she really must get these things out of her system. In some ways she is a sort of Moravia thirty five years too late. And that wont do. I think, if I must, and it seems that I must, work I’d be better ‘going back’ to the jollier subjects. I adored ‘Thats Entertainment’1 here in Cannes last week … and long, before I am too old, to dance along a black glass floor with an ebony cane … or better still splash about in a rainy street. Oh goodness! What a super perfect piece of total cinema that scene is, is’nt it? I was curious, and delighted, by your sane and sensible, I feel sure, reaction to the new Bogdanovitch2 … I long for it to come here. I think I’ll feel the same as you did.
Christ! That reminds me of the Festival soon. Utter misery of that apart from loving chums desperate to get up here for a breather. Losey has two3 this year! On the Same day too. Galelio4 .... or however the paper spelled it! and the ‘Englishwoman’ thing. So I shall have to be in attendance for those I fear. I long to see the Brecht .. he thinks it’s the best film he’s ever made. Topol included. Well … Joe is frail sometimes … as we know. He seems to detest the other Epic … and does’nt care WHO sees it. Of course it might just turn out to be super. You never can tell!
How good that your walls are no longer bare.5 It’s a loathsome feeling … waiting for the pickers to pick … and then put back the remainder. I had to do it a couple of years ago when my adored Pappa died. Splitting the loot among the children. His papers and books and diaries … his silly little personal things cluttering up the drawers of his desk … hopless feeling. Not even time for lumps in the throat. The end of something. So desperatly final. Ah well .....
India. Yes. To be avoided. Except for lovely Jaipur and green parrots in the trees … and bowling along the Calcutta Trunk … a gloriously romantic name for a main road I always think. But the rest; the Society .. the corruption … the poverty .. the babies in the rubbish bins along Connaught Circus. Difficult to come to terms with.
I’v gone on far too long ..... so I’ll stop now. I fear, so often, that I bore you … or, worse still, put you under a feeling of obligation. There is none, as you know. But I am a shy-child … and someones love, unasked for, can be irksome.
I’m off to plant out some pots for the terrace … and paint a bit of fence … and potter about a bit.
With my devoted love
Dirk.
To Dilys Powell Clermont
24 May 1975
Dilys my dear –
The Festival ended on Friday night when a youth chucked a bomb at the Casino, blew himself up, and destroyed a resturant and the lobby of the swank Ambassadeurs. He stated, in a note found, that he detested ‘all Capitalists everywhere, and Hitler is back’ ..... after attending two or three of the damned things one almost saw his demented point of view. What a business. What a sorry spectacle of ugly, sweating, over-dressed and jewelled people. I find it constantly depressing. Only this time I HAD to go down because of Losey who, grumbling to the last, had two films entered and out of a sense of loyalty, misplaced I fear! One went. And to Schlesingers thing.1 Otherwise I saw very little of anything or anyone else. Loseys stuff is rather dissapointing I felt. ‘English-Woman’ is particularly sad. A remake of a sort of sub-‘Accident’ filled with mirror shots and staircases and overdecoration. And two pretty grim performances too I thought. The reception was down … but they are very loyal to Losey here … and he has had some rave reviews from the Intellectual Press which made him jolly happy. The Topol thing2 was much better I thought … except for Topol .... not bad but not right. One sees Laughton all the time. One cant. But one wishes one could. It was shown without sub-titles so the French were a bit lost and it was hardly noticed. Schlesingers film split everyone in two camps. The Haters and the Lovers. The Americans, sensitive, a little, to Siagon, were furious at the attack on their life .... the French thought it self-indulgent .... which it is … but why not?
John just shrugged, and started plans for his next film in America and a new play at the National! Young enough not to care so much what anyone in this beastly town really thought.
Apart from that I had a run of ‘refugees’ up for meals … a good deal of the laying of tables and washing up went on … and putting new paper in the Loo and filling ice buckets … but I’d do anything rather than go ‘down’ there. My new Producers, very young and keen and intilligent, came up to discus the Resnais subject .. to now be called, ‘Pro
vidence’ as a working Title.3 I think, but am not positive until the contract is signed, that I have got Ellen Burstien4 for my leading lady. Which makes me happy: I think. Better than [Liv] Ullman who seems not to ‘transplant’ very well from Bergman. I was assured by a Lady from the New York Times that Burstein is a ‘cow and a bitch and a hogger. You’ll HATE her. And she crowds the screen and she’s SO tall!’. Which filled me with awe and a certain misgiving.
Having chosen her myself, Alain went to N.Y to see her play, was totally captivated by her work, and asked her to join us. She has said yes with great enthusiasm and we hope the Agents and things will agree. What a rum profession this really is!
For your shell-like ears only. Or eyes, rather. No. Ones eyes cant be Shell like, can they? Sapphire?
For the moment peace reigns on this hill. The planes are all jammed today with the last of the Festival Group … like the swallows in October who stay just a little too long .... and normalicy returns to Cannes and the telephone. Well .. practically.
Now I can get back to the scything of the meadows … I hate this job at my age and in the heat … and the ruthless weeding up of brambles and nettles which seem to spring from beneath ones feet as one walks. It is a bursting time … June and May here. Everything rushes to a great tossing, green, foaming head .... and then July burns it all away … and August turns it to a dusty, brown and red, desert. But the spring .. like the spring and early summer in Cyprus .. blazes. And must be coped with.
So I’m off to my little Arab .. who I see sitting in the shade of the well eating sardins with his fingers from a tin and swigging away at a jar of water.
My love ….
Dirk XXX
To Kathleen Tynan Clermont
19 June 1975
Dearest Kathleen –
I have a stinking cold and feel grumpy as hell.
We have had ‘Vogue’ and someone from Conde Nast (?) shooting the house, and me, for five sodding days. And they brought the cold all the way from sunny London. So I’m not exactly joyful. They left yesterday to go to St Trop to shoot someone else … and I was jolly glad.
‘Your Room’ seems not to have been empty since the blasted old Festival .. and I’m wearing of emptying ashtrays, refilling the lavatory paper things, changing sheets and planning food. Young photographers seem to eat constantly .. ice cream and fresh strawberries and more ice cream and more strawberries .... and the place is covered in old Kodak packets, spent flash bulbs and oil marks, for some reason, all over your new white carpet. However, if you do come down to the Yacht in August, I’ll have it cleaned … or spray the bed, or something.
Today we have a rest before tomorrow, when Daph Fielding arrives for her trip .... and after that Family with tents on the lower terraces, guitars, pot, and the demented wails of Bob Dylan being ‘Folk’. Oh well.
Glad my letter did’nt irritate you. I worried lest it should .. and that I was taking it all too seriously … but I do happen to love you very much … as I reckon even you have grown to realise … and it seemed important to me to deal with your book1 at length. I was just worried that really it was all a bit long … my letter … anyway at least you gathered it was loving. And how.
Charlotte is too full of angles. She has no curves. Marina has. I feel essentially .... Charlotte is also very male. Marina, it seemed to me, was utterly not. Marisa [Berenson] I have known since she was eight … and liked, enormously, working with her .. but she is a terribly superficial sort of child .... anyone who can hang about with Berger and that faux Jet-Set-Blow-Up-Set has to be … she is not at all my idea of your lady .... also she is as tall as the Piltdown Man2 .... with about asbig a head. Have you ever seen A. Calder Marshall? a ‘lady’ and, I think beautiful, and very, very clever .... not yet a Star, I suppose, but does that matter? A. stands for Anna. And I bet youve seen her and hated her … but I know she is excellent. And feminine .... I’m not being much help … oh dear!
The Resnais film fills me with awe … and delight in equal amounts. It is not often one gets a film written especially for one but it is a bit daunting. And New England in winter seems to be a bit remote from just where I sit now … but if you were there at the time that’ud be super. After you alienating the Director3 of course. We must go on as we start, must’nt we … end of page but never end of love.… Next day. Feeling less grotty.
That was a dreary letter I wrote yesterday … but I’m not going to re-write it … just add a bit, because re-reading yours made me laugh so much about Zetterling and your bloke. She IS a wild lady … and terribly good at whips I hear. Her last husband finally slunk off to an island with a gentle creature and she lives all alone, for the moment, in a large ruin near Uzès with cows, goats, and a donkey. She nearly killed a house guest once by leaving a ciggie burning in an armchair … she really is as full of jollity as a cobra. And I do, actually, like the silly bitch. I’v known her since she first came to England .. a little waif with no tongue save her native Lap … and wide eyes and slim legs … then we did Anhoile4 together and got very involved. But I ducked. Ken will have one hell of a job … but she is TERRIBLY bright at her job … and her film on Van Gogh5 was spiffing, I thought … was’nt so keen on her Olympic effort,6 but that was different and less exciting for her. And oddly enough I feel it might work. She and he – I mean –
Except for the clash of ego and will which will go on .... but thats not my saga.
After I had finished writing your rotten letter yesterday, and was sitting sulking under the blasted vine (We had a ghastly hot mistral the day before and everything is burned to a crisp ..) the telephone rang and I found that I had agreed to be in the film Attenborough is making of the battle of Arnhem. I must be mad. I was there in fact from the 2[0]th of Sept until the 23rd of Dec … and got wet, shit scared, cold and hungry and recieved a lasting loathing of bridges and rivers .... so what the hell I am doing at fifty four re-doing something I was forced to do at twenty four leaves me bewildered somewhat.
Anyway it means a bit of loot, and all kinds of jolly people are saying ‘yes’ … like Steve McQ. & Shaun, or Sean, and Newman and rotten old Redford1 and so on … it’s costing millions and may well be the last Epic ever to be made! I have a sneaking feeling that it will be .. before the last, or next, real one comes along. So one might as well have a go, providing we are not all in some Camp somewhere being re-educated by your husbands Beautiful People .. which does’nt at all seem as remote as once it did. Now that I live in the Mediterranean Area I am a little more aware of the shadows lengthening than ever I was in Crow-borough Heath.…
Well: Daph will be arriving shortly from Paris … and I’ll have to go and lay up the table and put her roses in your room … and put on my Talking-Attractivly-to-Guests-Face. I have just missed having to do a ‘great in-depth’ thing for the Sunday Observer, we have lost the gentleman who was supposed to come along with his note book … so thats very super. I already have a wadge in something called Nova next month … and enough is as good as a feast. What more, I ask you, is there to be said about ‘My Extraordinary Recod Of 30 Years’? Nothing. Except that, by the elastic of my knickers, I’m still here .... and that is simply a case of Survival. Nothing else really. Except confidence. And perhaps a little conciet?
Anyway … I’ll piss off now. Leaving you with the simple suggestion that Charlotte is too angular .. is all angles and planes and no curves or rounds .. Marisa is like the Piltdown Man … and A. Calder Marshall is, as far as I am concerned, lovely and clever … though, of course, not a bit like you. If you, incidentally, got David put together a bit more, dont you think D. Sutherland would be excellent? He’s splendid in the Schlesinger film2 … he looks a bit weird in life, long fairish hair and lots of Celtic crosses round his neck with Lanvin suits … but he’s excellent with his hair cut .. and there is also always my beloved Julie Christie? What about her. Much better than any of the others … and the nearest, in life, to Marina – Aim high – why not? If you aim low you only get the mud – n
ot the Stars!
On that bit of profundity I’ll leave you – gasping no doubt, but I hope filled with my affection?
Love
Dirk
P.S. What a super read one is having about the Lucan business1 – a relief from Portugal. Poor fellow – what a Very Nasty Lady She is! D.
For some while Dirk had been estranged from his brother Gareth, the younger by twelve years; but at the end of June the latter, with his wife Lucilla, stayed for three nights at Clermont. On the day of their departure Dirk wrote to say: ‘I regret very much the wasted years’ and hoped that Gareth’s five children would help to ‘form us into a unit of a sort. Even if we have to be all lumped under the title of “The Bloody Bogaerds”!’ On 20 July, Brock Van den Bogaerde, the sixteen-year-old second son, arrived at Clermont, his tent on his back, en route to family friends at Ramatuelle. Dirk walked down through the garden to meet him and said: ‘You can pitch that there.’ Brock replied: ‘Haven’t you got a room?’ It was the start of a deep and lasting friendship both with his uncle and with Tony.
To Penelope Mortimer Clermont
8 October 1975
No. No my darling frail-heart, you did’nt tell me about any sort of Accident2 [ … ] What on earth happened? Well .... I dont REALLY want to know … I mean about what did happen. But are you alright now? No; of course you are’nt. Why are you so WILLFUL and so totally boring. Goodness. I could strike you hard [ … ] I thought all was going supremely well, that Life had reached it’s peak in the Suburbia Of America and that you were about to be happy. Well; happy for you that is. That is very badly punctuated. I mean happy for YOU in capital letters. Fuck what makes other people happy.