1) My education included two years of high school French, plus passing acquaintance with Carmen, but I am not anything like fluent. So it’s odd that over the last few days my focus has been drawn to two French language films. The first was introduced to me through the miracle of ye Instygrymme: Le collier de la reine, apparently a masterpiece of post-WWII French cinema. Filmed at Versailles Itself and in the studios, this black-and-white pearl of a film radiates stateliness and guile.
And since it is absolutely and completely without subtitles, it really helps to know the story already. But I am picking up little bits here and there (e.g. “Je me sens mieux” means “I feel better” and “illustré juge” “illustrious judge,” and so on). It continues to exercise a hold on me.
Marion Dorian as Marie Antoinette.
1a) The most 1940s things about this film are the use of lipstick and the face (and one wig) of Marion Dorian, who plays Marie Antoinette with frightening dignity and aristrocratic warmth in turn.
2) And then last night I put on Diva for some audio-visual wallpaper. This movie is all about my freshman year of college, my first real exposure to foreign films, and the Nickelodeon Cinema (may it rest in peace) in its original location, now the BU School of Engineering. The Nick was always screening Diva — I think it was there something like five years, unheard of today — and as I remember it it was always shrouded in scaffolding lit by bare bulbs. For me it was like going to the movies in wartime Berlin. And the films I saw that year! Diva (obviously), Bob le flambeur, La Nuit de Varennes, Veronika Voss, Betrayal, Eating Raoul (OK, that wasn’t a foreign film . . . but memorable!) Most of them I haven’t seen since, but they remain a part of that unique year in my life.
2a) I had never heard “Ebben, ne andro lontana” from La Wally before, and the excitement of hearing it is the same every time I see the movie. Every time. And that white satin dress — iconic! In the novel (this is the second of five novels about the characters Gorodish and Alba) this dress is red and slit up her thigh. While that style was very popular in the late 1970s (think Victoria Principal in Dallas), it wouldn’t have worked in 1981 for an opera singer with a distinguished stage presence.
2b) On Apple TV, Diva has subtitles, but they are not the same as the subtitles I grew up watching. The way “tendu” is translated, for instance. The first time it was translated as “bent” — “It’s the most bent thing I’ve got!” In the ballet world I’ve learned it should be “extended.” On Apple TV it’s “crooked.” One character’s name is a slur; he is now referred to with a kinder but inaccurate reference that is also a lot more syllables. And even this scene is not quite as I remember it being translated, though I couldn’t tell you why.
3) Finally, for some reason this evening Edith Piaf popped up singing ”La Vie en Rose” (of course). Her voice is one of the Great Unique Voices; no one can really sing like her, though many have tried.