Days Between Stations Page 10

  Around the fourth day, a man from Pathé Studios came to the theater with several reels of film; Pathé distributed not only French films but foreign products as well. Adolphe asked if he could ride with the man back to the Pathé lot on the outskirts of Paris. At Pathé, Adolphe got a job unloading equipment, changing sets and running errands; he also watched transfixed as Pathé turned out hundreds of movies from one-and two-reelers to larger prestige productions. The other people on the lot generally found Adolphe a bit unusual but not unpleasant. He was polite and particularly deferential to the starlets, who reminded him of the women he had lived with before the war. He was regarded as attentive if also a bit absorbed, and often people took the time to explain things to him. The editors in the cutting room took him on as something of an apprentice; and when he’d acquired their trust, he was given a key to the room which he would use at night, long after everyone was gone. Then he would stand at the end of the cutting room and, with a single bare light burning, watch the strips of film that hung above the tables like falling water freezing before his eyes, until the room seemed to him a cave of glittering icicles.

  After a while, Adolphe was allowed to edit a segment of film which comprised several scenes. He did not cut the scenes as the director of the film had instructed, fashioning instead a segment of frantic and abrupt juxtapositions that baffled his superiors and infuriated them. He was informed that he had no talent for cutting and removed from the department. One of the cutters, however, suggested to the executives that while he didn’t particularly care for what Adolphe had done with his scenes, he thought the young man had a number of ideas and should perhaps be writing scripts. This argument wasn’t entirely persuasive to the people running Pathé Studios, but if there was anything they needed it was ideas and scripts and so they put Adolphe in the script department. As with film cutting, Adolphe began essentially as an apprentice and contributed to a script which Pathé found acceptable after revisions. He contributed to two other scripts and then wrote another by himself which Pathé professed to like. But when Adolphe saw the rough footage of his story, he insisted on a meeting with the producer and director during which he explained to them that their version was nothing like what he’d seen in his head; he had written a dream and they had shot stultified theater. In turn the producer and director explained to Adolphe that Pathé was the largest studio in the world, bigger than even the ones in Hollywood, and that they knew all about picture making, but if he thought he knew more about picture making than they, he was free to go to any one of the smaller independent studios in Paris, which were many in number and utterly insignificant, like gnats buzzing around the face of the Pathé lion.

  He returned that night to the rue de Sacrifice. He went at that hour of the day that had always meant most to him when he lived there, just after the sun had fallen and before the sky was black. Nothing about it had changed; in many ways the street was wilder and more astonishing than it had ever been. He did not choose to do wild and astonishing things. He chose to sit in a café within view of Number Seventeen and watch the front of the house and those who came and went. One or two of them he recognized; most of them were strangers. After two hours and several cognacs, Adolphe was drunk for the first time in his life and waved down one of the customers leaving Number Seventeen. There is a girl, he slurred. Her hair is the tangle of the trees on the Champs-Elysées and her body has not changed since she was twelve; her mouth is plum red. The other man had no idea what he was talking about, and as he walked on, Adolphe put his head on the table and wept in his own arms. The waiter brought a bill.

  One morning ten months later, Claude Avril walked from his apartment where he lived alone, caught a carriage to the Métro and the train to north of the city, and sat in his office vaguely dissatisfied, as though it was any other day, thinking about motion pictures. Avril was a barrel-chested man in his forties, born of the French working class, who had raised himself rather tentatively to something higher; not a blowhard, he had still not figured things out, a fact he freely acknowledged and which he felt left him open to new options. He had become bored with other business ventures in which he’d been only moderately successful (because his ambitions in those areas were constrained by his boredom), and so he turned to pictures a few years before, attracted by the gamble of them. He regarded himself, correctly, as something of a financial adventurer; he didn’t think of himself as an entrepreneur, let alone a producer. His small studio, located on a piece of land where there had previously stood one of the many flea markets that dotted the suburbs, had limited itself to the one-and two-reelers for which Avril could acquire financial backing; men with money regarded the whole picture nonsense as a novelty, a gimmick, the only thing about it not nonsense being the ways in which it could be exploited while it lasted. Avril himself, in no way a creative or artistic man, had this idea that motion pictures might become big. If it was seen as something barbaric by others, to which mainly barbarians were attracted, like Americans for instance, Avril nevertheless figured out barbarity was the order of the day; he had begun having that feeling most profoundly not during the war but in its aftermath. He was looking out his office window at the lot, watching the frail ridiculous sets wheeled around, watching the small company of actors playing pretend like large children in the dirt, when his assistant came in and said there was a boy to see him.

  “A boy?”

  “He can’t be more than eighteen.”

  “What does the boy want?”

  “To talk to you about a picture.”

  Well, of course. Monsieur Avril shook his head, she exited, and he sat there looking at the scene being shot, and realized he was bored again. He got up from behind his desk, went out of his office, passed the assistant and opened the door. He caught up with the boy on the stairs. “You,” Avril said to him, from the top step.

  The boy turned. He had pitch black hair, and the look in his eyes was resolute and alarming.

  “Did you have something you wanted to see me about? I’m Monsieur Avril.”

  “I’m Adolphe Sarre.”

  “How old are you?” said Avril.

  There was a pause. “Twenty perhaps, maybe a year or two older. A year or two younger.”

  “You don’t know how old you are?”

  “When I went to war they decided I was sixteen. That was three and a half years ago.”

  Well then at any rate I will stop calling you a boy, thought Avril. In the office the two of them sat staring at each other across the desk. A manuscript was placed before Avril. This is an outline for a picture, said Adolphe. The manuscript was titled La Morte de Marat. Quite an outline, Avril said, flipping through the pages. He sat reading for several minutes. He immediately realized the potential in a picture about the French Revolution; but they were talking along the lines of more than a two-reeler. Avril looked up at Adolphe, who was patiently waiting. “Well,” said Avril. “It’s quite impressive. You’ve spent a good deal of time and effort on this.”

  “Ten months,” said Adolphe.

  “Let me ask you. Have you been to Pathé with it? They might be quite interested.”

  “Aren’t you interested?”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t.”

  “I don’t want to go to Pathé.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want them to take my story away from me.”

  Avril leaned back, then put his flat hands on the table. He said, “What is it that you want? Do you want to make this picture yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever made a picture?”

  “No.” Adolphe waited a moment. “I know it’s presumptuous.”

  “I would have to raise a lot of money for this. So, it’s more than presumptuous, really. You see what I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know Jean-Baptiste Bernard?”

  “No.”

  “He has directed a number of pictures for me.”

  “You want him to direct this picture?
” said Adolphe.

  “I don’t want to take it away from you,” said Avril. “Ten months on the outline alone. We make thirty or forty pictures in that time.”

  “I know it’s presumptuous,” Adolphe repeated. “Could you hire me as an assistant to Monsieur Bernard?”

  Avril handed the manuscript back to Adolphe. “Come back in three weeks,” he said.

  Avril talked to Jean-Baptiste Bernard. Some thirty years before, Bernard had made a name for himself staging successful programs for the Opéra; now, nearing seventy, he had been hired on by Avril Studios as someone who knew actors and might maneuver them through the motions. Obviously he was no longer a success in the theater to be squandering his time on pictures; and Avril wasn’t really sure that Bernard had a feel for pictures, but he was too unsure of his own feel not to go with someone who at least had some theatrical experience. Bernard listened to Avril’s description of the picture he had in mind; as usual, he seemed neither fired nor inspired, only comprehending.

  Bernard was all Avril really had to go with. Avril did some investigating, and was somewhat astonished to learn that Pathé didn’t have its own French Revolution picture in the works. Avril talked to his investors. They insisted on guarantees, of course, though to Avril’s way of thinking this was a business that offered no guarantees; that was what made the possible payoffs so enticing. Then, Avril had a stroke of luck when, at a dinner orchestrated by a mutual acquaintance, he persuaded Marie Rinteuil, one of the Opéra’s most prominent actresses, to take the part of Charlotte Corday, the murderess of Marat; she in turn enlisted Paul Cottard, something of a matinee idol in France on the balsmusette circuit, to play the role of Marat himself. The investors were more impressed, and committed an initial outlay of funds toward beginning production of the picture. When Adolphe Sarre returned to the studio in three weeks, to the day, Avril bought the script outright, and hired him on as an assistant producer. Adolphe did seem a bit disconcerted that an actress in her early forties would play the twenty-four-year-old Charlotte, and that a cabaret star was portraying the revolutionary zealot Marat.

  The following week Bernard began shooting some interiors. Avril was hunting down costume and set designers for the larger-scale scenes to come, as well as hiring a research team to authenticate period touches for the film. Despite the fact that there was now a considerable buzz in the industry, particularly at Pathé, about the new project over at Avril Studios, Avril himself was oddly depressed. The speculation was whether Avril could pull off such an undertaking, since his operation was puny compared to Pathé and not equipped for something of these proportions; Avril was affected by this nay-saying, even secretly shared the doubts. He had the feeling the equation was all wrong, and when he stopped by the set at times to see how things were progressing—something he’d never done with the earlier shorts—and watched Bernard laboriously moving Rinteuil and Cottard through the paces, with the young Sarre sitting in the corner mute, his sense of misgiving wasn’t abated. A month went by; Avril was still hiring set designers and running into people from Pathé who approached and inquired cautiously. He was alarmed that rumors were already circulating the picture was floundering; he closed the set completely, and locked the gates of the studio to anyone not associated with the project—which only fueled the rumors more. Avril summoned Bernard, and told him he wanted to see what had already been shot.

  They met at the back of the lot, in a vacant room where they kept the backdrops from the shorts they had made over the previous years. They all sat together in the dark: the two stars, several production assistants, the cameraman, the costume designers, the set designers, the director, the producer. Afterward the stars proclaimed themselves satisfied, the production assistants nodded, the costume designers commented on changes that would be made in the wardrobe; the director, Bernard, shuffled about listlessly. The cameraman, a Dane named Erik Rode, was silent, studying the wall long after the images had disappeared. Avril sat for a while, saying nothing, then slapped his knees and thanked everyone for coming, asked if anyone had anything else to say, and dismissed them. They filed out wordlessly; Adolphe sat in the back of the room. When only the two of them were left, Avril closed the door. “So,” he said. Adolphe looked past Avril at the wall, much like the cameraman Rode had done. “Nothing seems to happen,” Avril said. He motioned with his hand.

  “It’s all wrong,” said Adolphe. “It has no movement. The people move but the scene doesn’t.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because the camera doesn’t move.”

  “The camera can’t camera.”

  “Griffith moves the camera.”

  “Yes, well, Griffith.”

  “Bernard’s all wrong about it. He directs like it’s a play. The actors are all wrong for it. They act as though it’s a play. It’s not a play. These are moving pictures. They should move.”

  Avril looked at him. “What is it that attracts you to this?” he said. “Are you a student of history?”

  “I don’t know anything about history.”

  “Well then, the character of Marat?”

  “It’s not Marat.”

  “No? The events themselves, then.”

  “Their shadows.”

  Avril blinked as though he would fall asleep. “Their shadows?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say you were directing this picture. What would you do different? Move the camera?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fire Rinteuil and Cottard?”

  “Yes.”

  “You realize it’s Rinteuil and Cottard that got me the financial backing for this. Without them—” He stopped.

  “But the money’s been committed,” said Adolphe.

  “On the basis of Rinteuil and Cottard’s being in the picture.”

  “Can they withdraw their commitment if Rinteuil and Cottard are dropped?”

  “You’re thinking quite a lot, aren’t you, Sarre? You’re not just sitting over there appearing mysterious after all. I don’t know if they can withdraw the commitment, but they can refrain from making other commitments. We’ll need those other commitments. We can’t make the movie on an initial investment.”

  “But it is an investment,” said Adolphe. “They’ll have to decide at some point to either take a loss or invest more, hoping to eventually recoup the loss if not make a profit. At that point, it will be up to us to convince them to continue.”

  “Rinteuil and Cottard are two of our most successful actors, you know.”

  “We don’t want actors. We want faces. I can tell them what to do, how to do it. I can tell them when it’s too much or when I need more from them. Rinteuil and Cottard have the wrong faces. We need faces no one’s ever seen, and that no one will forget once they’ve seen them.”

  “You can tell them what to do, how to do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You talk as though you’re already this picture’s director.”

  “We were speaking hypothetically.”

  “You know all about this movie stuff, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  Avril paced the room. “I’ve always thought of myself as a gambler, you know? But this frightens me, a little studio like mine in something like this. We’re speaking of something grand.”

  “I know I’m young.”

  “Yes, well,” Avril shrugged, “it’s a young industry, all the American directors are young. Griffith’s an exception, what, forty-something? The rest are all failed actors, writers, tramps, railroad workers, lawyers. What are you failed at, Sarre?”

  Adolphe watched the other man. “I saw a picture last night,” he said. “I’d like you to come see it.”

  So the two of them went to the picture that night, and afterwards walked together by the river. In the early morning hours they were still walking, as the lights on the street began to dim and the clocks shone like numbered moons above the curbs; on the quays below, the tramps slept in rows beside the water. “Well,” Avril said, “I th
ought it was a rather unremarkable picture.”

  “But you do remember,” said Adolphe, “the blind girl in the first part, when we first meet the sailor on the bridge?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was a blonde, with a very sad mouth that turned slightly.”

  “Yes, right.”

  “She had brown eyes, and a glow to her skin.”

  Avril stopped, his hands in his pockets, looking at the young man. “I couldn’t tell that from the black-and-white, but I’ll take your word for it.”

  “She was rather sad sometimes, as though she had always been sad.”

  “I remember. What about her?”

  “Charlotte.”

  “You think so?”

  “That’s the face.”

  “And Marat?”

  “We’ll find him.”

  They walked awhile longer. “Shadows, you say.”

  “The shadows,” said Adolphe.

  The next morning Avril fired Jean-Baptiste Bernard, and hired Adolphe Sarre to direct La Mort de Marat. It was clear to almost everyone, in and out of the picture business, that this was simply a huge publicity stunt, a hoax. A shoestring operation like Avril’s announcing production of a very large-scale picture, directed by a boy no one had ever heard of and who’d never directed a picture before. The investors were thrown into a state of panic, then fury when they realized Avril had already tied up their money. Avril pleaded that they give Adolphe a chance to see what he could do. He announced to the press in a statement issued from his studio office that it was his solemn and deeply held conviction Sarre was a genius. Adolphe himself decided to get out of Paris awhile. He was going to film Marat somewhere else; he wanted to find a place that not only hadn’t changed much in a hundred and fifty years—that in itself was easy, France was filled with villages that hadn’t changed in a thousand years—but also a location with its own drama, suitable for both Charlotte Corday’s late-adolescent madness and Marat’s exiles from Paris. (In fact, Marat spent his exiles in England, but Adolphe, his “exacting” research notwithstanding, chose to pay no attention to this.) Adolphe decided to place Corday and Marat in the same proximity several years before Marat’s death. He decided he wanted a place near the sea, preferably with either woods or mountains nearby. So, though Charlotte Corday was from the Normandy region of France, Adolphe left not for Normandy but the Bay of Biscay, a tumultuous Paris in his wake; he almost felt as though he was traveling into exile himself.