Sometimes, it cleanses the soul to talk to oneself... This reminds me of an ancient Oriental myth of confining secrets to a hole dug in a tree... Will you find treasure there? I doubt it...
IL DEPEND DE CELUI QUI PASSE QUE JE SOIS TOMBE OU TRESOR
QUE JE PARLE OU ME TAISE CECI NE TIENT QU'A TOI AMI N'ENTRE PAS SANS DESIR
Palais de Chaillot - Paris
Valse triste (Sad Waltz), Op. 44, No. 1, is a short orchestral work in waltz form by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. It was originally part of the incidental music he composed for his brother-in-law Arvid Järnefelt's 1903 play Kuolema (Death), but is far better known as a separate concert piece, which was performed in Helsinki on 25 April of that year as Valse triste. It was an instant hit with the public, and remains one of Sibelius' signature pieces.
Originally, the play Kuolema depicted the final moment of the life of a sick mother while her son kept vigil at her bed side. The incredibly sad waltz of Sibelius ended with her last breath. It is far too sad, and I have no wish to show it here.
Instead, also intensely sad, I think it is somewhat better you hear this great piece of composition in a gem of an animation feature: Allegro Non Troppo. It is a 1976 Italian animated film directed by Bruno Bozzetto. This film features six pieces of classical music. Allegro Non Troppo is a parody of Disney's Fantasia, but I think it is a class above.
Among the six, Valse Triste in "Feline Fantasies" hits you in your gut, and I am sure you will be misty and will not soon forget this gem. Enjoy, and get out your handkerchief!
The original music is from DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHONE 2536 400: "ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK FROM BRUNO BOZZELLO'S FILM ALLEGRO NON TROPPO. BERLINER PHILHARMONIKER HERBERT VON KARAJAN."
While doing the "Henry & June" blog, my mind was locked in the era of the 30's... Now, allow me to talk about "Taboo," which comes to mind when one sees the movie "The Lover," reliving a story that took place in VietNam's 1929. A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and forbidden based on moral judgment and religious beliefs. High on the list is that of forbidden love. And that is the subject of "The Lover." Many discussions about this movie always are focused on the sex scenes. I believe there are four of them, but that is not the only, nor is it the most interesting subject to talk about.
The Lover (French: L'Amant) is a 1992 film produced by Claude Berri and directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. Based on the short Goncourt prize winning semi-autobiographical 1984 novel by Marguerite Duras, the film details the illicit affair between a teenage French girl and a wealthy Chinese man in Indochina, later known as Viet-Nam when it was still a colony of France, in 1929. In the screenplay written by Annaud and Gérard Brach, the girl's age is changed from 15½ to 17 and is portrayed by actress Jane March, who turned eighteen shortly after filming began.
Production began in 1989, with filming commencing in 1991. The film made its theatrical debut on 22 January 1992, with an English release in the United Kingdom in June and in the United States in October of the same year. The film won the Motion Picture Sound Editors's 1993 Golden Reel award for "Best Sound Editing — Foreign Feature" and the 1993 César Award for Best Music Written for a Film. It received mostly negative reviews from American critics. However the film's performances and cinematography were generally praised.
It is noteworthy that the movie director Annaud almost gave up to have the movie filmed in VietNam due to difficulties found in the country. Realizing they must film their movie in VietNam to retain authenticity, the team returned to VietNam and began filming. Despite tight censorship from the VietNamese government, the movie does contain steamingly hot sex scenes which are not of interest in this blog. Instead, this clip is shown because it contains very nostalgic imagery of the trip from Sa-Dec to Saigon via route 1, about 140km away. From Sa-Dec, where the teen-aged girl lived, passengers must cross one of the branches of the great Mekong river by ferry to reach route 1 by automobile. Route 1 first passes by Vinh Long, another river town downstream then to Saigon. The ferry name was Vam Cong, in the southern province of Dong Thap. The car used in this movie was an authentic Morris Léon-Bollée as it was identified in the book.
The scenery in this clip is strongly suggestive of VietNam in the 30s under French colonialism but the filming was in the 90s and on location. It is hard to believe that VietNam's Sa-Dec in the 90s still looks and sounds like what the movie is showing. I would love to find the behind the scene documentary of this movie to learn how this was done. Did you see the car traversing the wooden bridge? Is it real? There are many more scenes at various on site locations in this movie that tempt me to look further in its making... and keep me wondering how did they do that? But... if you are curious about the sex scenes, you probably will not see them here. The voice you hear recounting the teen-aged girl's life is that of the lovely French actress, singer, screenwriter and director Jeanne Moreau, a legend in her own right.
The Henry and June CD has 18 tracks, scroll the list to select one of them to play using the scroller at right then click mouse on the track of your choice. Enjoy!
The back cover states that "The material on this disc was recorded over a period of sixty years (tracks 1 & 18, 1930; 5, 1932) and in a variety of locations" so the quality of the sound is uneven.
OK. I am going to finish this Henry & June series with this clip that some of you may not like because the scene takes place in a lesbian night club. However, you need to realize that Paris in the 30s and 40s was truly like what this movie is trying to show the audience.
This is the last night that June and Anais spent together before June leaves for New York. Anais is in distress because she began to fall deeply for June after the short time they spent together. The music you hear is one of my very favorite piece and it is played throughout the entire clip in the background. It was arranged by Mark Adler and this song was made popular by none other than diva Marlene Dietrich, entitled "Moi... Je M'Ennuie," music by de Wal-Berg and lyrics by Camille Francois. Dietrich (1901-1992) recorded this song in Paris on July 15th, 1933. If you are interested in that recording, you can hear it using the MP3 player below.
The French lyrics are quite "benign" but don't forget that it was the 1930s... If you never heard Dietrich sing, here's your chance.
De ce que fut mon enfance,
Je n’ai plus de souvenirs.
C’est peut-être que la chance
Ne m’offrit pas de plaisirs.
Et chaque jour qui se lève
Ne m’apporte aucun espoir.
Je n’ai même pas de rêve
Quand luit l'etoile du soir.
Moi, je m’ennuie,
C’est dans ma vie
Une manie.
Je n’y peux rien..
Le plaisir passe,
Il me dépasse.
En moi sa trace
Ne laisse rien.
Partout je traîne,
Comme une chaîne,
Ma lourde peine,
Sans autre bien.
C’est dans ma vie
Une manie.
Moi, je m’ennuie...
Par de longs vagabondages,
J’ai voulu griser mon coeur,
Et souvent, sur mon passage,
J’ai vu naître des malheurs.
Sur chaque nouvelle route,
A l’amour j’ai dû mentir ;
Et le soir, lorsque j’écoute
La plainte du vent mourir...
Moi, je m’ennuie...
C’est dans ma vie
Une manie.
Je n’y peux rien..
Le plaisir passe,
Il me dépasse.
En moi sa trace
Ne laisse rien.
Partout je traîne,
Comme une chaîne,
Ma lourde peine,
Sans autre bien.
C’est dans ma vie
Une manie.
Moi, je m’ennuie...
Many reviews of this movie gave a lot of compliments about the cast chosen for this film, and I do agree with everything said... except that... if you read Anais Nin's biography book by Deirdre Bair, you would have discovered that Nin, although slim, was not the petite woman described by many writers. She was five foot six inches tall and she towered over the tiny June who was about five foot two. Uma Thurman, who is five foot 11 inches is too tall for June, but her Brooklyn accent (along with Fred Ward's as Henry Miller) and her demeanor were perfect to impersonate June Miller while Maria de Medeiros fit Nin to a T although she is shorter than the real Nin. So the casting was truly well done making this movie a pleasure to watch multiple times to appreciate the music and the work devoted to its making.
According to Nin's diary, her relationship with June stopped here at the end of the clip. The movie has some steamy scenes with June but that were only in her imagination as Kaufman has skillfully orchestrated according to his screen play.
Interestingly, I found another blog devoted to this same film here. I will try to find some time and post the soundtrack of this movie in the next blog.
It's time to lower the curtain on Henry & June... and this is the next to last blog about this movie. There is a book written by Deirdre Bair who, it was said, had unlimited access to the unpublished writings of Anais Nin, including more than 250,000 handwritten diary pages: "Anais Nin. A biography" was published in 1995 by Putnam, New York, in hardback, and in 1996 by Penguin in paperback. The relationship between the two women was complicated and Bair said a few things that were relevant to Henry and June, the movie. June was known to be a compulsive liar and Henry Miller had told Anais Nin about June's several lesbian affairs in New York. Nin's and Bair's writings are very important readings for the audience to fully appreciate the directing of Kaufman in this movie, and particularly in this clip. In this scene, June abruptly announces her trip to New York after more lies about her upbringing. Later, the clip highlighted the usual way June negotiates to get what she wants in life. Again, Debussy's "Pour l'Egyptienne" is heard in the background. This scene is a prelude to my last Henry and June clip that includes the great famous song "Je M'ennuie," coming here soon...
I am always interested in learning how a movie director creates a scene in his films to tell a story. The authenticity of a scene is so crucially important that it can make or break a movie, especially if it is a film telling a historical event, whether it is embellished and dramatized or not. It is the attention to details that makes a story believable. Henry and June was a labor of love for Philip Kaufman and his wife Rose, and it showed.
The story begins when Anais Nin and her husband Hugo lived in a house in Louveciennes, from 1930 to 1936 at 2 bis, rue Montbuisson. The house shown in the Henry and June movie looks remarkably similar to the real home in Louveciennes that is now listed for sale at about 4,000 Euro a square meter.
Louveciennes is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, between Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, adjacent to Marly-le-Roi, and was frequented by impressionist painters in the 19th century. According to the official site, there are over 120 paintings by Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, and Monet depicting Louveciennes. Even Marcel Proust and Maupassant came to this town to escape Paris regularly. The well known composer Camille Saint-Saëns lived in Louveciennes from 1865 to 1870; and Marie Louise Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, the most famous female painter of the 18th century, died in Louveciennes 30 March 1842; Louis, 7th duc de Broglie, physicist and Nobel Prize laureate, died in Louveciennes 19 March 1987. It was thus very significant that Anais Nin started her career as an author in this very special town.
This clip shows the brief time Henry and June Miller were staying with Anais Nin and her husband Hugo in their home in Louveciennes as guests. Nearby is the forest de Marly, renamed from the ancient name of forest of Crüye at the end of the 17th century by Louis XIV who used it as hunting ground. The bicycle riding scene through the forest looks so authentic, and I really would like to know where it was filmed. During this visit, the Millers were not shy to show the great desire they have for each other and that openly charged energy and the aggressiveness of June did not escape Nin's silent fascination. Later on, back at the house, during the classic French match of "petanque" between Henry Miller and Hugo, the wide eyed Nin was the object of June's intense seduction. I am surprised that Kaufman did not play Debussy's Pour l'Egyptienne during that scene. He left the images speak silently without any musical background. You should try to find and read Nin's diary for this particular encounter. During the bicycle ride, the music you hear is Claude Debussy's Petite Suite - Ballet.
This is a very short clip, reflecting the way Philip Kaufman told the story of Henry & June... in short apparently disjoint but connected segments. The entire movie is revolved around Henry Miller's struggle as a writer inking out what eventually became his famous "Tropic of Cancer." I often wondered why that name was chosen... and this my theory:
The Tropic of Cancer, also referred to as the Northern tropic, is the circle of latitude on the Earth that marks the most northerly position at which the Sun may appear directly overhead at its zenith. This event occurs once per year, at the time of the June solstice, when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun to its maximum extent. So, it made sense for Miller to write the biography of his wife whose name is "June," and associated it to the Tropic of Cancer. The imaginary line is called the Tropic of Cancer because when it was named, the Sun was in the direction of the constellation Cancer (Latin for crab) at the June solstice. However, this is no longer true due to the precession of the equinoxes resulting in an annual drift of this imaginary line of latitude. According to International Astronomical Union boundaries, the Sun now is in Taurus at the June solstice. So, a modern day's name for this book would have to be "Tropic of Taurus!" I like Cancer better. Of course, you know about the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern hemisphere. Let's keep that for another blog in the future.
There are many very interesting histories about this famous book. Tropic of Cancer was first published in 1934 by the Obelisk Press in Paris, France. Its publication in 1961 in the United States by Grove Press led to an obscenity trial that was one of several that tested American laws on pornography in the 1960s.
While famous for its frank and often graphic depictions of sex, the book is also widely regarded as an important masterpiece of 20th century literature. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Tropic of Cancer 50th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
The book was distributed by Frances Steloff at her Gotham Book Mart, in defiance of censorship pressures.
In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein, cited Jacobellis v. Ohio (which was decided the same day) and overruled state court findings of obscenity.
Again, in this clip, because of June's presence, Philip Kaufman inserted Debussy's "Pour l'Egyptienne" motif in the background.
This clip introduces the first meeting between June Miller and Anais Nin. Here, you hear Claude Debussy's "Pour L'Egyptienne" From "Six Epigraph Antiques," performed by Ensemble Musical de Paris. This is the motif used by movie director Philip Kaufman to accompany Uma Thurman portraying June Miller repeatedly. The atmosphere of this clip reflects well what Anais Nin wrote in December 1931 in her diary shortly after meeting June for the first time. It was published later as Henry & June, page 14:
"A startingly white face, burning eyes. June Mansfield, Henry's wife. As she came towards me from the darkness of my garden into the light of the doorway I saw for the first time the most beautiful woman on earth.
Years ago, when I tried to imagine a pure beauty, I had created an image in my mind of just that woman. I had even imagined she would be Jewish. I knew long ago the color of her skin, her profile, her teeth.
Her beauty drowned me. As I sat in front of her I felt that I would do anything she asked of me. Henry faded, She was color, brilliance, strangeness."
In the book and the movie Henry & June, according to her diaries, Anais Nin, although married to her husband Hugo, formed a triad of lovers with Henry and June Miller. If you only watch this movie superficially, you may misunderstand her true relationship with June. Henry & June, the movie, because of its frank and quite tasteful treatment of sexual themes that were openly and widely accepted in France in that period of time, was threatened with an X-rating, that later was toned down to NC-17. So, who was Anais Nin? Nin was born Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell, (February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977.) She was a French-Cuban author who lived first in France and later in the United States where her journals were published. Her diaries spanned more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death, that is her erotic literature and short stories were published posthumously. She was raised a Roman Catholic and spent her childhood and early life in Europe. After her parents separated, her mother moved Anaïs and her two brothers, Thorvald Nin and Joaquin Nin-Culmell, to Barcelona, and later to New York City. On March 3, 1923, in Havana, Cuba, Nin married her first husband, Hugh Parker Guiler (1898–1985), a banker and artist. The couple moved to Paris the following year, where Guiler pursued his banking career and Nin began to pursue her interest in writing. According to her diaries,Vol.1, 1931–1934, Nin shared a bohemian lifestyle with Henry Miller during her time in Paris. Hailed by many critics as one of the finest writers of female erotica, her diaries recounted that, faced with a desperate need for money, Nin, Miller and some of their friends began to write erotic and pornographic narratives for an anonymous "collector" for a dollar a page in the 1940s. Some of her early work were eventually published as Delta of Venus and Little Birds.
This clip shows one of her outing with Henry Miller who was portrayed as a shameful vagabond with an abandon life style that fascinated Nin. The scenery depicted with some fidelity Paris showing the infamous street urinoirs and nude prostitutes waiting for customers in brothels of shady quarters. After taking some money from Nin, Miller immediately entered a brothel, followed by Nin, wide-eyed in bewilderment that later turned into an obsession and ardent infatuation with Miller. Again, period music is heard in the French well known tune "Parlez-moi D'Amour" by Jean Lenoir & Bruce Slevier. This song was performed by Lucienne Boyer.
This series of blogs turns out to be more complicated than I anticipated and takes more time too. For those of you reading this blog and did not know what "Nin" of my previous blog stood for, it's Anais Nin, and that clip was a scene at the beginning of the 1990 movie "Henry & June." I believe that movie got a lot of bad press because it had the dubious distinction to have received the first ever (and thus created) the American motion picture rating of NC-17. In the US, a movie is rated before it can be shown in theaters. The highest rating of R, which means the movie should be for adults only is OK and it is quite common. An X rating is reserved for pornographic movies that cannot be shown in main stream movie theaters. The NC-17 (no children under 17) is almost a financial kiss of death because its showing is severely restricted. As you can see then, it's all money driven, and movie directors must pay close attention to what they can and cannot do, or what they want or do not want to show in their movies, unless they do not care about making a profitable movie, and put in films what they really want to show. Phillip Kaufman made Henry & June, and he took the NC-17 rating stoically. Interestingly, it is said that the NC-17 rating was caused mainly by the showing of a postcard that Anais Nin was looking at at the beginning of the movie. Fancy that! Having lived in Europe for many years, I frankly do not understand what the big fuss is about. Henry & June is, in my opinion, a great movie that teaches the audience about many interesting things provided it cares to pay attention to what is shown. To start, director Philip Kaufman read Henry Miller's book "Tropic of Cancer" when he was student at the university of Chicago. He recalled that at that time, EVERY ONE was reading that book because it was banned due its strong sexual nature. He also met Anais Nin in 1962. Kaufman's movie closely followed the book of the same title, Henry and June: From the Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (full title Henry and June: From A Journal of Love: the Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931–1932)) published in 1986, one year after the death of her husband Hugo according to her wish to shield Hugo from all the details of her love for Henry. If you plan to watch this movie, you ought to read about Anais Nin's work and her passionate love affair with Henry Miller. In 1973 Anaïs Nin received an honorary doctorate from the Philadelphia College of Art. She was elected to the United States National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1974. Not to bore you here with too many details, you can watch this video clip. In this clip, you can hear "Sous les Toits de Paris" which is Kaufman's homage to the first French film with sound and its great movie director Rene Clair. In this clip, after meeting Henry Miller for the first time, Anais Nin wanted to let him use her typewriter. She delivers it herself to the apartment of Osborn, a colleague of her husband Hugo. Osborn lets Miller share a room in his apartment. This clip introduces for the first time June Miller, Henry's wife. Her picture was shown with only a few notes of the music motif from Claude Debussy's "Pour l'Egyptienne," which is the motif associated with June Miller throughout the movie. Uma Thurman portrayed June Miller with great intensity in this movie to match with the gravity of Debussy's "Pour l'Egyptienne." There are more clips that I intend to post here, time permitted, I'll get to the music tracks of this movie, as I usually do with movie soundtrack.
