Daily Blague

Watching movies in the afternoon is a guilty pleasure - more "guilty" than "pleasure," I'm afraid. Rightly so! If we came to prefer watching movies to writing - well, we chew on the consequences of that one the way I used to chew on Nicorette gum. But I suspect that I'm not really tempted to spend afternoons in front of the tube. It was with a sense of completely Victorian obligation that I sat down after lunch today and slid the tapes into the VCR. They're both due back at the Video Room tomorrow, and tomorrow I've got to see Dr Kline about these little rashes that I, for one, have decided are indirect consequences of Remicade, so watching movies is out of the question, and - are we in TMI land yet? - I prefer to arrange things such that I never see an altogether new movie in the evening, because that would require me to forsake the Martini pitcher.

Both videos were French, but one was silent. The "talkie" was Subway, Luc Besson's 1985 Métro caper, starring Christophe Lambert, Michel Galabru (M Charrier in the Cage aux folles series), and Isabelle Adjani. Ms Adjani gets top billing, of course, and she is, as always, unearthly-beautiful. One would indeed like to see photographs of her German mother and her Turkish-Algerian father; at least one of them must have been a knockout. But Ms Adjani is really a member of the supporting cast, which also includes the younger Jean Reno. Maddeningly, the tape was dubbed, so in fact none of the billed stars were really there - although I suppose it's just possible that M Lambert dubbed his part. In order to get an undubbed version, you have to buy a neutered DVD player somewhere and order the disc itself from France. Well, maybe someday. It's sad to think that it was the prospect of success in the American market that induced the dubbing. I can't think that the film really succeeded over here; it is utterly French - which means that it will strike an uninitiated American viewer as goofy when it ought to be scary.

The other video was The Passion of Joan of Arc, Carl Th. Dreyer's incredibly powerful 1928 adaptation of the records of Joan's trial. I don't care for silent movies at all - no matter how beautifully they're shot (and Joan is BEAUTIFULLY shot), they're missing that which makes me quite sure that I'd rather be blind than deaf. Happily, there was a sound track - unofficial, of course, but one can easily turn the sound off - consisting of Richard Einhorn's cantata, inspired by the re-release of the film in 1985, Voices of Light, a truly fantastic piece of modern music. Voices marks the first totally successful meeting of "classical" and "soundtrack." It can be listened to without watching the movie; I only wish the same could be said of the various suites that have been patched together from Bernard Herrmann's scores for Vertigo and North By Northwest. I knew that Voices had been written with Joan in mind, but I didn't know that Gaumont had put it on the tape; I'd thought that I would watch the movie as a silent, and then try to coordinate the tape with the CD. Happily, I didn't have to. But I recommend the following approach to the wary: rent the tape and play it first for the soundtrack only. Then watch the silent movie without any sound. Then combine the two. I should have followed this advice myself, but, as I say, I really can't stand silent movies.

And what else did I do today?