Prater Violet

by Christopher Isherwood

  I laughed. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

  But Lawrence wasn’t in the least embarrassed. “I might have known it,” he said disgustedly. “You’re just the right type. So bloody tactful.”

  His deepest scorn was reserved for the Reading Department, officially known as Annex G. The back lot of Imperial Bulldog sloped down to the river. Annex G had originally been a warehouse. It reminded me of a lawyer’s office in a Dickens novel. There were cobwebbed shelves, rows and rows of them, right up to the roof; and not a crack anywhere wide enough to insert your little finger. The lower rows were mostly scripts; scripts in duplicate and triplicate, treatments, rough drafts, every scrap of paper on which any Bulldog writer had ever scribbled. Lawrence told me that the rats had gnawed long tunnels through them, from end to end. “They ought to be dumped in the Thames,” Lawrence added, “but the River Police would prosecute us for poisoning the water.”

  And then there were books. These were the novels and plays which the studio had bought to make into pictures. At any rate, that was what they were supposed to be. Had Bulldog ever considered filming Bradshaw’s Railway Timetable for 1911? Well, perhaps that had come originally from the Research Department. “But will you explain to me,” said Lawrence, “why we have twenty-seven copies of Half Hours with a Microscope, one of them stolen from the Woking Public Library?”

  Rather to my surprise, Lawrence approved of Bergmann and admired him. He had seen several of the pictures Bergmann had directed in Germany; and this, of course, delighted Bergmann, although he would never admit it. Instead, he praised Lawrence’s character, calling him “ein anstaendiger Junge.” Whenever they met, Bergmann addressed him as “Master.” After a while, Lawrence started to reciprocate. Whereupon Bergmann, never to be outdone, began to call Lawrence “Grand Master.” Lawrence took to calling me “Herr Talk-Director.” I called him “Herr Cut-Master.”

  I was careful, however, not to inform Bergmann of Lawrence’s political opinions. “All of this fascist-communist nonsense,” said Lawrence, “is so bloody old-fashioned. People rave about the workers. It makes me sick. The workers are just sheep. Always have been. Always will be. They choose to be that way, and why shouldn’t they? It’s their life. And they dodge a lot of headaches.… Take the men at this place. What do they know or care about anything, except getting their pay checks? If any problem arises outside their immediate job, they expect someone else to decide it for them. Quite right, too, from their point of view. A country has to be run by a minority of some sort. The only thing is, we’ve got to get rid of these damned sentimental politicians. All politicians are amateurs. It’s as if we’d handed over the studio to the Publicity Department. The only people who really matter are the technicians. They know what they want.”

  “And what do they want?”

  “They want efficiency.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Efficiency is doing a job for the sake of doing a job.”

  “But why should you do a job, anyway? What’s the incentive?”

  “The incentive is to fight anarchy. That’s all Man lives for. Reclaiming life from its natural muddle. Making patterns.”

  “Patterns for what?”

  “For the sake of patterns. To create meaning. What else is there?”

  “And what about the things that won’t fit into your patterns?”

  “Discard them.”

  “You mean, kill Jews?”

  “Don’t try to shock me with your bloody sentimental false analogies. You know perfectly well what I mean. When people refuse to fit into patterns, they discard themselves. That’s not my fault. Hitler doesn’t make patterns. He’s just an opportunist. When you make patterns, you don’t persecute. Patterns aren’t people.”

  “Who’s being old-fashioned now? That sounds like Art for Art’s sake.”

  “I don’t care what it sounds like.… Technicians are the only real artists, anyway.”

  “It’s all very well for you to make patterns with your cutting. But what’s the use, when you have to work on pictures like Prater Violet?”

  “That’s Chatsworth’s worry, and Bergmann’s, and yours. If you so-called artists would behave like technicians and get together, and stop playing at being democrats, you’d make the public take the kind of picture you wanted. This business about the box office is just a sentimental democratic fiction. If you stuck together and refused to make anything but, say, abstract films, the public would have to go and see them, and like them.… Still, it’s no use talking. You’ll never have the guts. You’d much rather whine about prostitution, and keep on making Prater Violets. And that’s why the public despises you, in its heart. It knows damn well it’s got you by the short hairs.… Only, one thing: don’t come to me with your artistic sorrows, because I’m not interested.”

  * * *

  WE STARTED shooting the picture in the final week of January. I give this approximate date because it is almost the last I shall be able to remember. What followed is so confused in my memory, so transposed and foreshortened, that I can only describe it synthetically. My recollection of it has no sequence. It is all of a piece.

  Within the great barnlike sound-stage, with its high bare padded walls, big enough to enclose an airship, there is neither day nor night: only irregular alternations of activity and silence. Beneath a firmament of girders and catwalks, out of which the cowled lamps shine coldly down like planets, stands the inconsequent, half-dismantled architecture of the sets; archways, sections of houses, wood and canvas hills, huge photographic backdrops, the frontages of streets; a kind of Pompeii, but more desolate, more uncanny, because this is, literally, a half-world, a limbo of mirror-images, a town which has lost its third dimension. Only the tangle of heavy power cables is solid, and apt to trip you as you cross the floor. Your footsteps sound unnaturally loud; you find yourself walking on tiptoe.

  In one corner, amidst these ruins, there is life. A single set is brilliantly illuminated. From the distance, it looks like a shrine, and the figures standing around it might be worshippers. But it is merely the living room of Toni’s home, complete with period furniture, gaily colored curtains, a canary cage and a cuckoo clock. The men who are putting the finishing touches to this charming, life-size doll’s house go about their work with the same matter-of-fact, unsmiling efficiency which any carpenters and electricians might show in building a garage.

  In the middle of the set, patient and anonymous as tailor’s dummies, are the actor and actress who are standing in for Arthur Cromwell and Anita Hayden. Mr. Watts, a thin bald man with gold-rimmed spectacles, walks restlessly back and forth, regarding them from various angles. A blue-glass monocle hangs from a ribbon around his neck. He raises it repeatedly to observe the general effect of the lighting; and the gesture is incongruously like that of a Regency fop. Beside him is Fred Murray, red-haired and wearing rubber shoes. Fred is what is called “the Gaffer,” in studio slang. According to our etiquette, Mr. Watts cannot condescend to give orders directly. He murmurs them to Fred; and Fred, as if translating into a foreign language, shouts up to the men who work the lamps on the catwalk, high above.

  “Put a silk on that rifle.… Take a couple of turns on number four.… Kill that baby.”

  “I’m ready,” says Mr. Watts, at length.

  “All right,” Fred Murray shouts to his assistants. “Save them.” The arcs are switched off and the house lights go on. The set loses its shrinelike glamour. The stand-ins leave their positions. There is an atmosphere of anti-climax, as though we were about to start all over again from the beginning.

  “Now then, are we nearly ready?” This is Eliot, the assistant-director. He has a long pointed nose and a public-school accent. He carries a copy of the script, like an emblem of office, in his hand. His manner is bossy, but self-conscious and unsure. I feel sorry for him. His job makes him unpopular. He has to fuss and keep things moving; and he doesn’t know how to do it without being aggressive. He doesn’t know how to talk to the
older men, or the stagehands. He is conscious of his own high-pitched, cultured voice. His shirt collar has too much starch in it.

  “What’s the hold-up?” Eliot plaintively addresses the world in general. “What about you, Roger?”

  Roger, the sound-recordist, curses under his breath. He hates being rushed. “There’s a baffle on this mike,” he explains, with acid patience. “It’s a bloody lively set.… Shift your boom a bit more round to the left, Teddy. We’ll have to use a flower pot.”

  The boom moves over, dangling the microphone, like a fishing rod. Teddy, who works it, crosses the set and conceals a second microphone behind a china figure on the table.

  Meanwhile, somewhere in the background, I hear Arthur Cromwell calling, “Where’s the invaluable Isherwood?” Arthur plays Toni’s father. He is a big handsome man who used to be a matinee idol—a real fine old ham. He wants me to hear him his part. When he forgets a line, he snaps his fingers, without impatience.

  “What’s the matter, Toni? Isn’t it time to go to the Prater?”

  “Aren’t you going to the Prater today?” I prompt.

  “Aren’t you going to the Prater today?” But Arthur has some mysterious actor’s inhibition about this. “Bit of a mouthful, isn’t it? I can’t hear myself saying that, somehow.… How about ‘Why aren’t you at the Prater?’”

  “All right.”

  Bergmann calls, “Isherwood!” (Since we have been working in the studio, he always addresses me by my surname in public.) He marches away from the set with his hands behind his back, not even glancing around to see if I am following. We go through the double doors and out onto the fire-escape. Everybody retires to the fire-escape when they want to talk and smoke, because smoking isn’t allowed inside the building. I nod to the doorman, who is reading the Daily Herald through his pince-nez. He is a great admirer of Soviet Russia.

  Standing on the little iron platform, we can see a glimpse of the chilly gray river beyond the rooftops. The air smells damp and fresh, after being indoors, and there is a breeze which ruffles Bergmann’s bushy hair.

  “How is the scene? Is it all right like this?”

  “Yes, I think so.” I try to sound convincing. I feel lazy, this morning, and don’t want any trouble. We both examine our copies of the script; or, at least, I pretend to. I have read it so often that the words have lost their meaning.

  Bergmann frowns and grunts. “I thought, maybe, if we could find something. It seems so bare, so poor.… Couldn’t perhaps Toni say, ‘I cannot sell the violets of yesterday; they are unfresh?’”

  “‘I can’t sell yesterday’s violets; they wither so quickly.’”

  “Good. Good … Write that down.”

  I write it into the script. Eliot appears at the door. “Ready to rehearse now, sir.”

  “Let us go.” Bergmann leads the way back to the set, with Eliot and myself following—a general attended by his staff. Everybody watches us, wondering if anything important has been decided. There is a childish satisfaction in having kept so many people waiting.

  Eliot goes over to the door of Anita Hayden’s portable dressing room. “Miss Hayden,” he says, very self-consciously, “would you come now, please? We’re ready.”

  Anita, looking like a petulant little girl in her short flowered dress, apron and frilly petticoats, emerges and walks onto the set. Like nearly all famous people, she seems a size smaller than her photographs.

  I approach her, afraid that this is going to be unpleasant. I try to grin. “Sorry! We’ve changed a line again.”

  But Anita, for some reason, is in a good mood.

  “Brute!” she exclaims, coquettishly. “Well, come on, let’s hear the worst.”

  Eliot blows his whistle. “Quiet there! Dead quiet! Full rehearsal! Green light!” This last order is for the doorman, who will switch on the sign over the sound-stage door: “Rehearsal. Enter quietly.”

  At last we are ready. The rehearsal begins.

  Toni is standing alone, looking pensively out of the window. It is the day after her meeting with Rudolf. And now she has just received a letter of love and farewell, cryptically worded, because he cannot tell her the whole truth: that he is the Prince and that he has been summoned to Borodania. So Toni is heartbroken and bewildered. Her eyes are full of tears. (This part of the scene is covered by a close-up.)

  The door opens. Toni’s father comes in.

  Father: “What’s the matter, Toni? Why aren’t you at the Prater?”

  Toni (inventing an excuse): “I—I haven’t any flowers.”

  Father: “Did you sell all you had yesterday?”

  Toni (with a faraway look in her eyes, which shows that her answer is symbolic): “I can’t sell yesterday’s violets. They wither so quickly.”

  She begins to sob, and runs out of the room, banging the door. Her father stands looking after her, in blank surprise. Then he shrugs his shoulders and grimaces, as much as to say that woman’s whims are beyond his understanding.

  “Cut.” Bergmann rises quickly from his chair and goes over to Anita. “Let me tell you something, Madame. The way you throw open that door is great. It is altogether much too great. You give to the movement a theatrical importance beside which the slaughter of Rasputin is just a quick breakfast.”

  Anita smiles graciously. “Sorry, Friedrich. I felt it wasn’t right.” She is in a good mood.

  “Let me show you, once…” Bergmann stands by the table. His lips tremble, his eyes glisten; he is a beautiful young girl on the verge of tears. “I cannot sell violets of yesterday … They wither…” He runs, with face averted, from the room. There is a bump, behind the scenes, and a muttered, “Verflucht!” He must have tripped over one of the cables. An instant later, Bergmann reappears, grinning, a little out of breath. “You see how I mean? With a certain lightness. Do not hit it too hard.”

  “Yes,” Anita nods seriously, playing up to him. “I think I see.”

  “All right, my darling,” Bergmann pats her arm. “We shoot it once.”

  “Where’s Timmy?” Anita demands, in a bored, melodious voice. The make-up man hurries forward. “Timmy darling, is my face all right?”

  She submits it to him, as impersonally as one extends a shoe to the bootblack; this anxiously pretty mask which is her job, her source of income, the tool of her trade. Timmy dabs at it expertly. She glances at herself coldly, without vanity, in his pocket mirror. The camera operator’s assistant measures the distance from the lens to her nose, with a tape.

  A boy named George asks the continuity girl for the number of the scene. It has to be chalked on the board which he will hold in front of the camera, before the take.

  Roger calls from the sound booth, “Come in for this one, Chris. I need an alibi.” He often says this, jokingly, but with a certain veiled resentment, which is directed chiefly against Eliot. Roger resents any criticism of the sound recording. He is very conscientious about his job.

  I go into the sound booth, which is like a telephone box. Eliot begins to shout bossily, “Right! Ready, sir? Ready, Mr. Watts? Bell, please. Doors! Red light!” Then, because some people are still moving about, “Quiet! This is a take!”

  Roger picks up the headphones and plugs in to the sound-camera room, which is in a gallery, overlooking the floor. “Ready to go, Jack?” he asks. Two buzzes: the okay signal.

  “Are we all set?” asks Eliot. Then, after a moment, “Turn them over.”

  “Running,” the boy at the switchboard tells him.

  George steps forward and holds the board up before the camera.

  Roger buzzes twice to the sound camera. Two buzzes in reply. Roger buzzes twice to signal Bergmann that Sound is ready.

  Clark, the boy who works the clappers, says in a loud voice, “104, take one.” He claps the clappers.

  Bergmann, sitting grim in his chair, hisses between shut teeth, “Camera!”

  I watch him, throughout the take. It isn’t necessary to look at the set; the whole scene is reflected in
his face. He never shifts his eyes from the actors for an instant. He seems to control every gesture, every intonation, by a sheer effort of hypnotic power. His lips move, his face relaxes and contracts, his body is thrust forward or drawn back in its seat, his hands rise and fall to mark the phases of the action. Now he is coaxing Toni from the window, now warning against too much haste, now encouraging her father, now calling for more expression, now afraid the pause will be missed, now delighted with the tempo, now anxious again, now really alarmed, now reassured, now touched, now pleased, now very pleased, now cautious, now disturbed, now amused. Bergmann’s concentration is marvelous in its singleness of purpose. It is the act of creation.

  When it is all over, he sighs, as if awaking from sleep. Softly, lovingly, he breathes the word, “Cut.”

  He turns to the camera operator. “How was it?”

  “All right, sir, but I’d like to go again.”

  Roger gives two buzzes.

  “Okay for sound, sir,” says Teddy.

  Joyce, the continuity girl, checks the footage with the operator. Roger puts his head out of the booth. “Teddy, will you favor round toward Miss Hayden a bit? I’m afraid of that bloody camera.”

  This problem of camera noise is perpetual. To guard against it, the camera is muffled in a quilt, which makes it look like a pet poodle wearing its winter jacket. Nevertheless, the noise persists. Bergmann never fails to react to it. Sometimes he curses, sometimes he sulks. This morning, however, he is in a clowning mood. He goes over to the camera and throws his arms around it.

  “My dear old friend, we make you work so hard! It’s too cruel! Mr. Chatsworth should give you a pension, and send you to the meadow to eat grass with the retired racehorses.”

  Everybody laughs. Bergmann is quite popular on the floor. “He’s what I call a regular comedian,” the doorman tells me. “This picture will be good, if it’s half as funny as he is.”

  Mr. Watts and the camera operator are discussing how to avoid the mike shadow. Bergmann calls it “the Original Sin of the Talking Pictures.” On rare occasions, the microphone itself somehow manages to get into the shot, without anybody noticing it. There is something sinister about it, like Poe’s Raven. It is always there, silently listening.