by Jean Cocteau
The diction of my human phonographs, Pierre Bertin and Marcel Herrand, also comes in for its share in the general misunderstanding: a diction black as ink, immense and clear as the lettering of a billboard. Here, surprisingly enough, are actors who are content to follow the text, rather than force the text to follow them: still another lyric novelty to which the audience is not accustomed!
Let us touch on the accusation of buffoonery, which has often been hurled at me by our age — an age preoccupied with the false-sublime, an age (let’s admit it) still in love with Wagner.
If Cold means Night, and Hot means Light, Lukewarm means Dusk. Ghosts love the dusk. The crowd loves the lukewarm. Very well: aside from the fact that the buffoon attitude brings with it a clarity that is ill-suited to ghosts (by “ghosts ” I mean what the crowd calls “poems ” ); aside from the fact that Molière proved himself more of a poet in his Pourceaugnac and Le bourgeois gentilhomme than in his poetic dramas: the buffoon attitude is the only one that permits certain audacities.
People come to the theater for relaxation. It is easy to amuse them with the dancing dolls, to tickle them with the candies that one gives recalcitrant children to make them take their medicine. But once the medicine is taken, we shall pass on to other exercises.
Thanks to people like Sergei Diaghilev and Rolf de Maré, little by little there is coming into being in France a theatrical form which is not properly the Ballet, and which has no place in the Opéra, the Opéra-Comique, or the fashionable theaters. The future is indicated on the fringe of these conventional forms. Our friend Lugné-Poë has admitted this with considerable apprehension in one of his articles. This new form, more consonant with the modern spirit, remains still an unexplored land, rich in possibilities.
Revolution which flings the doors wide open for the experimentalists! The new generation will continue to experiment with forms in which the fairy, the dance, acrobatics, pantomime, drama, satire, music, and the spoken word all combine to produce a novel genre: and unaided, they will stage pieces which the official “artists ” will take for studio-farces, pieces which for all that will be no less the plastic expression of poetry.
The mixture of good humor and bad humor in Paris creates the most vital atmosphere in the world. Sergei Diaghilev told me one day that he had felt nothing like it in any other capital. Hisses and cheers; nasty reviews, with here and there an unexpected approval: and three years later the scoffers are applauding and cannot remember having once hissed. Such is the history of my Parade, and of any other piece that alters the rules of the game.
A theatrical piece ought to be written, mounted, costumed, furnished with musical accompaniment, played, and danced, all by one and the same man. Such a universal athlete does not exist, and the next best thing is to replace the individual by what is most like an individual: a friendly group.
There are many cliques, but few such groups. I am fortunate enough to belong to one made up of various young musicians, poets, and painters. The Eiffel Tower Wedding Party, taken as a whole, is the manifesto of a poetic spirit to which I am proud to have contributed already a great deal.
Thanks to Jean Victor-Hugo, my characters, instead of being (as is so often the case in the theater) too small, too true to life to be able to support the mass of lighting and décor, were constructed, corrected, built up, raised by every device of artistry to a likeness on an epic scale. I find in Jean Victor-Hugo a certain atavism of monstrous reality.
Thanks to Irène Lagut, our Eiffel Tower suggests forget-me-nots and lace valentines.
Georges Auric’s Overture, The Fourteenth of July — marching bands whose music blares out at the street corner and moves away — calls up the strong enchantment of the sidewalk, of the popular fair, of red-festooned grandstands like guillotines, where drums and trumpets make the stenographers and the sailors and the shipping clerks dance. And his ritournelles accompany the pantomime just as a circus band repeats a motif during an acrobatic act.
The same atmosphere breathes through Milhaud’s Weding March, through Germaine Tailleferre’s Quadrille and Waltz of the Telegrams, through Poulenc’s The General’s Speech and The Trouville Bathing Beauty. Arthur Honegger amused himself by making fun of what our musicographers gravely call: MUSIC. It is unnecessary to add that they all fell into the trap. Hardly had the first notes of the Funeral March sounded when all those long ears pricked up in grave attention. Not one noticed that that march was beautiful as a sarcasm, written with a taste, an extraordinary feeling for appositeness: not one of the critics, all of whom praised the piece, recognized the Waltz in Faust which served as its bass!
How can I express my gratitude to MM. Rolf de Maré and Borlin? The former with his generous insight, the latter with his modesty, made it possible for me to crystallize a formula with which I had been experimenting in Parade and in he Boeuf sur le toit.
JEAN COCTEAU
1922
Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel was first played on June 8, 1921, by Rolf de Maré‘s Swedish Ballet Company. The choreography was by Jean Cocteau and Jean Borlin, the décor by Irène Lagut, and the costumes and masks by Jean Victor-Hugo. The musical program was as follows:
Overture Georges Auric
Wedding March (entrance) Darius Milhaud
The General’s Speech Francis Poulenc
The Trouville Bathing Beauty Francis Poulenc
The Massacre (fugue) Darius Milhaud
Waltz of the Radiograms Germaine Tailleferre
Funeral March Arthur Honegger
Quadrille Germaine Tailleferre
Wedding March (exit) Darius Milhaud
During the course of the action there were three ritour-nelles by Georges Auric.
* * *
*Writing of Orphée in 1926, Antoine called it “a studio-farce, not even funny” (sic).
*Only he could write of Orphée that it was “a meditation on death.”
CHARACTERS
PHONOGRAPH I
PHONOGRAPH II
THE OSTRICH
THE HUNTER
THE MANAGER OF THE EIFFEL TOWER
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
THE BRIDE
THE BRIDEGROOM
THE MOTHER-IN-LAW
THE FATHER-IN-LAW
THE GENERAL
TWO BRIDESMAIDS
TWO USHERS
THE CYCLIST
THE CHILD
THE TROUVILLE BATHING BEAUTY
THE LION
THE COLLECTOR OF PAINTINGS
THE ART DEALER
FIVE RADIOGRAMS
DÉCOR
The first platform of the Eiffel Tower. The backdrop represents a bird’s-eye view of Paris. Upstage, right, a camera at eye level: the black funnel forms a corridor extending to the wings, and the camera front opens like a door to permit the entrances and exits of the characters. Downstage, right and left, half hidden by the proscenium arch, two actors costumed as Phonographs: their bodies are the cabinets, their mouths the horns. It is these Phonographs which comment on the action and recite the lines of the characters. They should speak very loudly and quickly, pronouncing each syllable distinctly. The action is simultaneous with the comments of the Phonographs.
THE EIFFEL TOWER WEDDING PARTY
The curtain rises with the drum-roll which ends the Overture. Empty set.
PHONO I. You are on the first platform of the Eiffel Tower.
PHONO II. Look! An ostrich. She crosses the stage. She goes off. And here’s the Hunter. He’s tracking the ostrich. He looks up. He sees something. He raises his gun. He fires.
PHONO I. Heavens! A radiogram.
A large blue radiogram falls from above.
PHONO II. The shot wakes up the Manager of the Eiffel Tower. He appears.
PHONO I. Hey, Mac, where do you think you are — hunting?
PHONO II. I was trailing an ostrich. I thought I saw it on the cables of the Eiffel Tower.
PHONO I. And you kill me a radiogram!
PHONO II. I didn’t mean to
do it.
PHONO I. End of the dialogue.
PHONO II. Here comes the Photographer of the Eiffel Tower. He speaks. What is he saying?
PHONO I. You haven’t seen an ostrich around here anywhere, have you?
PHONO II. I most certainly have! I’m trailing it right now!
PHONO I. Well, it’s like this: my camera’s out of order. Usually when I say, “Steady, now, watch for the little bird” — a little bird comes out. This morning I said to a lady, “Watch for the little bird!” — and out came an ostrich. So now I am looking for the ostrich in order to make it get back into the camera.
PHONO II. Ladies and Gentlemen, the situation is getting complicated, for the Manager of the Eiffel Tower has suddenly discovered that the radiogram was addressed to him.
PHONO I. He opens it.
PHONO II. MANAGER EIFFEL TOWER STOP ARRIVE WEDDING BREAKFAST PLEASE RESERVE TABLE.
PHONO I. But this radiogram is dead.
PHONO II. It’s precisely because it’s dead that everyone can understand it.
PHONO I. Quick quick! We’ve just got time to set the table. I remit your fine. I appoint you Waiter of the Eiffel Tower. Photographer, on your job!
PHONO II. They set the table.
PHONO I. Wedding March.
PHONO II. Wedding Procession.
Wedding march. The Phonographs announce the members of the wedding party, who enter in pairs, strutting like trained dogs in an animal act.
PHONO I. The bride, sweet as a lamb.
PHONO II. The father-in-law, rich as Croesus.
PHONO I. The bridegroom, handsome as a matinee idol.
PHONO II. The mother-in-law, snide as a wooden nickel.
PHONO I. The General, dumb as a goose.
PHONO II. Look at him. He thinks he’s on his mare Mirabelle.
PHONO I. The ushers, strong as Turks.
PHONO II. The bridesmaids, fresh as roses.
PHONO I. The manager of the Eiffel Tower is doing them the honors of the Eiffel Tower. He is giving them a bird’s-eye view of Paris.
PHONO II. It makes me dizzy!
The Hunter and the Manager bring in a table with plates painted on it. The cloth sweeps the ground.
PHONO I. The General is shouting, “Sit down, Sit down!” The wedding party sits down to the table.
PHONO II. All on one side of the table, so that the audience can see them.
PHONO I. The General rises.
PHONO II. Speech by the General.
The General’s discourse is orchestral. He merely gesticulates.
PHONO I. Everyone is deeply moved.
PHONO II. After his speech the General describes a mirage that deceived him in Africa.
PHONO I. I was eating pie with the Duc d’Aumale. The pie was covered with wasps. We tried to brush them away. No luck. Well, those wasps were tigers.
PHONO II. What?
PHONO I. Tigers. Thousands of them, all stalking around. A mirage had projected their image, much reduced, onto our pie, and we took them for wasps.
PHONO II. You would never think he was seventy-four years old.
PHONO I. But who is this charming bicycle girl in shorts?
Enter Cyclist in shorts. She dismounts.
PHONO II, girl’s voice. Excuse me, gentlemen.…
PHONO I. Madam, in what way can we be of service to you?
PHONO II. Am I on the right road for Chatou?
PHONO I. You. are, Madam. You have only to follow the car line.
PHONO II. It is the General who answers her, for he has just recognized her as a mirage.
The Cyclist remounts and rides off.
PHONO I. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have just been fortunate enough to witness a mirage. They often occur on the Eiffel Tower. That bicycle girl is actually pedaling along the Chatou road.
PHONO II. After this instructive interlude the Photographer appears. What is he saying?
PHONO I. I am the Photographer of the Eiffel Tower and I am going to take your picture.
PHONOS I AND II. Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!
PHONO I. Arrange yourselves in a group.
The party groups itself behind the table.
PHONO II. You are wondering what has happened to the ostrich hunter and the Manager of the Eiffel Tower. The Hunter is trailing the ostrich up through every platform. The manager is trailing the Hunter, and running the Eiffel Tower. This is no sinecure. The Eiffel Tower is a world, like Notre-Dame. It is the Notre-Dame of the Left Bank.
PHONO I. It is the Queen of Paris.
PHONO II. It was the Queen of Paris. Now it is a telegraph girl.
PHONO I. After all, a man’s got to live!
PHONO II. Now, don’t move. Look pleasant, please. Look straight into the camera. A little bird’s going to come out.
A Trouville Bathing Beauty comes out of the camera. She wears a one-piece bathing suit, carries a butterfly net in which there is a heart, and has a picnic basket slung over one shoulder. Colored lights. The wedding party lifts its hands in admiration.
PHONO I. Oh the pretty postcard!
Dance of the Bathing Beauty.
But the Photographer does not share the delight of the wedding party. This is the second time today that his camera has gone back on him. He is trying to make the Trouville Bathing Beauty get back into the camera.
PHONO II. Finally the Bathing Beauty goes back into the camera. The Photographer has convinced her that it is a bathhouse.
End of the dance. The photographer throws a bathrobe over the girl’s shoulders; she exits into the camera, skipping, throwing kisses.
PHONOS I AND II. Bravo! Bravo! Bis! Bis! Bis!
PHONO I. If only I could tell beforehand what surprise this crazy camera had in store for me, I should be able to put on a show. As it is, dear Lord! — I shudder every time I pronounce the fatal words. God knows what is coming next! Since these mysteries are beyond me, let’s pretend that I arranged them all the time.
He bows profoundly.
PHONOS I AND II. Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!
PHONO II. Ladies and Gentlemen, in spite of my earnest desire to please you one and all, I regret that the lateness of the hour makes it impossible for me to present a second time that popular number, “The Trouville Bathing Beauty.”
PHONOS I AND II. Yes! Yes! Yes!
PHONO I. The Photographer is lying in order to save face and at the same time make a hit. He looks at his watch. Two o’clock, and that ostrich hasn’t come back yet!
PHONO II. The wedding party rearranges itself. Madam, your left foot on one of the spurs. Sir, drape the veil over the corner of your mustache. Perfect. Now, don’t move. One. Two. Three. Look straight into the camera. A little bird’s going to come out.
He squeezes the bulb. A fat child, crowned with green paper, comes out. Under its arm it carries some prize books and a basket.
PHONO I. Hello, Mamá.
PHONO II. Hello, Papá.
PHONO I. More perils of photography.
PHONO II. This child is the very image of the wedding party.
PHONO I. And just listen to them!
PHONO II. He’s the image of his mother.
PHONO I. He’s the image of his father.
PHONO II. He’s the image of his grandma.
PHONO I. He’s the image of his grandpa.
PHONO II. He has our mouth.
PHONO I. He has our eyes.
PHONO II. My dear parents, on this auspicious occasion accept my expressions of esteem and love.
PHONO I. The same sentiment from a different point of view.
PHONO II. Accept my expressions of love and esteem.
PHONO I. He might have learned a longer sentiment!
PHONO II. Accept my expressions of esteem and love.
PHONO I. He shall be a Captain.
PHONO II. Architect.
PHONO I. Boxer.
PHONO II. Poet.
PHONO I. President of the Republic.
PHONO II. A pretty little corpse for t
he next war.
PHONO I. What is he looking for in his basket?
PHONO II. Bullets.
PHONO I. What does he want with bullets? It looks as though he were planning something naughty.
PHONO II. He is massacring the wedding party.
PHONO I. He is massacring his own family to get some macaroons.
The Child bombards the guests, who flee with screams of terror.
PHONO II. Mercy!
PHONO I. When I think of the trouble it cost us to bring him up.
PHONO II. All the sacrifices we made for him.
PHONO I. Wretch, I am your father!
PHONO II. Desist, for yet there is time!
PHONO I. Will you have no pity on your grandparents?
PHONO II. Will you show no respect for the Uniform?
PHONO I. Bang! Bang! Bang!
PHONO II. I forgive you.
PHONO I. Be damned.
PHONO II. No bullets left.
PHONO I. The wedding party is massacred.
PHONO II. The Photographer is chasing the child about. He is threatening it with a whip. He is ordering it to get back into the camera.
PHONO I. The child is dodging. He screams. He stamps his foot. He wants to “live his own life.”
PHONO II. I want to live my own life! I want to live my own life!
PHONO I. But what is this other noise?
PHONO II. The Manager of the Eiffel Tower. What is he saying?
PHONO I. A little less noise, please. Don’t scare the radiograms.
PHONO II. Papa! Papa! Look at the radiograms.
PHONO I. There are some big ones.
PHONO II. The wedding party gets up again.
PHONO I. You
PHONO II. could hear
PHONO I. a
PHONO II. pin
PHONO I. drop.
PHONO II. The trapped radiograms fall onto the stage and flutter about. The guests run after them and jump on them.
PHONO I. Look, look, I’ve got one! Me too! Help, it’s biting me! Hold it down, hold it down!
PHONO II. The radiograms are calming down. They draw up in a line. The prettiest one steps forward and gives the military salute.
