by Shawn Wen
The scene itself is a perfunctory performance, apparently included only to fill a hole in The Seven Deadly Sins. There’s no story, no interpretation. But Sloth opens the door for the more theatrical vices.
SCENE 10
Lust arrives hastily, clocking in at less than two minutes. The beige floor and gray backdrop are suggestive of the beach on an overcast day. Marceau is backlit; his figure casts a long shadow as he works with one hand open as palette and the other holding a brush. He energetically blends colors and applies paint to the canvas. But something distracts him. His gestures slow down, even as he continues work.
He steps back and shapes an hourglass figure with his hands—a woman’s body. As if this is the first time he’s seen his own model. He begins to paint performatively in big, broad strokes—showing off for her. Deciding the brush is too limiting, he throws down his tools and smears paint around the canvas with his hands.
His eyebrows dance up and down suggestively. For a brief moment, he closes his eyes and his mouth pulls back, as if overcome by her beauty. He paints even more vigorously now, but he peers past the canvas for her response. Finally he abandons the canvas and steps forward to kiss her hand.
Time passes. It sputters then stretches. What matters is not the speed of light, but the speed of thought. The mime refashions time, sculpting it with a precision instrument. He can suspend it or hasten it at will. He marches in place for three minutes and a lifetime has passed. In three minutes, eighty-four years.
M. INTERACTS WITH THE PRESS
Now here’s some footage of Marceau that’s truly silent. No music, no sound effects, no ballet flats striking the stage floor.
In grainy black-and-white film shot in June of 1958, passengers disembark at the Orly airport. A man runs up the stairs, pushing against the crowd to present Marceau with a huge bouquet of flowers. Greetings and kisses hold up the other passengers.
A group of photographers are waiting on the runway. Marceau arrives dressed in a smart three-piece suit, clearly delighted with the welcoming committee. An unidentified blonde woman is there, speaking to Marceau excitedly. He responds to her by pantomiming a man on a motor scooter driving in circles. The camera returns to her wide smile and crooked teeth. Now he mimes holding an umbrella, crouched over and wincing at the rain. The camera pans back again as she tries to hide her impatience. Marceau’s pretending to be a pool shark, making a trick shot behind his back. After the successful play, he swallows a huge gulp from a glass. He waves to indicate that he’s done with these stunts. He’s ready to go. The camera leaves him, focusing instead on the airfield, planes parked in the distance.
Her wait is over. She gets him next.
M. ON MASTERING ONE’S FEELINGS
Marceau was an advocate for fencing and had his students enroll in classes. “Fencing is a school of humility and develops speed, perfect control of the body, balance, beauty, and strong grace. It should be recommended to all men wanting to master their feelings and actions during a lifetime.”
Bip pulls the sword out slowly and, looking briefly at the sky, makes the sign of the cross. A woman’s hand appears before him, which he of course bends down to kiss. He pulls the delicate fingers towards his lips, only to find her forcing his arms behind his back. Bip is cuffed and led away.
COLLECTIONS: ITEMS FROM JAPAN
This is a little weird, but Marceau had a traditional kendo uniform made—kendo meaning “the way of the sword” in Japanese.
It has wide-legged pants (hakama) that resemble a skirt. The protective armor (bogu) includes a mask (men) with a metal grid covering the face, head, shoulders, and throat; gloves (kote) protecting his wrists and forearm; a breastplate (do) shielding the belly, ribs, and chest; and the tare covering the lower abdomen and upper thighs. The costume is complete with weaponry: one wooden sword (katana) and three bamboo swords (shinai).
It also came with a jacket (keikogi) with “M. Marceau” embroidered on the breast.
COLLECTIONS: KNIVES
There were two from Japan called wakizashi. These were the best weapons for seppuku. They looked like miniature katana swords. One of them had a cracked handle, the other a crack in the sheath.
And there was a dagger from the early Bronze Age, Persia. A colorfully rotted blade: green and yellow and brown.
The rest looked like they were bought at a costume shop for an Arabian Nights–themed party:
From Morocco, two knives with round blades and wooden handles.
Another curvy dagger, this one from the Ottoman Empire, called a jambiya.
A wavy sword from Indonesia called a keris. The handle in the shape of a lion, small animals running down the sheath.
COLLECTIONS: MISCELLANEOUS
He was married and divorced three times:
Huguette Mallet, two sons, Michel and Baptiste.
Ella Jaroszewicz, no children.
Anne Sicco, two daughters, Camille and Aurélia.
He bought a farmhouse in Berchéres, an hour outside Paris. There were four trees on the property at the time of purchase. “I have planted more than 2,500 and created a forest.”
COLLECTIONS: ICONS
On his walls, saints and angels dressed in red. Golden orbs around their heads.
Saint George on horseback slaying a dragon. In the background, you can see a princess locked in a tower.
Saint John the Evangelist sitting on a chair as he writes the gospel. John holds a book in his left hand, a pen in his right, as an eagle cowers at his feet.
The Ascension of Elijah.
The Archangel Michael and the Archangel Gabriel. Judgment and Mercy—in movies they are played by John Travolta and Tilda Swinton. Michael’s very name is a war cry to the angels. He’s a prince who guards Eve’s body. They are healers, warriors, messengers, protectors. They stand side by side in Notre Dame and side by side in Marceau’s home in Berchéres.
Saint Catherine wears a pretty tiara while seated on her throne. She holds in her hands the very breaking wheel to which her own body was once strapped. No kidding, they call it the Catherine wheel now.
Archangel Raphael on a pink background with a fish he would later name Tobias.
Gabriel again, this time holding flowers and a sword. Avoiding his soldier friend.
The warrior Saint Demetrius. He’s trampling on a fallen soldier with his horse.
In his house, he hung a life-size painting of Bip, dressed in white—the usual bell-bottoms and sailor’s pullover. His arms are stretched out and his feet are together like the crucified Christ. Variants of his own disembodied face float around him: Bip, Bip, Bip, Bip.
There is a photograph of Marceau sitting on an overstuffed couch beneath this painting of Bip. He reclines deep into the seat. His legs are crossed. He looks into the camera, unsmiling.
PIERRE VERRY
A word here on the man who worked as the Presenter of Cards from 1952 to 1979. He accompanied Marceau on nearly six thousand performances, through seventy-five countries.
Marceau was a particular man. The card must be held completely straight, while Verry’s arm dangled at an awkward angle, as if halted midstep.
John Beaufort wrote that Verry made “title-card-holding itself a fine art.” Frances Herridge marveled at his “immobility that rivals a statue’s.”
Verry also studied with Decroux. The teacher was obsessed with divorcing mime from narrative, and so he created le mime statuaire. “My passion, my zeal for mime . . . grew out of my fervor for sculpture and its sensual, carnal pleasure, which inspired me even as a child.” Decroux wanted to imbue theater with these properties.
To Marceau, mime was a kind of riddle. The audience was challenged to recognize the action, identify the character, situate the scene within a story. How to fill the blank spaces?
The lights came up and Verry stood as if petrified, holding a black board with white lettering: The Cage. The first clue. A starting point for the rest of the performance.
Marceau compared Verry’s costu
me to the etchings of Honoré Daumier and Jacques Callot. Bright yellow and blue feathers stuck out of his oversized hat. Long tassels dangled from his sleeves. He wore rich turquoise leggings. He definitely wasn’t Bip.
Clive Barnes wrote of Verry, “He holds, caught up in some frozen moment of heroic poetry, the card announcing Marceau’s next miracle. He is quite a minor miracle himself.”
The lights faded to black over Verry, and when they rose again, there was Marceau.
But remember. Time is material. You can feel it erode your skin, like wind and rain.
The mime keeps count in heartbeats and breaths.
After decades, he is weathered.
M. ON FAILURE
Anne Sicco was a nineteen-year-old fan who wandered into Marcel Marceau’s dressing room. He was approaching fifty. Camille was born. They married. Aurélia was born.
Marceau said, “Does not pantomime offer the language of the heart?”
In old photographs, Anne was slender in a tiered, white dress. Her blonde hair was tied back in a long braid.
In time, she came to teach experimental theater at Marceau’s mime school. For years, they kept residence in Paris. In the evenings he read, listened to music, and painted, speaking little to Anne.
She said, “It’s a silent sort of exchange.”
Perhaps the only one who understood.
“He has silent cries.”
She’s smiling from behind a camera. Her lens pointed at the leathery face of an old man.
Anne shared her name with his mother.
They divorced in 1984.
She stopped teaching at the school in 1985.
She founded her own company in 1986.
What was all that energy spent on? Women are not worth striving for. The reward is too fleeting, and then the reward is too much.
He said, “My personal life has been very difficult. I have been married three times. The marriages all failed. It’s hard to be a family man in my position. When you’re traveling all over the world you can’t have your wife waiting for you, like Penelope. Now one of my ex-wives is teaching in my school in Paris. We have become very good friends. In this sense, my life is not a failure.”
In interviews, he referred to her as his “former wife.” Why then did some obituary notices print “survived by his wife Anne Sicco Marceau”?
Aurélia was about to go onstage when she heard that her father had died. Anne was the director. She canceled the performance.
Anne said, “Je ressens une immense douleur.”
She said, “C’était un homme qui me fascinait.”
“Nous sommes tous bouleversés.”
M. ON TECHNOLOGY
In 1974, Marcel Marceau did an ad for Xerox’s new color copier. The commercial runs for ninety seconds. Marceau mimics a robot. He pantomimes copying both sides of a sheet of paper and pushing the computer around the office. The ad ends with a guarantee. He says, “Call Marcel Marceau. If no one answers, it’s me.”
BIP AS SLEEK CREATURE OF THE DEEP
He pushes against the floor to make it look as if he is pushing against a heaviness in the air. The fabric stretches over his torso, clinging to juts of bone, so that a hollow reveals itself. This body is composed of vacancies and devotions. The clothes don’t constrict. They wrap around his sinewy limbs like skin. They fit better than his own loose skin. His costume is smooth like a porpoise. The attached red rose is a dorsal fin.
SCENE 11
Marceau clothed in black against a black backdrop. The picture of poverty. His body is crooked and stiff. His eyes stare into the distance, unfocused. It takes a moment to register that he’s blind. He’s blind. Alms for the poor. He holds his hand out. It dips a little each time a passerby presses a coin into his palm. And once his hand is full, he deposits the change into his shirt pocket. He walks off, tapping his way with a cane. His hands brush along the side of a wall until he finds the door handle. He pulls out a key and lets himself in.
He’s entered a room filled with gold. He deposits his panhandled coins and gestures upward at stacks of money in front of him. He tries on necklaces, attentive to their delicate clasps. He piles chains around his neck and rings onto his fingers. He lights a cigar and takes a few pleasurable puffs. In this vault of riches, his eyes work just fine.
COLLECTIONS: MASKS
The imported ones came from former French colonies in Africa. Wooden masks from the Bambara tribe of Mali, the Baule and Yaouré tribes of Côte d’Ivoire. They were heavy, dark wood, hybrids of man and animal.
But the Japanese theater masks were the most beloved. He hung them vertically, like a totem pole, down one side of his bookshelf. His daughter later said that he drew from these masks to create Bip’s expressive traits.
One is a woman. She’s an ideal beauty of the Heian era, with shaved eyebrows, red lips, and blackened teeth.
There’s an old-timer smiling. His hair has receded to the crown. He grows a long beard and deep wrinkles crisscross his forehead. His cheekbones cast shadows over his thin face.
There are two demon masks. One, an oni, made of ivory. She’s a woman, mouth open, eyes golden.
Another frowning face.
Some granddaddies. Their grins surrounded with trimmed mustaches and goatees.
COLLECTIONS: ZOOMORPH
Two silver roosters, suspended in combat. Combs erect and tail feathers fanned out. Light shines off of their open beaks, their claws, the barbs of their feathers.
A bronze lion bares its long teeth. Chinks of metal broken off its mane. Its face has turned bright green since it was first cast in third-century Rome.
Three ivory elephants, one with a man riding on his back, carved from the very tusks for which they were killed. From China and India, nineteenth-century.
An ambiguous bestial face. Vulpine head ablaze with deranged eyes. An open, drooling mouth connects only at the canines. From the Tumaco-La Tolita culture, sculptors of so many afflicted figurines.
The falcon in Ernest Meissonier’s The Falconer is a burst of white brushstrokes (the underside of his wings and his compact body), a smear of brown and red (his camouflaged plumage), and some bright yellow streaks (talons). He’s a blur of motion, in contrast to the stationary falconer posing to show off his gold-trimmed robe.
A hunting dog gazes affectionately at Général Maisonneuve. The hound is tiny at the commander’s boots, all spots and floppy ears.
A white carousel horse coated with polychrome resin stands one and a half meters tall, rearing up on his hind legs. Alarm in his yellow eyes as he strains against his bit.
M. ON VIDEO
He doesn’t translate well. His movements are slow. Disjointed. A bag of bones. Can’t hold your attention. You fast-forward through entire scenes. Did you go too far? Rewind. Sit through it again. He seems arrogant. And the silence is interrupted by a laugh track.
You can clearly see the pancake makeup, the fake eyebrows, his constant mugging. A stark reminder of what you’ve always suspected: he’s just a clown.
SCENE 12
He is buoyant. The stage floor, a tightrope, a millimeter wide. It bends and springs.
No. Not so. Walking against the wind, pretending to walk against the wind, he is less effective than you. You, on your way to work, proud as you plant your feet on the ground, step by step.
How is the breeze over there?
Fifty-seven miles per hour. Pedestrians
dodging branches.
Look at that one, tossed here and there.
He’d do and undo each gesture, as if forever tying and untying a shoelace.
CAMILLE ON MARCEAU
Her father was entirely inhabited by his art. Mime was his way of building a world as he wanted it to be.
She also believed that the house in Berchéres was a physical manifestation of that world. She called his house a world apart. She called it a virtual museum.
She described strangely lit rooms, colorful tiled windows. She used the words a place of peace, a
childhood dream. Camille asked us to imagine her as a young girl, coming upon wind-up toys, medieval automatons. She asked us to imagine waiting for her father to come home from tour—sometimes three hundred shows a year. He’d spend hours elaborating on the souvenirs he brought home, piece by piece.
She said it was a home where objects from all cultures coexisted—a setting that could only be staged by an artist. The house filled with objects created another silent space.
COLLECTIONS: ANCIENT DOLLS
Twenty-three figurines:
From the Tumaco–La Tolita culture, the present-day border of Ecuador and Colombia (700 BC to 350 AD), they were found beheaded on garbage dumps, on burial mounds, near the coastline, as if broken in ritual. Immortalized in sex, motherhood, illness, and old age. Some suffered from visible afflictions: Down syndrome, dwarfism, facial paralysis, and tumors. The natives disappeared before the arrival of the Spanish, but their dolls remained. The shaman, the mother, the boy, the warrior.
Four terra cotta statuettes:
Archaic period (3500 to 2000 BC) in what’s now Mexico, right at the development of pottery, the first sign of settling down and accumulating objects. The puny legs, monstrous heads, and slits for eyes.
More:
Nearly all artifacts of Colima Culture (100 BC to 250 AD) were buried in shaft tombs, which were then discovered by looters. Dating and provenance are problems. Seated man, coated in a warm orange-brown slip; little guy with round irises and a bob hairdo, his body compact like an urn.
