Snakes and Ladders

by Dirk Bogarde

  Forwood poured another glass of Valpolicella. “Point taken,” he said.

  A day or two later we drove home through a deceptively calm France; for just below the surface of this smiling May lay the possibility of a civil war. The Students were marching, barricades going up, shops closing, and the streets of almost every major city seemed strangely deserted and dead. A long, hot Sunday. In Paris there was a silence which was almost tangible. Little traffic, few people, the sound of pigeons’ wings and hurrying feet along almost empty boulevards. A breath held; Alain Resnais sitting at a small table at the Café du Rond Point, almost entirely alone, waiting for me. We had made the arrangement to meet some days before to discuss the possibility of a film which he wanted to make, and which we had been trying to get financed by an American company for months, “The Adventures of Harry Dickson”. Now the finance had come through finally; but Alain, staring at his coffee, felt that the steam, as he put it, had gone out of his ambition. He had had to wait too long, make too many idiotic compromises for our future bosses, so that, now the money was available, he felt that he could no longer face the challenge.

  “I will not compromise to the extent which they demand. No. I cannot do it now … it is finished; you understand?” I did, of course, but was sad. It would have followed “Justine” and was a part which I longed to play above all others especially since Resnais, as he said, had written it for me.

  “I have here a letter for Vanessa Redgrave, she has been so kind and patient to wait, will you give it to her in London, we have no post now with the events of these weeks. I think she will understand too. Explain to her for me.”

  I took the letter, declined his offer to cross the river and come, as he said, “to see history being made: the Students are fighting for their existence two kilometres from here.” I left him standing on the pavement, tall, slightly stooped, a shabby raincoat, his red scarf, an airline holdall slung over his shoulder, the legend peeling: BOAC. He waved slightly as the car moved out into the thin traffic. He looked infinitely sad; infinitely worried. I put the letter for Vanessa Redgrave in my passport and we headed for Calais. And managed to catch the last ferry across the Channel before the strikes finally closed France.

  Driving up through Ashford Forwood said that perhaps, with things as they were now in France, I had better think again about moving there to live. We agreed that since I would be working almost immediately, and for a lengthy time, in Italy, it would be wiser to rent a house outside Rome, and see how it went. But first of all, and irrevocably, I would go ahead and put the English house on the market while I was away. I’d tell no one, apart from my parents, and perhaps the staff, Antonia and Eduardo who had taken over from the much-loved Hans and Agnes, and who, for their own futures must be admitted into the plans, for they would, I hoped, come with me when I left for Italy. I had about five weeks to go before Visconti would need me; there would be a great deal to do.

  * * *

  There is an army saying that the camp tailor knows more about troop movements than the Chiefs of Staff; and sooner. The same thing applies to theatrical costumiers. From them, after standing mutely for five days, amidst a welter of half-finished suits and coats, being pinned and chalked and offered endless cups of lethal espresso’s in Tirelli’s in Rome, I was informed that Visconti, whom I had not met since the one evening long ago, it seemed, at the Hassler when I agreed to this enterprise, now wished my physical body presented to him, for one single shot, by ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Since it was already three-thirty in the afternoon I was in some degree of panic.

  “But where are they?”

  “Salzburg. Very pretty.”

  “How do I get there?”

  “We have the plane tickets; Düsseldorf and you change for Munich then a car …”

  “But I was told not for three weeks.”

  “Changed his mind; tomorrow ten o’clock.”

  “I have nothing to wear; no costume is ready.” I threw a despairing hand about the cluttered, stuffy room, hung about with half-finished hacking jackets, coats and evening clothes.

  “Ah si, si … all you will need is raincoat. And here he is; is only a big shot. Just your head. All is ready. Tirelli is always ready. Never late.”

  But I sure as hell was going to be late for my first day’s work with Visconti. Something I felt absolutely sure he would not tolerate. How could I get myself on and off planes to bloody Salzburg; I had never moved a step unaccompanied either by Theo Cowan or Forwood ever since I had waltzed into this monstrous business. I was not about to do it now.

  We drove. Packing two suitcases in the space of fifteen minutes, we left the Hassler holding all the rest of the stuff, and headed for Salzburg. It was a fiendish drive through the night with a four-hour stop-over in Trento, and a dawn start the next day. One hour late, that is to say at eleven o’clock in the morning, we drew up, dusty, exhausted, anxious and hot, at the door of the elegant hotel which was Visconti’s headquarters. The manager was extremely polite; certainly this was the right place, and Signor Visconti was staying there; I could not possibly be late, he added in a hushed voice, since Signor Visconti was still asleep and would not be awake until at least four in the afternoon. He had attended the first night of Von Karajan’s “Don Giovanni” the night before, and had also worked very hard at the film. There was no cause for me to be distressed by my lateness, since no one would work today because it was a rest day. He suggested that I might like to see my room, regretfully in the annex, because the place was completely full on account of the Festival, and that my chauffeur was accommodated in a small room in a pension up the hill.

  White with exhaustion and anger I went to see my annex room. A small place under the eaves, overlooking the garage-wash area. The manager shrugged his shoulders sadly and said he regretted the situation, but for one night only … One night! At this rate how many nights would there be? Who was in charge, what had gone wrong, why had I been dragged through the night for absolutely no good reason? I was seething with anger, and shaking with fear. My first work in a strange country … not a good indication of things to come.

  The day passed slowly. Salzburg is just another city when all is said and done, and apart from an exhibition of Egon Schiele there was nothing much to see. Or that I, in my present mood, cared to see. By the time I had returned to the hotel Visconti had, like Box or Cox, left for some unknown destination. He would not be returning for dinner. There was no note, no explanation, no form of contact. I might just as well have still been in Rome; probably he thought that I was. We walked, Forwood and I, forlornly up the hill behind the too-elegant hotel, found a small bar with high wooden settles, a juke-box and a pretty waitress in a swirling dirndl who brought beer, wine, and piled plates of wurst and röesti. Life seemed a little more tolerable. Until the next day when the same procedure took place. Signor Visconti was asleep, and would be until four in the afternoon; he could not be disturbed.

  “This is very curious behaviour,” I said. “Perhaps he doesn’t know I am here?”

  “He must do … he must have seen the car outside … the management have told him … he’s just being an Emperor; is that what you called him?”

  “Well, if he makes no sign this evening by six, or whenever he gets up, I’m off; we leave for Rome and pack the whole business in. I don’t mind forgetfulness so much but I won’t tolerate sheer bloody rudeness.”

  At precisely six that evening I went down to the bar; no sign of life, but a scattering of laughter from the garden beyond. I stepped out on to a gravel path and walked, rather self-consciously, towards a collection of elegant cages clustered around the trunk of a giant lime. There were golden pheasant, quail, a toucan; casually I looked through the wires across the lawns towards the terrace. Sitting around a large table in the evening sun, Visconti and his court; the Cardinal from the evening at the Hassler, five or six others listening to him, agreeing, clapping politely at some gentle joke, laughing, sipping cool drinks from long glasses, relaxed,
casual, quite unaware that I was hovering furiously behind two blue macaws in the aviary.

  “I’ll give it another five minutes,” I murmured to one, who clambered inquiringly down the wire to the piece of twig I offered. “Five minutes, and if nothing happens straight back to Rome and England.”

  But there was a slight pause suddenly in the laughter at court. Someone looked across to the aviary, a bending of heads, and just as I was about to leave and cross the lawn towards the annex the Cardinal came loping worriedly across, hand outstretched, the other buttoning nervously his immaculate jacket.

  “Ah! Buona sera …” Saved by the bell.

  They made room at the table, and drinks were ordered, but no explanation was offered beyond the fact that they had done some good work already, and that tomorrow I would do one single shot and then be free.

  “Is very simple,” said Visconti. “Just a close-up. You see your brother-in-law in bed with a boy, you are shcoked, you shoot him, poum! poum! then you close the door. Is all. Then to Rome again; very simple, eh? A good beginning for you.”

  I was still angry and I confess bewildered, but remained exceedingly British and cool, and when he invited us to join them all at dinner in Salzburg I declined, politely, and said that I preferred to eat up the hill. He looked curious. “Up the hill? There is up the hill here, restaurant?”

  “No, a little trattoria; very small, very ordinary, quite simple.” We said goodnight and walked thoughtfully back to the annex.

  There was a wedding party in the little bar up the hill, the bride red-faced and shy in white, swigging down pints of beer, the bridegroom tightly stuffed into a blue suit, a massive crimson carnation matching his complexion. Children ran about the room in wrinkled socks, laughing and rolling beer mats, bouncing balloons; someone sang a rousing song to an accordion, the waitress hurried through the throng balancing steins of beer and plates of sausage. It was warm, relaxed, noisy and cheerful; through the smoke and clattering children I suddenly saw one of the faces from Visconti’s table, as he saw me. He came directly to the table, elegant in grey silk, politely he stood to attention.

  “Herr Bogarde, Herr Visconti sends me to ask if there is room at your table perhaps?”

  “Of course … plenty …”

  “He will be here directly.” The elegant young man clicked his heels and left. Two minutes later (he had clearly been outside in the car), Visconti entered with the court. Dressed in dinner jackets and with extreme elegance and care they made an impressive picture. The waitress hustled extra chairs about the table, threw plates down and hurried off to the kitchens. A child nearby burst a red balloon. Visconti removed his jacket and sat down beside me in his braces. He was grinning happily.

  “I like,” he said, indicating the wedding and the blasting accordion. “You like too?”

  I nodded. He patted my shoulder comfortably and, taking up my glass, finished my wine.

  * * *

  Unterach was dressed all over in scarlet, black and white. Banners and swastikas fluttered all about the cuckoo-clock village on the placid lake, the streets were thronged with laughing, jolly, blond young men, clumping over the cobbles in their jackboots, brown shirts and breeches; belts and holsters sparkling in the sun. Girls in dirndls and modest blouses, hung on their arms, singing and smiling at the memory of a time they never knew, and the elders happily held their babies up to clutch the sailing banners and have their photographs taken by fat lederhosened fathers. A spirit of festivity was everywhere, and the villagers were enjoying it all; they were making a lot of money out of the Italian film company, and reliving a past of which they now remembered they were very proud. No one was in the least distressed, except for one unhappy tourist driving through in his Ford Taunus on the way to somewhere else, who, trapped in recreated history, had a minor heart attack and was carted waxen-faced to the nearest clinic; this evinced much laughter since he was Jewish, but he shortly recovered and, I was informed with much laughter by a jolly lady in the pharmacy, fled back to Zurich. I detested the smiling little village.

  I did my first shot for Visconti at the end of the morning. They were in a hurry to get out of the small hotel in which they had been working for some weeks … and I was hustled, in my raincoat, to the door of the bedroom in which they were shooting.

  “All you must do,” said Visconti quietly, “is open the door; you see the wicked Konstantin in the bed with a boy. Orribile! Orribile! You fire. Paum! Paum! Paum!, make a little look, retreat, close the door. Is very easy … capisci?”

  On his cry of “Actione!” I threw open the door, stared at Konstantin and his lover, suggested by a large apple crate with an X chalked on it … did my shooting and the look, and left. There was a silence. The door opened. Visconti stood there, cigarette in hand, one finger rubbing his chin. “You do again, this time you are smiling? Capisci?”

  I repeated the process. Smiling … I did it Nervously, Ruthlessly, Sardonically, Coldly, and eventually with tears streaming down my face with Regret and Grief. Or whatever he had demanded in his low voice. I opened the door and shot Konstantin and his chalk-mark lover, six very different times, all within twelve minutes. The tears had taken a few moments to prepare. Visconti printed all six and strode off to his lunch at the hotel in the square. He said nothing. OK. So now I was through and could return to Rome. Albino Coca, his right-hand man, and chief assistant, caught me up crossing the cobbled streets, threading our way between the laughing Nazi children. He put his arm round my shoulder like an old friend.

  “Six prints. Is amazing for Visconti … usually only one or two perhaps … but six, and all different, he prints all! Amazing. He liked what you do. I know, I work always with him. He is very surprised, I can tell. Very good.” He squeezed my arm tightly, smiling.

  “He didn’t look very pleased; is that normal?”

  “Ah si, si … he says nothing. Not ever; but I can tell.”

  “Well, bully for you.”

  “Scusi?”

  “I suppose it’s his way; what do I call him on the set? Visconti? Sir? Signor?”

  Albino thought for a moment. “You must call him Visconti, for sure; not Sir, is very military, I think, eh? Fascisti?”

  “I always call my directors Sir. It is simpler and quicker.”

  “Not Visconti … but never, never, never call him Luchino. That is very private name. Personal. No one calls him that on the film, ever. Remember.”

  The hotel was full, the restaurant, on a terrace over the lake like a ballroom. I found a small table with dirty plates and an empty wine glass. Suddenly, as I was about to sit, the Cardinal appeared at my side, smiling deferentially, hands clasped: “Please! To come …” I followed him through the tables to where Visconti sat in splendour round a white cloth sipping his wine and eating from a plate of beetroot salad. He motioned me to sit beside him, smiled at Forwood and indicated another place. He beamed genially about him.

  “Some wine? The house wine is delicate … not too heavy. You like trout, Forellen blau? Some Kartoffel Salat? Molto bene.”

  I shook my head. “No, Visconti, no … some wine … no food yet.”

  He raised his hand in mock surprise, laying it gently on my own. “My God! So formal! Visconti! La la la … Luchino! Everyone calls me that! Capisci?”

  * * *

  I didn’t return to Rome. Preferring to stay and watch him working, to see how he did it, and what he demanded. It was all very quiet, hardly a word was ever spoken. He never moved from his chair; instructions were given in a soft voice to Albino and relayed to the players or to the large crowd. It was an absorbing experience, and I stayed at his side, daily, sitting in a canvas chair, for the next three weeks. We hardly spoke, there was never any need to, he knew what I was doing and instinctively knew why; he was serene and happy, and together we developed what can only be described as, for want of a better phrase, a form of mental shorthand or even telepathy. I was the pupil. He became my Plato or my Socrates … although he would have scorned
me had I told him.

  However; all was not well elsewhere. By the end of the three weeks working on the Night of the Long Knives and sundry other pieces, we had spent all the money available. The German Finance had been suddenly withdrawn without warning because they considered that we were making an anti-German film. The locals grew tired of our presence, had fearsome battles with the Italian crew, whom they considered to have let them down as allies in the war, and put up the prices for everything from a glass of Coca Cola to a reel of thread. The battles were physical. The laughing Brown Shirts beat the living daylights out of the tight-shirted, and too-tight-trousered Italians, trapping them at nights, after dark, in small bars or walking through the bannered streets. At Visconti’s suggestion the Italians bought up all the cheap tourist rings in the local jewellers shops, crammed them on to every available finger of each hand and thus armed with knuckledusters gave as good as they had got; and more.

  We left the ugly little smiling village and headed to the next set-piece in Düsseldorf. Here we were locked in our hotels, the equipment and the film impounded, until the bills had been settled, and all cables to Rome were unanswered. The film was on and off again constantly. We sat about in dejected heaps with our luggage packed and the feeling that we were a broke variety troupe whose agents had abandoned them. The Cardinal flew about trying to find money, and Visconti, after rising late, lunched daily in regal splendour since he was paying out of his own pocket, as indeed, was I. Eventually some money came, we did the work needed and thankfully headed back to Italy.

  * * *

  The main set at the studio in Cinecitta was the ground and second floor of the Krupps’ villa at Essen, the Villa Hügel. Complete. All of it. In all the years that I had worked in the cinema I had never seen a set like it. The great main hall, rooms leading off, Music Room, Drawing Room, Library, a great gallery with an immense staircase, and off that too, more and more rooms, all furnished, crammed with flowers, real fireplaces in which blazed real logs, and antique furniture of great worth and beauty. Tapestries, as well as faux Titians and Rubens, covered every spare inch of space, and every detail, from pencils and magnifying glasses in the vast library, to family photographs in silver frames and a half-finished piece of needlework lying, as if hurriedly put aside, in a huge armchair in the small Study, were in place. The flowers, fresh twice a day because the heat of the lamps caused them to wilt, were dozens and dozens of white lilies and deep crimson roses. “Gladioli are bourgeois flowers … for yachts in St Tropez … remove them. And no mixed flowers, it is vulgar to mix flowers, and the Krupps would know that; they were tinkers originally, but they had great pretentions towards ‘comme il faut’. We do not make mistakes.’