Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters
Page 50
London incredibly dirty after France. Cold also, a brilliant sun a bitter wind. I go shopping for my modest needs: people glad to see me back, brown and a bit fat. Beer at the Cantine I fear with the équip2 … my stomache, not my face so much. Tavernier on the phone last night to say that he has seen all the work now in Paris on a good screen and with proper sound. In Bandol it was in some awful little cinema and the screen was too small for the film and the sound did’nt work. So.
Forgive my typing. I had my injection for grippe on Friday and yesterday I felt a little strange! Alright today but very tired from re-action.
I miss the people of the équip. They were so AMAZINGLY kind to me, every single one. On the last Friday in Bandol I had a big farewell party for everyone (fifty, plus wives and some children) at the Pullman. I took all the salon, chairs, canapes, etcetera and we had 17 bottles of champagne, 3 of Scotch and Gin and lots to eat. It cost F.7.500 and was worth every sou. Kindness and affection and respect are wonderful gifts to recieve, you will agree? I miss them … tant pis …
[ … ] During the filming at Cannes we had to drive up into the hills to do a scene or two. I was in dread that we were getting near Clermont.
At Valbonne, thank God, we turned away and I did not look up into the familiar mountains. I could not bear to. It was bad enough at the airport at Nice … so familiar for so many years. From 1948 when it was a little shed with a green grass field and honesuckle round the wall of the Departure Lounge until the last few years with so much travelling to London for scans and doctors and so on .... time lost, time forgotten .. I am getting old and mournful. Silly!
Now someone, pleasant, arrives for lunch … a fish pie I have planned, and fruit and good French cheese and French bread. I have a good local shop not far away owned by a charming couple from Bordeaux with their two boys who work very hard. It is ALMOST like being at home .... and we speak French together. Which was useful for me in the film, because although I play an English man living in Bandol I do have a French wife who refuses to speak to me in English! So.… I had some very difficult moments as you will imagine …
Now. I must lay my table and get on with my boring jobs: I leave you as always with my love and affection and bon courage …
& come to London one day? It would be So lovely if you did –
Ever Dirk
P.S. Birkin, by the way, adorable – & marvellous to work with. D
To Dilys Powell Cadogan Gardens
26 January 1990
Dearest Dilys –
You are dreadful. I saw you at luncheon only a week or two ago. Well; before I was bedded,1 but I have’nt been forgetful of you.
Or has time sped along? Probably. Anyway … Paris is over and done.2 Quite hellish journeys both ways, people, searches, general hassle and at Paris the idiot from the Production who came to meet me lost the car in the Underground Parking at Charles de Gaulle for ONE HOUR, and then found that he’d lost the bloody ticket for it. So we were another hour with forms and screams and French Invective flying. And an hour in Sunday traffic into town, and Tavernier waiting for me patiently in the Lancaster. Three hours late. God. Work next day alright, the new, extra, scene, played well. I wrote it in bed with flu and made it much better generally. He feels confident of the film, and is clearly very happy but it IS desperatly sad … and perhaps that wont be such a good idea. Marcel Ophuls who saw the first final cut (without my extra scene) said that my work surpassed anything I had done in Death In Venice. And that I was ‘amazingly courageous’ to play the role so ‘honestly’. I think that by that he meant without make up of any kind and my balding head and beer belly showing! But, after all, I was playing my own age, the father of Mlle Birkin and wife1 to the adorable, but no longer young, Odette Laure (theatre). Never mind. It seems I have not lost my knack after twelve years. Goodness. But as Bertrand T. said at dinner on Sunday ‘Good wine is meant to mature for years. And it looks better covered with dust and cobwebs’. I do see what he means. But one is shocked slightly.
Desperatly saddened yesterday by news of Ava [Gardner]’s death. She was an adorable and loyal friend for so many years. Sad, lonely, and wretchedly ill with cancer, of course, and shingles and God knows what. Refused to stop smoking and drinking and stayed quietly in Ennismore Gardens with her beloved corgies. Wretched, wretched cruelty. I have done my piece (on Tavernier) for the new Sunday Indipendant2 .. and they seem pleased. I hope that I will be, and that Bertrand wont be angry. He should’nt be: it’s a paeon (sp?) of praise for him.
It seems to me that I am now a journalist rather than an actor or a real-writer. But I’m off to Hay on Wye for some book Festival in May, a luncheon in my honour! Madness … and then I am doing Questions and Answers to students at Guildford University, and THEN I do the narration (as Galsworthy) for Channel 4’s3 version for Radio of the ‘Forsyte Saga’ and after that, my dear, I am running a few master Classes for the young at the National.
So. You cant say I’m not trying to spread my past good fortune!
May I telephone and suggest a lunch chez vous after the next week [ … ] I’ll call.
Devotedly
Dirk
P.S. Tavernier has refused to have the film entered for Cannes.4 Thank God! It’ll be out end of April.
To Hélène Bordes [Cadogan Gardens]
28 January 1990
Sunday.
Cher, cher, Hélène –
Can you believe your luck! I have bought another ‘new’ typewriter. This one is a little easier to use than the other brute. But it still corrects, and erases, and rings bells and terrifies me.
[…] I am just back from Paris: one day to do an extra scene which Tavernier wanted me to write. (No payment naturally!) We worked in a dirty shed, sitting in an old Renault-car at a supposed Service Café on the road from Cannes to Bandol. Too complicated to explain it to you, but that is what had to happen. And because I have had this terrible flu and been in bed for eight days, and trapped in the flat for yet another eight to avoid temperature changes, I was forbidden to work outside at night on the Perepherique, or however it is spelled, and so this awful old studio, north of Neuilly, was discovered and we worked there. All was well, and I flew back to London that evening at 8.30pm. Dont believe that a trip between London and Paris is only 40 minutes. It is. In the air. On the land it takes, altogether, six hours! Three to get to, and from, airports, the security searches are intense, not that I mind that, but it is the crowd, the smell, the noise … awful.
I had two wonderful hours to myself in Paris. In the morning before we started work at ten thirty. I went immediatly to my nearest Casino, or Felix Potin, to try and get my favourite Tripes a la mode de Caen. Difficult on a Monday morning. But I got some frozen in a packet which looks alright. I shall try my first tomorrow. What an excitement.
Then some eau de toilette (Givenchey. Monsieur Giv.) which costs half the price in Paris in comparison to London, and some good music on compact discs, and a large Munster cheese. Idiotic. But the smells and the textures remind me so much of Clermont. Paris was glorious on Sunday night when I arrived. Light, laughter, crowds, no dirt, the City looking amazingly beautiful (they have cleaned the Arc. It looks as if it was carved from butter.) Amazing. Glorious. I felt so much at ease and happy. The Lancaster to welcome me, Marie Therese at the telephone .. she’s been there for forty years, ever since I first went there. We embraced with tears. She and I seemed, apart from one waiter, Gilles, to be the very last of the Old Brigade. Ah me …
What is happening to the world, as far as weather is concerned!
No rain here either. Sun, a cold wind; on Thursday a real hurricane killing people and destroying 3.000,000 trees. Million that should be. Frightening up here on my roof, but I was safe. There was a crash as the people below me had all their windows blown out. Just like in the Blitz. But I survived; a good piece in our Big paper which I wrote for them about the Tavernier film … I go to a Literary Luncheon in my honour in Wales in May, lecture to the Students at
Guildford University, will take some Master Classes in acting at the National Theater and have a half-book ready which Viking will use as their Fiction No. 1 for ..... 1991! When I shall be 70. Oh dear God. If I am lucky.
So you see, I try to keep alert and active .. I dont think that I shall try another film. This one was my first for 13 years.
And enough is enough, Five am Calls are not for me a mon age!
[…] I must go out now to mail this and some others. I did a programme on the radio last month1 and simply spoke, in passing, about euthenasia and how, after Forwood, my brother in law, and another close friend, all of whome died hideiously, I agreed with it completely. I have had a sack of sad letters asking me to help. Life is precious, but terrible at the same time.
All my love – D XXX
To Susan Pink
(Card) Cadogan Gardens
7 March 1990
Oh! The agony!2 Your magic hammer almost killed me – I cant think why. However I did all the rest of the BBC work standing & sort-off sitting – on a V. high chair. And not a flick of pain. Odd? But after 36 solid hours of talk I was far too tired to come in on Tuesday – But will see you next Tuesday as usual. Leg works SPLENDIDLY. I’ll just have to type standing up.
Bugger.
Love. D.B.
To Dilys Powell Cadogan Gardens
9th May 1990
At four o’clock
Darling Dilys –
I have just got in from lunching with you. And, as I came up in the lift, (I live in what was Lily Langtree’s maids-rooms. Converted. To be sure.) the telephone was ringing and stopped, naturally, just as I inserted my key into the door.
So now I’ll never know who tried to call me. No one ever does: really. So I’m curious. But I did so enjoy being with you: this is NOT a thank you letter it is, rather, an apology-letter. For I always seem to be yelling at you and hardly ever give you a chance to speak. Quietly, elegantly, you go about the business of eating and drinking and I’m still bawling away about Euthanasia or some other quite unsuitable subject.
You are deeply patient. But I DO love being with you.
What is so silly, after so many years, is that I am still shy of you. I know that you have accorded me great intimacy: I am aware of that. I am equally terrified of overstepping the mark, so to speak, and therefore feel dreadfully inadequet. Like my spelling. I am not quite altogether.
The wonderous thing is that the instant one speaks of the Cinema you are instantly alive and alert. The eyes flash fire, your hair spreads like a childs in the wind, you are re-vived from the mundane things of life and the Cinema is your ‘fix’. I know that. I recognise that. [ … ] But I fear to bore. One can, God knows.
Probably thats why the Masterclass business is such fun! I am asked terrific questions. What lenses, when a cut was made, and why, who had to use an Idiot Board, how an effect was achieved, did I really do the stunts on such and such (yes. I did.) did I hate Rhodesia, when we shot ‘Simba’ there, and were the Mau Mau really in such a strong position. Yes they were. But I never went NEAR Rhodesia or Kenya or wherever it was, that was an elderly Double (well: he was at least forty and had white hair ..) so I could’nt hate the place. The nearest I got to Kenya on that epic was Studio E. at Pinewood with a lot of withered bamboo and Virginia Mckenna in a head scarf. You know. Film. I revelled. Perhaps thats the only real time that I come alive. Sometimes, in this last film with Bertrand, I used to sit under a tree outside the little villa which we were shooting in, and I would say to myself, aloud, really quite aloud, ‘Yes. This is the thing I really want. This is when I am at the utmost peak of happiness and awareness. Sitting here waiting to be called to perform. To “be” someone I have totally invented’. To find a new dimension, to enter it, to give that dimension Life, if one can do such a thing, and to make someone in an audience perhaps in Tokio, maybe in Southgate or Northampton or even Munich or Fairbanks, move and say ‘I know that feeling. I have done that, said that, felt that. How does he know?’
I suddenly realise, sitting here writing to you, that during ALL my acting life I have NEVER, except for a very few occasions, left the Set. I have always stayed there; sitting in my chair, some way from the action .. but there. I have never been far away. I feed on the atmosphere, on the sights, the smell, the sound, of a film being got ready.
Is’nt it strange how the best senses all begin with an ‘S’?
Perhaps that is how I learned, for no one ever really taught me except a rude, and right, Cameraman who, watching me thoughtfully while we changed magazines, said ‘You know? I just wonder how the fuck you have lasted.’1
I had made ten films … either I hit him, walked off in a fury, or asked him what I should do. I did that last thing: and Bob Thompson told me. From the amount of frames per second through the gate, to the difference between a 75, a 5 or a 20 lense. He told me what the boom was for, never to speak when I shut a door, set down a glass, lifted a prop of any kind, how to avoid the dolly-tracks, pause if I heard a distant plane or an extranious sound approaching .. how to ‘use’ the pause [ … ]
And I have wittered on. I hate to bore you when we are together for such a short time. You must tell me next time when to shut up. I will. Because this damned machine has taken life unto it’self and is behaving outrageously.
I loved being with you. I’ll write, in detail, after Cannes … if there IS an after Cannes. There must be?
All my love
Dirk XXX
Dirk flew to Nice for the screening of Daddy Nostalgie at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was, after all, an official French entry.
To Bertrand Tavernier Cadogan Gardens
Wednesday afternoon.
16th May 1990
My dear Bertrand –
I will confess to you now that there were times, in the eleven years I have waited for you, that I felt sure I would never work again, and that if I did it would be a bit-part in some dull little English comedy. I never quite reached despair but I was very, very, conscious of the fact that the last film I made, in 1977 was with Fassbinder and was called ‘Despair’! Not very comforting.
But on Monday evening I knew that the wait had not been in vain, that you had sought me out, and that we had worked together on something of infinate value. I am so immensley proud.
I was too full in my heart that evening to tell you what I wanted to: perhaps too involved, certainly too emotional to say anything that would have made sense at that time and in that awful villa. But now that I am safely back in my flat, away from all the excitement, I can say to you that I LOVE your film.
I was, as you will imagine, surprised and delighted by the version you have crafted. I was smashed by Jane and her impact .. by Odette, and was pleased that I had not let you all down and that I had not forgotten the lessons I had been taught by Micky Powell, Joe, Luchino, Dearden, Resnais and all the others who taught me about the cinema. I am so deeply proud of the film: I am so proud to be a part of it, and I was tremendously moved all the way through and truthfully began to forget, quite soon into the story, that I had anything to do with it!
I suppose there are a few moments when the story languishes a very little bit; I heard one or two criticisms of it .. but no more and I could not possibly tell you where they were or, more importantly, how to cut them. For my part it seems to me very much your film.
The kind of film you make, bearing your own style and it is wonderfully satisfying. You must have felt that the other evening with that enormous audience, with the waves of affection and respect which were swamping us all.
They LOVED your work. Cannes is NOT a kind town in the Festival, but the affection and respect we were shown overwhelmed me, I hope that it gave you intense pleasure. Thank you for letting me join you, for your infinate kindness and consideration, for your awareness that I tried to work for you, and the film, with all my heart .. you gave me such confidence, such a feeling of safety, that I felt certain I could not fail you and I pray that I have not.
W
e will see what the critics and the others say of us, but even if they are not particularly good, or even if they rave, I know that we have made a quite beautiful film together, all of us, and that as one paper said, it is a glorious epitaph to your father .. it is also a most beautiful dedication to a magic-man, Micky.1
For that, for so much more besides, my thanks, and my devoted love and respect.
If you need a door-handle, a coffee cup, a pin or a pine tree in your next movie please, I beg of you, send for me? Okay?
I am still walking on air, remembering scenes, cuts, the music, Jane, Odette, and you .. and your laughter.
I am no longer alone. Thank you …
With devotion
Dirk.
To Dilys Powell Cadogan Gardens
18 May 1990
Darling –
I only wrote the p.c in haste so that you would know as soon as possible how things had gone for us. Because I know that you were interested. Todays ‘Times’2 has filled me with joy. I walked to the greengrocers on air! Idiot.
But after 11 years away from the cinema one was a little bit worried that I might have lost the edge, or, worse still, picked up some easy tricks. Nothing to fear. Neither was true. The evening was amazing. I suppose there were only about 500 people outside the Palais; maybe 1.000. Police, photographers and the usual tra la la .. BUT Birkin and I got such an overwhelming reception from the crowd yelling ‘Jane! Deerk!’ that she went white with surprise and amazement. It took us ten minutes to get to the top of the staircase, with three stops for photographers, and backward waves to the crowd below. My little Agent who had come with me as a sort-of minder, and who had resoloutly never set foot at the Festival was lost to sight behind us and yelled out ‘Whats happening!’ and I yelled back ‘A miracle! Enjoy it Jonathan1 .. it may never happen again!’