Le marteau avec maître : A Q&A with Alix Delaporte

An account of a Q&A with Alix Delaporte for her Le dernier coup de marteau (2014)

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

14 July

A little account of a Q&A with director Alix Delaporte for her
Le dernier coup de marteau (The Last Hammer Blow) (2014), as screened at
The Arts Picturehouse on Monday 13 July at 6.00 p.m.

Salut! Our @uniFrance Summer of French Cinema season kicks off tonight at 6pm with a Q&A:)X https://t.co/Inw59ojiep pic.twitter.com/x5r1g7WbBz

— Arts Picturehouse(@CamPicturehouse) July 13, 2015

When one thought of it, the story about Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, and the two (or three) hammer-blows, is oft told (one was in the screening without a grasp of the title – but it proved not essential to watching the film, and one almost respects the art world for the fact that Untitled is an abiding description) : to Alix Delaporte, who did not know this work (or the composer), this story had attracted her to make a film around the work. That said, she said about Samuel Rovinski that she first needed to give the father a job / profession, so why not that of a conductor ?

Actually, we do experience Grégory Gadebois (as Samuel), seen from within the orchestra as he sits on his stool, quite well* : it is our way into who he is, as against the convincingly big, bluff, blunt man who strides around The Opera Berlioz as if he is Stourley Kracklite (from Peter Greenaway’s The Belly of an Architect (1987), played by Brian Dennehy), denying his paternity. (Just in that respect, as the generous rehearsal time that the film affords (against the time to make a recording in the 1990s) is hardly realistic for nowadays, the film reminds of our relating to Stéphane (Daniel Auteuil) through his music in Un Cœur en Hiver (1992).)

It is at that level of connection that we have an understanding of who people are : as is clear, and as Delaporte confirmed in the Q&A, she leaves these things open so that, in a way, we construct our own film (or our own understanding, at any rate, of what happened, and why, and what it means). So we do not have explained to us, as another type of film-maker might (so that it is established and fixed in our mind, as a given to work / build on as a necessity of plot-driven cinema), things such as :

* Who Miguel is and what his relation is to Victor

* What (other than geographical proximity) brought Nadia** to have a relationship with Samuel (as we gather, she is not a fellow musician)

* Likewise, what (except, patently, shortage of resources) caused her to move to this place three years or so ago to bring up her family (one is reminded of the location of Bombay Beach (2011))

* What happens, except by implication, between Victor and his father when they are off screen


We heard from Delaporte how pasty-faced young Parisian actors who auditioned for the part of Victor did not suit her conception of someone who lives where he does, and how Romain Paul’s affability made her love and want to put him on screen (confirmed by his warmth on set). She was asked about his resolution and determination (in relation to how he is filmed), and she characterized him herself as a serious boy who does not seek typical teenage rebellion against his mother (parents, now that he comes to meet his father).

In relation to the specific question about using a shallow depth of field, both (but not only) when Victor enters the auditorium, and has the orchestra behind him, and in the closing moment***, and when that had come into the conception of how the film would look, Delaporte told us that she does not work on a film in such a way : that it had not been planned beforehand at that level, or structured or themed (not her exact words) as to the choice of shots – hence, as here Tweeted :

Which just goes to show how susceptible the creative process is to self-doubt, @CamPicturehouse - but do watch Le dernier coup de marteau !

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 13, 2015

End-notes

* If, though, we also know about music, we know that the players whom we see are miming (and not producing what we hear), and the orchestral sound does not quite match what we would expect, e.g. from where Victor is in the auditorium.

** Clotilde Hesme, who plays Nadia, reminds a lot of Kristin Scott Thomas, when younger, and how she might play such a role.

*** When Victor is on the top of the building, with his mother, and he is sharply foregrounded against Montpellier (which someone in the audience thought was deliberately referencing Les quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows) (1959), but which Delaporte said had not been in her mind / her intention).


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Camera Catalonia at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 Part II : Q&A with Jesús Monllaó, director of Son of Cain (Fill de Caín) (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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1 October

* Contains spoilers *

Jesús Monllaó brought his first feature, Son of Cain (Fill de Caín) (2013), to Cambridge Film Festival (@Camfilmfest / #CamFF) on Day 9 (Friday 5 September 2014) as part of this year’s Camera Catalonia strand (curated by Ramon Lamarca, pictured left below in front of the film-poster, with Jesús on the right, in a shot taken by colleague David Riley)

Ramon Lamarca and Jesús Monllaó before the poster of Fill de Caín,
by and courtesy of David Riley

Opening gambit

Before the 34th Cambridge Film Festival’s screening of Son of Cain (Fill de Caín) (2013), Ramon Lamarca kindly introduced @THEAGENTAPSLEY to Jesús Monllaó that evening : if you have read the review, you will know that comparisons had been drawn with Good Will Hunting (1997), and with the suspenseful Alfred H., and not be surprised that they were pleasing to Jesús (who has since had a chance to read the review in full and liked it).

After a good-natured meeting of minds and sharing of humour at the busy hub that is Festival Central (in its home every year, for 11 consecutive days, at The Arts Picturehouse (@CamPicturhouse)), and before parting, the hope was expressed that the audience of Screen 2 at Festival Central would take the film well. So that proved, with a full house, and almost everyone both seeming engrossed, and then staying for the Q&A.

If you have watched such a vibrant film for review purposes on even a 15.6” laptop screen, you want to see it again projected to see what it looks and sounds like – as Jesús had said, knowing which City he was in and that he some people would have seen through his trickery with the plot, he hoped that they had enjoyed the journey :

Spot on, because it does not matter at all that you know what unfolds (but do not read much further on, if you have not already seen it – or do not mind spoilers), and, second time around, one could appreciate both the construction, and the full range and subtlety of Ethan Lewis Maltby’s score. (One says ‘appreciate the construction’, because (as the review envisaged) one could view Son of Cain with a murder-mystery mindset* first time through, or when watching again, to see how what happened had been set up.)

Jesús Monllaó answering audience questions with Ramon Lamarca,
by and courtesy of David Riley

Interviewed first by Ramon Lamarca with composer Ethan, Jesús was on fine form, engaging expansively with questions, and wanting others to have credit for their work (please see below). He told us that he had had some resistance, but had insisted on Ethan to write the score, their having met when Jesús was studying the art of film-making in Canterbury more than a decade ago.

And it turned out that choosing a Mahler adagio (the fourth-movement Adagietto* (in F Major, Sehr langsam) from the Symphony No. 5), for the night scene with the family in the car, not only coincidentally accorded with where Ethan’s interest in music had first been sparked (by hearing Mahler in live performance), but also with Ramon’s love for the composer’s works… As Jesús told us, he had originally wanted to use the Poco adagio, marked Ruhevoll, from the Symphony No. 4 in G Major, but the cost of using that track had been prohibitive (and led to using the Adagietto, as more affordable).


Love was in the air generally, indeed, because Jesús (as other directors have been keen to do this year) wanted to stress that 90% of what mattered most had been done by other people. Though, equally, he had found that, having acquired the rights to the original novel, he had to fall out with its writer, Ignacio García-Valiño, on account of the offensive e-mail that he wrote on being shown the first draft of the script (and which, Jesús told us, he still has).

Happily, though, he later related that contact was re-made with the novelist, who saw the film in April 2013 and loved it, publicly writing so. In the event, Ignacio died fourteen months later : the fact he saw his novel filmed and liked it, despite the former confrontation, gives us some comfort now that he’s gone.


Back with the music, we heard from Ramon’s questioning how the texture / density had been ‘stripped back’ for all but the last ten minutes, paring down instrumentation – sometimes, as Ethan told us, by removing an instrument during mixing that had originally been recorded as part of a larger ensemble recorded, but edited down in this way. In this connection, Ethan was asked about the use of harmonics, bell-like sounds and a high-pitched part that might have been a high soprano or an instrument (he told us that it had been a guitar-sound), and said that each film-project requires him to determine the palette that he is going to use at the outset.

Ethan Lewis Maltby, far right, during the Q&A,
by and courtesy of David Riley

Usefully, which we might not have otherwise aptly appreciated, Jesús said that he had taken away all the recorded sound for the last seven minutes, leaving just the score, where Ethan had had full rein to break through, as the closing scenes unfold – one’s lips are sealed, but there is chess at their heart…


Later, as there was a Festival dinner-date for Jesús to make, and a departure for Brighton in the afternoon, it was agreed to meet The Agent at Corpus Christi the following morning for a more formal interview.


Middle game

Just after the appointed hour, the two indeed met and then headed to the corner of Pembroke Street, where Jesús’ wife and young son were finishing coffee at Fitzbillies.

At mention at the table of the idea of taking a boat on the river, an offer was made of a punting-trip, and so began their adventure on the Cam…

Now continued here

Saw Son of Cain (Fill de Caín) at @camfilmfest ? In a pre-punting chat, director JesúsMonllaósaid that Andrew is a rook, Julio a knight...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 9, 2014

End-notes

* A curious word, mindset, and one which seems fitting for Nico… ?

** Afterwards, Jesús shared that he had wanted the Mahler not only because he liked it, but also as the kind of music that the character in the original novel listened to : I wanted to pay homage to the novel with little details that would connect both media.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Smetana's String Quartet No. 1 (in E Minor) - given The Proms 'treatment'

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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26 July

This was played last night, in the Prom's first half, for the first time there.

I have no idea why. (Or why applause was needed after every movement*.)

I am now less resentful of what Mahler did to orchestrate Schubert's String Quartet No. 14, Death and The Maiden, because it still sounded like Schubert:

This orchestration, the work of George Szell, had little identifiable connection with the original, and used brass, amongst its textures. Perhaps the composer's intentions in writing a quartet, which we were repeatedly told contained a motif at the end that represented his blindness (or was it, after all, deafness?), were as dispensable as good employee relations in Ohio.

If you had asked me what I was listening to (without the benefit of whoever's wisdom it was beforehand, or to schedule), I would have had no idea, although I like this string quartet. All grist to the orchestral mill, I s'pose.

End-notes
* Unless it was shocked, grieving applause in embarrassment by those who knew the original.

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What satisfaction does a good - or better - novel give?

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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11 March

Of course, start by defining your terms - is On Chesil Beach (which Philip French probably thinks is a palaeontology manual) a novel or a novella? Maybe, just maybe, it depends - in part - on what the author calls it.

That said, I have a lovely red pepper sitting in my kitchen (well, it's on top of a mug), but, if I called it a novel, I doubt that anyone would approach it as one, but rather with a knife and / or some cheese, mushrooms and breadcrumbs.

So, peppers and McEwan (or even McEwan's lager) apart, you are reading this book, and a bit as if it's a lover keep wanting to spend time with it, and its takes you not quite where you wanted, but where you were content to be taken (because of the dialogue, the descriptions, the ideas, the characters...), right to the final word.

Is that better than when, as with Das Schloss (The Castle), that novel of Kafka's allegedly snatched from the fire to which he had mentally consigned it, there is no ending, as he did not finish it (although I think that it is Max Brod, the man who refused to destroy it and other works, who reports that Kafka had something in mind, and says what it is)?

Probably a pig to read it to that point - in whichever of numerous editions / translations comes one's way - not knowing, but would one, say, with Gogol's Dead Souls curse God and Man on finishing what we have and learning that there is no more, because - if we believe the story - the wrong MS, that of the reworked later part, was thrown into the fire?

Do things have to be wrapped up by the author, if he or she can, so that we can put the book down with a sigh of satisfaction, or can we declare, as I do with The Medusa Frequency and Angelica's Grotto, that the books are still great, even if it is clear enough - as debated elsewhere - that the books terminate with what, in musical terms, is a final cadence, but one that, for its formally ending, nonetheless smacks of an ending to be done with it as none other promoted itself in the mind of Russell Hoban.

And then, with that idea of an end to a symphonty* or like, we steer dangerously close - and so pull back, pretending that we touched the leg by mistake - to the labours left unfinished of Schubert, Bruckner, Mahler and the like (not to mention Fartov and Belcher).


End-notes

* I'm keeping that in, and I shall write to Peter Maxwell Davies, urging him to abandon the symphonic form (he's written at least four, after all), and compose a Symphonty instead!


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