The New Confessions (45 page)

Everything in the episode, in terms of filming, proceeds orthodoxly. The encounter at the stream, the ride to the château, the meal in the kitchen. Then, as the trio walk to the cherry orchard, the curtains in the cinema draw back to reveal the two angled screens adjacent to the
main one. The two auxiliary projectors start up and suddenly we have three separate images. Three heads in view: Jean Jacques, flanked by Mlles. Graffenried and Galley. We see covert glances pass among them. The two girls look up on either side as Jean Jacques climbs the tree in the center screen. Then the contours shift and firm as the embossed film runs through the projector. The hanging clump of cherries seems to take on the form of three-dimensional fruit. The perfect pallor of the girls’ faces and shoulders seems cast in plaster relief against the leafy background. We look down with Jean Jacques at the two delightful lasses gazing up at him. The girls eat the cherries, spit the stones into their hands and throw them back at Jean Jacques, who ducks the gentle hail.

Then the center screen is filled by Mlle. Galley looking up, apron held out to catch more fruit. Jean Jacques’s face is on one side screen as he plots his revenge; on the other, his hand plucking a bunch of cherries. Center screen: we move in slowly on Mlle. Galley’s breasts, the low cut of her gown, the pressure, on either side, of her arms forcing them ever so slightly together, the swell and subsidence of her excited breathing, the soft deep shadow of her cleavage. Jean Jacques’s hand throws. Center screen, the cherries land. Lips, cherries, lips. Eyes, cherries, eyes. Then three laughing mouths. We pull back. In the center Jean Jacques’s laughter disguises his agonized face. The side screens dim; the curtains roll back to cover them.

It works magnificently. At the premiere the audience was in an uproar. The planning of it all was painstakingly difficult. (I must pay tribute to Mlle. Sadrine Storri, a burlesque dancer from Lyons who disappeared back into obscurity after the film, who played Mlle. Galley. She showed admirable patience and good humor as I, standing on a chair above her, dropped dozens of cherry bunches onto her bosom, Horst’s camera whirring twelve inches away.) Of course my delight and pride in this scene was delayed. We were working blind. I had to wait many months before I saw the sequence run on three full-sized screens. For myself, and I speak with total honesty and objectivity, I think it represents the most complete and effective blend of technique and content in the entire movie. Embossed film and the Tri-Kamera were the perfect devices to reincarnate the tender eroticism of that warm afternoon near Annecy. Add to that the audacious use of massive close-ups of lips and eyes, dark glossy cherries and pale heaving breasts … overpowering images. My close-ups in
The Confessions: Part I
were the largest ever witnessed on the screen up to that time (larger than Eisenstein’s
for sure) and—this is what makes me particularly proud—not a caption in sight.

And so we continued working throughout the summer beset by more than the usual delays and technical hitches. The embossed film stock was notoriously fragile and the Tri-Kamera presented us with understandable teething troubles. The list of problems was endless and of little interest now, but it will give you some idea of the conditions under which we had to work if I tell you that, after a day’s filming, Horst, Leo and I drove to Geneva—where the nearest lab that could develop the embossed film was to be found—to examine the prints of the previous day’s shooting. More often than not we discovered some defect, some bubbling or flaking in a negative, that necessitated reshooting. The entire cherry-tree sequence, some two and a half minutes in length, took us most of July to film. By the end of that month I realized we were in serious difficulties. I received an angry cable from Eddie pointing out that the ratio of film shot to film used was running at approximately eighty to one. In other words I was shooting eighty minutes of film to produce one minute of screen time. A ratio of thirty to one is regarded as generous. Fifteen to one is not impossible. Somehow this news leaked out and it is from around this time that vicious stories began to circulate about profligacy, extravagance, and manic perfectionism. After a particularly scurrilous and savage attack in the trashy
Das Grosse Bilderbuch des Films
, I even traveled back to Berlin to reassure Eddie, and calm him down.

We were now over budget. We were behind schedule. But what was being produced was extraordinary. It is true to say—and it is one of film’s bizarre strengths—that the last category can always overrule the first two. There is no contest in the struggle between real Art and Accountancy. Audiences are indifferent to balance sheets. Eddie knew this, but our other investors were less happy.
Julie
had been released in 1926. We were now approaching the last quarter of 1928 and no film was in sight. Unbeknownst to me, Eddie had been obliged to buy out Goldfilm’s interest and was renegotiating his deal with Pathé.
The Confessions
was fast becoming a Realismus project, pure and simple.

Delays meant we had to postpone our Les Charmettes filming yet again, and we traveled to Grex in Switzerland to shoot the Geneva scenes. The huge set—the city walls of Geneva—had been standing unused for two months and Leo was contractually obliged to dismande it by the end of September.

Doon had been with me all through this exciting but exhausting summer. I was immensely grateful. I think she sensed my grief over Hereford’s death was deeper than I showed and, indeed, I doubt if I could have carried on if each evening I had not been able to return to her. At Annecy she was called upon to work from time to time (we spent a frustrating week trying to reshoot her first encounter with Jean Jacques but the Tri-Kamera kept breaking down); however, at Grex there was nothing for her to do and I sensed boredom settling in. Curiously, I seemed to calm down once we reached Switzerland even though our problems in no way diminished. Perhaps it was the countryside. What I liked about the landscape was the way every possible bit of arable land was cultivated—some vineyards looked no more than twelve feet square, tucked in odd corners made by the angle between a barn and a cliff face, or set on a largish edge on a mountainside. It was this immaculate husbandry rather than the grandeur of the views that reassured me. It indicated, I thought, a determination and sense of purpose consonant with my own and I began to relax.

In this mood it was easier for me to take a weekend off when part of the Geneva city wall collapsed and filming had to be suspended while it was rebuilt. Grex was not far from Montreux, so I suggested to Doon that we spend a couple of nights there. But she wanted to go up to the mountains, so we drove up one of the valleys, ascending steadily from the lakeshore, zigzagging through the woods up into the thin air of the mountain plateaus. We spent the night in a small village (I forget the name) in a hotel made, it seemed, entirely from elaborately carved, densely knotted wood. We were even served a meal of ham, gherkins and potatoes on carved wooden plates. We both found it somewhat oppressive. Doon said it was like living in a sinister fairy tale. We decided to leave on the Saturday morning and return to the lake for lunch.

It was a sunny morning but cool. A level bank of cloud obscured the lake completely, as if we were shut off from the world below. We were happy as we motored easily down the tight bends, laughing about the monstrous wooden hotel.

Rounding one corner we passed a broken-down car and a man—the driver—tried to flag us down, but we were by him too quickly to pull up in time.

“He looks so cold,” Doon said. “Stop for him.”

I braked, came to a halt some fifty yards farther on and got out. I waved the man on down to us. A smallish fellow, he started jogging thankfully towards us. Then, suddenly, he stopped, glanced back at his
car and then leaped off the road and began to run down through a meadow towards a copse of fir trees. It was then that I recognized him. To Doon’s astonishment I took off in pursuit.

I ran speedily down the slope through the thick dewy grass, arms windmilling backwards to keep my balance. I soon gained on my quarry, whose city shoes seemed to give him no purchase on the slippery ground. He fell several times and I caught up with him sprawled face down at the edge of the trees.

Eugen P. Eugen was soaked through and shivering. He stood up and plucked leaf mold and pine needles from his natty suit.

“Mr. Todd,” he said. “How pleasant to see you again.”

“Why are you following me, Eugen?” I asked. I was calm. I knew I could deal easily with whatever doltish blackmail was coming.

“Your wife hired me,” he said, with a mild grin. He looked down. “My shoes are ruined.”

“But you can’t work for
her,
” I said angrily. “
I
hired you.”

“Herr Todd”—he spread his hands apologetically—“a fellow has to make a living.”

He told me that Sonia had contacted him a fortnight earlier (I have no idea what alerted her: it could have been any of a dozen inept cover-ups); he had come down to Annecy and followed us to Switzerland. He had already sent two long reports back to Sonia detailing her husband’s infidelity. Eugen told me all this with perverse pride, as if it were evidence of his efficiency—a talent, so the implication seemed to run, to which I could also testify. As he elaborated on the contents of his reports, I closed my eyes. Some kind of bird was singing noisily in the trees. I could feel the dew seeping up through the soles of my shoes as if searching for the sensation of fatigue and random remorse that was spreading downwards through my body, its source—seemingly—some gland located in the crown of my head. Sonia had known for almost two weeks. What was waiting for me in Berlin?

I was roused by Doon’s call from the road. Eugen and I looked round.

“Ah, Miss Bogan. Magnificent actress,” he said.

I thought I should feel more animosity than I did for Eugen. I tried to summon up a rage—unsuccessfully.

“Shut up, you little bastard,” I said with no conviction. Then I shouted “Coming!” to Doon and set off back up through the damp lucent meadow towards the road.

“Herr Todd.” Eugen slipped and slithered behind me. “Could you
possibly … ? I’d be extremely grateful for a lift back down to the lake. These hired motors—”

“Sorry.” I strode on.

“Don’t worry, Herr Todd. I quite understand.”

Sonia waited until I returned to Berlin in October. In the interim we did not communicate. The sun was shining and there were still some bright autumnal leaves on the birches in the garden at Charlottenburg. I got out of the car, a full cargo of guilt slowing my steps. The house was partially cleared. The carpets were gone but the pictures still hung upon the wall.

Sonia wore black. I suppose she was still in mourning for Hereford, but the effect was suitably menacing and doom laden. For some reason she suddenly seemed much older than me, and when I saw her face, pale but immaculately made up, I felt childishly frightened of her. I had done wrong. Even I could not rally any bravado. I had to face my punishment. Sonia confined herself to only one rebuke, but it was enough.

“Hereford dies. And then you do this to me.”

Lies and excuses filled my mouth but I ignored them. “Sonia, I … Where are the children?”

“In a hotel. We’re going back to London tomorrow.”

I rubbed my face, as if I were washing it. I could see the long avenue of resentment and acrimony stretching ahead of me.

“I love Doon,” I said. “I’ve loved her for years. I want to marry her.”

It was a mistake. My impulsive honesty ruined things for me again. I should have done nothing but apologize that day. I saw tears bulge in Sonia’s hitherto conspicuously dry eyes.

“Oh,
really,
” she said with venomous cynicism. “Well, you’ll get no divorce from me.”

She took a letter from her handbag and gave it to me, said good-bye and left. I sat down and read the letter, from her lawyer, about the financial arrangements I was to provide for my wife and family; so much a month to be paid into this or that account, a trust fund to be established for the children, arrangements to be subject to an annual review, etc., etc.

I shed a few predictable tears of self-pity, and allowed my mind to travel back to those days just after the war at Superb-Imperial, days of Raymond Maude, the
Wee MacGregors
, beer and chops at the grill in Islington. Then, Sonia had been everything I desired; it was hardly her
fault that I had fallen in love with Doon. I had been a late developer. In 1920 I had been barely half-formed, now that I came to think about it. I had survived the Salient and prison camp but emotionally I was no more advanced than I had been at Minto Academy. I wandered around our house, revisiting chapters of my past. But the ghost of little Hereford seemed to haunt the rooms and passageways: I could hear echoes of his pratfalls and collisions at every step and corner, and soon the shawl of misery and regret that hung heavily over my shoulders drove me out of doors.

I never went back to that house. I had the contents packed up and sold it eventually for a small loss. I sent all the money to Sonia, as it was going to take some time to get the funds I had deposited in Switzerland to London. Our separation proved a tedious, depressing business; Sonia’s lawyer was a particularly aggressive, solemn man and I used to dread the regular summonses I received to his office to iron out this or that hitch or petty grievance.

We were still filming, of course, throughout all this, and at a punishing pace too, in an attempt to make up for lost time. To my dismay, the rough cut of the film was now over seven hours long and we still had to shoot the departure from Les Charmettes and the arrival in Paris.

I asked Doon if I could move in with her, but she said no. It was a perfectly reasonable refusal: she said we should wait a while. I was too disoriented to remonstrate for long, and while I was waiting moved to Eddie’s glum house on Kronenstrasse. Eddie was sympathetic, but he was more concerned about my professional rather than personal life.

“I told you not to get involved with actresses,” he said. “Look at you now: money problems, no house, no family …”