Part of the Picture: The sound of music, non-stop music
THE SOUND OF MUSIC, NON-STOP MUSIC
MAY 24, 2008 - WHILE IT’S TRUE OF ALMOST ANY EXPERIMENTAL, ART-HOUSE FILM that the first time you see it, you see it simply to understand the rules of the game – the grammar, the syntax, the way the story is told, the way it is styled – and it’s only the subsequent viewings, with these rules locked firmly in your head, that offer pleasures in the way we want (and expect) from the movies, this is especially the case with Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. This is one of the oddest musicals ever made, where not a word is spoken – every little bit of dialogue is sung (so I guess, given the context, we shouldn’t be talking “dialogue” but “lyric”). When Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve) goes dancing with her garage-mechanic boyfriend Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), and when the band strikes up a Latin American rhythm, she exclaims, “A mambo. Let’s go!”
But this rhyming is completely accidental, for her next words – as they head to the dance floor, as she looks at her feet and frowns – are: “I should have changed shoes.” This is no song. It’s just everyday conversation – broken bits of it, in French, that hardly seem qualified for one of the prime requirements of a musical: the sing-along promise of bookending rhymes. Then again, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg isn’t a musical (in the sense that we know the musical) so much as a romance in recitative – and that’s the conceit you wrap your head around during a first-time viewing. You begin to giggle at the supreme eccentricity of it all, but soon the artifice of the construction begins to fade away until it appears that the only thing unnatural now would be if someone actually began to talk.
But still, it’s only the second and subsequent viewings that truly unlock for you the movie’s mysteries – because that’s when you wrap your head around the marvel of Michel Legrand’s score. It’s how, when you listen to a symphony or a jazz suite or perhaps even a lengthy elaboration of a raga for the very first time, you’re happy if you manage to register the major motifs (if even that) – here, it’s the instantly hummable love theme – and it’s only on revisiting that you note the patterns of the filigrees and polish of the curlicues. That’s when you see, for instance, how the scene where Guy and Geneviève skip happily back home, after doing the mambo, loops back to when we first saw them together.
“We’ll have children,” Guy sings. “I’ll call my daughter Françoise,” Geneviève replies, and when he asks what if it’s a boy, she won’t have any more of this talk. “It will be a girl. We’ve always had girls in the family.” He’s silenced by her conviction and the music takes over – an interlude, really, part wind instrument, part pizzicato strings – and this stretch is nothing but a minor-key variation on the notes in which Geneviève expressed her love to Guy earlier, when he stood outside her mother’s shop (in Cherbourg, filled with the umbrellas of the title) and she sneaked out and rushed into his arms and discovered that he smelled like gasoline.
But the musical mainstay of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is, of course, its love theme, first heard unassumingly over the opening credits. In the mid-section, though – the part where Guy is drafted (to serve in the Algerian War) and takes leave of a wailing Geneviève – the theme keeps building, its simple lines swelling into a shattering crescendo that appears to fill all available space between heaven and earth, as if the only thing in the world is their love. Then, towards the end of the film, this theme gets its second major workout. It begins – once again – as the backdrop for a conversation between Guy and Geneviève, but this time, as it spirals into a crescendo, it’s clear that there are things in the world other than love, even in a musical. This time, Geneviève takes leave of Guy. And this time, the only wailing is in the music.
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I love Sound of Music. I love Singing in the Rain. These are the only two musicals (from the era) I could consciously recall until last week, when I watched the thrill-ride that was Hello Dolly on PBS (America’s answer to DD that next to no one watches, thanks to HBO-infestation). Having only seen (and hated) Barbra Streisand in Prince of Tides, I was pleasanly surprised by her ebullience and all, in this one. And I simply LOVE Walter Mathau, so that made the movie all the more fun. It’s been ages since I last saw folks break into a song and dance every two seconds in movies from this part of the world that I found this to be such a respite from the routine. Have you seen it? I think you’ll love it. The way Streisand annoys the heck out of Mathau (who eventually warms up to her, duh!) must be seen to be believed.
And now, on to your Umbrellas of Cherbourg. I might as well keep an eye out for it, now that you’ve made “wrapping my head around it” seem like a breeze. I tend to stay away from art-house stuff but you seem to have written this piece keeping exactly folks like myself in mind. I love how you patiently persuade us to let the various pieces of the movie simply wash over us, stage by stage. Don’t expect the moon at the first look, you seem to say. (And it’s certainly heartening to know that even veteran art-house junkies don’t “get it all” at once.) This gentle persuasion, this rich-in-details (”note the patterns of the filigrees and polish of the curlicues”) tribute to the movie is just the bubblegum flavoring those of us with a childlike disdain for the bitter medicine that’s art-house fare, need. I’m happy to drink it up now, if only to realize firsthand the connections this concoction inevitably invoked (for instance, “..the theme keeps building, its simple lines swelling into a shattering crescendo that appears to fill all available space between heaven and earth..” reminded me of that opera sequence in Dil Chahta Hai).
Sagarika: “And it’s certainly heartening to know that even veteran art-house junkies don’t “get it all” at once.” Oh, but that’s always the case. Which is why reviewing films is such a crapshoot. Even with mainstream fare, your second response to a film could be completely different from the first time around.
brangan: “Even with mainstream fare, your second response to a film could be completely different from the first time around.” But of course. You’ve made this point prior (Sujatha post, Anbe Sivam..) and I’ve never disagreed.
But in *this* particular instance I think we are talking two different things. While I’m talking about your (suggested) layered approach to *getting* aspects of the whole (vs. taking it all in at one sitting and gagging or feeling frustrated or both) as pointed out in your first few lines, you are referring to something that occurs in the aftermath…once the viewing has been done (with the caveat that in the case of arthouse fare, one cannot consider the viewing “done” after merely one sitting because, as you so lucidly describe here, the unfurling happens over a series of viewings — different than the first (or second) responses to each of those viewings). Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s been my thinking that you can’t place your engagement with mainstream fare (think “idiot plots”) and that with art-house fare in the same bucket. They are fundamentally different. What you can place in the same bucket though is the fact you refer to in your comment — that the second response to either film could be completely different from the first time around.
Sagarika: You’re right. There is a difference in what you look for in mainstream vs. art fare, but as far as the “getting” it aspect goes, some of the more intriguing mainstream fare (think Michael Clayton) does reward multiple viewings.