The Debussy Film

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(indistinct shouting)

(Man) Right, yeah, we've got it.

OK.

(Man over megaphone)

Over here with the pumps, please.

Mr. Hamilton,

you're wanted over here, please.

Let's get them lined up

as quickly as possible.

(Horse neighing)

Make-up, please. Make-up over here.

Now, this great composer

has died of cancer.

He's known hundreds of people in his life

but because of quarrels

and because a war was going on,

there's hardly anyone at the funeral.

This was the worst period

of the war for Paris.

The city's being shelled,

Germans are threatening to take it,

France is about to collapse,

and hardly anybody notices

the death of a man

who has now taken to signing himself

"Musician of France".

His wife is there, of course,

and Chouchou, his daughter,

but hardly anyone else.

Now, when the carriage gets there,

to the end,

I want you to run out into the road,

look at the wreaths for the name,

run back, and say to your mother,

"it seems he was a musician".

All right? Good.

We'll wait until then.

Turn over.

Action!

(Director) More water to foreground.

Steady with the coffin.

Steady.

Spray the hearse. More water!

OK, pull away now.

Start to zoom...

Follow them with the hoses.

There's more rain than you have here.

Just keep walking on.

It seems...

he was a musician.

(Melvyn Bragg) Claude Debussy,

born in poverty in 1862,

died friendless in 1918.

A film based on incidents in his life,

his own words and his relationships -

with Gabrielle Dupont, attempted suicide,

Lilly Rosalie Texier, attempted suicide,

Chouchou, died at the age of 13,

Madame Bardac.

wife of a wealthy banker,

and the man who took

most of these pictures,

Pierre Louys,

Dornographer,

novelist,

Photographer.

Cut!

OK. That's it.

Pull out the arrows.

Break for lunch, everybody. Thank you.

(Man) One hour for lunch only, please!

One hour only.

- Eastboume Gazette.

- OK, thank you.

- Hello. How do you do?

- How do you do?

Ah!

I believe you've been having some fun

on our beach this morning?

- You should've done your reporting then.

- Oh, yes?

Yeah.

The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian.

When they first did this,

they wanted Sebastian

to be played by a naked woman.

Really?

Well, you didn't, er...?

I mean, she didn't, erm...?

(Clears throat) Are you doing it all here?

I thought he was French.

Most of it here and in London.

When we shoot in France, the unions

make us double up in all the crews and...

we can't afford it.

I see.

- That's Debussy, over there.

- Oh, aye?

(Director) This scene is when Debussy

is in his early twenties,

long before he came to England.

He is with Madame Vanier.

She was looking after him at the time.

He always needed someone

to look after him.

Always found someone,

usually a woman.

(Laughs) He gave her singing lessons,

she gave him money,

You know, he loved gambling at cards

and whenever he lost, which was often,

she would slip into his pocket

enough change to get him home,

and a packet of cigarettes -

consolation prize.

But it was with Madame Vanier that he

first played his own composition in public.

She sang the songs

he had written especially for her.

There's Monsieur Vanier.

He liked Debussy

but he doesn't seem to have known

all that was going on between

the young composer and his wife.

(Debussy) And before he could find out,

I met Gaby.

- (Director) Gabrielle Dupont,

- (Debussy) Gaby.

(Director) They met when Debussy

was 26. He lived with her for ten years.

He was back from the Prix de Rome.

He'd won this great scholarship

from the Conservatoire in Paris.

(Debussy) Forced labour, I hated it.

(Director) Gaby was as poor as he was.

He had a good time with her.

(I DEBUSSY:
"Jardins sous la pluie")

(Director) Debussy was born poor.

(Debussy) My father was a soldier,

a shopkeeper, a prisoner,

a salesman, a clerk, and a layabout,

I never went to school.

He wanted me to be a sailor.

(Director) He only took up music because

of a meeting with Verlaine's mother-in-law.

She taught him the piano.

(Debussy) I owe her the little I know

about the piano. She knew Chopin.

(Director) He needed somewhere to live.

Someone to love him.

(Debussy) The only memory I have of my

mother is that she used to slap my face.

I can't afford to live at home, anyway.

My father expects my music

to pay for his billiards.

(Director) And Gaby was prepared

to be his housekeeper.

(Gaby) To go out and work for you.

To do anything you want.

(Director) He wanted to be free.

Free to roam Paris at night.

To meet poets, painters, critics.

To row with the Conservatoire,

to experiment.

(Gaby) As long as you stay with me.

(Director) Now he wrote his music for her.

(Debussy) "Gardens In The Rain",

for Gaby.

(Director) Most of the young students

and artists in France, in the eighties,

were impressed by the Pre-Raphaelites,

especially Debussy.

They seemed to choose the subjects

that he himself wanted to do.

For instance, one of the things he wrote,

while he was on the Prix de Rome,

was based on a poem by Rossetti,

"The Blessed Dam0zel".

You see, R0ssetti's situation was similar

to that of Debussy.

The poem is about this illiterate

Cockney woman, an English Gaby,

whom Rossetti is supposed to have loved

for her ethereal willingness.

He double-crossed her, of course,

just as Debussy double-crossed Gaby.

Art nouveau, aestheticism...

it was all going on, in Paris

and in London, in the 1890s...

(I "La demoiselle lue")

(Women's voices)

J La demoiselle lue s'appuyait

J Sur la barrire d'0r du ciel

Ses yeux taient plus profonds

que I'abime

J Des eaux calmes

J Au soir

J Elle avait trois lys a la main

J Et sept toiles dans les cheveux,,,

You know, they wanted all the arts

to be mixed together.

Now read this. This is by Baudelaire,

but Debussy said

the same sort of thing himself.

"It would be truly surprising if sound

were not capable of suggesting colour,

"if colours could not give the idea

of a melody."

He saw Turner's paintings

when he was in London.

He wanted his music to be like paintings,

to be paintings in sound.

His titles are for paintings -

clouds, moonlight, fog.

Sketchesfior La Mer.

Studies In Black And White.

Sorry, start again.

"It would be truly surprising if sound

were not capable of suggesting colour.

"If colours could not give

the idea of a melody,

"and if sound and colour were inadequate

to express ideas.

"For things have ever found expression

in reciprocal analogies

"since the day when God put forth the

world as a complex and indivisible whole."

(Gaby) Amen.

Oh, can't we go?

I'm bored.

Hm. Yeah, OK.

(Whispers) Ciao.

(Director) Wait.

Let me show you just one more.

(Director) Whistler.

He called his paintings "nocturnes",

and Debussy,

who wrote three nocturnes himself,

said that they were studies in grey.

The one I...

like best is...

Ftes.

A fantastic procession,

the vibrating, dancing rhythm

of the atmosphere,

with sudden flashes of light.

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