The Debussy Film Page #5

---

of what was to be

a long and agonising illness,

(Debussy) I began to work on two stories

by Edgar Allan Poe,

The Devil in the Belfry

and The Fall of the House of Usher.

(Director) He wrote little,

life was highly respectable

and luxurious.

Debussy's luck didn't hold.

His wife's income was cut off

and he was back looking for money.

Everything was more difficult now.

He had a daughter to support

and a big house to maintain.

And although he was very sick,

he had to travel all over Europe

on conducting trips.

Start the BP.

He was the leader of a movement in music

and so the commissions poured in

at a time when all the experiments

and struggles which he had undergone

were being hauled into the open

and thrown up in concert halls

and on stages

all over Europe.

Ida Rubinstein.

Was ior her that Debussy wrote

The Martyrdom of St Sebastian,

a big, phoney epiC,

contrived to satisfy the ego

of an ageing Russian ballerina.

On the opening night,

she caused a scandal-

a Jewess impersonating a Christian saint.

The whole thing was a flop.

And yet Debussy worked on it

as he had never worked before.

- Why?

- (Debussy) For Chouchou,

with her father's apologies

for what is to follow.

(Director) He continued

with his conducting trips all over Europe,

even though he collapsed many times.

And contracts - he signed to do films,

operas, ballets, anything.

(Debussy) I needed the money,

(Director) And sometimes, he was so ill

that he let others orchestrate his music

and just signed his name to it.

(Debussy) It's ugly,

Paris is becoming

more and more odious to me

and I wish I could leave.

Literally, I cannot endure it any longer.

(Director) A week later, war was declared.

The Da/Yy Telegraph commissioned him

to write a piece of war music.

(Debussy) It was to be for Albert,

King of the Belgians.

It had to include

the Belgian national anthem.

(Director) Berceuse Hro/'Zyue is possibly

the most unheroic,

un-bloodthirsty war music ever written,

(Dark, melancholy music)

Now, for the last years of his life,

Debussy locked himself away.

There is mention of his daughter

but of no one else.

His dreaming became a sort of

endless, isolated self-communion.

Time, place, the pattern of life -

none of these

had ever mattered much to him.

Now they mattered not at all.

He was working on

The Fall of the House of Usher

by Edgar Allan Poe.

(Debussy) Roderick Usher is sensitive,

as I am sensitive.

He hears and feels

everything in the world

and tries to force these impulses

into his work.

(Director) Roderick Usher lived with his

twin sister in a large, lonely house.

He was morbidly engrossed

in his artistic experiments

and in his sister.

(Debussy) She died...

and he incarcerated

her in one of his vaults.

(Director) Debussy became obsessed

with Roderick Usher.

(Debussy) Working on Usher is an

excellent way to steady one's nerves

against all sorts of horrors.

There are moments when I lose

the feelings of things around me

and if Roderick Usher's sister was

suddenly to walk into my home,

I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

(Director) Enormous effort.

All his impulses were put into this,

which was to be his greatest work.

For 12 years, this composition

drove him to anguish.

And all that he had,

after those 12 years,

were two or three sheets of music.

(Debussy) I am Roderick Usher.

(Director) A violent thunderstorm releases

Usher's dead sister from the vault.

(Debussy) I am Roderick Usher.

(P DEBUSSY:
"La Mer")

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes