William Boyd - The New Confessions

Seven-thirty A.M. On a smaller stage we find the interior of Isaac Rousseau’s house in Geneva. Suzanne Rousseau (Traudl Niemoller) is in the throes of giving birth to Jean Jacques. At one side of the stage sits a fifteen-man orchestra playing Massenet’s “ Elégie ” Todd spends an hour filming close-ups for Suzanne Rousseau’s face as she is instructed to scream and scream again. His perfectionism reduces her to tears. Standing behind the camera is Karl-Heinz Kornfeld. Todd has asked him to be present during this scene, dressed in costume as if witnessing his own birth.

At 9 A.M. an ambulance arrives containing a nursing mother and her male child born literally a few hours earlier. They are installed in a bed a few feet away from Suzanne Rousseau’s. As the moment of Jean Jacques’s simulated birth arrives, the baby is removed from its real mother’s breast, is smeared with olive oil and held aloft — screaming, dripping between the splayed legs of the actress. Todd spends another thirty minutes filming close-ups of the infant’s face until the exhausted mother insists she and her child be returned to the maternity ward at the local hospital.

At the end of the morning’s filming there follows a one-hour break for lunch. Karl-Heinz Kornfeld dines alone with Todd in a private room.

One-thirty P.M. Returning to Stage 3 we notice that there are two cameras set up, one on Suzanne Rousseau’s deathbed and one facing Karl-Heinz Kornfeld, who has been once again placed in a position that afforded a clear view of the bed. The orchestra plays an adaptation of Fauré’s Requiem as Suzanne Rousseau dies, calling for her baby boy. Isaac Rousseau looks on, glycerin tears tracking his face. “Think of your own mothers!” Todd bellows at the actors as the cameras turn. “My son! My son!” Suzanne Rousseau sobs pitifully. “Think of your mother dying!” Todd shouts. The music builds. Todd himself weeps uncontrollably. Some of the crew begin to cry. At the final sonorous chords Suzanne Rousseau gasps, tries to raise herself from her pillow and falls back, dead. At that moment, at a sign from Todd, a door in the studio wall opens, and through it comes a bewildered old lady in a dowdy overcoat and black straw hat. Karl-Heinz Kornfeld looks on for a moment in total shock before collapsing sobbing on the ground. The old lady shuffles forward calling, “Karl-Heinz! Karl-Heinz!” Todd cries, “Cut.” Pandemonium reigns.

The old lady turns out to be Kornfeld’s mother, whom he has not seen in five years. Todd has secretly brought her to the studios for just this entrance, transporting her from Darmstadt, where she has been living in impoverished widowhood.

I have to tell you that Karl-Heinz very nearly did not forgive me for this little trick. But the emotion registered on his face was astonishing. I did it because I wanted Karl-Heinz to be bound up in this film in a way that would be unparalleled. Which is why, so to speak, I wanted him to witness his own beginning; and why I enjoined them all to substitute their own mothers for Suzanne Rousseau. I knew Karl-Heinz’s guilt over his neglect of his mother and I knew that, as his head filled with morbid images, her sudden appearance would be devastating. I was absolutely right. He was ruined, wordless, shivering with confusion and emotional fatigue. The music was excellent and essential too. I used the orchestra for all the important scenes; they were kept permanently on hire and at hand. The actors gave the performances of their lives, even the baby.… That was a brilliant stroke. Such a fragile, wrinkled thing, still red and squashed looking. To see it held there screaming in the arc lights was enormously affecting. Unfortunately, and despite our best efforts, it developed a chill and nearly died. Some meddling relative persuaded the mother to sue (I had paid her handsomely) and we were obliged to settle out of court to avoid the adverse publicity she threatened. Aram/Eddie was mightily displeased at this unforeseen addition to the budget, but when I ran the film for him he had to concede the power in what otherwise might have been a hackneyed scene.

But it was the lasting effect on Karl-Heinz that most gratified me. He had been typically blasé about the film during the run-up to the first day’s shooting. His brand of relaxed, lazy cynicism was the last thing I required from the man who was going to ignite the imagination of the world as Jean Jacques Rousseau. In one day he saw himself born, saw his mother die and then had her miraculously resurrected. It was a shock from which I never wanted him to recover, and from that day his dedication to The Confessions was second only to mine.

Consequently, he completely understood when I rescheduled the entire filming program after we had been going little more than a month. The plan had been to shoot all our interiors before going to France and Switzerland to do our location work at Geneva and Annecy. But I realized, as the day approached for Doon and Karl-Heinz to play their first scenes together, that filming out of sequence — here and now — would have a disastrous effect on the intensity of mood we had been striving so diligently to achieve. It was quite obvious to me that the vital moment in this story of Jean Jacques as a young man was his meeting and subsequent love affair with Mme. de Warens. To film scenes after that meeting before it occurred (in film time) would be asking too much of the actors to reproduce the heights of feeling I required. Normally, chronological filming is something I am happy to dispense with, but here I knew it was essential. And Karl-Heinz, who had his doubts anyway about producing a convincing heterosexual yearning (this was to be of a different order from the melodrama of Saint-Preux and Julie) agreed. I spent three nights with Leo and our production manager working out a new schedule, then Leo went to Annecy to see if our locations could accommodate our early arrival. We wound up our first segment of filming at Spandau with the celebrated soup-pissing scene. We used real urine (mine) and did not tell the actress playing the quarrelsome crone. Her hawking and spitting when she tasted the soup was entirely authentic. I told her it was laced with vinegar (I had a half-empty bottle nearby), but she took some persuading and the prop was crucial.

We left for Annecy in September, a huge caravan of actors, technicians and equipment that occupied an entire train. I was exhilarated to see this troop assembled at my behest, but I was also troubled. When Rousseau went to meet Mme. de Warens for the first time he envisaged the encounter as a “terrifying audience.” Now, I felt something of that type of apprehension. I was leaving Berlin and my family behind me. Once that had happened, once those checks were removed, I knew it would be impossible for me to control my feelings for Doon any longer. Currently, a fragile equilibrium existed. Doon thought I was being loyal to Sonia, and interpreted my massive effort of self-control as a sign that I had realized we should only be friends. Apart from script conferences and costume fittings and the like, I had seen her socially only three times since that Christmas night, in each case in response to an invitation from her to attend KPD meetings. I tolerated these interminable harangues only because they brought me physically close to her and because afterwards we would go for a drink or a bite to eat. But even then we had only managed to be alone once. Doon always tried to invite other comrades along, and because it was she, they always accepted. My God, the deadly humorless earnestness of those young men and women! I would stare at Doon, enmeshed in passionate debate, and gave the occasional nod or muttered the odd fatuous remark—“Now that’s a fascinating concept,” or “I couldn’t agree more,” “That’s an outrage”—as token of my participation. But all that was behind us. For a month or more we would be living in the same building: the Imperial Palace Hotel on the lakeshore at Annecy.