Subject
VN in The Stranger (Seattle) (fwd)
Date
Body
Charles Mudede is a Seattle writer who publishes in The Stranger, one of
the alternative newspapers here. This article is featured in the
current issue. Originally from Zimbabwe, Charles is a great
fan of Nabokov and Russian Literature in general. He is also a
Nabokv-L subscriber. The article is posted here with his permission.
MADNESS AND CINEMA
Sunset Boulevard, Where Billy Wilder Meets Vladimir
Nabokov
by Charles Mudede
THE NEW BIOGRAPHY of Billy Wilder by Ed Sikov, On
Sunset Boulevard, describes an incident that took place between
Vladimir Nabokov and Billy Wilder at the director's Hollywood
home. Nabokov was examining Wilder's modern art collection, and
when the director asked him which of the paintings he liked the
most, Nabokov said he liked a Balthus. The reason I bring up this
piece of trivia is not to throw light on some unknown and important
aspect of Billy Wilder's filmmaking, but just to take pleasure in
the
fact that Billy Wilder and Vladimir Nabokov once stood together in
the same room, looking at modern European art. True, I would
have much preferred to have read about rotund Hitchcock and
rotund Nabokov standing in a room admiring Balthus' famous
painting of the post-coital nymphet, Les Beaux Jours, but I'm more
than pleased with this image of BW and VN standing in a room full
of expensive art.
But maybe my mention of this brief and meaningless encounter
between the great men is not entirely whimsical or indulgent. There
is something to be said about the art (or strategies) of Nabokov's
novels and one particular movie by Billy Wilder, Sunset Boulevard,
which was made in 1950. Wilder's other films have nothing in
common with Vladimir's art; they are at best silly comedies
(Ninotchka, Seven Year Itch) and sound comedies (Some Like It
Hot, The Apartment), but never -- with the exception of the noir
classic Double Indemnity (Wilder's greatest achievement) -- do they
even come close to being as sophisticated, as intelligent, as
Nabokovian as Sunset Boulevard. Indeed, any movie that has a
bald-headed German butler and a middle-aged actress burying a
chimp in a child's coffin at night is nothing but Nabokovian (from
Nabokovia -- meaning "a state of excruciating insanity" caused by
"intolerable bliss").
The story of Sunset Boulevard, as everyone knows (or should
know), is about a young and indigent screenwriter who accidentally
meets an aged and faded film star from the silent era, Norma
Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson. The actress lives in a big
house -- like Dickens' Mrs. Havisham from Great Expectations --
with a stuffy butler named Max von Mayerling, who is played by
none other than the great Erich von Stroheim. The mad actress
offers the mediocre writer the miserable job of doctoring her mad
screenplay, Salome, which she hopes will launch her back to
spectacular fame. Of course, the broke screenwriter says yes, and
soon he becomes a kept man. The faded actress falls in love with
her
handsome catch, but the writer falls in love with a woman his own
age, and so the actress shoots him dead for breaking her fragile
heart.
Wilder's film is about madness and fiction -- or better yet,
madness
and cinema -- in the way that Kafka is about madness and
jurisprudence, or Ellison is about madness and race. Thematically,
all
of Nabokov's important novels are organized in this way; it's
always
a matter of madness and some form of art or illusion. And in the
case of Kamera Obskura (about a rich, married man who falls in
love with a young and mediocre film actress) and Despair (about a
rich man who murders his movie double), it is, as in Sunset
Boulevard, a matter of madness and cinema. In fact, these two
books not only share thematic similarities with Sunset Boulevard,
but structural similarities as well: plot- and character-wise,
Kamera
Obskura is almost identical to Wilder's film. And at the end of
Despair, the murderer yells to the cops, "Frenchmen! This is a
rehearsal. Hold those policemen. A famous film actor will presently
come running out of this house." In the famous concluding scene of
Sunset Boulevard, Gloria Swanson sees the newsreel cameras and
cops and thinks she's in a movie: "I just want to tell you how
happy
I am to be in the studio again, making a picture. You don't know
how much I have missed you all, and I promise I will never desert
you again. After Salome we will make another picture, and another
picture.... And now, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."
One Nabokov specialist, Phillip Iannarelli, points out a
"Nabokovian
hitch" in North by Northwest's climactic moment between Cary
Grant and Eva Marie Saint (a boy in the background plugs his ears
before the gun appears from Saint's purse and is fired); he
describes
that moment of accidental precognition, which is analogous to the
sense of impending doom every character in Sunset Boulevard
chooses to overlook, as "reality encapsulated and encroaching on a
work of art." And if this mix between reality and art becomes too
intense, the result is usually madness, "excruciating madness."
However, as in the end of Nabokov's Bend Sinister, this madness
is not excruciating for the victim (they have abandoned our
miserable world!), but for those who witness the businessman
yelling
nonsense from the window or the aged actress descending the
staircase toward the newsreel lights. In Sunset Boulevard, the
witness is us.
the alternative newspapers here. This article is featured in the
current issue. Originally from Zimbabwe, Charles is a great
fan of Nabokov and Russian Literature in general. He is also a
Nabokv-L subscriber. The article is posted here with his permission.
MADNESS AND CINEMA
Sunset Boulevard, Where Billy Wilder Meets Vladimir
Nabokov
by Charles Mudede
THE NEW BIOGRAPHY of Billy Wilder by Ed Sikov, On
Sunset Boulevard, describes an incident that took place between
Vladimir Nabokov and Billy Wilder at the director's Hollywood
home. Nabokov was examining Wilder's modern art collection, and
when the director asked him which of the paintings he liked the
most, Nabokov said he liked a Balthus. The reason I bring up this
piece of trivia is not to throw light on some unknown and important
aspect of Billy Wilder's filmmaking, but just to take pleasure in
the
fact that Billy Wilder and Vladimir Nabokov once stood together in
the same room, looking at modern European art. True, I would
have much preferred to have read about rotund Hitchcock and
rotund Nabokov standing in a room admiring Balthus' famous
painting of the post-coital nymphet, Les Beaux Jours, but I'm more
than pleased with this image of BW and VN standing in a room full
of expensive art.
But maybe my mention of this brief and meaningless encounter
between the great men is not entirely whimsical or indulgent. There
is something to be said about the art (or strategies) of Nabokov's
novels and one particular movie by Billy Wilder, Sunset Boulevard,
which was made in 1950. Wilder's other films have nothing in
common with Vladimir's art; they are at best silly comedies
(Ninotchka, Seven Year Itch) and sound comedies (Some Like It
Hot, The Apartment), but never -- with the exception of the noir
classic Double Indemnity (Wilder's greatest achievement) -- do they
even come close to being as sophisticated, as intelligent, as
Nabokovian as Sunset Boulevard. Indeed, any movie that has a
bald-headed German butler and a middle-aged actress burying a
chimp in a child's coffin at night is nothing but Nabokovian (from
Nabokovia -- meaning "a state of excruciating insanity" caused by
"intolerable bliss").
The story of Sunset Boulevard, as everyone knows (or should
know), is about a young and indigent screenwriter who accidentally
meets an aged and faded film star from the silent era, Norma
Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson. The actress lives in a big
house -- like Dickens' Mrs. Havisham from Great Expectations --
with a stuffy butler named Max von Mayerling, who is played by
none other than the great Erich von Stroheim. The mad actress
offers the mediocre writer the miserable job of doctoring her mad
screenplay, Salome, which she hopes will launch her back to
spectacular fame. Of course, the broke screenwriter says yes, and
soon he becomes a kept man. The faded actress falls in love with
her
handsome catch, but the writer falls in love with a woman his own
age, and so the actress shoots him dead for breaking her fragile
heart.
Wilder's film is about madness and fiction -- or better yet,
madness
and cinema -- in the way that Kafka is about madness and
jurisprudence, or Ellison is about madness and race. Thematically,
all
of Nabokov's important novels are organized in this way; it's
always
a matter of madness and some form of art or illusion. And in the
case of Kamera Obskura (about a rich, married man who falls in
love with a young and mediocre film actress) and Despair (about a
rich man who murders his movie double), it is, as in Sunset
Boulevard, a matter of madness and cinema. In fact, these two
books not only share thematic similarities with Sunset Boulevard,
but structural similarities as well: plot- and character-wise,
Kamera
Obskura is almost identical to Wilder's film. And at the end of
Despair, the murderer yells to the cops, "Frenchmen! This is a
rehearsal. Hold those policemen. A famous film actor will presently
come running out of this house." In the famous concluding scene of
Sunset Boulevard, Gloria Swanson sees the newsreel cameras and
cops and thinks she's in a movie: "I just want to tell you how
happy
I am to be in the studio again, making a picture. You don't know
how much I have missed you all, and I promise I will never desert
you again. After Salome we will make another picture, and another
picture.... And now, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."
One Nabokov specialist, Phillip Iannarelli, points out a
"Nabokovian
hitch" in North by Northwest's climactic moment between Cary
Grant and Eva Marie Saint (a boy in the background plugs his ears
before the gun appears from Saint's purse and is fired); he
describes
that moment of accidental precognition, which is analogous to the
sense of impending doom every character in Sunset Boulevard
chooses to overlook, as "reality encapsulated and encroaching on a
work of art." And if this mix between reality and art becomes too
intense, the result is usually madness, "excruciating madness."
However, as in the end of Nabokov's Bend Sinister, this madness
is not excruciating for the victim (they have abandoned our
miserable world!), but for those who witness the businessman
yelling
nonsense from the window or the aged actress descending the
staircase toward the newsreel lights. In Sunset Boulevard, the
witness is us.