For the Time Being (11 page)

It is claustrophobic, tense and exhausting. Some people bash through a reading without a flutter. Others have to be given bottles of water, biscuits, barley sugar, glucose tablets, Kleenex to cope with the extra saliva they generate, or a mattress to lie on. At worst, a calming pill which reduces the hysteria, but equally the performance.

The abridged (or mutilated) version of a two-cassette job is far easier. I can do one in five hours. But the abridging, done in my case by the copy-editor of my books, Mark Handsley, is brutal, essential and apparently perfectly acceptable to the listener. The plot, the characters, the very essence of the subject somehow remain intact. You junk detail, characters who do not matter and descriptive stuff. Reducing 95,000 words to 25,000 is a marathon task.

There is an enormous difference between ‘reading' and ‘telling' a story. ‘Telling' must be much more personal, ‘for your ear only'. It must be a quiet complicity between the teller and the listener. ‘Reading' is often distanced by great elegance of speech, perfect pronunciation, the beauty of the words and the theatrical self-awareness of the reader. This does not get to the gut and mind of the listener. The intimacy, buttonholing, the imperfections of speech (a slight laugh, a sigh, a caught word, a repeated word) bring him or her much closer.

Anyone can listen to a reader; only one person, or one small group-at-the-knee, can listen to a teller. That is what counts. One
has to ‘play' the story, bring it to life, totally involve the listener. One alters the voice, a token change rather than a grandiose burst of actorly prowess, an indication only – which is why, very often, actors are better than professional, or habitual, readers. Get the listener in the first three or four lines; hold his interest; do not let it wander from your voice; keep him alert, so he can settle back and think: ‘This is specially for me! I am now being involved, and I can't prevent it.'

If you can establish that height of interest, familiarity, comfort even, the audiobook will flourish prodigiously. It is already starting to do so. But do people who listen to the abridged tape being read to them bother to buy the printed book? I wonder. Knowing people, probably they do not. I keep my fingers crossed.

Daily Telegraph,
17 December 1994

Obituary of Ian Dalrymple

I knew him as Dal. Those of us who were permitted to get fairly close to Ian Dalrymple in this unlovely profession of the cinema all knew him as that. He was modest, cautious, calm and in every way a gentle man. A gentleman is how he would best be described, but sadly that word is now out of date, perhaps one which he might have thought pretentious. Nevertheless that is what he was.

In 1947, after six years of an active war, I had an overnight success (the sort of idiot thing so commonplace today) in a small theatre in Notting Hill Gate. The critics lavished their praise, the world and his wife came to see us. I was paid £5 a week, and Ian Dalrymple one night was in the audience. I don't know exactly when he came, I only remember that he wrote, and said that he had liked my work and had I read, perchance,
Esther Waters
by George Moore. Of course I hadn't; I'd only just managed to survive my war years with
The Oxford Book of English Verse
and a paperback of
Forever Amber.

Well, almost. He overlooked this crass error and signed me up for two films:
Esther Waters
and one to follow called
Once a Jolly Swagman,
about speedway riders. Not exactly my scene, or indeed his. He wrote, I quote from his letter of 25 June 1947:

I didn't want to disturb you while your play was still running. When it comes off, shall we spend an evening together about our future plans for
Esther Waters
and
Once a Jolly Swagman?
Then, when you have read and thought about
Esther
and I've explained the storyline, we can have a good discussion about the character of ‘William'. You are a bit young for it – or more probably I'm getting so antiquated that my juniors seem all children.

Note the delicacy in his use of the word ‘our' and not ‘my'. That was Dal's style. They were always
our
projects from the start and remained so. My head reeled with delight and the overwhelming desire to please him. We worked hard on
Esther.
The film was lavish in cast, sets, costumes and a minutely detailed re-creation of the 1885 Derby, and it was all a colossal failure.

We had done some ‘tests' on film before starting work. He wrote on 18 July 1947:

One or two things emerge from Wednesday's tests but far, far the most important was that, if we all keep calm, you will rocket into the firmament. So. When you're a Big Shot, remember that your celluloid birthplace lay in Wessex [his own company]. But I wonder, will you! Or are you as hard as all the rest?

I remembered, I remember. I went to his house in Bourton-on-the-Water for the good discussion about the character of'William'. A tumbling family house, wellingtons and riding crops in the hall. I seem to remember tile floors, polished wood, green lawns, a great tree, chintz and worn leather, the walls stuck about with a great collection of paintings, none of which I had ever seen before. ‘Lowry,' he said, pushing his glasses high on the bridge of his nose, drawing on the cigarette in its long paper holder. ‘A great potential. I like him.'

We had the discussion on ‘William' but it really didn't do much good. I was too raw, too inexperienced. He pretended not to notice, or, if he did, he never let it show, and I went on to the set that first terrible morning frightened out of my wits – but at least going to join my friend, not merely my director. ‘What do I do?' I said, looking in horror at the gigantic camera. He removed his cigarette stub, crushed the paper holder in his fist. ‘Good Lord! I don't know. You're supposed to be the actor.' He said this mildly, so I jumped in and swam, as it were, without water-wings.

That I did not instantly drown was entirely due to Dal. He praised quietly, counselled wisely, showered me with confidence, cosseted and laughed, and when necessary threw me the lifebelt of
gentle praise. We were certain that ‘our' film was to be a winner. It was a howling flop and came near to breaking his heart. But he never at any time blamed me.

On 3 October 1948 he wrote:

I'm sorry. But for you time will swiftly flow. Hold your head up until
Swagman
in December. I've copped it good and proper, not quite all of it justified. But my regrets are more for the artists and technicians who worked so nobly, and my loyal family and friends … It's my one big reverse in twenty-one years; so it was time for it, from now on I let all the clever boys do the work.

Swagman
did better, it was rougher, tougher, more of its time, but Dal had suffered a desperate wound which bled and, although we worked once again together on a film of Arnold Bennett's
Mr Prohack,
he finally gave in and left the scene. We didn't lose touch, though our roads diverged.

He had launched me, he had seen some spark, and with his gentleness, his wry amusement, his shrewd eye, he watched me as I went along my often bumpy road. He set me on that path. His fault entirely. Thank goodness. We wrote, he read my books, he saw me on various dire TV chat shows, we sent Christmas cards. But not, alas, this year, and I shall mind that very much indeed.

Independent
, 1 May 1989

I remember being surprised, and showing it rather obviously when Luchino Visconti, reading through the cast of a film which I had just agreed to make with him, said: ‘And finally I will use the English girl, Charlotte Rampling, for the young wife who is sent to the concentration camp…'

All that I knew of Rampling at that time, and this was twenty years ago, was that she had had a great personal success in a comedy film called
Georgy Girl.
She seemed rather odd casting for a heavily tragic role in
The Damned,
a sombre film about Germany in the turmoil of the thirties.

‘Rampling! But why?' I remember saying tactlessly.

Visconti placed the forefinger and thumb of each hand around his eyes, framing them.

‘For this,' he said. ‘For The Look.'

As always, he was correct. I saw The Look myself one day on the enormous set which had been built to represent the Krupps' villa in Essen. We sat, Rampling and I, with the rest of the film ‘family' watching a concert by members of the household which was taking place at exactly the same hour as the Reichstag building was burning in Berlin.

When the news was broken, in a breathless voice in the middle of the concert, Rampling suddenly turned to me, her eyes wide with horror at the terrible implication of what lay ahead, and I instantly saw the power of those wonderful eyes. Green, wide, appalled.

All terror was there: all the fear of a woman who instinctively knew that her family was doomed was instantly summed up. No words were used, only that Look. It was enough. I have never forgotten it.

The very first time I met her she was wearing the shortest mini-skirt possible, and a pair of boy's scarlet under-briefs, clearly visible beneath the skirt, a crumpled T-shirt and rather grubby bare feet. She seemed to laugh a lot.

Two hours later, however, a strange metamorphosis had taken place. Hairdressers, make-up and wardrobe had gone to work on this capering, joyful child and, astonishingly, a perfectly groomed, radiantly beautiful and sophisticated woman in a long slim-fitting lace evening gown, corsage on her shoulder, pearls at her throat, was there before me.

The transformation was complete. No longer the leggy foal, hair tumbling in a golden fall about her: this was a cool, composed adult woman moving with extreme poise and the grace of a panther towards me down the long studio corridor.

A few years later, when I was about to start
The Night Porter,
I remembered that first Look and insisted that Rampling played opposite me. She had just had her first child and was still nursing him; there was virtually no money to make the film, and it was going to be what we call a ‘toughie'. Added to that, the producers wanted a bigger name than hers for the American market. However, I stuck to my decision, she accepted a derisory salary and got the role, becoming, in time, a part of cinema lore.

She was the perfect partner in a difficult film and in an almost impossible role. It was a compelling performance in everyway: when she is on the screen it is almost impossible to look at anyone else.

I have seen The Look under many different circumstances. I have seen the glowing emerald eyes change to steel within a second; fade gently to the softest, tenderest, most doe-eyed bracken-brown when in the company of her husband, her children and her very close friends.

If, in her ‘commercial life', she appears to be the temptress, in her private life none of this is apparent at all. Her clothes are simple: trimly cut, elegant and understated. She knows very well that she has a pair of the best legs in the business and is delighted that these should be made the most of. She is aware that she is a sex-symbol, but wears no jewellery, no feathers, frills or frou-frou.

Rampling keeps her sensuality well banked down. But one is constantly aware of the measured tread, the slender length of leg, the curve of neck and throat, but, perhaps most of all, The Look.

Daily Telegraph,
28 June 1987

The secret Joseph Losey

My father always said that the first tremor I would feel as I slid towards ‘old age' would be when I turned first to the obituary page in the newspapers. I've had the tremor now for ages.

Another ugly sign is when the biographers arrive to ask you questions about someone whom you thought you knew, or whom they, at any rate, thought you did. The time of the ‘authorized biography' is upon us: one begins to feel rather lost, a lone survivor on the raft of life.

It has now happened to Joseph Losey. There is a fat tome about, in depth, detailed, superbly researched, a public flaying of a character as maddening and complicated as any I ever knew; or
thought
I knew, because the joke is I didn't know him. I never have ‘known' anyone I worked with. Don't ask questions, obey directions (when they suit), keep yourself to yourself and don't get involved. It has been my rule for all of my playing life.

David Caute's biography,
Joseph Losey: A Revenge on Life
(Faber and Faber), will satisfy (and shock) the cine-buffs, amaze his fans, and would have driven him to apoplexy. It has left me with jaw agape. This is the old friend that I did not know but always suspected might be lurking about. It is a scrupulous dissection of a man who was, at times, an enigma – even to himself. ‘What the hell am I doing … ?' he would often ask me, but he seldom assuaged his anxiety by accepting the advice I offered, always went down the road he had chosen himself. So who was he?

I first met him standing in slush on a winter's day in a car-park at Pinewood. I was to have a private screening of a movie he had made a couple of years before. It was the early fifties, and I had never heard of him. I was exhausted after three movies in a row, and frozen. I had
no interest in watching his old movie, but had agreed to do so because if, after seeing it, I said I would work with him, he would get the money on my name to start his first maj or film in England. He awaited my verdict like an expectant father in the snow.

I wearily sat and looked at his offering. For twenty minutes, huddled in an overcoat, all alone, I watched the screen, then got up and called him in. Together we watched the film run through. I had been presented with magic.

I knew that afternoon that I would work with him even if he decided to shoot the A-to-Z map of London, or try a remake of
Way Down East.
I was hooked. I knew where greatness lay, even if I didn't know much about the man. Greatness, for better or for worse, was sitting in the seat beside me. In his own words: