Tuesday 20 November 2012

La Règle du Jeu

Certain memories seem so permanent, so non-negotiable, that the rest of your mind has to arrange itself around them, like water flowing around rocks.  If that famous fast-forward lifetime review really does happen when the end of life is imminent, then I expect it is made up of such moments.

For example, I recall sitting in our doctor's waiting room, somewhere around 1961 -- probably waiting to have him peer, yet again, into my eternally-aching ear -- and seeing a small, amateurishly-printed poster for a showing of a film by Jean Renoir, La Règle du Jeu.  I was proud of my reading ability, aged 7, but here were words -- clearly important words in capital letters -- I could not render. Fascinating! I suppose it must have been put up by a local society, though nothing as interesting as a film society existed in our town when I was old enough to appreciate one.

In fact, nothing as interesting as a cinema existed by then.  Incredibly, a whole New Town for 75,000 people was built around a place with a population of 7,500 without factoring in a new cinema.  There were two ancient and tiny "Old Town" fleapits, the Publix and the Astonia, but the depradations of local youths and a presumably non-existent business model meant that the Publix closed in 1961 and then the Astonia in 1969.

I never actually entered the Publix, as by its desperate final days it was only showing X-rated films to an audience of 300 seated on benches, not stalls, and on whom water dripped whenever it rained.  Allegedly the projector beam was regularly blocked by opening umbrellas.  I did see my own first X-rated films in the last days of the Astonia (1968's Girl on a Motorbike and Witchfinder General), brazening my way in with some bolder school-friends.  The staff couldn't have cared less how old we were, actually, so long as we didn't slash the seats or add to the stains on the undersized screen by hurling ice-creams.  And they weren't that bothered about that, either; it wasn't exactly a "family" cinema.  Within the year the place had closed, and it was another four years before a proper "New Town" cinema opened its doors.  Sadly, I doubt any Stevenage cinema ever did or ever will show Renoir's La Règle du Jeu.

The memory of that little poster remained, however, a hint that the world was bigger than I thought, if only I could be bothered to look and learn. My father could speak some French, and explained how to pronounce the words, and that they meant "the rules of the game".  As I gained competence in the language myself, that stubborn memory would resurface occasionally, and I would wonder why "rules" was singular ("la règle") and not plural ("les règles")?  Did the French regard rules as a singular thing, perhaps, like "the law"?  It was an early lesson in the niceties of translation.*

By some twist of fate, I have never yet seen La Règle du Jeu. I did become a devoted cinéaste in 1976/77, stuck on the remote campus of the University of East Anglia, with nothing better to do in the evening than attend every available film showing.  Happily, there were several every week. In one year I saw all those films that no-one other than film students ever sees in real life -- Last Year in Marienbad, Breathless, The 400 Blows, Closely Observed Trains, Céline and Julie Go Boating -- but never the Renoir.

So, an important memory in my life is a poster half-buried on a pinboard in a doctor's waiting room for a film I have never seen, and -- who knows? -- may never see.  And it's fairly certain that the film, were I to see it now (even if it does live up to its perpetual critics' Top Ten billing), could never match the significance of that memory.  Talk about a meaning forever deferred through an endless chain of signifiers!  Which we weren't, but it's all very French, n'est-ce pas?



*Titles are notoriously difficult to translate.  On a  German school exchange, I was delighted to learn that the spy series The Avengers was screened on German TV as Mit Schirm, Charme, und Melone ("With umbrella, charm, and a melon bowler hat").  Germans, it seemed, either didn't see the camply veiled sexuality and the ironically cocked eyebrow, or saw through it to something they took to be as archetypically British as a double-decker bus. They may, of course, have been right. I suspect James Bond film titles have always posed similar challenges of translation.  It's interesting how many early foreign-language renderings go for "007 vs. [name of villain]", as if Bond were Tintin or Giant Haystacks.

 In a perfectly German case of "it does what  it says on the tin", Woody Allen's Annie Hall was released in Germany as Der Stadtneurotiker ("the urban neurotic").   I am not entirely convinced that Grease was really released in Spain as Vaselina (¡Vaselina es la palabra!) but allegedly it is so.

29 comments:

Zouk Delors said...

La première règle du jeu est "Ne pas parler du jeu".

Mike C. said...

Zouk Delors,

Vous avez raison, monsieur, et il faut que je m'en tais!

Mike

Zouk Delors said...

Merde! Je viens de realiser que j'ai cassé la première règle moi-même en postant ça! Quel idiot! Je dois être dehors maintenant. (ZOUK Dehors, reh*!)

*risant en haut

Mike C. said...

Ne vous inquiétez pas, Zouk Delors. Je me demande si vous confondez "La règle du jeu" avec "Fight Club" (ou peut-être le "Bruces Sketch" de Monty Python même)??

Mike

Zouk Delors said...

Mais non, mon vieux, je crois que tu es aboiement en haut de la fausse arbre avec le "Bruces Sketch", bien que tu peux avoir quelque chose avec "Fight Club" (ou, comme nous l'appelle, "Le Club Duquel L'on Ne Faut Pas Parler"), mais n'est pas la chose la plus proche "Nœuds", par R.D.Laing?

Mike C. said...

Zouk Delors,

"Aboiement en haut de la fausse arbre"? "Le Club Duquel L'on Ne Faut Pas Parler"? Ah, bon, je *crois* que vous blaguez / me taquinez... (Et je crois aussi que vous pouvez parler mieux l'anglais que je parle le francais -- je ne peut pas jouer avec les expressions idiomatiques!).

[I'm switching to English -- sorry, monsieur ZD, but the French is making my brain hurt on a Sunday morning]

I'm intrigued by the reference to Laing's "Knots" -- I can remember the book (nice and short), but can't remember the contents. What's the connection?

Mike

Zouk Delors said...

"Ils jouent un jeu. Ils jouent à ne pas jouer un jeu. Si je leur montre que je vois que ça c'est ce qu'ils font, je romprai la règle du jeu, donc ils me puniront. Je dois jouer leur jeu de ne pas voir que je vois le jeu."

Nœuds, R.D.Laing

http://www.oikos.org/knotsen1.htm

Mike C. said...

Ah, merci, Zouk, j m'en souviens maintenant. Connaissez-vous le livre "Games People Play" par Eric Berne? Il est similaire, mais utilise beaucoup plus des mots...

Mike

Dave Leeke said...

I have absolutely no idea what that was all about. However, you were lucky that your experience in the doctor's was so ultimately pleasurable. Whenever I went to the dentist above Halfords I was always traumatised by the life sized print of Picasso's "Guernica" in the waiting room.

It still sends a shiver down my spine whenever I see it.

Mike C. said...

Dave,

Sorry about that, but we aim to entertain all comers.

Your dentist had Guernica in the waiting room?? Blimey. He either had a sense of humour, or a particularly large stain on the wall to cover up.

Mike

Zouk Delors said...

Mike

Pas de prob, mon cher. Oui, je connais Les Jeux Que La Gens Joue, mais (si ce n'est pas contre la règle du blog ou les étiquettes anglaises) je disputerais que les deux œuvres sont similaires.

Dave

Je m'excuse. Did you Try Google translator?

Mike C. said...

Hmm, Google Translate, eh ... Suddenly it all makes sense. Take off that silly beret, TC!

Mike

Dave Leeke said...

Actually, Zouk,no as I don't use Google (because they track you etc). I use duckduckgo currently.

It's not because of anything dodgy, just that I don't see why they need to know what random interests I have.

I think, Mike, that the dentist was an ex-grammar school boy with a few issues.

Zouk Delors said...

'ow u kneu ah am werring ma beret juste as ah am redding zees! Coïncidence? Je crois que non. Dave à raison - je savait que je laissais tomber un clangeur quand j'ai pris un comte avec google!

http://www.reenigne.org/blog/ (27.10.12)

Dave

Que est ce que c'est que duckduckgo?!

issues: parle d'un sens toujours différée par une chaîne sans fin des signifiants

Martyn Cornell said...

"Les étiquettes anglaises" means "the English tickets", or "the English bottle labels" - "étiquette" has both meanings.

Mike C. said...

Martyn,

Yes, well, I think the label on this entertaining little bottle says "Tesco". Zut alors...

Mike

Dave Leeke said...

"Zouk",

duckduckgo.com is a search engine that claims not to track you. Oh, and everyone drops a clanger by going with Google!

Sorry, Mike, just felt the need to pass this one on. And a bit of fun, n'est-ce pas?

Zouk Delors said...

Dave

Merci bien 4 that. Of course I realised as soon as I'd asked that I could just Google it anyway (ironically enough)*. Thought u were making it up, actually.

Mike

YOU started it with French anyway! I refer u to the title of this post. Also, " a meaning forever deferred through an endless chain of signifiers" sounds suspiciously like it may be translated from the French, perhaps of Derrida? Or summink.

*Tho perhaps not - seen Reuters?
"Google competitor DuckDuckGo says it's getting shut out"
Thu Nov 22, 2012 6:30am IST

Mike C. said...

Derrida, indeed. Dang, just plain askin' for it, with all that high-falutin' Frenchifried non-sense!

You're back online, then, TC? I have an email I meant to send you. Stand by.

Bed time for me, now, though.

Mike

Zouk Delors said...

[French: Eh, bain.]

[English (Hillbilly)
Hot diggity dawg, "Mike", now that's the kinda talk that gits the chitlins fair jumpin in the gosh-danged pan!

Ah 'm a-standing by!]

Dave Leeke said...

Ah well, I always did tend to support the underduck.

eeyorn said...

Ah the Astonia. Its now been converted to a Rileys 'sports pub'and is probably much the better for it. Definitely a fleapit worthy of the name.

eeyorn said...

Andy Roberts wrote a song titled 'Guernica' a couple of years ago, perhaps inspired by said artwork. I've known him for several years via the Stormcock mailing list, and formed part of a peer review group that helped him develop the song.

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2006/12/31/gernika-2

Dave Leeke said...

Thanks for that, eeyorn. Wasn't the Andy Roberts I was expecting! Still, good stuff.

As for the Astonia, a friend and I managed to blag our way in to see "Barberella" at 14! We sat in the same row as our French teacher. The film now gets shown at tea time and is seen as harmless (which it is) but was an X film then! Mike was right about the staff not really caring.

No IDs in those days.

eeyorn said...

Which Andy Roberts were you expecting, Dave? This one is perhaps best known as the founder member of Plainsong, and he also worked for a number of years as a backing musician for Roy Harper.

I too remember seeing La Fonda surviving the Orgasmatron at the Astonia he-he. Can't remember how old I was at the time but I'm now pushing 59.

Dave Leeke said...

Actually I was expecting THAT Andy Roberts but I don't see the one your link went to as the same one. Perhaps I'm wrong. Andy Roberts - the Grimms/Plainsong/Urban Cowboy one seems rather different to the guy that plays 12 string at folk clubs. After all, I think that the (famous) AR would write about current songs and mention such gigs as the link on his website.That seems to be concerned with re-releases and recent tours with Plainsong. Perhaps I'm wrong?

I'm pushing 58 - were you an Alleynian?

Mike C. said...

Sorry, guys, been out of town all day.

Eeyorn: welcome back.

Dave: please don't ask people personal questions on the blog (like "who are you?") when they've chosen not to identify themselves. I know Eeyorn very well, as it happens, but that's not the point.

Mike

Dave Leeke said...

Okay, Mike, hadn't realised that asking if we shared a school was "who are you?".

I was about to suggest we were taking up too much of your blog area. If Mr Eeyorn wants to continue the conversation he can find me on my "In the Footsteps of the Fool" blog. I am quite interested in the conversation.

No offence intended.

Mike C. said...

No offence taken, Dave -- I just don't want anyone to feel under pressure to discuss personal matters, up to and including their identity. Unless they are pretending to be French, of course.

Mike