Patrick Bade
Hollywood Imagines Europe

Patrick Bade - Hollywood Imagines Europe

- [Patrick] I’m just going to say hello to everybody, and then I’m going to turn off my face ‘cause apparently the sound quality is better if I do that. So 1939 is usually said to be the zenith of the Golden Age of Hollywood. A lot of very famous movies came out in that year, notably “Gone with the Wind,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Stagecoach,” “The Women,” and so on. And that year, audiences attendance peaked in America. 80 million people went to the cinema every week in America in 1939. Now, some years later, in 1994, only 10% of Americans had passports. I believe that number, that figure, has grown considerably, although there is still less than 50% of Americans who have passports. I think in 1939, it would’ve been considerably less than 10%, and only a tiny elite of Americans would have travelled across the Atlantic to Europe. So most Americans gained their idea of what Europe was like through going to the movies. And that’s what you’ll see tonight. It was actually often a very distorted and unrealistic picture of Europe. I’m going to… Oh, this, for instance. This is a still from the final scene of the 1934 film “Top Hat” with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, and the final scene takes place in Venice. This is how the RKO studios in Hollywood envisaged Venice in the 1930s. And I imagine people who’d seen this film and then actually came to Europe and went to Venice, they might have been a bit disappointed to discover that it’s a lot scruffier and less clean and shiny than it looks in a Hollywood movie. I’m going to concentrate on three cities in this lecture, Vienna, London, and Paris. This is a poster for the film “Great Waltz.” It was an MGM film, a very, very fictionalised version of the life of the Waltz King Johann Strauss.

And it starred the French star Fernand Gravey as Strauss and the Polish soprano Miliza Korjus. This film had a tremendous impact on me as a child. It certainly formed the ideas that I had of what Vienna would be like. Vienna was totally different, of course, when I finally got there about 15 years after I saw the film. But so the film came out in 1938, and I saw it actually in 1960. I was living in Bognor Regis, I was eight years old, and I was absolutely besotted with Miliza Korjus, the soprano in the film. I’d first heard her on the radio when I was five years old and I completely fell in love with her voice. And I used to go round with her photograph in the heart pocket of my school blazer, much to the outrage of the nuns in my primary school who said it was idolatry and I really ought to have a picture of the Virgin Mary or a saint rather than an opera singer or a film star. But, so I was very excited in the summer of 1960 when it was on show at the local Odeon in Bognor Regis as the B movie. You probably remember in those days there’d be the main feature and there would be a supporting movie. And the main feature was a new film, then a new film, “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” with Doris Day. Well, I was so excited about finally getting to see Miliza Korjus on screen and that my mother paid for me to go every single day for a week and spend the whole day in the cinema. I’m sure she was glad to get rid of me for that week. And so I would watch “The Great Waltz” twice a day for a week. So I must have seen it at least a dozen times. That meant, of course, I had to sit through Doris Day and “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies.” And I really couldn’t stand her.

To me, she was the absolute antithesis of everything I loved about Miliza Korjus. So this is Vienna as depicted by MGM in 1938, all gorgeous crinoline dresses and everything beautiful, everything sweet. Of course, very different from the reality of Vienna in that year, 1938. The film was released in November. Earlier in the year, Hitler had marched into Vienna, the Anschluss, and as you can see was greeted ecstatically by a large percentage of the Viennese. So the reality of Vienna at the time the film was released was very, very different with Jews being forced to scrub the pavements watched by gloating antisemitic mobs. Of course, I knew nothing about that at that age. Now probably the most famous scene in this film has Johann Strauss driving through the Vienna woods with Miliza Korjus and composing the waltz “Tales of Vienna Woods.” Or actually in the movie, he is aided by what sounds like a three-legged horse. It goes clip clop clop, clip clop clop. And the sounds of nature, a passing mail coach, there was a mailman with a horn and he goes ♪ Ta rum, ta rum, ta rum ♪ And a passing bird goes tweet, tweet. And Strauss writes all this down on the cuff of his shirt. And eventually they arrive in a heuriger, one of those little wine inns in the Vienna woods, where there happens to be an orchestra entirely made up of gorgeous peroxide blonde girls in white frilly dresses. And he presumably hands them his shirt with the notation on it, and they play the piece directly from his shirt. Well, I’m going to show you that scene later at the end of the talk. I’m hoping it’s going to work. I’ve got several video clips for you. But this is from the soundtrack of the movie as he is actually composing. He’s initially inspired to write the waltz “Tales of Vienna Woods” starting with the horse clip-clopping in waltz time.

♪ Da da, da da, dayum bum bum ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, dadum bum bum ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, dayum bum bum ♪ ♪ Dayum bum bum ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, dayum bum bum ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, dayum bum bum ♪ ♪ Dayum bum bum ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, da da ♪ ♪ Da da ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, da ♪ ♪ Da da da da la la ♪ ♪ Da da da da la la ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, da da ♪ ♪ Da da, um, da da ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, da da ♪ ♪ Come on, my Rosie ♪ ♪ Come on, my Rosie ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, da da, da da ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, da da, da da ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, da um da da ♪

• [Patrick] Utterly delightful, but utterly ludicrous, of course. And as they go through the woods, they pass by shepherds with flocks of sheep. Of course, there’ve never been shepherds and flocks of sheep in the Vienna woods. Now moving on to London. The great cliche about London in Hollywood films of this period is that it is permanently in a fog. Well, of course, London was notorious for its smogs. They weren’t really fogs. And as you know, Monet came to London several years running at the turn of the century specifically for the smog season and stayed in the Savoy Hotel and painted this wonderful series of smoggy London. That doesn’t really exist anymore since the Clean Air laws of the 1960s. But the Sherlock Holmes movies, for instance, there’s a whole series of them with Basil Rathbone. He wanders around London, as I said, in a permanent fog. And 1937, the film “Damsel in Distress,” it’s an RKO movie, a vehicle for Fred without Ginger this time. But the Gershwins, George and Ira, composed the songs for this movie. And one of the loveliest, of course, is “A Foggy Day in London Town” here sung by the original interpreter, Fred Astaire.

♪ A foggy day in London Town ♪ ♪ Had me low and had me down ♪ ♪ I viewed the morning with alarm ♪ ♪ The British Museum had lost its charm ♪ ♪ How long, I wondered, could this thing last ♪ ♪ But the age of miracles hadn’t passed ♪ ♪ For suddenly I saw you there ♪ ♪ And through foggy London Town ♪ ♪ The sun was shining everywhere ♪

• So of course, in Hollywood movies, if it’s not foggy, it’s raining. And that could be a cue for another wonderful Fred song, “Isn’t it a Lovely Day To Be Caught in the Rain?” This is from a Fred and Ginger movie. This is “Top Hat,” but I’m not going to play that to you. You can find that very easily on YouTube. And I suppose for most Americans of my generation, or maybe since, their view of London is very much formed by “Mary Poppins,” more rain, of course, and more fog in “Mary Poppins.” I just watched the trailer for this while I was putting together this lecture, and I was impressed. This is much, much more accurate view of London. I mean, they’ve done some serious research on Victorian London for the details of the sets and the architecture and the costumes, and so on. This really intrigued me, this scene for “Chim chiminey, chim cher-oo.” It was the post box. And that is a real London Victorian post box. There aren’t many of the originals left. Happens to be one actually about 200 yards from where I’m sitting at the moment at the end of my street in Islington, so I went and took this photograph yesterday to put into the lecture to show you that the one in the film is exactly right, as are, of course, the old gas lamps. And there are still a few of those around in London. A film which is certainly in its decor much, much less accurate is “The Gay Divorcee.” Again, a Fred and Ginger film, 1934, which takes place in Brighton. I’m actually quite fond of Brighton. I remember it very well from my childhood. It has a certain… How can I put it politely? I can’t really put it politely. It has a certain sleazy charm, and much of that reputation goes back to the old divorce laws in England where the only possible reason for a divorce was adultery.

And couples who just didn’t like each other or wanted to move on, they would set up their pretend adultery. I mean, hotels in Brighton thrived on this industry. It was all set up. You book two rooms in a hotel in Brighton. The husband was the one who always did this. You know, it was the gentlemanly thing to do if you wanted to give your wife a divorce. And so you would rent two rooms and you’d pay a girl to sleep in the second room. And before breakfast, the husband would go, fully dressed, he’d climb into bed with the young lady and they would then order breakfast and a maid would come and deliver them breakfast in bed, and then the maid would be paid to testify in the court case that she had witnessed the man and the young woman in bed. And so this is the premise of the film “The Gay Divorcee” with Fred and Ginger. She wants to get a divorce and she’s paying a gigolo to pretend to commit adultery with her. It’s all wonderfully glamorous, very different from the reality. The kind of sordid, embarrassing reality of this kind setup is wonderfully conveyed in another movie you might like to watch, “A Handful of Dust.” I remember an Australian once saying to me that the only true emotion he’d ever seen English people show was embarrassment. And embarrassment certainly is the great English emotion, I would say. And you’ll get that from the film “A Handful of Dust,” but, of course, not in the Fred and Ginger movie. This is Brighton as imagined by RKO studios in Hollywood in 1934. This is the Grand Hotel. If only. If only. How wonderful it would be if there was a hotel that looked like this in Brighton. This is the reality, I’m afraid.

This is where they would’ve stayed in the Grand Hotel at the front in Brighton, a rather hideous Victorian building. Now moving on to Paris and an absolute favourite movie. This is the 1932 movie “Love Me Tonight.” 1932, of course, it’s a year or so before the Hays Code is introduced, so it’s very naughty. It’s naughty stuff. Not least, of course, Jeanette MacDonald being paraded in her underwear. And a lot of very raunchy double entendres in this film. Has a wonderful script, and it’s directed by Rouben Mamoulian. And if you haven’t seen it, watch it. It’s the most dazzling film from a cinematographic point of view. It’s amazing, amazing camera work, fluid, fluid, camera work. And it starts actually with documentary footage of Paris. Here we are on the Quai. You can see the bouquiniste stalls to the left-hand side you can see. So this is the actual film of Paris it starts off with. And then seamlessly it moves into a scene of Paris waking up in the morning, which has been recreated in a Hollywood studio, in the Paramount studios where it was filmed. And there’s wonderful tracking shots moving through Paris with a musical accompaniment, Maurice Chevalier greeting various people, everybody talking in rhyming couplets. It’s the most amazing piece of filming. And I’ve got a clip of that, I hope it will come across well at the end.

To show you, here is Maurice greeting the shopkeepers. Now I suppose the most famous Hollywood movie about Paris is “An American in Paris” with Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron. This makes no pretence whatsoever really of being realistic. There are some photographic backdrops, but mostly it’s a recreation of Paris in Hollywood. This is very much a film set Paris. What I think is interesting from my point of view as an art historian is the very knowing references to paintings of the Ecole de Paris, particularly Raoul Dufy. This scene of the Place de la Concorde. The backdrop is not the real buildings, the Place de la Concorde. It’s a painting by Raoul Dufy. And here the scene in Montmartre, of course the backdrop here is a painting by Maurice Utrillo, who was the great master of scenes of Montmartre. Now, so that’s 1951. Six years later, Billy Wilder made a film called “Love in the Afternoon,” which is set in Paris. And again, I’ve got the trailer for this that I want to show you later. And this differs from most Hollywood films about Paris in that most of it is actually filmed in Paris. And it’s very, very nostalgic for me because this shows Paris as it looked when I first knew it, when I first went to Paris, in fact, six years after this film was made. I went there in 1963, and I have very vivid memories of it and how it looked different from today. I mean, one reason it looked very different was that none of the buildings were clean. You know, post-war Paris was a very dirty city and the buildings were very grimy. Now, of course, Paris gleams. That very pale Parisian limestone is scrubbed clean by law every couple of years.

So there’s a delightful trailer, which I hope to show you later. And it’s not one of Billy Wilder’s masterpieces, it’s not really one of his more successful films. I think mainly because Gary Cooper was really too old for the role. And somehow today this romance between a man in late middle age with a teenage girl strikes us as more than a tiny bit creepy. But that I find this, I enjoy this film so much not just for the exterior scenes, but also for the interior scenes. Every single detail is so right, it’s so Paris of its period, you know, down to the water heater that you see in the background and the basin, and so on. So I think real Parisian interiors were used for this movie. So that’s 1957. 1963, which was the first year that I went to… Oh, here again is a scene from “Love in the Afternoon,” the Billy Wilder film with Audrey Hepburn and the ageing Gary Cooper. And this is filmed apparently in a room in the Ritz on the Place Vendome. You can see the Place Vendome out of the window. Also absolutely right and characteristic is the wonderful wrought iron garde-corps in the lower part of the window. You see those on almost every building in Paris. Sadly not on mine as the wicked syndic of my building actually ripped them out last year strictly against the law.

So yes, six years later, we’re now in 1963, and as I said the first year that I went to Paris, and another film by Billy Wilder which is much better known and much more successful, “Irma la Douce.” It’s based on a real French musical play, and it has very engaging performances from Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, and it’s an entertaining movie. But it’s very, very different from “Love in the Afternoon.” This is absolute cliche Paris. And again, I’ll show you at the end of my talk I’ll show you the trailer. And it’s fun, but it’s almost embarrassing in how every possible American cliche about France and the French is to be seen. Here is part of the opening scene. Of course, there was, until very, very recently, and it’s only in the last five or six years, I think, that what you see in this has actually been banned in Paris. When I was still teaching at Christies 10 years ago and I would take students on walks around Paris, and it always amuse me to walk them down rue Saint-Denis where you would see actually precisely this, all the prostitutes in the street. Although they weren’t young and gorgeous like these ones, they were often quite elderly and rather tired looking. Here this is the rue Saint-Denis because you can see the Hall at the end of the street, the great cast iron food halls. And so the last clip that I’m going to show you is actually not a Hollywood movie. It’s a French movie by Marcel Carne. It was his last great collaboration with the poet Jacques Prevert. They made a whole series of films, most of which are regarded as being amongst the greatest classics of the French cinema, “Le jour se leve,” “Les enfants du paradis” is the most famous, I suppose, which was made towards the end of the Second World War.

But this movie is generally regarded as being a flop, and it really brought their collaboration to the end. The only thing from it that is very famous and everybody knows, of course, is the song “Les feuilles mortes,” “Autumn Leaves,” which is sung in the movie by Yves Montand. But I have the movie on DVD and I must admit it’s quite hard to follow. It’s got a very complicated plot and I’ve never really watched it through to the end. But I absolutely love the opening of the movie and I’ve watched that again and again. And it begins actually just behind my flat in Paris along the Line number 2. So it’s like four minutes walk. If I leave my front door in Paris, I can get to the first scene of this movie, which is the metro station of Barbes-Rochechouart on the Line number 2. And it’s a section of the metro. There are two lengthy sections of the metro in Paris that are above ground rather than underground, they’re raised, and they have to go over the rail tracks that go into the Gare du Nord and the Gare de l'Est and they have to go over the Canal Saint-Martin. And so this is all very, very authentic. This is exactly how it looks. And I pass it, when I’m in Paris I pass it, you know, every other day and very often get on the metro at the station of Barbes-Rochechouart. Now the amazing thing about this is that this wasn’t filmed in situ, it wasn’t filmed out of doors.

What you are seeing here is actually a reconstruction in the studio of a section of Paris. And again, I think my last excerpt that I’m going to show you is a Pathe news newsreel which shows how the sets were constructed for this scene. So I’m going to hand over to Georgia. She’s got the tricky task now of… I’ll put my face back on. So are you there, Georgia? Are you able to launch into the excerpts?

• [Georgia] I can you see that, yeah. I’m going to press play.

• Good, so this is the first one. Oh, here is… This is the scene in Vienna woods with Miliza Korjus and Fernand Gravey. I haven’t got any sound. There you see the sheep, of course, and the shepherds. Of course, as I said, there are no sheep. I still don’t have any sound.

• [Georgia] Patrick, I can hear it just fine.

• Good. Well, as long as you can hear it, that’s fine. Oh, I can hear it now. Good. ♪ Da da, da da, dayum bum bum ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, dadum bum bum ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, dayum bum bum ♪ ♪ Dayum bum bum ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, dayum bum bum ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, dayum bum bum ♪ ♪ Dayum bum bum ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, da da ♪ ♪ Da da ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, da ♪ ♪ Da la la la la la la ♪ ♪ Da la la la la la la ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, da da ♪ ♪ Da da, um, da da ♪ ♪ Da da, um, da da ♪ ♪ Come on, my Rosie ♪ ♪ Come on, my Rosie ♪ ♪ Da da, da da, da da, da da ♪

• I think we’ll move on, Georgia. Can you move on to our next excerpt? And this should be “Love Me Tonight.” So you start off with this footage, real footage of Paris. Obviously here at the Pont Neuf and the River Seine. And somebody cycling along the Quai. But this now, this is actually Hollywood. We’ve left what were supposed to be in the slopes of Montmartre, but this is actually recreated in a Hollywood studio. I can’t hear anything, but I hope you can. This is Paris waking up in the morning. I think this whole scene actually was inspired by a scene in the opera “Louise” by Charpentier, George Charpentier, which musically describes Paris waking up in the morning. Of course it was a star vehicle for Maurice Chevalier, who was a huge, huge star in Hollywood in the early 1930s in the first days of talky movies.

• Lovely morning, Paris. You are much too loud for me.

• Right, can we move on now, Georgia to the next? And this is a trailer for the Billy Wilder movie “Love in the Afternoon.” A few cliches of course, the American cliche about Paris being-

• Everybody does it. The butcher, the baker, even the friendly undertaker.

• Everything about you is perfect.

• I’m too thin, and my ears stick out, and my teeth are crooked, and my neck’s much too long.

• Maybe so, but I love the way it all hangs together. Nine o'clock.

• Oh no, that’s much too late.

• Five o'clock, four o'clock.

• In the afternoon? When do you work?

• Whenever I’m not busy.

• [Narrator] Gary Cooper fabulous as the world’s greatest connoisseur of women who has hunted the species from Stockholm to Siam. No wonder he was named man of the year. His matchless technique always begins with gypsy music, keyed to fascinate any woman. Audrey Hepburn delightfully completely innocent. How can anyone blame her for being dazzled? Maurice Chevalier, the most famous love detective in Paris who kept a box score on every game that was ever played.

• He’s certainly the most handsome man in your files.

• He’s certainly the most utterly no good.

• He’s got such an American face, like a cowboy or Abraham Lincoln.

• You know what happened to Lincoln?

• I think they must have scoured the flea markets for all the clutter, which is all absolutely right.

• [Narrator] “Love in the Afternoon,” when a girl with no experience turns the tables on the most experienced man in the world.

• How many other men were there?

• Can move on again, please, Georgia? Right, this is the trailer for “Irma la Douce” six years later, also Billy Wilder. But here, this is not real Paris, of course. This is completely Hollywood studio Paris. This rue Saint-Denis in Paris and the Hall as imagined by Hollywood designers.

• What’ll it be, Officer? Cognac?

• No. No, no, no. I never drink when I’m on duty. Matter of fact, I never drink when I’m off duty. Give me this little glass of Vichy water. Get out of here.

• What is it?

• I know about you!

• There!

• This is ridiculous.

• Your lordship.

• I hope you flew all the way back to England and I hope that fish your bloody liver.

• Right, can we move on to the last clip, please? And this is, it’s a newsreel footage of the creation of the set for the film “Les portes de la nuit.”

• Right, that’s it. So I’m going to see what questions we have.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: Where is the speaker?

A: Thank you, Estelle. You’re so right, I sound better without my face.

“Similarly post-war in the UK, "we have perhaps a distorted…” Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You’re quite right, Lorna. There was also a very cliche view of America and Americans in European movies after the war. It’s understandable, I suppose.

Thank you Cheryl, very much.

“What is hideous for one person…” You’re probably, you’re absolutely right. And I can’t remember what it was that I designated as being hideous. Maybe it was the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Actually, no, I like Victorian architecture, but I wouldn’t say that’s the most beautiful.

“Beauty is in the eye of the holder.” You’re quite right. The film with Maurice Chevalier, and it’s so brilliant that film. I watch it again and again and it’s absolutely enchanting. It’s actually really the story of Sleeping Beauty told in modern terms, and it’s called “Love Me Tonight,” “Love Me Tonight,” and the director is the very innovative and brilliant director Rouben Mamoulian. Good, people have the sound. I’m very happy. I didn’t have it. So.

Oh. Black boxes on the screen, don’t know about that.

“I heard a song by the Gershwins introduced on the radio "as one being by his sister Ari.”

Oh dear, oh dear. Well that is rather unfortunate, isn’t it? That’s rather ignorant. Incidentally, I think I’ve mentioned this before, that song, “A Foggy Day in London Town "had me blue, had me down.

"The British Museum had lost its charms,” is actually almost a direct transcription of the opening of a chapter in Isadora Duncan’s autobiography.

Ruth, it’s difficult for me to advise you. It depends on so many things. It depends on your budget and what kind of hotel you like. Of course, you know, when I’m in Paris I don’t need to stay in hotels. I’ve just stayed twice with two groups over Christmas and after in the Hotel Edouard VII. And if you want a high class hotel that’s very well situated, I would recommend it. It’s good. My own preference would be that there are so many small, charming hotels in Paris. I think I’d rather stay in a smaller hotel. And the one I know and have stayed in a couple of times and I absolutely love is the Hotel Chopin, like the composer Chopin, and it’s in the Passage Jouffroy in the 9th arrondissement.

Rita, your family lives in Montmartre. Lucky you. I hope you’re able to visit them. On my recent visit where I had a group of Australians, I mean, I thought I knew Montmartre really well, but I did a walking day with a local guide and discovered so many more wonderful things. The top, of course, is very touristified and mobbed by tourists. But if you just walk a little way down the hill, it’s really an enchanting part of Paris.

Yes, Audrey Hepburn very, very interesting life indeed that she had. I’m not sure what you’re asking, Hannah, more than my collection.

“Gigi” by Colette is another ideal view of Paris. In fact, yes, Ed, of course I’m going to see you tomorrow. There are two films of “Gigi.” There’s one we all know with Maurice Chevalier singing “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.” But just a couple of years before there was a French version, which I strongly recommend. It is certainly a lot more authentic.

Thank you, Rita. Any of my Zooms. I think everything you have to ask Lockdown. I think pretty well everything now has gone on to the Lockdown archive and should all be available to you.

Thank you, Sharon. And thank you, Naomi. Thank you for all your very kind comments.

Q: “Was there a reflection "of the communist movement in French…”

A: Yes, very much, a little bit before war, but very, very much post-war for a time. And I think Jacques Prevert was a communist actually, who was the co-maker of “Les portes de la nuit.”

Susan, thank you. American movies, if only you knew 'cause my little group of friends that I meet three times a week in our favourite restaurant, the one thing that they love to discuss is movies and everything American. I mean, it’s a mutual love affair, of course, between America and France. And I would say, you know, my French friends, for instance, they took me to see “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.” I absolutely loathed it, I really detested it, but I went with a group of eight French people and they all thought it was absolutely wonderful and they were astonished that I didn’t like it. They thought I was a real miserable old English git.

Yes, you can find… Lorna, you can, you can find all these things on YouTube.

I’m very, very grateful to Karina and Laura and everybody at Lockdown who did all the dirty work in downloading all these clips. I would never be able to do that. Thank you, Ruth.

Q: “In the French films, have subtitles been added?”

A: I’m not sure if that’s always the case on YouTube, but the great classics of the French cinema or all those Marcel Carne movies, you can get them in DVD versions that have subtitles.

Rene, you don’t seem to have received it. I did send you any an email. The name of the book is “Belonging and Betrayal” by Charles Dellheim.

Thank you, Rita, for telling me I’m not a git. Some people think I am. And do you know that Woody Allen film? I’ve got the DVD and I just haven’t got around to seeing it, but mainly 'cause I don’t usually care for Woody Allen, but everybody tells me that is a wonderful movie. Thank you, Mark.

And that seems to be everything for today. And I’ll be seeing you again. What day of the week is it? It’s Wednesday. On Sunday, right. Bye-bye!