Dimanche à Pekin (1956) - full transcript

With the support of CNC,
this restoration was made in 2013

from the Kodachrome 16mm original film
- images by Eclair Group,

sound by LE Diapason.

This film was awarded the Grand
Prize for Short Films 1956

Sunday in Peking

For 30 years in Paris,

I had been dreaming about Peking
without knowing it.

In my imagination
I could still see an illustration

from a book I had looked at
in my childhood,

without knowing exactly
what it referred to.

It was, in fact, a scene
at the Gates of Peking.



The avenue leading to
tombs of the Ming Emperors.

And one fine day, there I was.

It's not very often that
one can step into a picture

belonging to one's childhood.

Yet, here I am,
on this Ming avenue,

with the Ming camels, like
trussed chickens in their immobility,

the Ming warriors,
those unknown soldiers,

the horses,
the life-size Ming elephants.

All sorts of animals two-by-two,

placed there to guide the traveler,
with no possibility of error,

to the precise spot where, in fact,
the Ming Emperors are not buried.

Where they are buried,
that's their own affair.

A triumphal arch
on a road leading nowhere -

that might well be
the symbol of China.



It's dawn. The gates of Peking
are still griped in mist,

as if the all city were just
coming out of a steam bath.

The secret of the tombs
was one form of Chinese politeness.

The mist is perhaps another.

This filmy veil that comes
between people,

that prevents them from touching
each other, or staring at each other,

this city at the bottom of the sea,

this dusty light,
midway between water and silk,

all this is still politeness,
but is already a form of painting.

No, this is not an absent-minded
surgeon, it's a townsman

protecting himself against the dust.

Until their brick buildings and
barrier could take up the job.

For the revolution was directed
against the capitalists,

but also against dust, disease and flies.

The result is that one still
finds capitalists in China,

but there are no more flies.

And on its way to a future without
capitalists, disease and flies,

here is the China of tomorrow.

The China which gives me
a cheerful greeting.

In the park where
the China of tomorrow has lead me,

a Pekinese of today is doing
his physical exercise.

Here the traditional sword takes
the place of the western dumbbells.

The sword calls for more skill
than the dumbbells.

For, with the same
movement of the wrist,

you have to whirl
something heavy, the sword,

and something light,
the silk tassel with its pompoms.

After proving his skill
in this stylized violence,

the Pekinese of today engages
in a boxing match with one of his friends.

The spectators tell me that
this is Chinese boxing -

one rarely hits or is hit.

The all skill lies in knowing when and how
to dodge or to come to grips.

When I ask who these
energetic over-forties are,

I'm told quite simply that they are
patients from a local hospital

for whom physical exercise
has been prescribed.

Pei Hai, the northern lake,
the ancient Winter Palace of the Emperors.

Here again I find my children of mist.

They look half-squirrel
and half-apple.

Their appearance is so
charmingly traditional

that one has to make an effort
to remember that 25 years ago,

amidst the filth of the Peking streets,
every morning one found little red bundles:

children that had died in night.

That was the time when our parents
saved their tinfoil wrappers

of the chocolate bars

for the children in China.

I can't delude myself into believing
that our silver paper was of much help.

But after all,
for a western conscience,

there is something satisfying
in the thought that

one at least of these young
athletes, leans as cats,

may owe his existence
to our mother's chocolate.

10 o'clock. A Ming steamroller -
unless it's just a copy -

is leveling one of the walks
of the Winter Palace.

It's time to take a pedicab.

Those contraptions that
have replaced the rickshaw

and mingled with the hustle
of the Chinese town.

The Chinese town,
that is to say, the suburb

that more or less escaped
the geometric planning

imposed by the Mongol conquerors.

With its streamers, its sign boards

and all of paraphernalia
of incomprehensible publicity.

This is the China of the movies.

You'd expect to see Humphrey Bogart
in a white suit coming out of an opium den.

But there are no more opium dens;

and lovers of the picturesque can always
turn back to those fragments of old China

that the flow of modern life
still carries along with it.

The price of modernism
does not seem so high

when we see the harsh price
of the picturesque.

For instance,
this woman with deformed feet,

a survival of the days of the empire.

Through tight Ch'ien-men,
the Gate of Purity,

we move from one city
to another.

From the Chinese town
to the Tartar town.

This is regularly arranged in squares
enclosing the Imperial Palace.

It's less commercial
then the Chinese city,

though its outer avenues are
in permanent use as a market.

And beyond these,
there is a third city,

the town that is being built:
the Peking of 2000 AD.

With the labor of mule and man,
it is arising.

A Peking which fortunately

does not owe much to
European forms of architecture.

It is a Peking where the blend
of tradition and novelty

is symbolized by the presence,
at the top of modern building,

of something like hereditary mannerism:

the four up-turned corners
of a Tartar tent.

It is in this model district that
we've come to see a model school

with its model little girls,

who are playing
or doing practical work in the free air.

A class in the open air,
a class to the light, Giraudoux.

Where retorts and blast furnaces become
the most delightful things in the world

and where meteorology is studied
side-by-side with crochet work.

I'm ashamed to confess that I interrupted
the march of History for a moment,

and by showing the class a picture book
from France, caused general confusion.

But the book is written in French,
and the sight of these queer symbols

gives the young Chinese, I am told,
all the thrills of the exotic.

11 o'clock. I've moved to another district
and here I am the Bridge of Heaven.

It used to be a criminal area.

It's remained a little oasis
of unorganized activity.

It used to be the court of miracles,
now it's a fair.

Midday,
and back in the street again.

The policeman does not blow a whistle,
that would not be polite.

He addresses pedestrians and cyclists
in terms that, though vigorous,

are always grammatically correct.

The children's bus which takes
youngsters to school or to the park.

And all along the streets, the permanent
exhibit of the treasures of Peking.

From the penny toys
they sell on the pavements,

to the shops cover with characters,
as if they were huge boxes of tea.

It is a feast of color.

There is color everywhere:
On the walls, on the fruit,

on the pastry shops and
on the children's toys;

on the musical instruments
they're selling in the open air;

on the theatrical costumes;
on the sweetmeats;

on the cheap porcelain in the market,

and on the precious porcelain in Liu Li Chang,
the street of the antique dealers.

On roofs, as well.

And the all town is a display stand
for Ancient China.

With its temples, with its bronze animals
and its porcelain roofs.

This is no longer
the China of the movies,

it's the China of Jules Verne,
of Marco Polo.

And in this Forbidden City,

the golden centre where the old
imperial spider wove her web,

in this Forbidden City,
now a museum

close to the still white
Beijing Cathedral,

threaten symbolically by the horns of pagodas,

one's imagination
is caught up in History.

One dreams of a fabulous China,

with a past more remote than
the concealed faces of the moon,

revealed only by
the roosters crowing in the night

and the shi lions staring at the Sun.

One thinks of the troops of Genghis Khan

penetrating the passes of the
mountains edged by the Great Wall,

that masterpiece of the Chinese Emperors.

A Maginot line 6.000 miles long
and just about as useless.

The horsemen descending on the plains
and giving it over their Tartar thieves.

The Tartar thieves with soulful eyes
like those of girls.

The Ancient Peking destroyed and
transformed into a Mongol sub-district.

The grandson of the conqueror,
Kublai Khan, rebuilding the capital

and imposing upon it an order
that would indorse for seven centuries.

And sowing in his palaces a blue flower
that grows only in Mongolia

to assuage the homesickness
of his troops.

And the weariness of the conquerors,

their inability to impose order
on this vast mass.

And the beginning of an era
of legendary wars

that still resound through
the Peking Opera House today.

The all History of China,
the truly historical and the legendary,

lives again in the theatre
and in the marionettes.

There is Sun Wukong, King of the Monkeys
and thief who robbed Heaven,

half-Prometheus
and half-Charlie Chaplin.

There are the gods, bearing
sledgehammers and thunderbolts.

There're the monsters, tigers, dragons,

who come and take food
from a girl's hand

and respond to her caresses.

There're the courtesans,
who died of love;

the girls of noble family,
who married gardeners;

and the generals,
ancestors of all those generals

who for 2.000 years
made and destroyed China.

Until one 1st of October,

the Chinese people celebrated
their Bastille Day,

their Day of Revolution.

Let us say no more about History.

In the gardens, during the afternoon,
History goes on.

So long shut away
behind its symbols,

China is now call upon to reveal itself.

And we are required to
understand these sensitive faces,

these men, these women,
these children

with whom we shall share History,
as we shall have to share our daily bread.

This crowd, so truly human,
delights in being face to face with animals.

The zoo in Peking is full of visitors.

Here is this crowd,
like a broad blue river,

with its pairs of lovers chatting tenderly
about the five-year plan.

Here is this crowd, which bears
you along like a mighty ocean.

No amount of exasperation or
pushing will carry you against it.

Around this bear,
children are dancing to a little tune

that will stay with me
until the end of the afternoon.

We end our Sunday at the Summer Palace.

The Pioneers have taken
possess of the islands.

Their laughter and their songs
are like birds in the silence.

All this is as remote as China,
and as familiar as Hyde Park.

Against this background of past splendor,

in the avenues of this Mongol Versailles,

one wonder about
both past and future.

But for my part,
as I look at these scenes

and take them in
and listen to them,

I just wonder, at the close
of this sabbath day in Peking,

whether China itself
is not the sabbath of the whole world.

The End

Subtitles by Tomé Silva
August of 2019