Nuit noire, Calcutta (1964) - full transcript
Do the clinical studies
of psychiatrists
concur with
the psychological
analyses of novelists?
We asked writers to draw portraits
of psychopathic personalities
using nothing more
than their talent and imagination.
Will doctors find
some of the main symptoms
of their clinical patients
in these strictly fictional
representations?
Marguerite Duras
has drawn us a portrait
of the "psychopathic personality
of an alcoholic".
DARK NIGHT CALCUTTA
Adaptation:
Paul J. Memmi I Jennifer Kaku
Subtitling:
Nice Fellow
I have come here to write a novel.
It is the story of a man
I have imagined.
He is silent,
naive...
lacking audacity.
He will let any chance
for happiness slip by.
I have made him
vice-consul of France
in Calcutta.
Vice-consul:
a mediocre occupation,
but safe...
and which misleads.
Calcutta...
infinite city
of the lassitude of being...
I must now tell of his failure,
his shattered dream,
and how Calcutta, slowly,
will fully expose his solitude,
his banality,
his anxiety, so tight.
I must invent Calcutta,
completely.
Its heat.
Fans everywhere,
rustling like startled birds...
The love felt,
meeting a woman.
My luck
is the greatest there is.
If I do not succeed,
I will not kill myself.
I will return to Paris.
The living dead.
I will continue doing
what I have done.
No one will know.
How difficult!
How to attack this fortress?
It seems impregnable,
all of a sudden.
Words exist somewhere,
hidden, for the moment.
But I know them all.
All of them!
They will come to me.
the woman is blond.
the woman he meets
is also Calcutta.
The beggar
is Calcutta.
The vice-consul of France, as well.
What is this thing
I want to describe?
What is its nature?
This thing I want to do...
To write!
What is its nature?
Solitude...
I returned it.
I didn't keep it to myself,
like the others.
What do the others do?
I turned this fetid pocket
inside out.
Tomorrow it will be seen.
I do not know
what this book will be.
What I know is,
it's taken my place.
I am no longer anything.
Describe endlessly:
the night
of Calcutta.
An enormous egg.
Black.
Miasmic.
Clouds gather above
the mouth of the Ganges...
in a Himalaya.
A beggar, infested with fleas,
is squatting
in the water of the rivers
near the banks
where the carps lie sleeping.
She is watching out for them,
and she eats them raw.
I don't want to go to England.
I don't want to!
I don't want to anymore.
You will stay here for a while.
You can come to my place,
you know that.
No...
If I stay, I'll stay at the hotel.
I would like that room
for myself alone.
Actually, I'm fine here.
You're here...
and I like that beach.
Did you speak to Jean?
What did he say?
What is he holding against you?
Everything, I think... I don't know.
- Is it over for you?
- How can anyone know?
You can know, I think.
Horrible city...
Horrible vermin everywhere.
The reek of the mud,
stirred by the fans...
He did not go over to her.
to waste one's time,
one's youth...
Those naive words
she must be using...
I would like to tell
of her despair.
A great swelling wave,
a smooth roll
flooding through her...
The lover must have left
a couple of days ago.
His name is Jean.
I overheard.
The woman in Calcutta is blond.
I will invent her tomorrow.
The sky is nothing.
Haze...
He meets her
at a French Embassy reception.
He asks her to dance.
She speaks first.
I don't know how
to write this book anymore.
Calcutta is dying. She is too.
The Ganges
no longer carries anything.
Perhaps I am mistaken?
I must begin again tomorrow. Calmly.
Write every day...
I will find the connection
between all of these things.
Begin at the beginning.
I will tell everything.
I can. I can do everything.
What strength! What happiness!
I will find the phrases.
When did you find out?
Yesterday. At Cabourg.
He pulled out a flask
from his pocket.
Even when he walks!
What are you going to do?
Go to him.
Why not?
So that's how you are...
Why is he here?
To write a book.
He told the bookseller, who told me.
What kind of book?
I don't know.
So you see,
he wants to be left alone.
Any news about Jean?
He's gone.
He left me a note.
He'll come back to see you.
Will you go back to Paris?
I think you should
get some rest first.
Sleep...
One night...
Dark...
Miasmic...
Dark, miasmic.
An enormous egg...
Alcoholic, what a joke...
I can stop whenever I want...
How do you start
to describe emptiness?
Had I been the soul she was seeking,
I'd have approached her.
Is there something
you wanted to know?
This is hell!
The Ganges that carries the dead,
the filth...
I can't do it. It's impossible.
Agony.
It's simply impossible.
So what is there to say?
What is there to do?
of psychiatrists
concur with
the psychological
analyses of novelists?
We asked writers to draw portraits
of psychopathic personalities
using nothing more
than their talent and imagination.
Will doctors find
some of the main symptoms
of their clinical patients
in these strictly fictional
representations?
Marguerite Duras
has drawn us a portrait
of the "psychopathic personality
of an alcoholic".
DARK NIGHT CALCUTTA
Adaptation:
Paul J. Memmi I Jennifer Kaku
Subtitling:
Nice Fellow
I have come here to write a novel.
It is the story of a man
I have imagined.
He is silent,
naive...
lacking audacity.
He will let any chance
for happiness slip by.
I have made him
vice-consul of France
in Calcutta.
Vice-consul:
a mediocre occupation,
but safe...
and which misleads.
Calcutta...
infinite city
of the lassitude of being...
I must now tell of his failure,
his shattered dream,
and how Calcutta, slowly,
will fully expose his solitude,
his banality,
his anxiety, so tight.
I must invent Calcutta,
completely.
Its heat.
Fans everywhere,
rustling like startled birds...
The love felt,
meeting a woman.
My luck
is the greatest there is.
If I do not succeed,
I will not kill myself.
I will return to Paris.
The living dead.
I will continue doing
what I have done.
No one will know.
How difficult!
How to attack this fortress?
It seems impregnable,
all of a sudden.
Words exist somewhere,
hidden, for the moment.
But I know them all.
All of them!
They will come to me.
the woman is blond.
the woman he meets
is also Calcutta.
The beggar
is Calcutta.
The vice-consul of France, as well.
What is this thing
I want to describe?
What is its nature?
This thing I want to do...
To write!
What is its nature?
Solitude...
I returned it.
I didn't keep it to myself,
like the others.
What do the others do?
I turned this fetid pocket
inside out.
Tomorrow it will be seen.
I do not know
what this book will be.
What I know is,
it's taken my place.
I am no longer anything.
Describe endlessly:
the night
of Calcutta.
An enormous egg.
Black.
Miasmic.
Clouds gather above
the mouth of the Ganges...
in a Himalaya.
A beggar, infested with fleas,
is squatting
in the water of the rivers
near the banks
where the carps lie sleeping.
She is watching out for them,
and she eats them raw.
I don't want to go to England.
I don't want to!
I don't want to anymore.
You will stay here for a while.
You can come to my place,
you know that.
No...
If I stay, I'll stay at the hotel.
I would like that room
for myself alone.
Actually, I'm fine here.
You're here...
and I like that beach.
Did you speak to Jean?
What did he say?
What is he holding against you?
Everything, I think... I don't know.
- Is it over for you?
- How can anyone know?
You can know, I think.
Horrible city...
Horrible vermin everywhere.
The reek of the mud,
stirred by the fans...
He did not go over to her.
to waste one's time,
one's youth...
Those naive words
she must be using...
I would like to tell
of her despair.
A great swelling wave,
a smooth roll
flooding through her...
The lover must have left
a couple of days ago.
His name is Jean.
I overheard.
The woman in Calcutta is blond.
I will invent her tomorrow.
The sky is nothing.
Haze...
He meets her
at a French Embassy reception.
He asks her to dance.
She speaks first.
I don't know how
to write this book anymore.
Calcutta is dying. She is too.
The Ganges
no longer carries anything.
Perhaps I am mistaken?
I must begin again tomorrow. Calmly.
Write every day...
I will find the connection
between all of these things.
Begin at the beginning.
I will tell everything.
I can. I can do everything.
What strength! What happiness!
I will find the phrases.
When did you find out?
Yesterday. At Cabourg.
He pulled out a flask
from his pocket.
Even when he walks!
What are you going to do?
Go to him.
Why not?
So that's how you are...
Why is he here?
To write a book.
He told the bookseller, who told me.
What kind of book?
I don't know.
So you see,
he wants to be left alone.
Any news about Jean?
He's gone.
He left me a note.
He'll come back to see you.
Will you go back to Paris?
I think you should
get some rest first.
Sleep...
One night...
Dark...
Miasmic...
Dark, miasmic.
An enormous egg...
Alcoholic, what a joke...
I can stop whenever I want...
How do you start
to describe emptiness?
Had I been the soul she was seeking,
I'd have approached her.
Is there something
you wanted to know?
This is hell!
The Ganges that carries the dead,
the filth...
I can't do it. It's impossible.
Agony.
It's simply impossible.
So what is there to say?
What is there to do?