Venom and Eternity (1951) - full transcript

A restored print:

Dear spectators, you are about
to see a discrepant film.

No refunds will be given.

The Management.

ON VENOM AND ETERNITY
A treatise by Jean-Isidore Isou

This film is dedicated to:

and to all those who contributed
something new and personal,

to the art of cinema.

In hopes that the filmmaker will,
some day, be judged worthy of them.

This film is part of a larger work

which has the fervent support
of thirty "youths," at most.



Léon Bloy said you cannot be "somebody"

before the age of 50.

The economist Keynes wrote
that a system of ideas

takes at least 25 years
to reach the "public."

But the filmmaker
himself is also too young;

his work is inevitably fragmentary;

and parts that have been published,
have been scoffed at or ignored.

By the same author:

Chapter 1 First principles

The sound was first recorded
on vinyl with the kind help of:

These disks, when transferred to film,

retain some of their "crackling" noises.

These were kept because of
the contribution they make

to the (involuntary) revolutionary
character of the film.



The characters, story, and settings

are (of course!) imaginary:

any resemblance to real people or places

is purely accidental.

Even the Saint-Germain neighborhood
has been invented by the filmmaker;

it simply represents the
heros Way of the Cross.

Daniel left the Cine-Club,
his head shattered by noise,

as if his skull had
been used as a goblet

by cannibals from the Solomon Islands,

as if his brain had been battered
by barbaric drinking toasts.

After the Cine-Club screening,

and during the usual
incoherent debate that followed,

he had tried, for the
first time, to expound

his new and original ideas

about the Art of film.

His own words, thrown out to the room

now came back to him as
intoxicating as alcohol.

I am engrossed by the cinema,
by its inherent potential

for discovery and for
uninterrupted progress.

I love the cinema when it is insolent

and refuses to obey the rules.

A film can make Cinema History today

because guys like Griffith

rather than stick to tradition,

by leaving the camera in one place

and have the actors act around it

had the audacity to shoot close-up,

to show tears rolling
down the heroine's face

a simple fraction of the whole

monstrously filling the screen,
to the detriment of the rest.

I don't like imitators!

In cinema, I love Eric von
Stroheim's innovative cruelty,

how he bursts with his sadistic nails

a white pimple on his terrible face!

How the arrogant hateful officer

drops a woman's bag without
bending to pick it up

only for the camera to
reveal to us seconds later

that his two arms are
horribly mutilated.

But I don't like imitators!

I love in cinema

when Eisenstein
in "Battleship Potemkin",

uses social symbolism
for the first time.

A crowd crushes itself,

shot on the steps by an advancing army

rigid as the inhuman
tank of Greek fatalism.

The contrast between a baby carriage
escaping disaster all by itself

and the regular cadence
of the soldiers' boots

carries the revelation
of revolutionary history!

I don't like Eisenstein's imitators!

We have all seen Chaplin's innovative

use of indirect allusion
in "A Woman of Paris":

instead of seeing the train leave, we
see the light of the train's windows

rolling across a woman's face.

I'm fascinated by cinema,

by the surrealist imagery of
Buńuel's "Un Chien Andalou":

a cloud slicing the moon

is compared to an eye
halved by a razor blade.

The disgusting iris pukes from
its socket like a raindrop.

- But we know all that!
- Get to the point!

- Bravo!
- Strip!

Calm down, you assholes, shut up!

I just wanted to say
that I don't want to make films

that take advantage of
other people's mistakes.

I want to run my own risks,
for the sake of my soul.

I want my own personal heaven or hell.

- Selfish bastard!
- Petit-bourgeois!

First of all, I think
the cinema is too rich.

It's obese. It's reached its
limits, its maximum capacity.

It will explode if it
tries to get any bigger!

A mere blockage will
shatter this fat-filled pig

into a thousand pieces.

I hereby announce the
destruction of cinema,

the first apocalyptic
sign of disjunction,

the rupture of this ballooning,
pot-bellied organism known as film.

- Anarchist!

Films today have a finished,

perfect, tranquil quality.

This results from the harmony
of elements in composition,

a classical unity
of constituent parts:

word/image.

One must divide to conquer.

The youngest members of the family

must be sent out as an avant-garde

to try and clear a space for themselves

in this new independent movement.

Like in migrations
or imperial conquests!

Yes, we must destroy the two
wings of cinema, sound and picture.

- Butcher!

We must break down
this natural association

that made speech the
correspondent of vision

or the spontaneous commentary
born from the picture.

I want to separate the ear from
its cinematic master: the eye.

I want to slap onto a film

the sound of a roaring crowd,
unrelated to what's seen onscreen.

The pictures must
proceed with indifference,

irrespective to the
terrible story in sound

projected, hurled, into the
obscurity of the theater.

The link must be severed
between the succession of images,

coherent unto themselves maybe,

but in no way coherent
in relation to the sounds.

- Rubbish!

An intellectual's strength is
limited by his field of reference;

he is as much a creature of habit

as a cow chewing the cud.

Daniel's words were mangled by
shouting from the auditorium...

Up till now, words have
merely commented on the image.

From now on the image will become
a relatively inessential complement

to the screaming soundtrack!

- It's not a scream, its a scram

its a scam, it's a crime...

- Shut up! Let him talk, you imbeciles!

If you analyze any film,
you'll see that

it's composed of a series of images

in which lightning-like
strikes of dialogue

punctuate the hero's visual gestures.

I recently looked at a film dialogue:

just like the intertitles
in silent films,

it made no sense without the image.

From now on, I want

the spoken mass of the film to
be a rigorously precise surface,

to the detriment of the images.

Destroy the pictures for the words,

contrary to what is usually done,

do the opposite of what
we believe cinema to be.

Who ever said that cinema,
whose meaning is motion,

has to be the motion of images

and not the motion of words?

- Moron!

- What will you do
with the pictures, then?

Pictures in cinema bother me

for many reasons, you fools.

Photos are already too banal!

The different combinations
of angles, of chiaroscuro,

superimposition, soft focus...

it all goes to show we must
go further, beyond photography.

We must attack
the film material itself.

- Ridiculous!
- First, the images must rot!

The room fell silent.

Daniel did not seem
so stupid after all,

even to those who disliked
his physical appearance.

The fact that photography had shifted

from its early precision to
the artifice of special effects;

from a copy of reality, as it was said,

to artistic photography,

from its reality to
its monstrous unreality,

replaced its clarity with
a game of chiaroscuro,

is a proof of its debasement,

its obsolescence into uselessness.

If you fiddle too much with something
in your attempts to transform it,

you extract its secret
charms, you kill it!

- That's what you do when you
fiddle too much with your girl!

Exactly!

Think of the Marquis de Sade and
his relationship with the weaker sex.

The divine marquis knew
so many "hot chicks"

that his search for the unknown

led him to a special form
of love known as perversion.

The more ugly, toothless,

decaying, and disgusting the woman,

the more he was attracted to
her and excited by her love.

The cinema has reached a
similar point in its development,

as has contemporary painting,

with its impressionists and cubists;

poetry, from Baudelaire
to the Lettrists;

and modern music.

The more spoiled, perverted,
and rotten the material,

the more beautiful it is.

The more mangled, gangrenous,
and rancid the film material,

the more precious it
will be to the filmmaker.

Creators are interested only
in the novelty of creation!

That's why they are
obsessed with ugliness today;

it's the new beauty.

- Why go to the cinema
to look for ugliness

when you can just look in the mirror?

- Shut up!
- Fuck you!

- Silence! Let him speak!

I've no intention of telling
you the story of my life!

We're not in a confessional here.

I remember, as a child, in one
of my father's grocery stores

I saw an ambassadors
daughter come buy Roquefort,

Camembert and Limberger cheeses.

Looking at her, I was
sickened to think

that she could eat
such putrid cheeses.

The older the box,

the more maggot-ridden the cheese,

the greater her
pleasure in acquiring it.

We all thought she was crazy.

And she was so serious,
distinguished-looking, and blonde

that her appearance lent a
seraphic note to her craziness.

As I grew older and my palate
became more refined,

I too grew to prefer Camembert,

Roquefort and Limberger to
yogurt and cottage cheese.

I came to realize that it takes

a great knowledge of
and love for cheese

to appreciate the
ones that really stink!

The same example
holds true for cinema.

I spent my youth in dark theaters,

the modern equivalent
of the opium den.

I could have imagined a thousand
realistic, unreal or pleasant stories.

But it takes a great love for film

and enormous amounts of raw stock...

- Have you eaten much film, then?
- Until I felt sick,

but I'd rather be sick than
keep a bad taste in my mouth...

­ That's a cop out!

- It's also very difficult.

Is it a perversion of
language, or of the tongue?

I may not be right,

but the others will soon be wrong.

In my search for renewal,

I simply exhausted the
possibilities before they did!

While the others are still

trying their chances with photography,

I've given up on it:

Im attacking the
film material directly,

destroying it, more moved
by its madness

than by its reason.

Sadistic photography, that's it!

- Youre just decadent!
- Idiots!

The evolution of art,
of an artistic medium

has nothing to do
with the evolution of society.

Sade wrote his books during
the French Revolution,

which was not at all a
decadent period of our history

it was the birth of a nation!

- Hes a Democrat!

- He must be Jewish!

- Antisemite!
- Shut up!

- Fascist!

- Go tell Stalin!

- Go home to Truman!

Cinema itself has led me
to this cinematic rebirth!

Words, for me,

with their nuances and definitions,

reveal the impotence, the
limitation of the image!

A text which refuses to
take the image into account

will enlarge the
possibilities of photography,

injecting the cinema
with a Bogomoletz serum.

In destroying the limitations
of the cinematic image

Ive destroyed it

exactly as if I'd turned
a frog into a bull.

We'll find ourselves
face to face with a bull.

Excuse me, Mr. Bull,

I didn't know you were a
frog in a previous life!

- Beat him up

and throw him out!

My films would concentrate primarily

upon making language a
supplement of photography -

as if the sound was external
to the image and did not emerge,

as it has up till now,
from the internal logic,

the stomach of the image.

Language will no longer
emerge from the screen

to coincide with its sequences,

but from another place entirely:

as if, in a very concrete
and visible manner,

it was an external addition
unrelated to the image,

a necktie of spit hanging
from an ivory tooth

as if the image prowled
an invisible field,

a place both supernatural
and inhuman, from which

a voice indifferent to humanity
sends forth its oracles!

Photography will thus
gain a fourth dimension,

but a fourth dimension of such force

as to subjugate the other three
- oppress them,

flatten and destroy them!

The enrichment of photography
has thus led me to shred it,

to chew it up...

- Don't laugh, Mister mouse

you could end up with
a rat in your mouth.

- This young man is right,
you bunch of idiots!

When the substance of an
art form begins to decay,

everything we express with
it is decayed in advance.

Our sensibility, our
originality are useless

when faced with the limitations
of a banal means of expression

which is in the end determinant:

We must change the raw materials
and the techniques of cinema

if we want to communicate
a new sensibility,

an original sensibility.

Why are you defending this
cinematic corpse-robber?

You scrap merchant of old film!

Scrap artist, scam artist,

scalp collector!

Get lost, Figaro of the cinema!

But, you bunch of cattle, you swine,

you don't understand that
my young friend Daniel

- Hey Daniel, it's Pierre,

I'm defending you back here!

Don't you understand?

What Daniel means is that cinema
already has its masterpieces;

that all that's left for us to
do is chew on these masterpieces,

to digest them and to vomit them up!

Vomiting up old masterpieces

is the only way for us
to manifest our originality:

puking out these masterpieces
is our only chance

to create cinematic
masterpieces of our own.

This is basically what
Picasso did for painting,

as the creator of
swallowings and spittings

of well-digested old paintings!

Cinematic photography must
thus enter its infernal phase,

its evil phase!

I've often been stunned
and dazzled while thinking

of the heights of refinement
that the Marquis de Sade

prided himself upon; eating
his mistresses' fecal matter,

adoring the excrement more
than the women themselves...

- Disgusting!
- Sadist!

Heights which I, alas,
am far from attaining.

But I know that cinema
must nourish itself

from the excrement of
its own photography,

or else it will congeal

into the Pompeiian
academism known as Hollywood,

the USSR, or Italy.

Foreign spy!

Daniel thought that French culture

was totally foreign to these idiots

that he himself would look like a
mulatto to all the fools of the world

as one might say:
"fools of the world, unite!

Break your chains and
destroy this foreign spy

with no country to call his own"

You're a bunch of idiots,

but maybe there's one
among you who understands.

For him I digress!

In terms of the photography,

I'll fuck the film stock up
with rays of sunlight,

I'll take the outtakes from old films

and scratch them, skin them,

so that unknown beauties
can see the light of day;

I'll sculpt flowers on film

and a new order will
emerge from the disorder,

just as Cézanne turned
Impressionism into a museum art.

I want a film which will
really hurt your eyes

like one of those old projections
where the film breaks and burns

and the numbers 1,3,5,7
appear at top speed.

I've always loved the countdown;

maybe because I associate them
with the beautiful old classic films

and my taste has shifted,
from what I loved,

to that which accompanied it!

Yeah, right... thanks,
thats a fine present!

We should leave the
cinema with a headache!

There are so many films, every week,

that we come out
as stupid as we go in.

I'd prefer to give you
headaches than nothing at all!

I'm not being paid by an
optician to bring him clients,

but I'd prefer to ruin your eyes
than to leave you indifferent!

But in the midst of this visual mess,

voice alone will be
coherent and terrible,

until the day when creative
and innovative research

deforms it into incongruity!

The spectator must
leave the cinema blind,

his ears crushed,

torn apart by this
disjunction of word and image:

shriveled up in both departments.

The rupture between
language and photography

will form what I call

DISCREPANT CINEMA.

I hereby announce the
manifesto of discrepant cinema!

Film that is lacerated,

or voluntarily distressed
by the film-maker

will be known as a "chiseled" film.

Youll piss off your audience!

I don't think so,

but if that's the case,
to hell with spectators!

I know whats up!

Those who will
particularly detest my film

will be the camera
operators, the professionals

for whom the cinema has never been

an art form

but an industry unionized to defend
the current means of production.

But who ever said

that cinema is an art
for photographers?

But if the photography doesn't
matter, then it's not cinema any more,

it's the radio, it's
reading in an armchair...

Why not?

Radio, via television, has
become a kind of cinema.

Why should the cinema not, in return,

become a sort of radio?

You are right, sir.

There is a continual
displacement of the arts

(poetry and painting
have become music)

a displacement which represents

the enrichment of one art by another,

or the abandon of certain qualities

in favor of other arts...

Daniel thought that he would always
want to do something different;

music as poetry,

painting as novel,

and now the novel as cinema:

a novel read aloud
by a ladys companion

to spectators sitting in front of
the burning fireplace of the screen

watching sequences, like logs,

fall and transform abruptly
from incandescence to ash.

We must age the public,
cradle them with the voice,

fascinate them with our
stories or send them to sleep.

But that's not cinema!

But thats just it,

if what I want to do is
cinema already,

theres no evolution;

no conquest of territories

that dont yet exist!

If we always cling to
what already exists,

well never make any progress!

If what Im doing is cinema already

theres no merit in it,

since it already exists.

But my actions take their
meaning from the fact

that what I make
was not cinema before,

but, thanks to me,

has since become cinema.

But what good is evolution?

The idea is not to make a film

and play about with various techniques

for ones own benefit,

but to find out how the cinema
can surpass itself,

to open a path

for it to forge ahead.

Its not just about doing

something new with one film;

but, rather, indicating a whole
new path for cinema to follow.

Discovery, my friends,
for good or bad,

better or worse;

but there's nothing
bad about innovation

Everything that existed
in the past was bad,

otherwise we would never
have gone beyond it,

we would never have renounced

the past with revolution
and radical change:

everything that exists is bad!

All we have is the future:

creation, in other words; the
struggle for something new.

Nothing else can save
us from mass suicide.

I believe, stupidly perhaps,
in a better future for humanity,

I can overturn the art of
the screen a million times,

and more profoundly...

Thats enough!

But for the first film,
thatll suffice...

And Daniel left the room.
He thought to himself:

Thats my battle:

Ill have to put my Cine-club
spiel and the reaction it provoked

among the eternal public,

I'll have to put it all into my film!

It will be the film to take cinematic
posterity as its subject matter,

auto-reflexive cinema,

a cinema that produces
original masterpieces,

without resorting to "gimmickry."

It will be the first
cinematic manifesto

to be presented inside a cinema.

It is, moreover, the first time
that the Cine-Club

will participate in a film,

that reflection
or debate about cinema

will be preferred to ordinary
cinema in and of itself:

Daniel arrived in
Saint-Germain-des-Prés;

it was the evening of
29th September 1950.

He was full of joy and terror:

the dregs of the debate had swelled,

cultivated and
developed his film-to-be.

He could picture it in its entirety,

from the opening title
to the end credits.

ON VENOM AND ETERNITY

It will also be the first time

that the credits will be visible
not only in the middle of the film

but all the way through,
said Daniel to himself.

This is the end of the first part.

I hope you find the
second part more amusing...

In front of the Club Saint-Germain,
Daniel's short-sighted eyes

sought some kind of
event capable of exalting

or expanding his soul.

The debate, the consistently
rowdy incomprehension -

(comprehension, on the other hand,
being velvety, mute, less apparent),

- their shouting had
given him goose-pimples,

as though his pores had
been devoured by mange.

After scouring the dark bar

- more to be seen than to
look for anyone in particular -

he was on his way
to the Bonaparte cafe

when he got the impression
that someone was calling him.

- Daniel! Daniel!

He turned around.

- Daniel! Eve is looking for you.
- Eve?

- Eve! You know, the Norwegian girl...

- Which Eve?

He already knew.

He pictured Eve,

her stride which resembled
that of an evil empress,

cold as marble, like a
sculptural image of war,

the green seaweed of her green eyes,

her mass of blond hair,

which made it seem that she
carried the sun on her aquatic head.

She had haunted him for days,
ever since he had met her

at an art opening
where he had spoken out,

and been forcibly ejected by the owner,

because he had previously insulted
the "boss lady" in his newspaper.

Eve had tormented him until
the night of August 23rd,

when he had left his room
after an orgy of sleep,

ready to grab onto the
first girl who came along:

"You or another..." he said
to one of his dance partners,

in an outburst of indifference;

- any girl would do

as long as she could make
him dream, make him laugh.

That night of August 23rd

he had pinned his eye

onto the blond headed figure
with its back turned to him

as though his gaze were
pinned on like a ribbon.

- Would you like to dance?
- You seem to be alone.

Without turning her head: I am alone
and thats how Im going to stay

He swallowed a bag full
of aspirin and pee.

Ah

The whole place tasted of ashes,

the dancers seemed
to be shit-encrusted.

He abandoned the place
as one changes career,

and went to try his luck elsewhere.

- You or another...

Since then he had often run
into Eve around the neighborhood,

his eye had been rinsed,
washed of its vision:

he had squandered the
image of the young woman

and guessed at the
nostalgia she carried about

from bar to bar, from
bistrot to cabaret.

She carried herself
haughtily; like a movie star,

hoping to provoke a cinematic
adventure for herself,

whereas a film can tell
only one unique story,

an adventure which by chance
disturbs the life of its characters,

a once-in-a-lifetime experience,

similar to winning the lottery.

Some weeks after the
night of August 23rd,

on the same day that
the mysterious shadow

had told him that Eve
was looking for him,

while he was talking in
the street with a friend,

Eve brusquely approached him.

Was it you who asked me to dance,
in the street, on the 23rd of August?

Daniel hesitated.

An ancestral memory warned him that
he might be due a slap in the face.

- Have I fucked up again?

These girls are so sensitive...

So he replied, hesitantly:

yes

She had prepared her reply in advance:

I wanted to say I'm sorry; I really
regretted being so impolite...

What...?

Im ready to make it up to you.

I'd like to make it up to you.

The words "make it up to you"
repeated themselves on her lips

and the decision with which she
spoke mitigated her foreign accent,

the gravelly impieties of her speech.

He was dazzled by
her sudden appearance,

although he was not at all surprised;

because a couple of times,
at previous balls or dances,

girls who had initially
refused to dance with him

for precise reasons

(his conceited attitude, for example,
or the friend sitting beside him ...)

or for imprecise reasons,

had changed their minds
without explanation.

He was thus in a permanent
state of expectation:

perhaps every man hopes
for a reversal of fortune

Face to face with Eve,
all he could say was:

- Oh, that's ok,
don't worry about it...

He turned to his friend, who
was grinning lecherously

Eve continued on her
way; her rolling stride

making each step seem like
a specially prepared dish,

the swinging motion of her
hips spinning a spider's web.

Now Daniel was standing in
front of Eve, blinking his eyes,

while she smiled at him with
a slight air of timidity.

Eve looked Daniel straight in the eye:

- Would you tell me about your poetry?

Daniel recoiled.

So she knew, the bitch -

the young man who had invited
her to dance was not the same

person as the young man
she was apologizing to;

local hooligan versus scandalous
young poet, about whom the papers

Yes, that's it.

And what a stupid way
to start a conversation,

there's nothing I hate more
than talking about my poetry,

no more than I wanted to discuss my
Judaism with the Spanish princess,

to whom I made a whole
antisemitic speech.

There are certain
secret things about which

it should be forbidden to
speak below a certain level,

although I love discussing the
Kabala with Rémi or with the Rabbi,

I tell everyone else
I'm just another student,

a young fool who can only talk
about women, dancing and movie stars,

who doesn't give a shit, the ideal man,

prestigious and powerful, who is
sorely lacking from human society,

impossible to hurt because
he turns everything down

But it was too late for that with Eve,

she knew whom she was dealing
with; she knew the ropes

- Wouldnt you prefer to go
for a walk along the Seine?

I don't really like anonymous
relationships, he thought.

People hide behind a mask
of words and attitudes,

a mask that is only really
shattered by the cries of lovemaking.

That's why I hate relationships

based on:

"Hello, what are you reading?
Hows it going?"

We take full stock of ourselves only
when faced with the ordeal of desire

and the real woman,
consisting of secrets,

hidden dreams and nocturnal frankness

reveals herself,

her true face,

whether beautiful or indifferent.

Our relationship is formalized

in this zone of truth,

the starting point from which

we can proceed to daily life;

knowing what to expect
from one another.

Love has put our lives in danger,

just as great books

or great perils would do.

If I can't stand talking to
a woman I haven't slept with

it's because I don't like cheating.

"What should we say to each other,
Madame? I don't know you at all."

I don't like men, in general,

the only thing I have
in common with them

is that I love their wives.

Daniel was childish;
when a woman resisted him,

thereby his link with his fellow men,

he hated her and all humanity.

Now Daniel strolled along the
banks of the Seine with Eve,

and the Seine beside Eve

was like the long funeral cortege
of a member of officialdom,

national funeral rites, black
and silver, for a dead city,

proceeding silently towards
a faraway cemetery

The Seine slept peacefully,
curled up under the bridge

like the ultimate beggar.

Too bad it wasn't raining;

rain makes people intelligent...

The afternoon condescended
towards evening

and time seemed immense, that Sunday

When Daniel spoke to Eve,

he used the same tried
and tested phrases

that had for a long time
served him as semaphores, guides

or signposts of conversation,

between which he threaded
more spontaneous reflections,

soaked, infected with the intelligence
of his pre-prepared remarks.

It's true,

I do want to sleep with you.

But I'm afraid you'll make a scene.

Psychological complications, you know,

have in todays world replaced
conventional moral complications.

If I could purchase you

enjoy you

without having to go through
all the preliminary politesse

out of consideration for
your personality, etc

"Personalities" and "individuals"

piss me off

What a pity there are no more slaves.

Men will never get used to
no longer having men

at their disposal, men
of exceptional quality.

He recalled that in
the days of Antiquity

one could buy oneself a philosopher.

- You're adorable, you're so spoiled,

but don't you think that
the poor, the slaves,

could one day destroy people like you?

Daniel thought about his
expulsion from the Communist Party.

The terrible sadness
that he had felt that day

reminded him of the day
he broke up with Denise;

abandoning his girlfriend
had provoked the same feelings

as the abandonment
of his social beliefs.

Much later, all that
seemed derisory to him.

But at the time he had
felt that he was renouncing,

being mercilessly eliminated from
the only possible course of action,

losing his health, as
though incited to suicide.

What was he to do?

One is amazed to find oneself
still alive the next day!

You know, Eve,

the Communists make me laugh.

Let them enjoy their comfort
for another couple of years.

That's all I need to
make a few masterpieces,

maybe a film,

something that I can save

from the dribble and spit
of electoral politics.

And then

I'll sweetly end my days
in a political prison,

I'll read detective novels
from the prison library,

the type of novel that I like.

I'll dream

Books, sleep

and dreams of women will
keep me going until I die.

In any case, I will never, never,
do anything that doesn't please me.

If they don't let me read and dream,

I'll go on hunger strike

and die.

They'll get you in any case.

Who had said to him once?

Anybody, innocent or guilty,
anticommunist or communist,

who doesn't expect a violent death

to be shot or to die
in prison, is a fool!

No-one is master of
his own destiny today.

- You seem strong from a distance

but in actual fact
you're quite fragile.

- You can say that again

We say "we must confront life," etc.

The truth is that I don't like life.

I despise it too much to be able

to stand it hurting me in any way.

It's like letting myself be insulted
by the concierge or by the grocer.

I've always wanted to say to
life: "who do you think you are,

scum, fool

to make me suffer like this?"

And he laughed.

They say you're a fascist.

But I think that you're
too human to be fascist.

When I was eliminated from the Party,

because I found my
immediate superior too stupid

(a girl who wore glasses and
was riddled with complexes),

I was furious, I wanted
to attack her with vitriol.

(She was too ugly for a gang-bang).

My friends and I

founded a literary revue

with the following motto:

We the founders of this review,

three geniuses,

offer our services to
the highest bidders!

But no one wanted us,

no one needs geniuses,

only faithful followers.

We wrote in the revue:

"We will one day be great men

but we're sick of all those
who encourage us with words,

incapable of finding a penny
in their pocket to give us.

We want to be great men now,

not in twenty years, when we are old.

We are always twenty years too late

to enjoy our own audacity,
to laugh at our elders."

They called us the valets
of imperialism

and then they invited
us to rejoin the Party,

because the Party needs leaders,

but by then I'd tasted the
pleasures of fighting for myself

and not for others,

I didn't want to any more...

Who was it, that had said it to him?

His fertile mind adapted their
ideas to suit his own personal style.

I didn't get along with them,
because I don't like slogans.

Politics, perhaps because of
its dedication to doctrine,

repeats and regurgitates
certain formulas

as if it takes men
for newborn babies...

Maybe I get bored
faster than other people?

When I was a child I invented
new prayers every night.

I always wanted different prayers.

Truths that have to be repeated
too often no longer amuse me;

boring truths are nothing but lies,

because theyve used up the warmth
which made them pleasant to live with.

You know, I've never
done anyone any harm

except for the usual indiscretions
of childhood and young adulthood

but today I'd like the right
to think what I want to think,

to take it as far as I want.

At seventeen, at twenty,

I thought that I could do something
for other people, for humanity...

But I later understood
that there's nothing I can do,

absolutely nothing
no matter how hard I try.

So now I just want them to leave
me in peace with my weaknesses.

You know, I never really liked
selling the Party newspapers

I was ashamed

I preferred to walk in the rain

or to go home and read
André Breton, or Keyserling.

Eve turned to him:

- I always find men who don't share
my ideas very unattractive.

But I like you!

So our ideas can't be too
different, despite what we say...

Daniel said to himself that
he would not talk politics

in his film,

although he had wanted to show that
he was well acquainted with it...

Then Daniel and Eve's conversation

turned towards themselves,
towards love.

Eve stared at Daniel

as she would later when they were
dancing in the corner bistro...

A particular melody
doesn't necessarily

have to remind you
of a beautiful woman.

You might hear it with
a very boring individual.

But, since the melody is beautiful,

you invent a love affair
to go with it,

a non-existent nostalgia,

a sadness you have yet to experience.

Music thus creates a memory
of something you've never had,

but which you would like to have had,

an adventure to match the melody.

During the slow set,
Eve stopped abruptly.

- I can't dance with you any more.

It's having too much
of an effect on me...

Despite the "experienced"
air of the women in our group,

"young girls" still exist

in the old-fashioned sense of the word,

capable of stupefying emotion

when faced with the
most simple contacts,

of a timidity which has survived
the brash attitude of their peers;

thanks to the influence
of certain books and films

the virginal modesty affected by the
young girls of previous generations

is as fiercely suppressed today
as 'vulgarity' was in the past.

Timidity is unfashionable,
by today's standards...

The tall young woman trembled

in Daniel's jaded arms

(jaded after years
of dancing, of women).

Unable to believe that her
constant trembling was the result

of emotion, he asked her:

- My God, you're trembling.
- Why are you trembling?

She replied:

- I'm sorry, it's just that
I'm not used to dancing...

And suddenly, as if
relieved by this admission,

she completely stopped trembling
and began to dance calmly,

to Daniel's great regret.

Furious at himself, and at her, then,

he found himself reliving a prior
instance of oppressive self-possession

when he had said to a
young woman, during a waltz:

- You're boring me, Mademoiselle,

I find you very boring...

He had left her there in
the middle of the vortex

abandoned among the couples, lost,

wanting the earth to swallow her up -

just like the little
hunchback of the Moulin Rouge

(if true, it's a dreadful story)

who, when seated,

looks normal, free of her defects.

A handsome young man
has just asked her to dance.

Upon standing up, however,

she reveals her monstrous deformity,

crouching, shriveled up at his feet.

Turning towards her
partner on the dance floor

where he had followed her, horrified,

she found him gone.

He disappeared into the crowd,

preferring the short and
heart-rending cruelty of escape

to the torture of the dance -

three dances, one after another,

under the pitiless and despising
eyes of the other dancers;

the hunchback, in the
middle of the dancers,

entangled, dwarfed by the
men's legs and women's skirts

blinded by shame, feeling
more observed than observing,

irreparably lost to Daniel
in the crowd

just as he had decided
to drop this girl

who, having regained her
self-possession, heard him say:

- You were a lot better
when you were trembling

Now you seem so normal, so stupid

and disappointing that you
don't interest me any more...

Abandoned on the dance floor,
red with shame...

he didn't know what happened next; we
rarely see the results of our actions.

He was all ready to drop Eve

- "she's not even pretty" -

when she stopped, as they turned
the corner into a dark street

(eternal pulp fiction heroine)

and balanced herself
on her hips, with fury:

- Don't you like me, Daniel?

Don't you want to make love to me?

- Ohhhh, maybe... why not?

Why not?

She didn't believe in love either.

But then night followed,
sewn up with love,

as one might thread a queen's
veil with precious stones.

But it's too precise a piece of work
to have the right to discuss it here.

In the morning, Daniel occupied

such a deep place in Eve's heart,

he had mastered Eve's
body to such an extent;

Daniel's frenetic and obstinate brain

perfect even in the throes
of an incendiary passion,

seemed so conquering, so victorious

and so exhausted by the
satisfaction of his bottomless thirst

that Eve was overjoyed;

delighted that something
about her body and her soul

could still give pleasure to Daniel,

that she could be of service
to his joys, his thoughts.

- I know it's stupid,
but, if you want,

I could stay with you all my life!

Your life is all that counts...

She said this the
following night, at dinner,

when Daniel, having stuffed his face,

excused himself for
a very bourgeois burp.

- You can allow yourself all sorts
of obscenities with me, darling,

nothing could seem dirty to me,
coming from you.

That morning however, the first
and only one they spent together

the sight of this girl whose
ordinarily stormy nature

had been domesticated by fulfillment
and by her love for Daniel,

who had become pure and clean,

who made herself small
to fit into his arms,

who molded herself into the
Procrustean bed Daniel offered her,

who even held her breath

from fear of overstepping the limits

of this tiny refuge, that she filled
with the immense instability

of her happiness.

And watching Eve,

who had become the woman who loved
him with this animal passivity,

a tiger reduced to
a living bedside rug,

Daniel's thoughts,
gradually but determinedly,

led him to Denise,

the Denise to whom he had bizarrely
attached himself one New Year's Eve

after leaving Mimi drunk in bed.

On the street, in front
of Editions de Minuit

- Hello Daniel.
- It was Jimmy, his friend.

- Come on, I'm taking
you to a New Year's ball

thrown by a whorehouse
madam, said Daniel.

- I want to pass by the
Boul' Mich on the way

to clear my head and, to be honest,

in the incurable hopes of finding
some sort of empty adventure.

In front of the Dupont-Latin,

in the midst of a crowd of people
whom he hesitated to acknowledge,

he saw a tall young
woman with chestnut hair

she turned towards him with
laughing eyes, blue or green

the color of a new and
unfamiliar territory...

- Wait for me a minute, I'll be back...

He abandoned Jimmy...

Daniel always abandons
you for somebody else!

How long can he keep going?
What port will he dock at?

He went to join the young woman;
with the habitual banalities,

a conversation as
conventional as 'hello';

he persuaded her to abandon her plan
to go to the Kentucky dance hall.

Why does it always work out for him?

Because he never
remembers his failures.

Our memories are victories.

Our defeats belong to
that mass of immensity,

the absolute that escapes our grasp.

Her name was Denise; he would
crush her beneath his wheels.

He found her thin, but
she had a generous body.

At the Kentucky, while they were
dancing, a young man approached them:

- May I kiss you, Mademoiselle?

She turned to Daniel and,
seeing the look on his face:

- No, I'm with the love of my life...

And she believed it.
And Daniel believed it.

And when he took her home, he thought:

I want to do you good here
(and pointed to her belly)

and hurt you here
(and pointed to her heart)

It was an extraordinary night.

He loved her so much,
he sank into her body,

he shed tears of love - the
cynic, the hitherto aloof Daniel -

- Who will love you like I do, Denise?

It's crazy. Tell me,
over and over again,

those ridiculous words:

I love you Daniel

- I love you Daniel, I love you Daniel,

I love you Daniel.

When we hear these
precarious words we shiver;

we feel as if every word

is splitting us open
and shattering our soul.

You know, Daniel,

we search for the real
person behind the facade

beyond the labyrinth of words

in which we can lose ourselves forever

where all men go to die.

How many corpses in the
labyrinth of the dictionary?

How many men clutch the
bars of those corridors

from which they can never escape,

destroying themselves
for the sake of a lover,

dying of despair,
smothered in the dungeon?

The dictionary is full of corpses;

a graveyard for those
who died for words.

When two people are joined by words

and by those who incarnate those words

when two people find
each other, come together,

who since birth

and since the beginning of
the world, have been divorced,

the resulting collision
is truly cosmic.

All lovers write purple prose.

Even in his dreams,
Daniel shrank from it...

- I'm sure that the same impulse

that created this accidental happiness
will take it from us, Denise;

we count as nothing in
this terrible trajectory;

love is a mere child's plaything.

But I adore you, Denise,

even though I shouldn't be saying it.

He remembered all that
had happened, with Denise,

after that first night,

when he brought her to hear the
zither music from "The Third Man"

(which was making the
rounds of the clubs)

and then to the cafeteria
at the Cité Universitaire,

where they shivered side by
side in the greyness of dawn.

He found her so profoundly beautiful

that he was afraid to look at her,

afraid to find her inferior
to his mental image of her.

We only really see someone
the first time we meet them.

From that point on, we blur
the image of the woman we love

conforming it to the first
image that we created of her.

Mimi had said to him, sadly:

You know, Daniel, a
couple is such a difficult,

such an impossible thing to realize

that if we manage
to achieve that unity

it is a defining moment in our lives.

You, Daniel, might have a chance
of attaining that purity

if you lose your status of womanizer

and like the average man

surrounded by solitude,

concentric circles of silence

through which love can penetrate

only by means of a truly
rare and difficult adventure.

But this was followed by...

Denise, you just don't understand,

there's no easy answer for us.

Suppose I stay with you,

sealing our love with
a cinematic kiss,

The credits say 'The End' but
the drama is just about to begin:

the decrepitude of a shared old age,

domesticity, children.

Daily routine, wrinkles.

It's a hell which
exhausts all possibilities

When we think of the love we shared

we'll want to barf.

I recently saw a newsreel

of the golden wedding anniversary
of a group of old people

who had gathered for the
occasion at the town hall.

You should have seen
those aging sweethearts.

It was disgusting!

All they shared was mutual decay!

And even if, stating the impossible,

love had managed to
persist between them,

and they had become
blind to their own ugliness,

used to the way they looked.

In any case, one of the
two either man or wife,

will die before the other!

The one who is left
behind will be condemned

to suffer the inevitable
pangs of separation.

That's what's in store for the
love we share, if we stay together.

There is another solution,

the pain of an abrupt separation:

"it was too good to last."

The Catholics are right:

when they say that mortal love

in any shape or form,
is a fall from grace.

There's no difference
between love and pleasure,

since both are equally doomed to fail!

But I hate love to the same
extent that I love pleasure

because the former
involves my soul,

which I prefer to keep free!

He asked himself:

should I drop Denise right away,

should I tell her to leave

- or should I keep going?

His indecision tormented him.

With Denise, for the
first time in his life,

he was afraid of a break-up,

of the inevitable ending;
and the more scared he got,

the more he longed for the break-up,
in order to overcome his fears,

the more he crushed
Denise with his arrogance,

lacerated her with
egotistical complaints.

In the subway:

In the end of the day, you
don't give a shit, Daniel

neither do I.

That night was great, really great.

I enjoyed myself, it was fun.

We put on a good show,
the two of us...

The awkward stupidity of her words

words that he himself
said ten times a day,

without understanding
what he was saying

caused him so much genuine suffering

that at the next station,

as she tried to take his arm
while getting off the train,

he pushed her away and spat at her:

Fuck off and leave me in peace!

He went to the cinema, alone;

but everything he saw
reminded him of him and her.

Pierre had said to him:

When we break up

with the woman we love,
on the way home

we're stunned by the gleaming
sword which twists in our wound.

We savor the wisdom of
this stupefying sadness,

without finding the strength to
go hunting for new adventures

for a new girlfriend, as usual,
to help us forget the last one;

dumbfounded, fascinated both
by distress and by its causes,

by the novelty of the situation,

we're borne aloft on a fever,
which doesn't really bother us -

the surprise is too great;

what's incredible is the loyalty
of our memory to the last hot body.

All night long, he told himself:

First thing tomorrow

before she goes to work

I'll call Denise and
smooth things over with her.

It seemed that the night
would never end,

he had to wait for the next
day to carry out his plan.

He was still awake at dawn,

feverish, decided

but so exhausted by his
night of plotting and planning

that he fell asleep

as worn out as if he had
been making love to a shadow.

He had been struggling
with Denise's angel

and could go on no longer.

His desire,

thus delayed their reconciliation
instead of facilitating it.

It was two days later by
the time he called her.

When she came to the phone:
- Is that you, Daniel?

He recognized his own desire
in the gentleness of her voice

and the same expectation.

The insatiable flame flared up again.

He couldn't get enough of her body.

He covered her in tooth-marks,
bruises which she wore

like the brand of a possessive owner.

He robbed her, took her money...

Does she love me or not,

beyond the "daily bread"
of her physical needs?

He broke her down, drove her mad,

tore her apart in order to
feel himself inside of her,

he wanted to be her downfall,

he ravaged her in an attempt
to burn himself into her memory.

He became a part of her,
installed himself inside of her;

until the day that she
invited him to dinner

with a businessman friend of hers.

Daniel was never fond of his
girlfriends' male companions.

The businessman took them
to a stuffy restaurant;

and since he complained incessantly
of not having a mistress...

- Rich men like yourself

never fall in love; they're
too busy making money,

they've no time to look for love!

And vice versa.

- You might be right, young man,

but when I invite a young
lady to dinner and...

- When I'm at the cinema

and I see someone inviting
a "young lady" to dinner

in the hopes of sleeping
with her afterwards,

it makes me sick.

If it were me, I'd invite
a penniless young man,

but one of the greatest,

to dinner, instead of the "young lady"

The spirit of poverty
revolts within me,

I feel parsimonious and miserly.

I think if it were me,

I'd sleep for free
with the "young woman"

and make her pay for dinner!

- What a mentality...

Daniel answered brusquely,
with the intention to shock:

(his interlocutor was the kind of
man easily shocked by cynicism)

You look like a pig!

I've never seen an uglier face!

Denise, get your coat on.

And stay away from businessmen!

She silently put her coat on

- and then Daniel said sullenly:

No, take it off, we're going to
finish our meal, we're staying!

Passively, gently

(maybe cunningly, behind the facade,

(taking a secret masochistic pleasure
in her defeat) she removed her coat.

He jerked the reins
like an animal trainer

(time for the reins to snap)...

Whereas she,

realizing the shamefulness
of her slavery

put her coat back on, in tears,

clinging onto her love

and to the blind, barbaric but
unconscious brutality of her man.

His selfishness, which
razed everything around it

endlessly self-obsessed,

emerging victorious after
tunneling like a mole

into the subterranean
resistances of his adversary,

his triumphant muzzle emerging at last

from the soul he had devoured;
satiated, shouting victory

"it was so easy, in the end";

his paws resting upon
the remains of his prey,

savoring his moment of triumph

with a feeling of
gratitude for the victim.

With a cannibalistic pleasure

of which Daniel never tired.

The next day

he waited for Denise's
daily call. Silence.

- Maybe she's sick?

No phone call the next day, either.

He was embarrassed
to call her at work.

She must be sick;
I'll have to find out.

He dialed the number:

- May I speak to Denise?
- Just a minute, please.

He recognized the voice
he was looking for:

Denise, is that you?

Yes, who's this?

What do you mean, who's this?
It's Daniel!

Daniel? What Daniel?
I'm not interested...

Klak! She hung up the phone.

Shit, shit, shit!

He went back to his room, so exhausted

that he lay down and cried.

I'll make a film out of this misery.

I'll make a masterpiece
from what I'm feeling, ha!

He spent three days in bed, rambling,

satisfying himself, perhaps,
with mechanical gestures,

but rotting alone, rotting alone,

rotting alone.

On the fourth day the
sun woke him up happy.

He went out into the street,

displaying his usual stupid
happiness for all to see.

When he saw the first reasonably
attractive young woman pass by:

- Hello mademoiselle,

I've had my eye on you -

and I thought that you might
let me accompany you...

You don't give a shit, Daniel,

"could be her, could be
anyone else"...

her or another, her or another!

How would you define love, Daniel?

I don't know...

When two hearts and
bodies of equal strength

come together, not just for pleasure,

but also to savor the pride
of eternal mutual possession

or just for a moment...

That's what you're searching for,
every night, on the boulevard,

as if you're looking for God - Love.

Some people find a wife like that,

some have brief affairs, and
some people find nothing at all!

Jean Isidore Isou, the author,

wrote this chapter of the film in
a moment of poisonous tenderness

similar to those women
who leave his room

pregnant with an "I love you," born
of his flesh and destined for no-one

bursting with desire, like a
fruit which no-one will bite into

since it seems so far, so monstrous.

However, re-reading these lines on
a day of amorous supersaturation,

he finds the whole chapter insipid.

Nevertheless,

the author knows that
people come to the cinema

for their weekly,
Sunday, dose of tenderness

and while he couldn't give
a shit about the story,

he'll tell it in the hopes of earning
a well-earned success.

He doesn't like these kinds of story;

because they're merely a
matter of personal taste.

The systems or forms,

which surpass the banality of these
stories, are all that interest him.

And now... here he is,
in bed with Eve.

He left her around ten o'clock;

and arranged to meet
her later that afternoon.

They were to meet at a Lettrist recital.

Like many others,

he was interested in the sudden
panic that was taking hold of poetry

and music in
Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

For those who don't already know, the
Lettrists are a group of young people

who believe that words are
obsolete and revoltingly banal,

when used as an element
of poetic emotion.

The sonority of individual
letters alone

can combine music and poetry
in an innovative potion

which is closer to
spontaneous sensation.

Here ends the second chapter.

Eve was waiting for
Daniel in the basement,

she had saved him a place beside her.

Together, they abandoned themselves

to Lettrism's mad orbit.

They knew that the universe
replaces old drugs with new ones,

aware that every new
message must be received

with the ears of a child,
not a donkey.

"Marche" by François Dufręne

Lettrist poetry is more
popular than Surrealist poetry;

it has even more of
a social conscience

than the best modern poetry.

Try to read a surrealist poem,
with its subconscious imagery!

After two pages you're bored;

you mark your place and
try again the next day.

But you can listen to
Lettrist poems for hours.

You can always be soothed
by a pleasant rhythm

focusing upon a broad concept
which can be easily understood.

It's a pleasure which
requires absolutely no effort.

"J'interroge et j'invective"

an homage to Antonin
Artaud by François Dufręne.

Music itself,

with the elimination of melody
by Schonberg and the atonalists

is evolving towards Lettrism!

Lettrism will one day be
more important than jazz

which was dismissed, in its early days,
as a half-caste music with no future.

Jazz has been labeled as an
outpouring of black primitivism.

Jazz is fake primitivism!

It's Americanized blackness,

played on musical instruments,

blackness disguised,
masking its disgust

with the use of
mechanical instruments:

trombone, drums, piano,

"civilized" instruments.

Jazz is primitivism in disguise!

We must return to a genuinely
free and savage state

to a music and poetry
of the intestines,

to the purity of voice,
the ancestral roar;

the rediscovery of our
original, explosive immediacy,

to the barbarity of our
vocal chords. Everyone naked!

This is Lettrism!

Our memories must be
glued to these notes,

our love affairs encircled by them.

Our grandmothers loved waltzes,

our mothers loved
tango and we love jazz;

because, respectively,

our happiest moments have been
accompanied by their rhythms.

It's not the music that
we love, in reality,

but the memories that it awakens.

For the public to learn
to love Lettrism

this strength must spread,

it must inhabit our every footstep.

At the end of the day,
what's new is always victorious.

Every generation
needs fresh material -

which has not yet been
worked over by their elders

- to attain self-realization.

Daniel and Eve left the concert.

Eve held him tight;

Daniel's heart and the quays
of the Seine were, that night,

powdered with Lettrist arrangements.

In one of the city squares,

the birds on the grass
were just as decorative

as cows in the countryside.

The neighborhood of
Saint-Germain-des-Prés

where writers meet to talk shop,

like furniture sellers in
the Faubourg Saint-Antoine

or African Americans in Harlem;

the same laws of professional
concentration apply,

this neighborhood, now labeled
existentialist by stupid journalists

whereas you'll find no one
here but fans of pure jazz,

(members of the international group
of jazz lovers known as Zazous)

Surrealist poets, Lettrists
and ambitious young people

looking to escape
contemporary society,

arrivistes ready to blow up the world,

alienated young people.

This neighborhood which
idiots call 'existential',

whereas here there is
no worse insult than...

- Yo, existentialist!
- Shit!

All the petty geniuses who
distract you from the real geniuses

who will, one day, become
posthumously famous!

All these alienated and
ambitious young people...

The cafes of Saint-Germain
are like barracks

for young people who
crawl through the mud

towards victory and self-realization

like all the other soldiers, of
all the other wars in the world...

So many will be defeated in the end!

Our victories bear direct
relation to the capacity

and the strength of our allies.

We're victorious, when our own friends

outnumber those of our enemies
or those who remain indifferent.

It's time to write the story of
a different Christopher Columbus:

with exactly the same name -

Christopher Columbus

- but who never succeeded
in discovering America...

Writers have lied to us

in their books they spoke
of a noble way of life

that only the rich have
the right to speak of.

Their language makes us believe

that writers are rich people,

whereas they're almost all broke

because real literature
doesn't earn money.

Writers are the only poor people

who have the right to
speak like rich people,

but we have been decieved

by our ambition to create masterpieces

since it really is no more than
the ambition to die hungry.

Daniel's thoughts wandered.

Eve kissed him from time to time,

as if trying to rescue
his lips from oblivion,

his primitive means of self-defense.

But Daniel was lost in his thoughts;

and Eve's kisses, like
the seasons of Paris

came and went without disturbing
their harmonious curves.

Words, language...

I think that other people have also
worked with out-takes from old films,

don't you think so?

Maybe, other people
have also used out-takes,

but they edited them
into a coherent whole,

they organized these out-takes

into a logical, coherent montage.

I'm going to be the first to abandon
myself to these scraps of film

just as Dostoevsky abandoned
himself to his fall from grace.

I'll transform into nobility

that which has been, up till
now, considered squalor.

By the same token, the
images and comparisons

which, in Victor Hugo's poetry

were consolidating elements

have, for the Surrealists

become a source of dissolution.

For example:

Eyes used to be compared to flowers,

in order to better praise
their beauty.

The Surrealists
compared eyes to flowers,

to make you forget the eyes

and lose yourself in that
comparative flow of objects

which pours out from
the use of comparison.

It was, if you like, the same technique,

but a different principle
defined the two procedures.

Between the possibilities presented
by the use of out-takes to date

and my way of using them,

I'm sure that there is
as big a distance

as that which separates Victor
Hugo from the Surrealists!

But between the two attitudes

modern art is formed.

Cinema is called a modern art,

but has created nothing up till now

but primitive masterpieces.

Modernism does not yet exist, in film.

Modernism will begin

with the destruction of cinema.

Maybe right now...

Then again, there are
so many things involved

that I can't go into now.

When we destroy the basic
principals of an art form,

the secondary elements
fall apart by themselves.

Take, for example,

the very anti-cinematic
style of my scenario:

the long, torturous phrases

which break with
the short propositions,

the simple, indicative and active
style of scenarios up till now.

I am the first to use

the same long phrases in film

that Marcel Proust
took from philosophy

and was the first
to use in his novels.

To take another example:

up till now, the protagonist was shown

turning towards his partner;

his gestures were fully visible.

From now on you'll hear

"Daniel turned around"
without seeing him turn.

We'll incorporate
imagination into the cinema

since we're destroying
concrete reality.

The spectator can invent
the protagonist for himself,

for the first time in
the history of cinema.

After a moment of silence,

Eve condensed his long chain
of thought into a single link:

The actors' images will bear
no relation to your scenario

as if you'd taken the mock-ups
and the sequences of a film,

and, using these scenes,
instead of editing,

you'd got bored with a performance
whose outcome was known in advance.

As if this bric-a-brac represented the
boredom the film already inspires.

As if this boredom was already
the destruction of cinema.

You'll show that images
are irrelevant,

that you can make them
say whatever you want,

and that which they
don't say in reality.

When all images are equal,

they are all equally indifferent.

Did you know that

Mme de Charričre
told Benjamin Constant

that God had existed, but that he died

during the creation of
an incomplete universe.

She said: the universe that you see

is nothing but the scaffolding of
a universe that will never be built.

This film will never be built,
at least not as films used to be.

If I've correctly
understood you, Daniel,

the God of cinema is
dead, according to you,

the volcano of original unity extinct.

Only detritus and chunks
of frozen lava

roll down towards us.

I know that others have
already destroyed photography,

But you're the first
to have understood

the necessity for this destruction.

Others before you have
destroyed photography

but they did it by accident:

and then abandoned the job and
went to work on something else.

You're the first to understand that
the destruction of the photography

is the only possible
way for it to evolve.

Daniel had run into his friend
Pierre that same morning,

accompanied by the stranger whom
they had met at the Cine-club.

They had discussed Daniel's film.

- You know, Daniel, what those idiots
at the Cine-club don't understand

is that the cinema has exhausted
its capacity to create masterpieces.

Discarding the existing
masterpieces is not an option

the best we can do is
to use our intelligence

to use the parasitic intelligence
of these masterpieces of the past

to turn them inside out,

to demonstrate that
we understand them.

Our predecessors were
fortunate enough to start with

an empty playing
field to move around in:

that's why they chose a
cinema of action, epic cinema.

We however, luckless
disciples, late arrivals,

we have nothing in front
of us as raw materials,

than the memory of
this cinema of action,

the criticism or defence
of preceding actions.

Our films can be no more
than simple commentaries,

conscious or unconscious,
of the films of the past

The storyline of your film
may be banal;

tomorrow's film-makers will, however,
be able to tell any story they want

using your system of discrepant cinema

indifferent to whatever appears
on the film strip itself,

anyone who has a story
to tell can make a film

without spending any
money on film stock.

The image is too elementary,
too simple!

Hence the impression of
stupidity given by silent films

which were obliged to tell stories

that the novel had already
abandoned with shame!

Even Chaplin was merely
a primitive clown.

King-Kong, cowboys
and kisses in close-up

this is what action
photography has been reduced to.

Even "Battleship Potemkin,"
Eisenstein's Soviet masterpiece,

is a sort of King-Kong
of revolutionary ideas,

an anecdotal account
of primitive revolt.

Language is the only element
of the world of expression

that can embrace all
the world's nuances.

Language alone is as complex as man

and rich with all the
treasures of human ambiguity.

The stranger intervened:

- It was really fantastic, Mr. Daniel.

After you left we spoke
about you a lot.

You are the first to deal with
the problem of language in film;

until now, the image
was all that counted;

language was a mere subordinate

without interest, of what
is called 'cinematic style'.

Your type of film may be

one of the most intelligent
in cinema history.

In any case, only discrepant
cinema, as you call it,

can create the most intelligent
film in the history of cinema

We had a fine discussion
after you left!

Those idiots told me that

making the most intelligent
film ever with sound and language

is cheating, since the cinema is,
after all, primarily photographic.

I answered that in
destroying photography

Daniel turns it inside out

and makes it more intelligent
than ordinary photography,

since destructive photography is
superior to ordinary photography

otherwise it would not
have the power to destroy.

You have to be stronger,
superior to someone

in order to beat them
and break them down.

A film like Daniel's will thus be

the most intelligent film
of the history of cinema,

not only from the point of view
of language and sound, as you say,

but also from the point
of view of the image.

You know, after you left,

we talked a lot at the cine-club.

I told them that although other people

may have already used
similar techniques,

their attempts were
mere games, mere farce:

that they had made no connection

between their games and the
necessary evolution of cinema.

I gave them Picasso as an example!

Before he came along

other artists had already
destroyed the image,

any child could imitate
Picasso by destroying an image

but he was the first
to take the beauty

of conventional painting
as his starting point

and, after infinite research,
with great difficulty,

progress towards the destruction
of conventionally beautiful painting.

He systematized a new
approach to painting

and forged a path through
the forest of painting

which leads from ordinary
figurative art

towards abnormal art.

The same goes for Alfred Jarry,

the author of "Ubu Roi".

We know that Ubu Roi
was a mere college farce:

that it was Alfred Jarry's
friends who staged the farce

but it was Jarry himself who
cut a path through the jungle

of the conventional
literature of his day,

a path that leads

from that beautiful literature
to the college farce.

Alfred Jarry spent his life

clearing and systematizing the path

which leads from beautiful
literature to the college farce.

In your case, Daniel, the 'cinema
- within-cinema' manifesto must

be a knife possessed
of inhuman strength,

thanks to which the youth of today
can beat a path for themselves

through the stifling
stupidity of cinema

towards a new territory
devoid of farces.

You must arm the cinema
with a weapon, a sword,

such as it has never known!

America existed before
Christopher Columbus

but only Christopher Columbus
could force a way for Europeans

to reach that America;

an intelligent path.

Your film must be
sufficiently intelligent

to constitute a Northeast
Passage for cinema

a map towards a new exoticism.

I told them that if you
had created nothing new

then no one had ever
created anything new,

neither Picasso, nor Griffith,
nor Chaplin, nor Baudelaire,

nor Rodin, nor Descartes nor Plato;

since there's always been something

for people like these to be the
first to grasp and systematize.

It's nevertheless strange, Daniel,

There will be a continual displacement

of values in your film!

You'll use photography

to make people pay attention to sound.

You could even tell a love story
in order to remind yourself,

discreetly, of another love story.

Rarer and more precious.

And it's funny,

you extol the use of language
as a way to upset photography

and yet you love Lettrism, which
is the destruction of language.

What you are really interested in is
the creative process, invention,

discovery:

that is, fundamentally,
what creation consists of

an incessant destruction of surfaces

in order to access the
turbulence beneath them.

They'll say that I had no
difficulty in shooting this film

but it took years of film-making

to provide such easy access to the
footage I've collected, from all over.

They'll call my film clumsy

but there's no such thing
as a perfect work of art;

the cinema has arrived at that point

where the uniqueness of an art form

is to be found precisely
in its clumsiness,

just as modern music has transformed

old dissonances into
the harmony of jazz.

When I think of what my film

will contribute to
all aspects of cinema:

(A) A new photographic technique:
"chiseled" or rotten photography.

(B) A new and original type of scenario,

where language explains the invisible.

(C) A new style of discrepant montage

(D) An new way of envisaging
the cinema:

cinema as the esthetic of cinema.

Those idiots will, of course,
complain about me again

but I know that even if the film

is superior to all pre-existing films,

I know that I'm superior to my film

and that I'll never stop doing more

and doing it differently.

- Your spectators must
remember, not forget, Daniel

that you've even invented the
music for the film by yourself.

I'm speaking about Lettrist music.

They told that me you don't
know the meaning of cinema.

I replied: Daniel
will invent the cinema;

it's not cinema that's
going to invent Daniel.

To avoid all ambiguity, I told them:

We must first let ourselves
be invented by an art form;

in order to subsequently
reinvent it ourselves.

Riding his ideas for the cinema

like a winged horse, Daniel passed
over into the land of twilight.

A red ant crawled into
the eye of the night:

it was the first
street lamp lighting up.

Now, with this Eve, whom
he didn't like very much,

he had to begin the
night all over again!

In his impatience, he had
exhausted his desire for Eve

just like those sweets which he
had never been able to suck on,

to hold in his mouth and enjoy,

as he was told to as a child

instead he crushed them quickly
between his teeth and swallowed.

(you never chew, darling,
his mother had remarked).

Impatient to arrive
at the apex of pleasure,

as fast as possible, at its summit,

just as he always knocked his
drinks back in one go, then cried:

my stomach hurts, Mommy,
I can't stand it, I can't stand it.

In bed, beside Eve's sleepy body,

he felt that he was almost satisfied;

he searched for the cowardly words
with which to tell her she had to go.

I'll always love you, Daniel.

You scare me a little

the heavy brain you all carry

within your adolescent bodies...

The heavy brain behind
the adolescent face.

The princess used to say
the same thing;

and Mimi, Jeanne and Rémi
used to say the same thing.

I want to be faithful to you forever,

I'll never leave you.

Forever...

Never!

You know,

I think you're fooling yourself

about the future of our relationship.

I don't have time

I can't see you any more...

not tomorrow, never!

Daniel! But Daniel!
What do you want from me?

Did I do something to upset you?

Tell me, darling

what did I say wrong?

Didn't I do everything you wanted?

Just tell me

how you want me to behave!

Eve, I'm not the sort of young fool

who thinks he's conquered the world
as soon as he has a woman on his arm.

I know very well that love's
not enough for the young...

but you always want
to conquer the world!

You're annoying me now,
I'd like you to leave...

Daniel! I can't leave like this...

Are you throwing me out?

You're compromising me
and you're throwing me out!

You're not thinking...

the people who've seen us
together, what will they say?

Even the concierge will laugh at me!

Their petty concerns...

the concierge...

people like that, dependant
upon the opinions of others,

lacking any feelings of their own,

anything which would allow them
to surpass or despise anyone else,

for whom the hatred of one
man or the love of another

is more important than the
shit they see in the street,

formed entirely by the hate

or the sympathy of their neighbors.

Never themselves,

always the neighbors.

When I meet people like you,

if only you knew
how I spit on you all!

Humanity...

He hated her and longed for solitude.

He saw himself at ten years
old, slapping his younger sister

because she was playing
with two poor children.

As he chased them away, he
heard their widowed mother

shout at him furiously:

You're chasing my daughters
away, my little orphans,

because they're not
as rich as you are.

God will punish you and make
you more miserable than they are.

Placid, indifferent

- a small, timid, surly monster -

he had already foreseen and
refuted those conventional phrases,

thanks to his precocious reading,

before they had even appeared in
the widow's vulgar brain.

A friend of Daniel's
had remarked one day:

You're like a spoiled child!

It's true that I'm a spoiled child;

I always will be.

Spoiled children, when
they leave their parents,

cannot resign themselves to a
world that doesn't spoil adults!

They're at war with the world.

While others resign themselves
and conform to the world,

spoiled children spend their lives

trying to bend the world
to their will.

Think about it for a
moment and you'll see.

Everyone who has changed the
world began as a spoiled child.

I'm telling you the truth, the world
will either belong to spoiled children

or be devoured by
misery and resignation.

You might be right,
Daniel, to despise mankind.

All those who wanted to transform
mankind began by hating it -

otherwise they would never
have wanted to transform it

Christians wanted to render
it worthy of paradise...

Even Marxists who pretend to love it
want to destroy it to change it

and Nietzsche...

You must really love mankind, to
detest it to such an extent...

You don't understand, Eve;

you inspire a lot of pity in me,

for eternally valid reasons;

believe me,

you all do.

I feel like a philanthropist
in front of you all...

You want to defy the world, Daniel!

But you'll be hung and spat upon

by the populace that you despise.

Like Mussolini...

What ferocity, all of a sudden!

Like that other stupid young woman

who I hadn't been able to,
or hadn't wanted to satisfy.

One evening, at a restaurant,

I saw a couple right in front of me.

The man must have been about fifty.

The woman sitting beside him
was about thirty five or forty,

beautiful, with the youthfulness
of a well-kept woman.

I stared at her impertinently;
and she turned towards me

and smiled, complicit.

I was so brazen, so young

that her heart must have
warmed itself at my fire.

The old man sitting
beside her looked up;

he looked at me, with
an expression on his face

of distance, amiability and wisdom

with the immense luxury of sympathy.

A look that I ignored, indifferent,
preoccupied by the woman alone

like a young wolf or tiger
who coldly crushes everything

with eyes for the flesh
of his partner only.

Years later, however,
the look on the face

of this young fool who wanted
me for her pleasure alone,

the wild look in the eyes of this
young woman, suddenly, terribly,

reminded me of the look
in my own eyes, back then;

and the current look in my eyes
resembled that of the old man.

I understood his disaffection,

his arrogance

and his 'couldn't give a fuck' smile.

Something just as tranquil,
ironic and friendly

as one often finds,
if one looks carefully

in the faces of the old
presidents of the Republic,

the understanding and bonhomie
that I despised as a young man

and that I now know how to read
and love in the eyes of people

who seem to be at peace
with themselves

in the midst of the world's madness.

Let me stay with you tonight, Daniel...

You shouldn't have dragged
me into this game of love

Now that I've assumed the role,

I'm capable of carrying
out any role you choose.

Even suicide, if that's what you want.

I don't know how to get out of it.

Let me sleep beside you tonight...

You won't see me tomorrow.

I need love... I can't
be with just anyone

even if you throw me out.

If, one day, you want me

let me know, I'll come!

I'm at your disposal, Daniel!

Daniel's thoughts were limited
to his own personal satisfaction;

in his mind, he embraced all the
millions of women in the world.

The Mimis, Fifis, Margots,

The Denises and Ingrids.

The desire to be unique
- or at least to be alone

possessed him like a madness

'It's time for her
to go, she has to go!'

Eve saw the look in his eye
and without saying a word

jumped out of bed,

She got dressed very, very quickly

and left, slamming the door
behind her.

My film's almost finished, at last.

In the end, it's nothing
but the story of Eve

and the thoughts that she inspired.

I often saw Eve again, in and
around Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

The bodies of the women we have
loved are reclaimed by the street

and become as foreign to us

as if we had never slept side by side.

The fact that we've kissed
these beings

seems as unlikely as it did
when we were sleeping with them.

The strangeness, the coldness

and the timidity of our first
encounter seem naďve to us.

These women are once
again devoured by society,

which turns them into statues
before our very eyes.

To finish off Eve's story:

This young woman, to whom people
paid less and less attention

developed mannerisms to make
herself more interesting.

One night she raised the alarm

because of a stray dog
in a city square.

Her presence no longer
enough to attract attention,

her gestures became more and more
disproportionate to her surroundings.

She went slowly mad,
like an aging spinster

because, socially, she adopted
attitudes that are seen as

original or crazy.

She still had the beauty

and youth to hide the phenomenon

but you could already see the
crazy old lady lurking within her.

Her mind had been pushed in
such an opposite direction

to what we call intelligence;

that she slowly became ridiculous.

When Daniel passed her in
the street, he ignored her.

One day, sitting outside a cafe

with a friend,

he saw Eve, between two
plain-clothes policemen,

walking towards a squad car.

- Look, Daniel, there's Eve!

They're going to deport her,
she's going back to Norway.

She's been acting crazy

The friend ran over to Eve

to shake her hand, say goodbye.

Daniel stayed put, silent,
looking in the opposite direction.

- Damn you, Daniel!
- I don't give a shit!

Half an hour later, a
man came into the cafe,

looking for Eve.

Eve? They've just deported her.

Deported her?
I've stuff to give back to her.

Daniel approached him:

Do you know Eve well?

Yes, of course, but why?

Do you know her intimately?

Yes... but...

Very intimately?

Did you sleep with her?

Yes! But why?

Oh... nothing.

I just wanted to check.

His friend laughed.

Daniel just wanted to
know who had succeeded him.

He put 5 francs in
the billiard machine.

Daniel thought about his film...

My film

will be called "Spit and Eternity,"

or "Spit and Marble"
or "Spit and Steel";

it will delineate the gap between
the dusty state of our language

and the extent of its true potential.

I'll draw attention
to Nietzsche's phrase:

'only inner chaos

can give birth to a dancing star'

My film will be like a
Hell composed of circles.

The first circle will consist
of my ideas about the cinema

of my desire to make a film
to describe these ideas;

below that will come the circle of Eve

and, below that, the circle of Denise,
Rémi and Lettrism,

closest to my heart.

My film will be a manifesto
for my future films,

a preface for films to come,

a concentration of themes,
like Cocteau's "Blood of a Poet."

My future projects will revisit
each theme systematically,

developing each theme with
more clarity, more purity.

My first film will be the core,
the promise of things to come.

As opposed to my published writings,

I want my films to be devoid of rage:

calm and full of reconciliation,
if that's possible.

Eve must be at the station,
between two policemen...

But I can't do everything.

I have to lose some ballast.

I will never, ever accept their
love, their good or their evil

they can only offer me
that which already exists

and which is bad
by definition: mortality.

By Daniel's side,

his friend scored thirty thousand
on the electronic billiard machine,

which gave him the chance
to start over, for free...

This film was originally
four and a half hours long.

It was reduced to its current
length for "practical reasons."

It's duration still seems to me today

too limited to contain an "experience"

and at the same time allow
its author to be "intelligent."

A single film cannot give an account

of the values of a system that
encompasses millions of possibilities.

In this piece of work, the
spirit of rupture preoccupied me

more than the accomplishment
of obligatory goals.

Inspired by this film, disciples
and friends are already envisaging

works that are so "monstrous"

that they will definitively change
the appearance of cinema "per se."

Dishonest critics will
attack my "subject matter".

There's no such thing
as a universal "story"!

Superficial young women,
who prefer passionate drama,

are bored by gangster films;

my generation laughs

at the tearful romances
of our parents.

Certain idiots accuse Proust of
using a "boring" style of writing

to describe the boring events
of the world of "high society."

The essence of the film depends
upon education, temperament,

personal vision and other
contradictory phenomena.

These should not be used
as criteria for judgment.

This is, in any case, as far
as the scenario can take us.

After these long and
complicated sentences

we will at most know
how to destroy language;

we must attain Lettrism,
which already exists here,

as invented by the author.

Because the mere composition of
poems and stories never satisfied me

and because I always wanted to invent

new forms for the stories
I was telling,

because, in other words, I have always
imposed an extra task upon myself,

legalists and intellectuals
have attacked and insulted me

to the point of stupor.

All that's left to do is
to ask you on the way out

if this film is worth at least
as much as any gangster film

love story or documentary

which the critics of cinema
consider "most reputable."

Begun August 15, 1950
Completed Wednesday 23 May 1951

THE END