In the evening on Valentine's Day we went to the National Film Theatre to see Truffaut’s delightful Jules et Jim. The large cinema was packed. I had seen the film once before, over thirty years ago on a small black and white television with a square screen but I was too poorly equipped then, too poorly experienced and too poorly educated to enjoy and appreciate it. And for so many reasons: one reason being that it had been gorgeously photographed using an extra wide screen format; another reason being my own lack of personal development, or rather my total maladroitness in the lovelife minefields of jealousy and possessiveness; a third reason being my inadequate understanding of French history and culture, having never visited the country at that time. I feel guilty nowadays because I was so egotistical then and I had repeatedly failed to see the necessary connection between proper fun and proper freedom as a universal human right. Now I think I nearly understand ! Some critics say it isn’t a perfect film but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a great one, and if I were running a film school it would definitely be on the curriculum. At the end of the film the lights “went up” and those luxuriant wide red velvet curtains swished to a satisfying close, their deep folds classically illuminated from beneath, whilst a smart young couple who’d been sitting about three rows in front of us stood and kissed in a long unembarrassed embrace, beautifully top-lit in pale blue from one of the many ceiling spotlights juxtaposed against that blood-red background, a vivid and hyper-cinematic image to memorize with joy, and one that Truffaut himself might have enjoyed.
Dreaming vividly as I often do is still a delight and I enjoy time spent looking for clues about all aspects of real and imaginary life in those dimly recollected experiences. Sometimes the past is re-invented with cinematic felicity in those few seconds before I wake. For instance, just before waking on the morning after Betty’s funeral, I found myself lost and entering the vestibule of a darkened village school room and being asked by two lady teachers if I was “here for the funeral”. I covered my embarrassment somehow and went outside on to the village green, darkened on a mid-summer night just before dawn. It looked like a battlefield of freshly dug graves and through it moved the shadowy figures of countless schoolchildren in nineteen fifties uniforms.
Driving along the north side of Clapham Common this afternoon, my attention to the traffic was briefly distracted by the oncoming progress of an athletic Greek goddess who was jogging towards me wearing a pristine and loose fitting white rugby shirt. I’m not sure which myth she represented, something to do with golden apples perhaps, although it might just have been her perfect rhythm and bounce that fragmented my deviant thoughts. The opportunity for completing a detailed analysis of the phenomena was suddenly curtailed by the passing between us of a large white truck which inadvertently supplied the suitably fruity adjective I might have been searching for, because the name of the transport company was PEACHY.
