Mr. Ophuls
Paris, May 2006. The train emerged from the under-ground into startling daylight, then I was in Pere Lachaise cemetery. I didn’t bring a map: you can’t be lost if you don’t know where you’re going.
I consider myself a connoisseur of cemeteries, and Pere Lachaise satisfied all my criteria. None of those manicured lawns like the memorial parks back home where kids played Frisbee in the brilliant sunshine while their ancestors turned to dust. Pere Lachaise is a city of the dead, and it looks like it: ancient gray sepulchres with rusty gates, statues whose faces had been worn away by leprous time, gnarled trees whose branches blocked out the sun. The cobblestones seemed to swallow your feet and pull you down into the earth. Insects buzzed and flew into your nose as if you were already a corpse. Any minute the dead would rise, stroll among the crypts and wonder where everyone had gone.
After an hour or so of twisting my ankles on the cobblestones I sat on a bench and unpacked my lunch: pain au chocolat and an Orangina. Before me was a jumble of graves and two hooded figures standing guard over a mausoleum. I hadn’t run into another visitor; I was alone in this teeming necropolis. Aren’t we all alone anyway? You can live in a city of 10 million and you’d still be alone. With the dead, at least, you knew exactly why. The silence pressed against my eardrums, a weight more oppressive than sirens, horns, and shrieking metal. I needed to make it stop. I emptied my bag onto the bench, grabbed my iPod, stuffed the buds in my ears and hit Play. Then I sent out a bunch of text messages.
A tour group went past my bench, clomping down the cobblestones. I gathered up my things and followed them. We trudged past naked angels with averted eyes, equestrian monuments, graves piled like shoeboxes, a dead man apparently peeking out of his final resting place. Then we were at the grave of Jim Morrison. A middle-aged woman produced a candle, another a bouquet of flowers. Bowing their heads, they invoked the spirit of the Lizard King. I walked on.
By the gate was a map indicating the tombs of the famous dead. Oscar Wilde was there (I’m sure he was besieged by visitors), Edith Piaf. Lots of fans for Chopin (required pilgrimage for pianists) and Proust (a must for everyone who’d ever attempted Proust and surrendered to attention deficit disorder). Then I saw the name and I knew I had to pay my respects. Putting my navigational skills to the test, I went looking for the grave of Max Ophuls.
If I had to make a list of my all-time favorite movies, it would consist of a bunch of screwball comedies (The Lady Eve, His Girl Friday, To Be Or Not To Be — the Lubitsch original, not the Mel Brooks one) and one romantic tragedy: Letter From An Unknown Woman by Max Ophuls. Based on a story by Stefan Zweig, Letter is the story of Liesl, a woman who falls in love with a handsome jerk. She’s so consumed by her passion, she can’t see that, one, he’s a jerk, and two, she’s being bonkers. Liesl is played by Joan Fontaine, who is so fabulous that instead of wanting to slap her for being such a masochist, you sort of understand her. The man is played by Louis Jourdan, who is so handsome it’s ridiculous.
We see in a flashback how Liesl, 16, yearns for the handsome pianist who lives upstairs. But she’s a child and he doesn’t know she’s alive. He’s the toast of Vienna, and beautiful women are in and out of his apartment at all hours. Then her family moves to Linz, but she does not forget him. Years later she returns to Vienna and goes to all the places he goes. Stalks him, basically. He notices her at last, seduces her, and then leaves.
In his long absence, she bears him a son, but does not tell him. (I know: Martyr!!) She meets a rich man who falls in love with her, marries her, and brings up her son. Many years later the pianist, having squandered his talent, returns to Vienna. He spots Liesl with her husband at the opera… and seduces her again! And here’s the kicker: He doesn’t remember who she is! Liesl suffers and suffers and suffers, but she does it so exquisitely that there must be something in that torment. Perhaps at some point there is nothing to distinguish misery from ecstasy. All this time the camera never stops moving, taking us right into Liesl’s soul.
There was no monument to Max Ophuls. His ashes and those of his wife were in the columbarium, their names engraved on a plain slab of marble. I wondered if people came to visit him. Liesl would, all fluttery and nervous, eyes darting about in search of her forgetful swain.
* * *
Visit http://www.jessicarulestheuni-verse.com.
