The New Confessions (48 page)

The Confessions: Part I
in its final version ran five hours and forty-eight minutes. It had not been difficult to persuade Eddie that its only chance of success lay in emphasizing its scale and extraordinary properties. We hired the enormous Gloria-Palast on the Kurfürstendamm and installed three vast screens. A sixty-man orchestra was assembled (at the last minute Furtwängler denied us the Berlin Philharmonic—I never spoke to him again after that day). On February 27 there was a gala performance. The great auditorium was half-empty; only a few hundred people saw
The Confessions
as it was intended to be. There was, consolingly, a rapturous reception from the press, but its tone was sad and valedictory. The
Illustrierter Film-Kunst
was representative:

The film ran for a week in the Gloria-Palast to average houses before we had to close. The sole benefit was that the publicity revived Realismus’s
fortunes briefly. Leo Druce quickly made a musical comedy about three out-of-work window cleaners that enjoyed a modicum of success. Offers multiplied for me. I could have made any number of films in half a dozen countries had I so wished, but I turned them all down. I will not dwell on my feelings, but my despair at what had happened was so intense I half-seriously contemplated suicide, especially when—against my wishes—Doon went to Italy to make the film with Mavrocordato. Karl-Heinz was busy at UFA with a new contract. It is a measure of how low I was that I did not interfere when Eddie cut and dubbed a ninety-minute version of
The Confessions
with a partial soundtrack of execrable quality, called
Jean Jacques!
This was to appease Pathé and the French investors and I believe played only in France and Belgium. I have never seen it; I insisted my name be removed from the credits; I abjure it utterly.

I bought a modern apartment in the west end, but Doon never moved in with me. I was so distracted that I soon gave up trying to persuade her. We continued to see each other as before, shuttling between the two addresses, as her work and political activities permitted, up to her departure for Paris. I suppose we led a social life, but I remember little about those difficult months after the collapse of
The Confessions
. Among my papers I have a small engagement diary for 1932. I quote its entries in full.

It was Eddie who encouraged me to think of adapting
The Confessions
for sound. His motives were not entirely altruistic. The film had cost the best part of two million dollars and virtually none of that had been recouped. Obviously we could do nothing with
Part I
, but he reminded me we still had
Part II
and
Part III
to go. Could we not commence filming these in sound and use some of the material of
Part I
as flashback? Slowly, my enthusiasm began to regenerate itself. Over several weeks I ran the film again and again. Yes, there
were
sequences that could be saved by voice-over narration. New schemes and possibilities
presented themselves to me and by the end of 1932 I started the over-dubbing.

I had to do this piecemeal as both Doon and Karl-Heinz were busy on other films, and moreover it took many attempts to get the synchronization perfect. But I was working again, and in between these dubbing sessions I wrote a narrative monologue for Karl-Heinz’s voice-over and we started recording music for key scenes.

Does it sound absurdly naïve, today, to relate that I was hardly concerned about the rise of the Nazi party? To be perfectly honest, I thought they were a crowd of farcical jokers. I remember going—reluctantly and under duress—to an association meeting with Doon in the spring of ’32 where a scuffle broke out at the door and there was a distant sound of breaking glass. Afterwards I asked what all the fuss had been about.

“Fucking Nazis,” Doon said.

“What are they after?”

She looked at me in hostile astonishment.

“Jesus, Jamie, where are you living?”

“In Chambéry,” I said.

Doon understood. But it was as close as the Nazis ever came to me. I am sure she told me in great detail what was happening in the country, but I let it wash over me. It is quite easy to give an impression of intent listening even when your mind is somewhere else entirely. I remember in mid-’32, before the general elections, how Doon used vociferously to support the Communists’ decision not to vote with the Social Democrats. And when the Nazis won all those seats she still maintained it had been the right course of action.… Social Democrats, Communists, Nationalists, Nazis, Hindenburg, Papen, Schleicher, ban the SS and the SA, rescind the ban on the SS and the SA—round how many Berlin dinner parties did these names and topics hum? True, I did notice the uniforms on the streets, and there always seemed to be a march, a demonstration or a rally going on. But remember, it was not my country and as far as I was concerned there were more pressing affairs to be dealt with.

Georg Pfau, though, told me something that I do still recall. Poor Georg was attacked by party thugs with depressing regularity. Number 129B was near a hall frequently used by the KPD for their meetings, and Georg, who often walked home from work late, was set upon twice by Nazi gangs and was once even victim of a Communist ambush.

He turned up at the studios one day for a sound-recording session (he had a basket of cicadas for me) with both eyes blackened and a large blue bruise on his forehead. I commiserated with him.

“At the root,” he said to me slowly, “it’s a Bavarian problem. You see, the Bavarians
hate
us Prussians. That’s the danger. And they won’t be happy until they have us under their control. That’s what all this
verdammt
trouble’s about. It’s a German civil war. That’s what we’re living through.”

He was very gloomy about it. I used to repeat his remarks at dinner parties whenever the conversation turned to politics and it always promoted serious debate—in which I took no part, content simply to have initiated it. But Georg’s dark pessimism was somewhat unusual. Among our friends and acquaintances the mood was excited, but one of patience too. “Yes,” people would say, “things are bad now but it’s only a phase. It’ll pass, you’ll see.”

Even Doon thought this, although the phase she anticipated following this one sounded hopelessly unrealistic. I pointed out to her that the association was a splinter group of a faction (the Artists’ League) that had broken away from the KPD. It was hardly a firm base upon which to build a new society. She admitted that.

“But our principles are universal,” she would say.

“What do you mean?”

“Which side is your heart on?”

“The left.”

It was a neat debating trick, but I often used to recall it later when I became a victim of political ideologies myself.

But Adolf Hitler as chancellor was too much for her to take. She began to plan to leave almost at once. And, it had to be said, her own career was not holding up that well. Doon spoke German, but not to a standard necessary for German talkies. The film she had made with Mavrocordato (
The Blond Nightmare
, need I say more?) had, not surprisingly, flopped. Offers of work were now forthcoming only from British or American co-productions (hence the trip to Paris) and the parts were only cameos—the token American vamp or minx, tourist or heiress. Mavrocordato was already in Paris working with Pommer and Pabst. He had been trying to persuade Doon to move there for months. In the end Adolf Hitler provided the final push.

Why did I let her go? I was no longer worried about Mavrocordato, oddly enough. I guessed that if she felt like it Doon might sleep with him again, but no prohibition on my part would make any difference.
In fact, I thought we could both do with a break from each other. Since Sonia had gone, my life with Doon had not been the unalloyed bliss I had expected. We were like those gimmicky weather forecasters, where a man or a woman pops out of a little house to prophesy rain or shine. As luck would have it, our fortunes and spirits rarely coincided during the early thirties. While I was flattened by the
Confessions
disaster, Doon was busy. When I picked up as I began to work on the sound version, Doon could get no decent roles and the political situation made her miserable. I let her go, then, sadly but fairly confidently. I planned to be filming at Neuchâtel in the near future: we would not be far apart, Doon could join me at weekends. After
The Confessions
I would happily move with her anywhere. In any event, I did not see my tenure in Germany lasting much longer. Eddie had recently been summoned to the Propaganda Ministry by Goebbels himself and was asked to explain why he was making a film about the notorious French socialist J. J. Rousseau. Eddie ducked the issue by saying the Rousseau he planned to film was in fact Swiss. But the dead hand of the official censor seemed poised. Paris might even be an admirable base from which to complete the film. Gently, I tried to persuade Eddie to transfer Realismus to another country. He said he would think about it.

The Confessions
now existed in three versions. There was the worthless and appalling
Jean Jacques!
, there was my six-hour definitive
Part I
and now we had about fifty minutes of dubbed sound episodes—fragments waiting to be linked by new sequences that we planned to film at the end of the year and into 1934.

Karl-Heinz would be free of his UFA contract in November, and then we would film the Neuchâtel episodes. We would link this new narrative to the flashbacks and then move on to film the years of triumph and fame in Paris. This
Part II
would encapsulate
Part I
and it would all be more or less in sound. At least, this was how Eddie and I worked it out. But Eddie was not all that sanguine. Realismus, while no longer in severe financial difficulties (so he assured me), was no longer the power it had been. A. E. Groth had returned to Sweden, where he had had a stroke. Gast and Hitzig, the company’s two most successful directors after me, had joined the ever increasing stream of exiles: Gast to Paris, Hitzig to London. Leo Druce was required as my producer and in any event his two films had not been particularly successful. Even the most charitable friend (i.e., me) would have to describe Leo’s directing
as “workmanlike.” Also, he was preoccupied with personal affairs. Lola had divorced him, gone to Hollywood and returned, and was now suing him for some reason or other. Eddie could not afford to hire more-established directors. The choice facing him as head of a small studio down on its luck was either make risky trash or else stick with his star. Eddie knew I could get work at UFA, Terra or Tobis at any time I wished. But I was loyal. He somehow managed to scrape up enough money and the filming of
The Confessions: Part II
was announced in small advertisements in the trade press.

We had been late starting
Part II
, true to form. We came down to Neuchâtel in early January. The departure from Stettin Station was in strong contrast to that of 1928. Now our little troupe occupied only one carriage and a baggage wagon. Still, it was stimulating to be at work again. Despite the interruption I felt a strong sense of continuity as we settled into the hotel. Here we were again in another medium-class, medium-sized hotel on the banks of a lake surrounded by mountains. Annecy, Geneva and now Neuchâtel. The pilgrimage of
The Confessions
continued the tracing of Jean Jacques’s steps. And here we all were: myself, Leo, Karl-Heinz, Horst Immelman, each one dedicated to the task in hand. Only Doon was missing, but she was not far away.

The first disaster struck before a foot of film had turned. Helene Rednitz, who was playing Thérèse le Vasseur, came down with bronchitis and after a week in bed went back to Berlin. Leo, Karl-Heinz and I went to Geneva and spent two days patrolling bars, theaters and variety shows looking for a replacement. We found our Thérèse in the Théâtre de la Comédie, a young girl playing a chambermaid in some tired farce. Her name was Anne-Louise Corsalettes. I decided to call her Anny La Lance (after a small village on the Lake of Neuchâtel) and, I would like
to say, a star was born. I certainly enjoyed the opportunity it afforded me of saying, “I want you to be in my movie,” but Anny was no actress, she just looked perfect. Rousseau described Thérèse as “a girl of feeling, lacking in coquetry, with lustrous gentle eyes.” Anny had large dark eyes and a blunt, quite pretty face. She was a big girl with strong shoulders and hips and it had been her clumping exits and entrances in the farce that had attracted our attention and had taken us backstage. Naturally, she was overwhelmed at our offer.

Anyway, that was Anny La Lance and she performed well under my direction. She did everything I told her and bore me no ill will when I set her up in order to get the right response (as in the diary passage quoted above, when Jean Jacques’s house at Môtiers was stoned by hostile suspicious villagers). Filming was going well and I was shooting German and English versions concurrently—such are the problems of sound. Karl-Heinz’s English accent was strongly Germanic and Anny spoke only French, but I could overdub later.