Sixty Years of International Art Cinema 1960-2020 - Bruce Hodsdon continues his series - 6 (32) (ii) - André Delvaux's Magic Realism

André Delvaux

Belgium was created as a country in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. Bi-lingualism divides the country between French-speaking Wallonia in the north and Dutch/Flemish-speaking Flanders in the south. Some Belgians extend this linguistic identity and feel affinity with France or the Netherlands. Following an uprising against the Dutch in 1830 Belgium gained its independence. Early film production consisted mainly of documentaries. Henri Storck is credited with the promotion and development of cinema in Belgium. “Although emphatically Flemish, his social awareness and artistic independence [as a documentary filmmaker] transcend[ed] class and ethnic boundaries…Firmly rooted in Belgium’s artistic traditions [he was] also open to the influence of the outside world” (Lieve Spaas 10-11). It was not until after World War II that the Belgian film industry began to take shape and the distinctions between Flemish and Francophone cinema became blurred (ibid 9). As filmmakers, the Flemish trio of Storck, Charles Dekeukeleire (also a leading critic), and Delvaux “were unique in creating a dual Flemish Francophone identity” (ibid 12).

 André Delvaux  (1926 - 2002), Flemish-born with French schooling, was son of Belgian painter Paul Delvaux who is often identified with surrealism. While visually reminiscent of his father’s art and the work of Flemish surrealist painter, René Magritte, his first feature is based on a novel by Flemish author Johan Daisne. While he acknowledged the influence of Vertigo, none of Delvaux’s subsequent films were more self-categorised than his first feature The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short/L'Homme au crâne rasé (1966). His second feature One Night a Train/Un Soir un Train (1968) is also based on a Daisne novel, De Train der traagheid/Train of Slowness, which “again confronts the viewer with reality and illusion and with Delvaux’s belief that it is impossible to know the other or oneself” ( ibid 15).  Delvaux’s special love for music is evident in Man, the placement of the spare score composed by the performing quartet running parallel with rather than seamlessly absorbed by the narrative.

Senne Rouffaeur, The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short

Daisne’s novel in the form of an uninterrupted confession, is transformed into subjective narrative by Delvaux’s evocatively original approach; Govert Miereveld (Senne Rouffaeur), a middle-aged lawyer married with two children, teaches commercial law at a girl’s school where he develops a secret love for one of his students, the beautiful Fran Veenman (Beata Tyszkiewicz). On Fran’s last day at school Govert has summoned enough courage to reveal his love to her but circumstances prevent him from doing so and she goes out of his life. Some years later finds Govert, now reduced to working as a law court clerk, still obsessed with his lost love. One day he is obliged to travel with a former colleague, a forensic doctor, to attend an autopsy to be conducted on a decomposing body at a cemetery. The detached gruesomeness of the process profoundly affects Govert. Later that day he is overwhelmed when he sees Fran, who is now a famous actress, at the hotel. 

Following appearing to fall asleep in his room he ‘imagines’ going to her room to declare his love, fact becoming indistinguishable from fantasy. “To juxtapose the horror of the autopsy with the beauty of the young actress, lends a dramatic tone to the film - or is it a reflection of Govert’s disturbed mind? […] The only certainty the viewer gains [through the uncertain gaze kept by Delvaux at a distance] is that the subject sees but does not know the other” (ibid 14). The price of peace for Govert has been the loss of his sense of being in the aftermath of his traumatic meeting with Fran. Magic realism has been suggested as relevant by Spaas when dealing with the notion of identity “for it is precisely the idea that one’s own identity can be the object of knowledge which is being challenged.”                                                                                                                                                                    

The core question in the work of both Daisne and Delvaux concerns perceptual knowledge : how do we know that what we perceive is actually there? And how do we know what we remember is real? And if we cannot be sure of the world we perceive, how can we know ourselves?“ (ibid 12).

The revelation in a newsreel that Govert inadvertently views ten years later, in the institution where he appears to be interned, that Fran survived the shooting, lifting the burden of Fran’s death, that in Govert’s destruction he has found peace as Gottfried : “I look at myself from the outside. I am someone else.”

Michael Richardson acknowledges that “the influence of surrealism is stamped on the films of André Delvaux, [see above]. Some of his other films, Rendezvous at Bray (1971) and Belle (1973), for instance, treat themes that parallel the concerns of surrealist writers like Julien Gracq and André Pieyre Mandiargues, although,” Richardson considers that,”Delvaux’s interest seems more to use the ambiguities of reality to construct visual tapestries than to seek out that point of the mind at which contradictions are resolved” (168). Tony Rayns finds that in “a remarkably original first feature […] Delvaux’s main feat is to take the audience into Miereveld’s manias without pretending to explain them […] The result is a mixture of psychological thriller and noir love story, and it’s more than a little wonderful.” For Richard Roud, Delvaux has an absolute genius for choosing his locations […] The most extraordinary achievement of Delvaux’s film is that he manages to suggest visually the metaphysical overtones which are spelled out in the novel. […] He does it mainly by being extremely simple and selective […] Delvaux presents the entomological portrayal of the everyday with, however, just the right number of details missing, to set in relief, those that are there. And what better way to portray a man obsessed?”

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Lieve Spaas The Francophone Film : A Struggle for Identity  2000;  

Michael Richardson  Surrealism and Cinema  2006;  

Richard Roud Sight & Sound  Spring 1967;  

Tony Rayns Time Out  Film Guide 2009;  

Tom Milne  Monthly Film Bulletin  February 1967; 

Ernst Mathijs 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die  2004.