Long life
Star struck
Nigel Nicolson
Last week I attended the gala premiere (in aid of the Almeida Theatre) of Damage, the film of Josephine Hart's sulphureous novel. At the start a notice was displayed forbidding anyone under 18 to watch it. That was a mistake. It should have been 75, the age when it is assumed, wrongly, that all passion is spent, for never have I seen such carnality pictured on the screen. Com- pared to the nude antics of the two main characters, Anna and Stephen, the writhing of Laocoon was a mere towelling after a bath. The audience tittered, not with desire or amusement or shock, but with embar- rassment at being voyeurs of such scenes.
As it happens, I saw something of the origins of the film. The director, Louis Malle, and the script-writer, David Hare, spent four days working on it in the garden cottage which Ed Victor rents from the National Trust at Sissinghurst, and I saw them every day. Two more delightful men I have never met. Their laughter rang across the tawny gold of the August flower-beds. In the visitors' book Hare wrote, 'In the time we were here, the love-making of Anna and Stephen became more violent', but of that I had no suspicion. What sur- prises me is their assumption that Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche, who had never met before, could be persuaded to strip naked and act these scenes, perhaps over and over again, before a crowd of techni- cians and onlookers. It must take some courage.
Imagine the response of Garbo if she had been asked to do this, but perhaps I exaggerate her timidity. I met her once. John Gunther brought her to lunch one summer's day, explaining that he could not mention the name of his guest over the telephone because she was shy and famous, but I would know her when I saw her. I didn't. She was by then 60 or more. But after a few minutes I recognised the move- ment of her hands as she fondled a cigarette-holder and of her body as she ran like a girl across the lawn. There was deli- cacy there, but also audacity. She might, after all, have acted Anna.
The only other film-star I have ever met could never have played Stephen. When I was a boy, my mother, who was then in her social phase, invited Charlie Chaplin to come down from London for the day. At lunch the conversation turned to jokes. Each of us was asked to tell our funniest story. Mine was: 'What's the difference between a small packet of cigarettes and a cricket team? Answer: one Player.' That did not go down too well, and we all turned to the world's greatest comic genius. His story didn't seem to me funny at all: just silly. I have never forgotten it. It was this.
A man in a teashop orders a cup of cof- fee and a piece of shortbread. On paying the bill he compliments the manager on the quality of the shortbread and asks if it could be made in any shape. 'Why, certain- ly."Well, if I come back tomorrow, could you make me a piece shaped like the letter e?"No trouble,' says the manager. Next day, on returning to the shop, the man looks aghast. 'But you've made it a capital E!' he cries. 'I meant a small e.' He arranges to come back another day, and this time expresses himself completely sat- isfied. 'Where would you like me to send it?' asks the manager. 'Oh, I won't give you the trouble to send it anywhere,' says the customer, 'I'll sit down here, if I may, and eat it now,' and does.
Previous page
