Deception is a movie primarily about music, but it is also about the fragility of love and ego.
Because of the gentle and unreliable mixture of insecurity, need for connection, ego, the blurring of passionate personal love and passionate musical love, musicians (in real life and in movies) sometimes make choices that might not make sense to "lay people."
In this case we have a successful and rich composer named Alexander Hollenius, his student (and kept mistress) Christine Radcliffe, and her refugee-from-Europe cellist boyfriend (from Christine's days in Vienna before the War) Karel Novak. Hollenius, being rich and influential, helped Karel leave Europe for New York without knowing that Christine had been in love with him. Christine doesn't want to let Karel know, because she believes that he is too emotionally fragile to take it.
(That's only one of the deceptions in the plot)
Another grand deception is the one where Paul Henreid, who plays the role of the cellist, appears to play the cello. This feat was accomplished by Henreid taking six months of lessons with Eleanor Aller's cello-teaching father, having a piece written by Eric Wolfgang Korngold for the movie with some passages where a non-cellist could be posed to play and look good (even if the sound wasn't good), and employing one right arm and one left arm of two hidden cellists occupying the sleeves of Paul Henreid's (probably over-sized) jacket to play the difficult close-up passagework.
Eleanor Aller played the concertos by "Hollenius" (really Korngold) and the uncredited Haydn for the movie's soundtrack. The cellists playing the cello held between Paul Henreid's legs didn't need to play in tune or make a decent sound because Aller was working her magic through the power of great musicianship and exquisite cello playing. According to Aller's son (and my recently deceased friend) Fred Zlotkin, Gregor Piatagorsky was considered for the soundtrack, and when that proved not possible, Aller stepped in and did a remarkable job. Fred was also present during the recordings, albeit in utero.
Christine, identified in the movie's first exchanges of dialogue as a pianist and a composer, doesn't seem to have a means of support aside from what Hollenius has given her. As a leading woman in a 1946 film noir, she doesn't have many choices; the only actual power she has at her command (besides playing the piano very well in one scene) is the power to love, withhold love, deceive, or destroy.
My (no longer living) friend Seymour Barab once told me, while we were talking about the role of a composer, "First of all, they should be dead."
(That's only one of the deceptions in the plot)
Another grand deception is the one where Paul Henreid, who plays the role of the cellist, appears to play the cello. This feat was accomplished by Henreid taking six months of lessons with Eleanor Aller's cello-teaching father, having a piece written by Eric Wolfgang Korngold for the movie with some passages where a non-cellist could be posed to play and look good (even if the sound wasn't good), and employing one right arm and one left arm of two hidden cellists occupying the sleeves of Paul Henreid's (probably over-sized) jacket to play the difficult close-up passagework.
Eleanor Aller played the concertos by "Hollenius" (really Korngold) and the uncredited Haydn for the movie's soundtrack. The cellists playing the cello held between Paul Henreid's legs didn't need to play in tune or make a decent sound because Aller was working her magic through the power of great musicianship and exquisite cello playing. According to Aller's son (and my recently deceased friend) Fred Zlotkin, Gregor Piatagorsky was considered for the soundtrack, and when that proved not possible, Aller stepped in and did a remarkable job. Fred was also present during the recordings, albeit in utero.
Christine, identified in the movie's first exchanges of dialogue as a pianist and a composer, doesn't seem to have a means of support aside from what Hollenius has given her. As a leading woman in a 1946 film noir, she doesn't have many choices; the only actual power she has at her command (besides playing the piano very well in one scene) is the power to love, withhold love, deceive, or destroy.
My (no longer living) friend Seymour Barab once told me, while we were talking about the role of a composer, "First of all, they should be dead."
The ultimate bit of magic that dead composers can achieve is the way their personalities appear to be somehow present while their music is being played no matter who (or whom) it is doing the playing. They can also appear to be present when a recording is played by human beings that are no longer living.
The composer's desire to connect with a person or people while writing a piece of music is generally fulfilled in the process of writing (with the object or subject usually not in the room). After the piece is written it then becomes a vehicle for a particular performing musician's self expression, and then a vehicle for any performing musician's self expression. In Deception Hollenius uses his concerto as an instrument of revenge against Christine and her husband.
The cellist Karel Novak declares that after the first performance of the Hollenius Concerto has been played the piece will be his ticket to a great career. Musicians need music to play, for whatever reason. As long as composers are willing and able to provide new music, and audiences have interest in hearing something they haven't heard before, musical culture moves forward, and occasionally careers are made.
When all is said and done, we have to accept that the emotional substance that fuels a composition (friendship, love, jollity, seasonal zeal, revenge, religious devotion, experimentation, money, response to a text, or a response to a moving or still image) may never really be understood.
And ultimately it doesn't matter.
You can watch a remarkable BBC documentary about Korngold and the Slatkin family hosted by Aller's sons Leonard and Fred that includes a demonstration of the visual cello playing deception right here.
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