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“Cinema - this is a lie.” George Brownes

Memory.

A hazy morning on the coast of Brittany.

The screams of gulls over coastal cliffs,

the stupefying smell of salty water and Roquefort cheese.

Will it go on forever? Or will the strip snap?

Will the focus shift? It is hard to say.

Certainly there is a desire to lay down one’s burden for a moment.

To forget everything...

To simply exist, to exist as a living witness...

To stop.

To stop at a random memory.

To rewind it. Back to the beginning. Further still.

Of course, these are only pictures torn out of the void.

Without perforation. With scratches on emulsion.

Too grainy. Fading. Yellowing.

But look at this pale face, steely grey eyes,

this barely noticeable flicker of irony at the corner of his mouth.

This arching eyebrow. A tiny scar on an earlobe -

isn’t it a magnificent amalgam of genius and utter illiteracy,

amnesia and dazzling clarity of mind,

manic-depressive syndrome and the resolution of a border guard.

The birth of a genius. Lyon. Nov. 26, 1863.

On December 26, a perfectly normal male child is born

in the Capuchin hospital in the Latin Quarter.

However, it never rains but it pours -

another male child is born.

And, as often happens in life, the paths of the twins diverge.

The first boy will be the protagonist of our story.

Let us call him Jean-Paul.

But is the world ready to accept him?

And is he ready to accept the world?

The brother.

Brother No. 2 chooses freedom. Freedom in the dark.

He will become a specialist of Dark Spaces,

with only moles, worms and fir roots for his companions.

1869, the island of Tonga.

A searingly scratchy memory carries Jean-Paul back

to this short but colorful period

with his missionary uncle Paul Gauguin

on the Island of Tonga. It was paradise!

For Jean-Paul, Tonga also meant

his very first experience in the art of invention -

Uncle Paul had just invented

a Great Out-Of-Boots Hopping Game.

Although the simple-minded missionary

felt a great joy in giving, he had still made a fatal mistake -

there was no ecological niche

for such aromatic stuff on the island.

A Green-eyed, Big-toed Fly -

by the way, the female of the species

react to a bare toe from a distance of 1700 kilometers -

did only what her millions of forbearers

had done for billions of years.

The further events took place

in accordance with the laws of nature.

Saying farewell to his childhood, Jean-Paul took a vow:

I will never take my boots off.

1871. Stockholm.

One more blue-yellow memory goes back to Sweden.

Sweden was a wild country, the only civilized people there

were Alfred Nobel and Nils Holgersson.

The latter had just invented a Selma Lagerlöf clockwork goose.

Jean-Paul was sent to Sweden for climatic reasons -

the Swedish air, rich in iron,

was good for Jean-Paul’s underdeveloped lungs.

Alfred Nobel, a Jew and a distant relative of Jean-Paul,

kept trying to invent a non-explosive dynamite

so far without success,

and therefore he consisted of diligently numbered pieces.

Little Jean-Paul was distressed by this wild and desolate country.

There was no esprit, no glamour there.

He gazed sadly at a white spot in the upper left corner of the frame,

having no idea that it was a blond boy called Ingmar Bergman

who was riding an inferior, rusty Swedish bike.

Paris. 1876.

Paris! What a town!

Just now they brought here the Tower of Eiffel,

which had up to now been gathering rust

in a smoggy godforsaken place called London.

And the walls of Paris...

How many memories, how many names -

Jean-Claude, Jean-Pierre, Jean-Luc.

Unfortunately, Jean-Paul was not able

to leave any mark on the walls of Paris.

He did not know who he was.

Where the others had memory, Jean-Paul had a black hole.

That’s why we call him Jean-Paul.

A Russian called Leo Tolstoy was the first person in the world

to introduce hop, skip and jump. True enough, when landing,

he broke 8 ribs, both thighbones, pelvis, collarbone and left thumb,

after which he fell into oblivion for many decades,

during which period his only consolation

was the melancholy twanging of his mind’s mandolin.

1879, Switzerland. The beginning of the crisis.

A relatively obscure period in Jean-Paul’s life

is his stay in Switzerland during 1878-1881.

Probably the reason was the success of the Swiss

in the invention business. The fact is that even then

the Swiss knew the safety pin and the cuckoo clock.

But the newest and the most stunning invention

was a device for the identification of the Swiss.

Now Jean-Paul knew at least something about himself.

He is not Swiss. But what is he?

The number of options was frightening.

Maybe I am a Belgian, thought Jean-Paul horrified.

At the same time...

What about replacing transmission by eccentric and using perforation,

the specialist of Dark Spaces asked the fir root.

The fir root did not answer.

A meeting in Germany.

In Germany, somewhere in the backwaters of Europe,

the first noteworthy event in the last 700 years takes place:

Bach and Beethoven meet.

1878. Clermont-Ferrand, St Godand Hospital, the building.

There are two inseparable things -

a danger threatening one’s native land and medical examinations.

Which is the reason and which the result, wondered Jean-Paul,

and what is this strange glow inside my coat -

is it really the flame of patriotism?

To die for your country - wouldn’t it be

a wonderful solution for a rapidly progressing identity crisis?

An eighth sense warned Jean-Paul:

you can cross a street under the red light,

you can marry a race horse,

but there are certain things that are simply not done.

When it came out that Jean-Paul had two wooden legs,

the problem of dying for one’s country was not so urgent anymore.

A moustache can be useful, for women are looming already.

But the strange glow inside Jean-Paul’s coat

continued to trouble him.

1884. Tuscany.

Voila una donna.

It was the wrong country for the call of love.

As a matter of fact the women were very rare in Italy.

Cannibalism was an ordinary practice as late as the last century -

they ate men, women and the postal clerks,

but due to their delicious flesh,

the number of Italian women decreased catastrophically.

Adoption of pasta meals can also be explained by the rarity of women.

Voila una donna.

Passion in Copenhagen.

Jean-Paul’s cry for love had found a response in Sigrid U.,

a great woman writer, a cool Nordic woman.

Why had this seedy hole, Copenhagen,

a restaurant called MANUEL?, Jean-Paul managed to think,

before his wits were dimmed by a blazing passion.

So much for Sigrid U. then.

1878, a cold winter in Southern France.

The winter of 1865 in Southern France

was exceptionally cold.

Spring 68, Paris. Time to choose.

The spring of ‘68 in Paris was turbulent.

There was an overwhelming need

to sing the Marseillaise to the accompaniment of an accordion,

to draw a straight line on a blindingly white sheet of paper.

Of course, there were those who went away.

And although Jean-Paul felt a strange urge,

an inexplicable call, he still decided:

I will stay with you, my Paris.

The unfathomable glow inside his coat was still there.

1871. F. Liszt meets a piano.

1871. Marseille, Grand Cafe. Discreet charm of proletariat.

Let us forget Jean-Paul for a moment.

The Grand Cafe was also a favorite haunt

of Dr. Hector Berlioz, an invention genius,

who was on the verge of making the dream of mankind come true.

Dr. Hector had invented an enzyme which, infiltrating cancerous cells,

set going their tumultuous fusion

that means the process of reverse bipartition.

The remaining cancer cell was eliminated operatively

and the victory over cancer was within grasp.

There he is, Dr. Hector!

There were merely a couple of purely technical details

concerning the direction of the synthesis

and, of course, the formalities pertaining to the patent documents.

And now have a look at Jean-Paul!

What is he in comparison with the doctor? A loser.

Time for contemplation. April 25, 1873 - March 13, 1874.

Jean-Paul returned home for a year.

Everything seemed so strange.

The old apple tree did not blossom anymore.

The old apple tree had turned into a melon tree.

His ear’s desire for freedom was kept alive by the hope

that Santa Claus would open the door.

But as always, Santa Claus came down the chimney.

But never mind.

Look, the blinding smile of an approaching she-postman.

Nipples erect in the Mediterranean breeze.

A tiny mole in the hollow of the knee.

Jean-Paul’s soul was filled with peace.

The solution was at hand. It was spring, the spring of 1874.

HE

AND

SHE

Evidently it was Beatrice’s egocentricity

and inability to communicate,

her incapacity for seeing problems in a wider context

that caused the destruction of their young, barely budding love.

At the same time Jean-Paul felt an odd relief -

his suspicions that Beatrice was not mature enough

to respond to his vigorous passion, proved to be true.

12.37 a bathroom. The iron breath of technology.

The toothbrush had just been invented. What next?

Jean-Paul felt

that he was ready. Ready for what?

1882. The collapse of dreams. The twilight zone.

This moment changed Jean-Paul’s life utterly.

Whenever he fell asleep, he always dreamt

the same terrible, nightmarish dream

and woke with a start in a frenzy of horror,

covered with sweat…

Slightly perturbed.

The assassination of Antonio the Cheese-maker in Naples in 1883.

Italy, the country of soothing climate and emotional people.

Breathtaking sights have such a profound effect on tourists

that for a moment they tend to forget their homelands.

Exquisite dishes compete with each other,

spontaneous, open people make it easy to find company,

and by the time the sun sinks over the horizon,

every foreign visitor has only one idea in his/her head:

if only it were possible for me to live here and why not?

Surely everyone has a right and a responsibility to escape

at least once in his or her life to this wonderful country,

away from their own cold, bleak homeland!

Only Italy can offer what everyone needs most:

peace, new experience and olives.

March - April 1883. Waterman returns.

The news of the murder of the cheese-maker

ruined Jean-Paul’s health.

Casablanca, he managed to think,

and saw Ingrid’s hand moving towards a glass of champagne...

Yes, Jean-Paul had crossed the borderline

between good and evil,

he had turned into an insignificant puddle

for thousands of feet to walk in.

Bernadette Fisher, a simple village girl,

was able to take a decisive step and enter Jean-Paul’s watery life.

Their physical closeness

rapidly developed into a deep spiritual attachment.

Jean-Paul, the puddle, did not understand immediately,

that Bernadette, with her linear way of thinking

and unsophisticated manners, was not an equal partner for him.

Cohabitation is more than just wiggling your toes.

Changed circumstances and unhealthy rivalry

had a sobering effect on Jean-Paul.

He returned to the world of fire, steel and Burgundy.

1873, Tour de France. The collapse of neopositivistic idealism.

A new and deep depression.

Questions without answers, tormenting dreams.

And on the top of everything,

this nasty little Russian, Volodya Ulyanov-Lenin,

skating just beneath Jean-Paul’s window,

as if there were nowhere else! The Volga! The Don! Baikal!

The Arctic Ocean, for example!

At the same time...

Who is the man inventing the synthetic rain clouds?,

the specialist of Dark Spaces asked.

Francois Truffaut, I think, answered pomme de terre.

1875. Berlin. The culmination of the identity crisis.

An even more schizoid identity crisis

forced Jean-Paul to venture

into the deepest nooks and crannies of his subconscious.

To face himself, to ask, on which side of the barricade he stood.

Jean-Paul did not know what a barricade was,

but he had an inkling of an answer.

An answer that could not be voiced yet.

Jean-Paul sensed

that he was leaving something irrevocably behind.

The accounts for one period of his life had been settled.

The picture was clearing.

But Jean-Paul never returned to Berlin,

not even in his worst nightmares.

Prague. 1874.

The winter of 1874 in Poland was exceptionally cold.

All six glazed windows in Prague shattered.

Frame by frame, Montpellier, on Wednesday at

As is well known, British women were so plain

that for the last two hundred years

there was a law against their going to the Continent

except when they were used to intimidate naughty children.

The only exception was Jane Frame,

who now walked in all her beauty into Jean-Paul’s life.

Did you notice the man with the round spectacles

at the first floor window? It was Victor Hugo, the man who invented

an internal combustion engine that works on seawater.

However, there was still no solution

to a minor, but nevertheless basic problem:

the oxidation of sparking plug electrodes.

The end of the petrol engine hegemony was near.

Frame by frame - no, that’s not my way, thought Jean-Paul.

A meeting with a cigar, a sardine and Japanese memories.

Silence, sighs, whispers and cries.

The needle-sharp, ethereal meeting point of two worlds,

separated from us only by a non-existent step.

Then Jean-Paul formulated one of the basic truths of being:

always start with a sardine, never leave a cigar to the last

and better forget about the memories of Japan.

A successful experiment in France.

It had finally been proved

that Emile Zola and Alexandre Dumas were one and the same person.

It was a glorious victory for le Academie Francaise.

1884, Salamanca de la Guadalajara, Rioja.

Spain. Cheap wine. Primitive pleasures.

Two old alcoholics, Freud and Hemingway, corrida fans.

All this merely filled Jean-Paul with disgust,

lulled him to sleep.

Jean-Paul slept in the hot Spanish sun and dreamt.

He dreamt of freedom.

Freedom.

The phobias of childhood... a distant memory.

And suddenly Jean-Paul realized

that the bright spot in the left hand corner is no Ingmar Bergman,

but a speck of dust on the lens of his spectacles.

He was free.

To be free means to ignore rules. Boots off!

But don’t wiggle your toes, warned an inner voice.

That was a mistake.

Jean-Paul was now as small as Little Edouard

and that promised nothing good.

Edouard and Alfred.

Once upon a time there lived Little Edouard and Uncle Alfred.

Above everything, Little Edouard loved fine arts.

Such names as Claude Lonane, Jacques Callot,

Jean Baptiste Chardin, Eugene Delacroix,

Fernand Leger, Henri Matisse were more than familiar to him.

Or let us take music.

Little Edouard’s life without Luigi Cherubini,

Cesar Franc, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Eric Satie,

Eric Honecker, and Andre Marcal would have been unimaginable.

Little Edouard spent all his free moments

with the poetry of Paul Valery, Andre Gide, Marcel Proust,

Guillaume Apoleinaire, Andre Breton, Louis Aragon,

Jacques Prévert, Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus

but he utterly adored Rene de Chateaubriand,

Alfred de Musset, Jules Verne, Dider Auriol,

Charles Baudelaire and Honore de Balzac

and he really could not get enough of Gustave Coubet -

Oh, that was a mistake. So much for Uncle Alfred, then!

1880-1882. Under the bridge.

For a strong character, life under a bridge can be a sort of purgatory.

At a particular moment there is a certain readiness.

The head is a magnet, ears are iron.

Everything is still ahead, everything is still possible.

Edison on the bridge, 1882.

The meeting with Edison had to be on the bridge.

Jean-Paul knew that Edisons always had to be met on bridges.

But the meeting never happened,

because at the same time Edison was somewhere else,

on some other bridge instead.

Edison was big and he knew it.

Edouard in action.

French people have had two great sons:

Little Edouard and Napoleon Bonaparte – both 130 cm...

What is it like to be Napoleon? thought Little Edouard.

Discovering that his breasts had started to grow,

Little Edouard decided to invent a brassiere, before it was too late.

1885. Friends.

On his 50th birthday, Jean-Paul faced tormenting questions.

He suddenly and unintentionally realized

that his circle of friends had narrowed.

There was now only a talking carrot and an unfledged radish.

And a distinct feeling of deja vu.

Edouard in action.

Avignon girls. Avignon, April 15, 1891.

Little Edouard’s activities galvanized thousands

of still latent feminists of the neighborhood,

who organized a congress in Belvedere Castle.

Before reaching the first item on the agenda,

the movement split into the Left and the Radical Left.

The planned cruise was on the verge of being cancelled.

Edouard in action.

An unseen catastrophe.

Both groups of the feminist movement on the cruise

defined themselves as leftist

and point-blank refused the cabins of the right-hand side of the ship.

Later events took place in accordance with the laws of physics.

So much for the feminists then.

This magnificent catastrophe was only witnessed

by a half-blind coast guard named

Franz Schubert, a male chauvinist pig,

still waving to the ship

which to his mind was moving farther away.

And now it is time to ask:

what use is a catastrophe that goes unseen by a wide audience?

Edouard.

Little Edouard’s fascination with brassieres

sank together with the Titanic.

Little Edouard decided to invent the mass media instead.

But that was a mistake.

So much for Little Edouard, then.

May 1895. Velko Tõrnovo. The circle closes.

Bessarabian surrealists were Jean-Paul’ last hope.

Jean-Paul realized that the circle was closing.

1891-1893. Back to basics.

1895. Setting out.

Bonjour. How are you doing, man?

The summer of 1895 in France was exceptionally hot.

A sip of Bejaulais Nouveau, some verses by Baudelaire -

what else could one desire, mused Jean-Paul.

He felt dead brill.

At the same time...

Is it at all possible to cumulate the optic consistency of a lens?...

the specialist of the Dark Spaces asked the earthworm.

It is probably time for you to go, answered the earthworm.

What does it mean? thought Jean-Paul.

Is it a hidden message? What should I do?

Is it really a hint that I have to invent a steam locomotive,

Jean-Paul managed to think,

and then a heavy hand was laid on his shoulder.

Your ticket! Jean-Paul had never had any tickets.

But there was this mysterious glow inside his coat.

It may have been a one-way ticket? It was not a one-way ticket.

Finally, realized Jean-Paul, I will learn what I am.

Louis Lumiere - not bad, not bad at all.

1895. 17.30 the brothers jump into the air.

Le cinematographe.

The same year, in 1895, the Lumiere brothers invented the cinema.

And although they both died of heart attacks at the premiere of their film,

the cinema as such rapidly gained popularity.

Dr. Hector Berlioz never finished his cure for cancer.

Victor Hugo never completed his internal combustion engine

that was supposed to run on seawater

and Francois Truffaut sadly neglected his rain clouds.

They all became devoted cinema fans

and nothing else could penetrate their,

or even our, souls and minds.