at least at the outset, continuing to weave the threads tacked
on before 17:00. Little by little, new awareness’s rise:
a story with 6-7 characters we would have started beforehand will
be developed in the "after 17:00" climate. A woman calls
you: "I will be waiting for you tonight". What will
you answer, all of you immortals? I wouldn’t know myself.
Of course it would be great to enter a house where people are
fighting and announce to them, in the bailiff’s official
tone: "From such and such time you are all immortal".
Passing from the mortal framework to the immortal one would be
very interesting: on the other hand, it is easy to foresee a statuary
configuration for mankind, with ivy growing over our bodies and
feet becoming roots deep in the ground.
Dreams belong
to the blind and to seers. A film all about dreams would be a
significant documentary for our descendants too; otherwise, they
would hardly be able to know what people living in this bellicose
period were dreaming of.
Supervision
- and I don’t mean to make silly word plays - would be entrusted
to a blind man.
But no flou,
no slowing down, no surrealism, as film producers would say. Our
dreams are clear and ferocious, we can talk about them while lying
on hammocks after breakfast. Our dreams are the Pythagorean table,
we multiply Anthony by Achilles, add a glass to a magnet, or to
Carlo’s granddaughter we obtaining clear and peace-less
results.
Let’s
remain within the order of known things: a tree is a tree and
it cannot exist if not as a tree. But actually in dreams the tree
can speak and out of our belly kilometers of intestines can unravel
out with utmost ease,
We are even
able to create a city that is, from its very foundations, fruit
of a dream. Close your eyes, my friends, here is the city with
its squares, bell towers, a dream. In a shop window some men are
displayed, a melancholy passer-by enters, rents out a young blond
guy for one hour, takes him to the park, tells him his personal
history, then takes him back when the hour has elapsed.
I am not mentioning
other unexpected apparitions, I warn you, however, their meaning
will be in the earthy truth of their development.
Nothing magical.
To depose Frankenstein and try the "new" we need only
to feel the urgency to re-propose to our attention motifs that
have been petrified by the passing of centuries. We will give
up truca, transparencier, the infinite tricks dear to Méliès.
The wonder must be in us to be expressed without wonder: the best
dreams are the un-fogged ones, they are visible like nerves on
leaves.
Cesare
Zavattini's writing credits include "The Bicycle Thief"
(1948) and "Umberto D" (1952).
[This essay
originally appeared in “Il Banale Non Esiste” (Banality
Does Not Exist), ed. Bompiani. Republished in "Cinema",
#92, 25 April 1940.] |
