One of my favorite actors – Philippe Noiret – has died. Among the films of his I remember are Bertrand Tavernier’s Coup de torchon (from a Jim Thompson novel) and The Watchmaker of Saint Paul (from a Simenon novel), the amusing My New Partner and the art house classics Il Postino and Cinema Paradiso. What a career.
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Poetry doesn’t belong to those who write it; it belongs to those who need it.
That’s from Il Postino. The same could be said of movies. Funny where the stream-of-consciousness takes one when one reads of the death of an actor…
I ended up at the poem Juliet Stevenson, as Nina, translates for her dead and present lover, Alan Rickman as Jamie, toward the end of Truly, Madly, Deeply.
If suddenly you do not exist,
if suddenly you are not living,
I shall go on living.
I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.
I shall go on living.
Because where a man has no voice,
there, my voice
Where blacks are beaten,
I can not be dead.
When my brothers go to jail
I shall go with them.
When victory,
not my victory,
but the great victory
arrives,
even though I am mute I must speak:
I shall see it come even though I am blind.
No, forgive me,
if you are not living,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you
have died.
–Pablo Neruda, The Dead Woman, as translated from the original in Spanish
From there it’s on to the end of a John Ford-directed movie adaptation of a John Steinbeck novel…
I’m also reminded that it’s been a very long time since I’ve seen a Bertrand Tavernier movie and that it’s also been too long since I last watched one of the very great movies about the wonder and power the movie-going experience can have in and on our lives, Cinema Paradiso.
RIP, Philippe Noiret and thank you for your Pablo Neruda and your Alfredo and your Major Delaplane and your Rene and your Lucien Cordier and your Rafael Giurrana and your…
I love Noiret – he never acted, he did.
Great in comedy, great in drama.
France2 news interviewed Jean Rochefort, who was very moving, last Friday.