The insoluble pancake

A few weeks ago I once again descended deep beneath the city, twenty-five meters below ground, to visit the carrieres of Paris. It’s my third trip there now, but this time I was in the company of a expert, a specialist in the subject, a man who has made his life’s work the study of every kind of man-made tunnel and cave. He is the co-editor of one of the reference works on the subject, and so it was something of a privilege to make this trip. A friend of a friend introduced me to him, and on one fine warm Sunday afternoon we left behind a pleasant Parisian summer afternoon (elegant well-dressed people drinking espressos on terraces, summer sunshine illuminating parks and beautiful broad boulevards, that kind of thing) to descend into the dark and the cold of the Parisian Carrieres.

Some history: there are hundred of kilometers of tunnels here in southern Paris, many of them centuries old. In medieval times, limestone was quarried extensively from deep underground, leaving behind many caves and tunnels. Later, in the 18th century, as the city limits rapidly expanded, suddenly buildings were collapsing, holes opening up in the street. These ancient underground caves had collapsed, the earth had subsided. No-one expected the ground to carry all this weight, after all it was open countryside when they were quarried. This was the origin of the ‘inspection des carrieres’ (IDC) who joined up all these underground caves and quarries with tunnels, who drew up detailed maps of where everything was. In Paris, the owner of a patch of ground is also the owner of everything down to the level of the carrieres; almost the first operation in any building work here is assessing how solid the ground below actually is — and reinforcing it if it isn’t, which can be expensive.

Over the years, many of the tunnels have been closed off or filled in, but in large part the network still exists, and inspections are still carried out regularly by the IDC- but of course, they are not the only people down there. At one time, almost every public building in Paris boasted a set of staircases going down, an entrance underground; today, most of these entrances have been closed off. But a few still exist…There are manhole covers in the street which go down, but these are for the large part welded shut; but every so often, one will open; some work needs to be done, the manhole cover is opened and …

There is one way to enter, one way to descend, that has always remained open, more or less. At one time, a railway followed the outskirts of Paris, an outer circle: it was called ‘le petit ceinture’, or ‘little belt’. There are parts of the railway that still exist today, although no passengers have crossed the platforms for perhaps a half-century. In one location, not far from where I write this, a tunnel takes the abandoned railway lines underneath the current tracks of the line four metro. In the middle of this cold, damp tunnel (it is actually underneath the “parc montsouris”) there is a hole in the wall — that hole leads to the carrieres.

In the past few days I have seen five films directed by Aki Kaurismaki, as well as “The Liar”, Mika Kaurismaki’s film school project for which Aki wrote the script. Kaurismaki is one of the “guests of honour” at the Paris Cinema festival, and a complete retrospective of all his films are passing the screens of the Reflet Medicis. As well as this, Kaurismaki and a few actors from his films are in town, and have made appearances before a few of the projections. So I will have a chance to catch up on all the films I missed at the Champo retrospective around 18 months ago.

On Thursday night at the Cinematheque there was a screening of “Juha”, Kaurismaki’s silent movie, and it was accompanied live by the Finnish orchestra who wrote the film’s original music. Kaurismaki, Kati Outinen and Andre Wilms were also there, but unfortunately (and this was to be a recurring feature of other projections) no-one really got very much of an opportunity to say anything.

For Kaurismaki to make a silent film was not such a radical departure of course given that (for certain of his films at least) nobody says very much (apparently for the “Match factory girl” all the dialogues were written on little bits of paper at the last possible minute). But a silent film for sure demands a different style of acting than a film graced with live dialogues; as Kaurismaki commented, once the card appears indicating a person’s emotional state, after that card disappears from the screen the actor has to display that emotion even more forcefully than before.

“Juha” tells the story of a rural couple who live a peaceful simple existence in the depths of the countryside. Their rural idyll is disrupted by the arrival of stranger (Andre Wilms) in a fast red car, who persuades Juha’s wife, Marja (played by Kati Outinen) to run away with him to the city. Needless to say, things end badly for everyone. Tragedy and burlesque. A revolver and an axe.

The live music was not really what I expected; it was kind of rock / jazz fusion, which in the end worked well enough (but then of course live music for a silent movie doesn’t have to be some guy with a piano of course). Mr. Kaurismaki made a few laconic comments before the projection, but wouldn’t be drawn any more than that.

It’s interesting to see so many of Kaurismaki’s films one after the other; the final scene of Juha is almost the same as the opening scene of “Shadows in Paradise”, filmed around ten years earlier — the Helsinki municipal rubbish dump. One notices of course that the same group of actors appears in all the films, more or less. That Kaurismaki cameos quite often (twice as a hotel clerk, once as the driver of a hearse in the delirious “Calamari Union”). Last night, watching his “blockbuster” hit, “The man without a past” I noticed in one of the scenes a portrait of Matti Pellonpaa hanging on the wall – Pellonpaa was one of Finland’s greatest actors, and starred in many of Kaurismaki’s films; he died suddenly in 1995.

Tonight I will go to see the two ‘Leningrad Cowboys” movies, concerning the world’s worst rock band. You know I could have found out about Kaurismaki about ten years earlier if I had been paying more attention, or had been a little more open; in Manchester in 1991 I remember seeing posters for the “Leningrad Cowboys go America” at the Cornerhouse cinema. I was intrigued. But I was perhaps not too open to new experiences back then; I didn’t go to see the film, instead preferring to spend my money to see Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca”. Which I had already seen on television in any case. Ah, youth.

One of my Christmas gifts this year was Catherine Puglisi’s “Caravaggio”. Now I know that Christmas was a long time ago but I just haven’t found time to write about this book before. Puglisi’s book describes in detail each of Caravaggio’s major works, in the order they were painted, whilst at the same time detailing the spectacular and tragic arc of his life. What I appreciated most was that the author’s work is factual; wild speculation and pop-psychology analysis are avoided. This would certainly be something all too easy to do with a character like Caravaggio.

My own encounter with Mr. Caravaggio’s paintings was unexpected. I had been visiting the Naples observatory, in Capodimonte, and I thought, hey I better go and visit the art gallery next door — the museum of Capodimonte. I went there very late in the day, the museum was almost empty, I had the place to myself. I wandered through the empty galleries, not knowing what works of art were there — not knowing that there were three or four paintings of Caravaggio’s. Not even knowing who Caravaggio was. It is always most surprising to see his works displayed with other paintings from that epoch; most other painters were searching an elusive idealised beauty, producing paintings removed from the squalid realities of 17th century life in Italy. So when you see his paintings for the first time you think — these people look like real people! And in fact they were — Caravaggio drew from life. Girls from the street stood in for the Virgin Mary. Surprisingly, looking at enough of his paintings you will see that these models actually reappear in several different works — almost as if he’s a film director who always uses the same actors. Look closely enough you will see that his apostles’ clothes are ripped at the corners. Of course there are the strong chiaroscuro effects, beams of light illuminating chosen sons, tragic figures whose faces are half hidden in shade. It’s easy to see why Caravaggio is Martin Scorcese’s favorite painter.

Caravaggio’s own life was no less shocking — after numerous brushes with the law, he finally ends up killing a man in duel, although perhaps it was an accident?– and he flees Rome, heads south, stopping in city after city for year or two at a time, painting and painting. Caravaggio was probably one of the best-paid artists of his time, and he fled Rome at the height of his fame… although he had become successful and famous, he has always this unstable side. He retreats to Malta, he almost becomes a Chevalier, a knight of the order — but something goes wrong, he’s in prison again, he has to run away once more. He returns to Naples, there are always rich people to protect him, he has connections. Then the final act, the abrupt end: Caravaggio tries to return to Rome, but he is arrested en route. His boat continues on northwards without him, containing the paintings he has made as an act of appeasement for Cardinal Borghese. He tries to folllow on foot, he crosses marshy plains — he catches malaria and dies and is buried in an unmarked grave.

In the boat heading north without Caravaggio is his last painting, drawn for the Cardinal and now hanging in his gallery in Rome. It is “David with the head of Goliath”, representing the well known biblical scene, David holding the head of the slain giant. Except in this case, the giant’s head is that of Caravaggio’s. Caravaggio’s final act of atonement?

Reading Puglisi’s book and looking at all the paintings one after another what impressed me most was Caravaggio’s incredible gift of composition, his ability to place the actors in each scene so as to best tell the story he wanted to tell. It also seems that he worked directly on the canvas, without any preparatory sketches — at least, none has ever been found. Interestingly enough, X-rays of some of his paintings has revealed that he didn’t always find the right solution the first time around; underneath the first layer of paint hidden figures are visible, heads are turned in a slightly different angle.

Strangely enough, Caravaggio had an enormous influence on the painters of his own time, but then he was completely forgotten until the 19th century. Wandering around the Louvre one afternoon I was surprised to stumble into one small room which seemed to be full of Caravaggio paintings I had never seen before. But — these works were not painted by him at all as I realised in a second, looking at the labels — they were painted by his imitators.