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| We can hardly hear the music from the 78 now, just the rustle of the girl's feet in dry leaves. We are inside the mansion. In close-up the flip-flops walk along a corridor strewn with leaves and rubble. In the foreground lies a broken blond doll. She hesitates by the doll but moves on. This is a dark, untidy place and the abandoned doll suggests the previous occupants left in a hurry. [Olga: "I was so excited when we found the doll there. It reminds me of an abandoned young girl."] |
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| The doll is part of childhood and she hesitates, tempted, but goes passing by since she is on the cusp of womanhood. The doll is also a reference to the previous film Olga Spatova and Lucie Pechova made together, Alone, about an abused girl, where the doll features prominently. [Olga: " The doll is a leitmotif in all my films, even in my new one. I like it as a symbol for a girl."] | |||
| Looking up to the girl 's face we see the ceiling is a vault of some kind, she pauses, listening. Very faintly she hears the music playing. She follows the sound. On a dark curving staircase, she ascends almost a silhouette as Edith Piaf starts singing Mon Dieu - the French lyric praying for a lover to be spared a little longer - just one day, two days, a week ... |
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| Three close shots show the man clambering onto the window ledge, cutting his hand on the glass shards. Note restraint in the blood effects. |
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| From the village the girl climbed up a wooded slope to the mansion. Inside it we started at floor level showing her feet and the doll, looked up to the girl's face, then up at a steeper angle watching her climb the staircase - drawing us too upstairs. There may be a vague religious reference - the stairway to heaven. The religious implication continues with a wooden cross-bar, a wound on the hand ... and those apples which always hark back to the Garden of Eden. | |||
| The film cuts between the girl coming up stairs and the man on the window ledge. All the time Piaf's voice gets richer and louder. Finally she peers round the doorway and sees the source of the music ... and him. |
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| The jump cut device is used to show how she assimilates what she sees and realises he is about to commit suicide. |
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| Piaf's dramatic voice masks other sounds, but he senses her gaze. For the first time we see him in close-up: solemn, brooding, older, serious and distracted. A set of cuts from one to the other suggests a potential link between them. |
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| Such gazes usually suggest romantic connection, but here the threat of his suicide overrides other concerns. Suddenly she slips her tooth braces out and wiggles them in a childlike attempt at distracting him. |
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| He is nonplussed. She is embarrassed. She is on the edge of womanhood yet in this crisis did not use sexual charm, but childishness to catch his attention - and it failed to stop him. He purses his lips and turns away. |
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| Then the gramophone slows, the music is distorted and stops. His grandiose gesture is falling apart. She can't help being amused. It is as if the Fates are conspiring to stop his plans and prevent his death. |
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| There are two embarrassments: for her
the vain attempt at distracting him with her tooth-braces and for him the
song to which he intends to kill himself proclaiming "Give me the time to
build memories ..." becoming ridiculous as the gramophone runs out of energy
... as if his determination to kill himself is also short of sufficient driving
drive. They now share those private moments.
This page covers a total of 1 minute, 16 seconds and 03 frames. |
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