Читать книгу Mirror, Mirror - Paula Byrne - Страница 17

That gorgeous tart-face and her garter belt launched a legend. But, more than this, Madou knew how to sustain a legend.

The reflection is of a movie star, but as I know all too well, she is also a woman who reads. Knut Hamsun, Selma Lagerlöf, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Friedrich Hölderlin. She worships Rilke; she knows, by heart, the writings of Erich Kästner. Very fancy, very modern.

According to her myopic critics, her acting talent isn’t supreme, her singing voice at best mediocre; she can’t dance for toffee. None of that matters a jot. She isn’t a celebrity; she is a Movie Star.

Here’s what I think about Moses von Goldberg. He saw her as someone who could take his direction, someone pliant, and ready to be moulded. Poppycock! I once heard him say, ‘I can turn you off and on like a spigot.’ Their first film together set the tone for their professional relationship: the clever, gentle, sophisticated, older gentleman dominated and humiliated by a crass showgirl. He would return to this theme over and over again.

Lola Lola had to be able to inspire obsession in an intelligent man, and that was exactly the quality he was looking for. Madou had it naturally. It couldn’t be faked. Eventually, inevitably, the girl destroys him. He should have known. But how could he have known that Professor Unrat’s descent into a grinning cuckolded stage clown would mirror his own doomed relationship?

As I say, he wasn’t counting on her intelligence. She was no statue, or puppet. When he deserted her, to save himself, she found her own way. He left Hollywood to make another picture, telling her that she’d be better off without him, that she would develop as an actress. But she was terrified of losing his light. Then she had an idea. She would steal his light.

For days, she watched Herr Direktor’s films in the projection room, over and over again. The others thought she was vain, but she was mastering his art. Light and shadow. Shadow and light. Another director was found, and on the first day of shooting she asked for her mirror.

She looks at him scornfully when he brings her a hand mirror. She points her finger, and I am wheeled in front of her: an eight-foot mirror on castors, dotted with light bulbs. She looks around the set at the crew, who are half mesmerised, half shocked. She is terrified, but, always the warrior, she sets about her job. She instructs the electricians to plug in the lights, and the grips to position me, so that she can see herself exactly as the camera will see her.

Then she makes her next move.

‘With your permission, gentlemen,’ she issues instructions to the electricians high up.

‘You on the right, come down, but slowly, there stop, set it.’

Then it is the turn of the small wattage lights, and then the all-important key lights. The spotlight near her face, but high, high above it, and a little to the right. She raises her finger, until she feels the exact amount of heat.

All the time, she stares at me, the mirror, and, like a miracle, shadows begin to appear. She is moulding, shading, highlighting. Then the face appears, in all its luminous beauty. A small butterfly shape flutters under the nose. She is ready for the camera to roll.

The crew, hardened and tough, begin a slow, appreciative, clap. She smiles: ‘Thank you, gentlemen.’

She has taken control of Joan Madou, the Movie Star.

Mo was vanquished, and he knew it. Vanquished by a mirror.