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For Julye and Gina
FIGURES
3.1 The Shop Around the Corner, dir. Ernst Lubitsch (1940) 48
3.2 The Shop Around the Corner, dir. Ernst Lubitsch (1940) 50
3.3 The Shop Around the Corner, dir. Ernst Lubitsch (1940) 52
3.4 The Shop Around the Corner, dir. Ernst Lubitsch (1940) 59
4.1 Double Indemnity, dir. Billy Wilder (1944) 72
4.2 Double Indemnity, dir. Billy Wilder (1944) 75
5.1 Nights of Cabiria, dir. Federico Fellini (1957) 94
5.2 Nights of Cabiria, dir. Federico Fellini (1957) 95
5.3 Nights of Cabiria, dir. Federico Fellini (1957) 96
5.4 Nights of Cabiria, dir. Federico Fellini (1957) 97
6.1 North by Northwest, dir. Alfred Hitchcock (1959) 110
6.2 North by Northwest, dir. Alfred Hitchcock (1959) 112
7.1 Lawrence of Arabia, dir. David Lean (1962)
8.1 The Graduate, dir. Mike Nichols (1967)
8.2 The Graduate, dir. Mike Nichols (1967) 153
9.1 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, dir. Miloš Forman (1975) 162
9.2 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, dir. Miloš Forman (1975) 165
10.1 Being John Malkovich, dir. Spike Jonze (1999) 174
10.2 Being John Malkovich, dir. Spike Jonze (1999) 176
11.1 The Fellowship of the Ring, dir. Peter Jackson (2001)
In the years since the publication of the first edition, profound changes in technology and economics have pushed series—streaming, cable, and broadcast—into the foreground of cinematic experience. However, the fundamental task of the writer—to engage the reader/audience emotionally and create in them a desire to know what happens next— has not changed.
This edition provides new analyses of two recent feature films, both originating overseas, and also demonstrates how the sequence approach explored in the first edition, along with other various strategies, can be applied to cinematic storytelling in the serial form.
The leap between the feature and series is not as big as it may seem. A writer/filmmaker who can inspire hope, fear, suspense, and anticipation in the audience in a feature film will find that the tools for accomplishing these objectives are scalable—they can be applied to cinematic content as short as a one-minute film, extending out to several seasons of a series.
This book will focus on series that are serialized—that is, they tell a single story across several episodes, namely Breaking Bad, Insecure, and Barry, and will discuss the relationship between the structure of the individual episode as against the structure of a season.
FOREWORD
It begins with an idea, an idea that gnaws, that haunts, that spills into the quiet moments and refuses to go away. With nurturing, the idea grows. It finds purchase in a fertile imagination and unfurls itself, opening into its very own world. Characters arrive. Sometimes they step out of the mist of the mind fully formed, other times they’re lumps of clay that must be sculpted. You can’t wait to give them voice. You can’t wait to tell their tale.
Then comes the terror of the blank page. If you’re a beginning screenwriter you ask, “How do I fill 120 pages?” If you’re a seasoned professional you ask, “How do I contain my story to only 120 pages?” And no matter who you are, you ask, “How do I make it good?” It’s enough to send you running to Starbucks for a nonfat latte and an afternoon of procrastination.
I arrived at the University of Southern California’s Graduate Screenwriting Program in the Fall of 1990 with a head full of stories and no idea how to write a screenplay. I’d read most of the popular screenwriting books and had written a couple of lousy scripts where everything happened in the right place but nothing seemed to matter. Luckily, at USC, I learned the craft of screenwriting from one of the form’s master educators, Frank Daniel, who designed the program’s curriculum around the sequence method.
On the surface, the sequence method may appear to be just another formulaic, by-the-numbers approach to structuring your script. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead of providing a dead structure, sequencing helps writers create the dynamic, dramatic engines that drive their stories forward. And unlike other popular approaches to screenwriting, the sequence method focuses on how the audience will experience the story and what the writer can do to make that experience better. Sequencing gives writers the clarity to understand and manipulate dramatic tension to maximum effect, playing off the audience’s expectations and controlling their hopes and fears.
The sequence method doesn’t just make a screenplay better; it also makes it easier to write. Sequencing helps clarify character motivation and drive, and illuminate which scenes are dramatically necessary and which are irrelevant. It breaks the 120-page monster into manageable
sections and provides an easy-to-follow dramatic road map that helps writers avoid the typical second act morass.
What I learned from a master teacher at USC, Paul Gulino has now committed to paper and ink in this remarkably helpful volume. In it, he has managed to provide a thorough yet succinct introduction not only to the notion of sequences but also to the theory that underlies them and all dramatic storytelling. Further, he has provided concrete illustration of the use of these theories in the insightful, detailed analysis of several significant feature films. In this, he echoes Frank Daniel’s notion that, ultimately, the only true teachers are the masters of the form, and that learning how to study them can lead to a lifetime of discovery and enrichment.
I am much indebted to Frank Daniel, my instructors at USC, and the sequence method for making me a better storyteller and a better screenwriter. I hope that this volume will in some measure do for others what they did for me. Over the course of my career, I’ve discovered that when I employ the sequence method, my screenplays turn out well. When I’ve strayed … well, so have my screenplays.
Andrew W. Marlowe
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to Richard Herman who has kept me in the game all these years, Katie Gallof at Bloomsbury for all her help, Julye Bidmead who creates magic, Gina Gulino who inspires me with her dedication to making the world better, my colleagues at Chapman University for their support over the years in making all this possible, and my students who have taught me so much.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is a study of the use of “sequences” in film and series. To illustrate the points I am making about the nature and function of sequences and related storytelling tools—historical, critical, theoretical, and practical—I have reproduced a few images from especially significant movies and series.
Each image is a single frame taken from the full-length motion picture or series episode and is used here for educational purposes pursuant to the Fair Use Doctrine.
My book is not endorsed by or affiliated with any of the performers, directors, producers, or screenwriters who created these movies or by the studios that produced and distributed them, and the single-frame images are used here for purposes of criticism and commentary only.
Readers who are interested in seeing these historically significant motion pictures and series in their entirety are encouraged to view them from authorized sources.
Part One
F EATURE F ILMS
Chapter 1
A N I NTRODUCTION TO S EQUENCES
Why Sequences?
The great challenge in writing a feature-length screenplay is sustaining audience emotional involvement from page one through 120. Most writers can dash off a ten- or fifteen-minute script with little planning; as the length stretches to an hour or more, it becomes difficult both to conceive a script in its entirety and to execute the individual scenes at the same time. Most professional writers use various tools to solve this problem—writing a treatment, outline, step outline, beat sheet, or using file cards. The function of all of these is to allow writers an overall view of their work while they toil away at the specific scenes.
The division of a feature film into acts—commonly three acts nowadays, corresponding generally to the setup, development, and resolution—is likewise a way for writers to divide the vastness of 120 pages into digestible pieces that can be attacked individually, without the need to be mindful of the overall work.
Even in using the three-act approach, though, navigation through a screenplay can be difficult. Most commonly, the first act is understood to occupy the first thirty pages, the second act the next sixty, and the third act the final thirty. For most writers, it is the sixty pages of the second act—the true heart of the script—that presents the greatest challenges, a bewildering descent into a swamp of seemingly limitless choices, replete with the perils of wrong turns down dead-ends and quicksand from which the writer cannot extricate the story.
The use of sequences is an important tool to handle this problem. A typical two-hour film is composed of sequences—eight- to fifteenminute segments that have their own internal structure—in effect, shorter films built inside the larger film. To a significant extent,
each sequence has its own protagonist, tension, rising action, and resolution—just like a film as a whole. The difference between a sequence and a stand-alone fifteen-minute film is that the conflicts and issues raised in a sequence are only partially resolved within the sequence, and when they are resolved, the resolution often opens up new issues, which in turn become the subject of subsequent sequences.
The advantage of understanding that a feature film is composed of a series of shorter films is that it mitigates the problem of a seemingly amorphous second act. In general, a two-hour film will have two fifteenminute sequences in the first act, four in the second, and two more in the third. Variations on this arrangement can be seen in many films, mostly in the length of the sequences and sometimes in their number, but as a tool for planning and writing a feature film this approach can be very valuable.
In the pages that follow I will explore the notion of sequences in detail—their historical origins, how they are defined, and how they function to make a screenplay fulfill its most basic task: engaging a reader/viewer. Since understanding sequences requires understanding of some basic tools of storytelling, I will also examine these, with an eye toward the question of how a screenplay goes about engaging an audience. I will then explore twelve films representing a wide variety of styles and time periods and show how sequences function within each. The last part of the book will demonstrate how the principle of sequences and the other storytelling tools can be seen in serial dramas.
Academically, the sequence approach to feature-length screenwriting was taught at Columbia University in the early 1980s, has been taught for the last forty years at the University of Southern California, and at Chapman University since the 1990s. Its use as a teaching tool grew out of the experiences of Frank Daniel (1924–1996), the inaugural dean of the American Film Institute and later the head of the film programs at Columbia University and USC, who found that teaching the three-act approach to screenwriting resulted in the difficulties discussed above, and so resurrected the notion of sequences to help students write more successful screenplays.
In putting this approach down in book form, my hope is this simple truth—that big films are made out of little films, and that long episodes are made out of shorter ones—can be of help to others in conceiving and writing screenplays for film and television.
The Origin of Sequences
In the beginning was the sequence.
Or more properly, the one-reeler. With the advent of projection of movies in 1897, the celluloid carrying the images was wound up around spools that could hold about a thousand feet, which translated into a projection time of around ten or fifteen minutes.
By the early 1910s, for reasons both artistic and economic, films were extended beyond one reel. However, in the United States at that time, films continued to be distributed one reel per week, meaning a multi-reel film might be viewed across several weeks, much like a limited series. Further, because many theaters only had one projector, even if a multi-reel film was shown all at once, projectionists still had to pause between reels to swap them out, with the audience regaled by various live acts during the interval.1
Artistically, filmmakers dealt with these interruptions by ensuring that each reel had its own integrity. Some screenwriting manuals of the time advised writers to structure their work around this division into reels.2 By the 1920s, with the full-length feature film coming to dominate the cinema, distribution procedures had changed, and most theaters had two projectors, so viewing films became seamless. In this context, formal and rigorous adherence to writing for each reel became unnecessary, but the structure persisted, evidenced by the organization of screenplays into sequences identified by letter (A, B, C, etc.), a practice that lasted into the 1950s. Film critic David Robinson notes:
Paradoxically, this curious method of releasing and showing multireel films a reel at a time was not wholly without positive sideeffects. Faced with this peculiar constraint, the best filmmakers recognized the need to give each reel an individual dramatic integrity, a climax and the necessary suspense to provoke anticipation of the next episode: this was to have a lasting and beneficent influence on dramatic structure in American cinema.3
1. David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), pp. 133, 176.
2. Epes Winthrop Sargent, The Technique of the Photoplay (New York: The Moving Picture World, 1913), pp. 121–4.
3. David Robinson, From Peepshow to Palace (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 145.
In fact, the underlying structure—eight or so sequences in a feature film—persists to this day, long after its origins and practice have been forgotten. Rather like Monsieur Jourdan in Moliere’s The Bourgeoise Gentleman, who is shocked to realize he’s been speaking prose for forty years without knowing it, feature film screenwriters continue to structure their films in sequences—and can get into trouble when they don’t.
The persistence of this arrangement suggests that something deeper is at work than the somewhat accidental arrival of cinema with one thousand-foot reels. The notion of a feature film having eight parts is, like all else in dramatic theory, tied to human physiology. The ability of humans to focus attention can only be sustained for a short amount of time before some change in the stimulus is needed to refresh our attention span. Sequences provide the audience/reader with variations in intensity without which they may find themselves fatigued or numb rather than enthralled by what is on the page or screen.4
How a Screenplay Works
This book puts forward and articulates the division of feature films into eight segments. Many discussions of screenwriting begin either with Aristotle’s influential work The Poetics or Syd Field’s more recently influential work Screenplay (1979), which articulate different ways of dividing up a dramatic work. Aristotle described tragedy as a “whole action,” and, to him, a whole is that which has a “beginning, middle and end.” This is the first formulation of drama in three parts, and though he also further broke down tragedy into five parts (prologue, episode, exode, parados, and stasimon) the first three roughly corresponded to the beginning, middle, and end, while the latter two were inserted in the middle, marking where the chorus entered and then sang odes.
Syd Field’s book described a three-act division of screenplays as beginning, confrontation, and resolution, separated by plot points, 5 and, though he did not originate the notion of thinking of screenplays in
4. Paul Joseph Gulino and Connie Shears, The Science of Screenwriting: The Neuroscience Behind Storytelling Strategies (New York: Bloomsbury, 2018), pp. 42–5.
5. Syd Field, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (New York: Bantam Doubleday, 1979), p. 21.
terms of acts, the popularity of his book helped make the “three-act structure” a common model. Other screenwriting manuals that have been published since 1979 espouse the notion of three acts and give various insights into what they mean and the function they play in writing the screenplay.
Variations exist, of course. Kristin Thompson, in her insightful book Storytelling in the New Hollywood (1999), studied over a hundred films from the 1910s to the 1990s and discerned in them what might be considered four acts, not three (which she terms setup, complicating action, development, and climax).6 David Bordwell, in Narration in the Fiction Film (1985), described six parts of what he calls the “canonical” story format: introduction of setting and characters, explanation of a state of affairs, complicating action, ensuing events, outcome, and ending. 7 Popular books by Christopher Vogler and Blake Snyder segment a screenplay into fifteen and seventeen steps or beats, respectively, but retain three acts.
While much insight is to be gained from these books, aspiring writers may understandably get the mistaken impression that the task of the writer consists primarily in following theorists’ notions or recommendations, and failing to do so, they will fail.
There was, of course, a group of extremely successful playwrights who did not base their work on Aristotle’s Poetics, or any other known guide or manual of dramatic writing—this group includes Sophocles, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, and Euripides—the playwrights of Greece’s Golden Age of drama—whose plays constituted the body of work that Aristotle studied in order to generate his treatise. And of course, for most of the history of moviemaking, writers did not have access to Syd Field’s book, and indeed, screenwriting manuals were rare during the Hollywood’s own “Golden Age” of the 1930s and 1940s.
While the playwrights who flourished before Aristotle, and the screenwriters who did so before Field, worked within the framework of specific conventions and formulae, their basic task can be understood in a way that is more empowering to writers and more helpful to them in realizing their vision than aiming to conform to a formula and connecting its dots.
6. Kristin Thompson, Storytelling in the New Hollywood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 27–8.
7. David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), p. 35.
In his 1927 study, Aspects of the Novel, E. M. Forster described somewhat caustically the root nature of story: “it has only one merit: that of making the audience want to know what happens next. And conversely it can only have one fault: that of making the audience not want to know what happens next.”8
Fifteen years earlier, in his book Play-Making (1912), theater critic and theorist William Archer (1856–1924), wrestling with the issue of what, ultimately, constitutes the essential characteristic of drama, came to the following conclusion: “The only really valid definition of the ‘dramatic’ is: any representation of imaginary personages which is capable of interesting an average audience assembled in a theater.”9
As to motion pictures, Kristin Thompson has said the following of the emergence of Hollywood as a world leader in the film industry by 1916: “The techniques of continuity editing, set design, and lighting that were developed during this era were designed not only to provide attractive images but also to guide the audience attention to salient narrative events from moment to moment.”10
These are three very wide-open statements about the nature of the storyteller’s task. Their common thread is to focus on the audience. All successful plays and films have been successful first, before considering any other positive attributes they might have, in engaging an audience in this way. And needless to say, if a screenplay or teleplay does not succeed in the task of keeping a reader wondering what will happen next, it will never see the light of production.
A writer who understands this as the basic task—keeping the audience attention on what comes next—is free to go about it in any way their imagination and inventiveness allows. If a writer realizes that whatever patterns or rules they encounter in dramatic theory or in screenwriting manuals (including this one) are to be understood as tools to this end, they will be empowered to employ them in more interesting ways than are possible than when seeking to adhere to “rules” or formulae above all else.
During the course of the analyses that follow, I will in fact examine films that used various combinations of the tools to achieve this end
8. E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (New York: Harvest/HBJ, 1927), p. 27.
9. William Archer, Play-Making: A Manual of Craftsmanship (Boston, MA: Small Maynard, 1912), p. 32.
10. Kristin Thompson, Storytelling in the New Hollywood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 1.
of audience engagement. Included in their number are some that may seem quite unconventional in their approach, but they all have in common success in engaging an audience. In the second part of the book, I will do the same with series.
A successful screenplay or teleplay, then, is a living thing, in the sense that it “works” to create anticipation in a reader. The question is: how does it work? This question must be answered before an understanding of sequences can be undertaken, because what applies to features and series also applies to sequences.
While dramatists and screenwriters have used a variety of techniques over the years, there are, in the main, four basic tools that have been employed successfully to keep the audience attention directed into the future. In order of ascending significance, these Big Four are:
Telegraphing. This is also known as pointing or advertising. It consists of telling the audience explicitly what is going to happen in the future of the narrative. A verbal example could be one character saying to another “Meet me at Jerry’s Juiceteria at five o’clock” (this is an example of an appointment, one form of telegraphing). A visual example of telegraphing would be a character preparing his motorcycle for a ride. Both suggest the direction the story is going. Both help solve one of cinema’s challenges—its selectivity—what is seen on screen is only a small part of the action. If the audience is told someone is going to meet someone else at a juice bar, we can cut to the juice bar without confusing the audience or providing exposition in the scene explaining to the audience why we’re suddenly there.
This tool can also be used as “false” telegraphing—telling the audience where the story is going and then paying it off in the reverse. A character who makes arrangements to see a Broadway show with his mother but instead gets kidnapped is an example of this, yielding a surprise twist. The surprise twist has been a staple of cinema from its first decades, and such twists only work if the audience is made to anticipate something. A character getting kidnapped in the opening shot of a movie can never be a surprise twist, because no expectation has yet been created.
Another type of telegraphing is known as a deadline or ticking clock. An example of this would be one character telling another: “You have till midnight Friday to bring the Duke back.” This line not only tells the audience where the story is going, but it can also put a character under time pressure, which intensifies the audience’s emotional involvement. Although telegraphing is used mostly as part of the support system of the narrative flow of a story, it has been used in a more profound
way. In American Beauty (1999), just after the opening titles, Lester Burnham announces in a voiceover narration, “In less than a year I’ll be dead.” This (literal) deadline instantly creates anticipation and gives shape to the story. Much later in the picture, Lester informs the audience, “Remember those posters that said, ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life?’ Well, that’s true of every day except one. The day you die.”
These simple lines of dialogue are critical to audience engagement, for the film has little else to propel the viewer’s attention into the future.
Dangling Cause. This tool carries more emotional freight than telegraphing. In the first decade of the twentieth century, Hollywood films came to be dominated by a narrative model consisting of a series of events linked by cause and effect. A man asks a woman to marry him (cause), and she accepts or rejects him (effect). With the evolution of longer films in the 1910s came the development of the “dangling cause”—a cause that would not have its effect until later—it would, in effect, “dangle” in the audience’s mind while other events intruded. For instance, a man vows to ask a woman to marry him but does not do so until the next scene or until several scenes later. In this case, the vow is an example of a dangling cause.
In general, a dangling cause is an expression of intent, a warning, a threat, an expression of hope or fear, or a prediction, which places a question in the audience’s mind for which no immediate answer is provided. It thrusts audience attention into the future by arousing curiosity and, possibly, concern for a character. Early in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975; see Chapter 9), McMurphy makes a bet with the other patients about Nurse Ratched, namely that he can “put a bug so far up her ass she won’t know whether to shit or wind a wrist watch.” This type of dangling cause is known as a dialogue hook, for it provides a transition into the following scene, which finds McMurphy slouching in a chair across from Nurse Ratched, presumably ready to make good on his bet. The question arises—can he do what he said he’ll do?
A dangling cause more commonly is not picked up immediately after it is established. In Lawrence of Arabia (1962; see Chapter 7), before embarking on an expedition into the desert, Lawrence declares, “It’s going to be fun,” while his friend Dryden warns him the desert is a “hot, fiery furnace,” suitable only for Gods and Bedouin—and Lawrence is neither. During the course of the epic, this dangling cause is revisited several times, as Lawrence flirts at various junctures with being both God and Bedouin—and the film itself ultimately dwells on the question: “Who are you?”
Dramatic Irony. Also known as omniscient narration, this is a tool often overlooked by aspiring screenwriters, who tend to believe that the characters in a screenplay need to know everything at the same time that the audience does. Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows more than one or several of the characters onscreen, a condition that pushes audience attention into the future because it creates anticipation about what is going to happen when the truth comes out. That anticipation is known as ironic tension, and it is bracketed by a scene of revelation (the moment the audience is given information of which a character is unaware) and recognition (the moment the character discovers what the audience has already known, which serves to resolve the ironic tension). Dramatic irony comes in two flavors— suspense, which can be used to inspire fear in the audience, and comic, in which a misunderstanding is exploited to produce laughter.
When the audience learns that two coworkers who dislike each other are unaware that they are writing love letters to each other in The Shop Around the Corner (1940; remade as You’ve Got Mail [1998]—see Chapter 3) the question naturally arises—what will the outcome be when the two realize the truth? Dramatic irony has the additional advantage of enriching the scene by giving double meaning to the most mundane lines of dialogue. In There’s Something About Mary (1998), Ted thinks he’s been arrested for picking up a hitchhiker while the audience knows he’s being questioned by police about a murder, otherwise innocuous lines he delivers such as “where I come from this is not that big a deal” generate laughter.
Skillful storytellers can employ hierarchies of knowledge in the use of dramatic irony, between not only the audience and the characters but between the characters themselves. In North by Northwest (1959; see Chapter 6), Roger Thornhill meets Eve Kendall on the train and she proves to be almost angelic in the way she helps him evade the police. Later the audience learns that she’s actually working for the people trying to kill him (first scene of revelation). During the following scenes between Eve and Roger, ironic tension comes into play as we fear the danger he does not see. This ironic tension is so powerful it allowed director Alfred Hitchcock to draw out the subsequent crop duster scene for more than five minutes with no onscreen activity other than a man waiting for someone near a cornfield. In the scene afterward at the Ambassador East hotel, Roger realizes Eve is working against him, a scene of recognition that resolves the previous ironic tension. But since Roger does not tell her that he knows, a new hierarchy of knowledge is created—now he is aware of something she does not know. This layer of
ironic tension is resolved in the following scene, when Roger confronts Eve and Vandamm at the auction house, the final scene of recognition in the relationship between the two.
Dramatic irony is a more powerful tool than telegraphing or dangling causes, and can sometimes sustain a feature-length film all by itself, though almost usually in the comic rather than the suspense variety. The Graduate (1967; see Chapter 8), Top Hat (1935), Harvey (1950), and Being There (1979), in addition to The Shop Around the Corner/ You’ve Got Mail are comedies that use dramatic irony in large measure to sustain audience engagement.
Dramatic Tension. This tool is the most powerful of the Big Four, in that it can be, and has been, the most common one used to sustain audience’ emotional involvement in American full-length dramatic works for over a century, and its use is the primary subject of most books on screenwriting. Frank Daniel described it simply yet elegantly: “Somebody wants something badly and is having difficulty getting it.”11 In fact, Daniel articulated two kinds of dramatic stories: chases and escapes, but these are two versions of the same thing: either someone wants something and is having trouble getting it, or is trying to escape something and having trouble doing so.
The notion of dividing screenplays into large segments called “acts” has been discussed previously and becomes germane when undertaking a study of dramatic tension. This book explores the notion of eight sequences, but these sequences work within the context of larger segments of a full-length film, and for my purposes three acts are most suitable for articulating and executing dramatic tension. This is because when a character wants something, a question is implied: will the character get it or not? This is known as the main dramatic question, and a question of necessity has three parts: the posing of the question, the deliberation on it, and the answer to it. A question need not have any more parts to it and is not complete with any less. So, the first act poses the question: will so-and-so get what they want? The second act sees the playing out of the question, its “deliberation,” as the character works against difficulties to get it, and the third act provides the answer. Dramatic tension thus thrusts audience attention into the future with the expectation of an answer to the question.
11. David Howard and Edward Mabley, The Tools of Screenwriting (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), p. xii.
Understanding dramatic tension in three parts is useful also because it is echoed in the smaller subdivisions of a dramatic work— successfully realized sequences and scenes often likewise have dramatic tension, and thus each has a “three-act structure”: character wanting something, an obstacle, tension resulting from the conflict between the two, and a resolution, leading to a new tension. At the end of the first act in Double Indemnity (1944; see Chapter 4), Neff decides to help Phyllis kill her husband for the money and so he can be with her. This poses the dramatic question: will he succeed? The sequence immediately following raises a different dramatic question: can they set up the murder without being discovered? There are a series of obstacles to this end. Within each scene during the setup, there are smaller obstacles, and thus smaller units of dramatic tension: can they get Mr. Dietrichson to sign the contract? Can Walter get off the phone before he arouses Keyes’s suspicion? Any time there is dramatic tension, there are three parts: it must be set up (question posed), it must be played out (question deliberated), and it must be resolved (question answered). In drama, the “three-act structure” is something like a fractal in geometry: a nested structure, iterated at three different levels in a film.
Understanding dramatic tension in three basic parts has one last major advantage: it comes to grips with Aristotle’s notion of a “whole”—what it is that makes a film feel like one film and not, say, eighty separate scenes, or 120 individual minutes of filmic experience. When working with dramatic tension as the primary tool in engaging audience attention, the answer is the dramatic question and the tension it creates, known as the main tension, to distinguish it from the various subsidiary tensions arising in scenes and sequences. The main tension is what makes a movie feel like one movie; it’s what unifies it; it’s what elevates a film above the sum of its parts (providing “organic unity” in Aristotelean terms); it’s what we use when we describe what it is about. “A man falsely accused of murder and hunted by the police and enemy agents must try to clear his name” describes what North by Northwest is about, and it is nothing more than a recitation of the main tension, with the implied question: will he succeed? Likewise with Saving Private Ryan (1998)—“A man is ordered to lead a squad of soldiers behind enemy lines to find an American soldier and bring him back alive,” or with Nights of Cabiria (1957)—“A lower class hooker wants love and respectability.”
As will be seen in the analyses that follow, the overwhelming pattern in successful feature films is that the first act occupies the first 25 percent
of a film, the second act occupies the middle and runs 50 percent of the film, and the third act runs the last 25 percent. It is also worth noting that the main tension is not resolved at the end of the picture; in most cases, it is resolved at the end of the second act; in fact, the resolution of the main tension is what characterizes the end of the second act, and in the third act, a new dramatic tension almost invariably asserts itself. To use the above three examples, in North by Northwest, the tension surrounding Roger trying to clear his name is resolved 77 percent of the way into the movie; the third act revolves around the question of saving Eve. In Saving Private Ryan, Captain Miller decides to abandon his mission 70 percent of the way into the movie; the third-act tension involves defending the bridge from the Germans; in Nights of Cabiria, Cabiria gets her love and respectability when the man of her dreams proposes to her 82 percent of the way into the movie; the third-act tension revolves around her impending marriage and its consequences. Like dangling causes, dramatic tension plays on audience curiosity, but unlike dangling causes, it requires an emotional connection between the audience and a character—the protagonist—in order to achieve its effect. It is the function of the first act, or in Thompson’s terms the setup, or in Bordwell’s the introduction of setting and characters and explanation of a state of affairs, to introduce the protagonist—the main character— and create an emotional bond between them and the audience. Once this bond is established, the audience will have an emotional stake that goes far beyond mere curiosity and can sustain audience involvement for the length of the feature film.
These, then, are the four basic tools of the storyteller. Other tools exist that can help enrich the experience of a script or movie, and these will be discussed in the analyses. These four are presented here because they are the ones crucial in achieving the most basic task of the screenwriter—keeping the audience wondering what is going to happen next—and thus play the most basic role in how a screenplay or teleplay “works.”
How Sequences Work
Sequences help solve one of the basic problems in all dramatic writing: the fact that a drama is a contrivance, but that it will not work if it seems like a contrivance. The action in drama unfolds before the audience’s eyes, and the extent to which it seems spontaneous—the
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the tongues now devoted to slang and the misuse of words which hang about the higher education; while the clamour of ill-advised women without doors was unknown. The comments of a recent French writer on the charm of life in those past days, are too valuable to be laid aside unrecorded. “The keen intellects of the time,” he writes, “caught a glimpse of everything, desired everything, and grasped eagerly at every new idea. Only those,” he goes on to say, quoting Talleyrand, “could realise the joy of being alive. The childish present-day philosophy of optimism and effort fails to lend life a charm it never knew before. The most insignificant gallant of the Court of Louis experienced more varied sensations than any rough-rider or industrial king has ever been able to procure for himself.” Admittedly, the evils of the time cried aloud for redress of wrongs which were all to be washed away later by the river of blood; but these had been more ameliorated than aggravated by the scholarship of thoughtful writers. Wit, and the sense of beauty and delicacy of expression, carried, not unfrequently it is true, to affectations and absurdity, was the order of the day, binding men and women in links of an intellectual sympathy, whose pure gold was unalloyed by baser metal. Those réunions in the salons of the great ladies, must have been delightful, thronged as they were with distinguished men, and with women, many of them beautiful, spirituelle, or both. But for the sparkle of true wit, the music of sweet voices, the ripple of verse and epigram, the popularity of those gatherings would not have been so long maintained. The atmosphere of them was sweet with the lighter learning of old Rome and Greece, and the gaiety of graceful modern rhymes, or the sentiment of the latest sonnet. The passing of centuries had now left far behind the barbaric clash of warfare, and widened the old limitations of mediævalism and Scholasticism. From the hour the cruel knife of Ravaillac stilled the noble heart of the great Henri, the times had ripened to the harvest of a literature resplendent with promise of illustrious names.
Ever zealous for the glory of France, Richelieu founded the Académie Française; and later the college of the Sorbonne, where
now he lies magnificently entombed, was rebuilt by him, and devoted to its old purpose of a centre of learning; and as of old, and as ever, men thronged from near and from afar to Paris for the study of art and learning, and to pay such homage to the modern Muses and enjoy their smiles, as good fortune might allow.
Amid such environment it was, that Ninon embarked upon the stream of the life she had elected to follow, hoping to pass, as indeed she did, through the years serenely and in fair content. If now and again some minor questions of spirit troubled her—conscience it could scarcely be called, since by the lights she had chosen to guide her, conscience could hardly be reproachful—it was but passingly. Yet the tale goes of the visits of a Man in Black, a most mysterious personage, who at his first interview, when she was about eighteen years old, brought her a phial containing a rose-coloured liquid, of which a little, a mere drop, went a very long way. It was the recipe for prolonged youthfulness, and certainly must have been very efficacious. It was, he said, to be mixed with a great deal of pure water, quite as much as a good-sized bath would contain—and a bath of pure water is, of course, in itself a very healthful sort of thing. Many a year went by before the Man in Black—or one so like him as to be his very double—came again, and Ninon was prone to shrink at the remembrance of him. When he did come, it was to inform her that some years of this life still lay before her; and then for the third time that Man in Black presented himself, and—But the cry is a far one to seventy years hence, and during that time, as far as Ninon was concerned, he remained in his own place, wherever that might be; and if, after all, he had been but a dream, in any case the shadow of his sable garb does not appear to have been very constantly cast upon the mirror of her existence. That was bright with love and friendship, the love and friendship of both sexes, and truly if in love she was frankly fickle à merveille, in friendship she was constant and unchanging. Ever following the dying parental counsel, she was fastidious in the choice of the aspirants to her favours. In her relations with women and men alike, honest and honourable and full of a kindly charm which made her exceptionally bonne
camarade. It was small wonder that the salon of Mademoiselle Ninon de L’Enclos was a centre of foregathering greatly sought after.
CHAPTER IV
A “Delicious Person” Voiture’s Jealousy A Tardy Recognition Coward
Conscience A Protestant Pope The Hôtel de Rambouillet St Evrémond
The Duel Nurse Madeleine Cloistral Seclusion and Jacques Callot “Merry Companions Every One”—and One in Particular
Six years had passed since as girl and boy Ninon and Marsillac had parted at Loches. At sixteen years old he had entered the army, and was now Monsieur le Capitaine de la Rochefoucauld, returned to Paris invalided by a serious wound received in the Valtellina warfare. Handsome, with somewhat pensive, intellectual features, chivalrous and amiable, he was “a very parfite gentle knight,” devoted to the service of the queen, which sorely interfered with his military promotion: devotion to Anne of Austria was ever to meet the hatred of the cardinal, and to live therefore in peril of life.
The daring young hoyden of Loches was now a graceful, greatly admired woman of the world, welcomed and courted in the ranks of the society to which her birth entitled her.
It was quite possible that the change in her appearance was sufficiently great to warrant de la Rochefoucauld’s failure to recognise her in the salon of Madame de Rambouillet when he passed her, seated beside her chaperon, the Duchesse de la Ferté —not, however, without marking her beauty; and he inquired of the man with whom he was walking who the “delicious person” was. The gentleman did not know It was the first time, he believed, that the lady had been seen in the brilliant company. The impressionable young prince lost little time in securing himself an introduction, further economising it by expressing his sentiments of admiration so
ardently, that they touched on a passionate and tender declaration. Ninon accepted this with the equanimity distinguishing her; she was already accustomed to a pronounced homage very thinly veiled. It was to her as the sunshine is to the birds of the air, almost indispensable; but she found the avowals of his sentiments slightly disturbing in the reflection that Marsillac had altogether forgotten his Ninon. That, in fact, he had done long since. The fidelity of de la Rochefoucauld in those days, was scarcely to be reckoned on even by hours. Already he was in the toils of Ninon’s beautiful rival, Marion Delorme, a woman Ninon herself describes as “adorably lovely.” Beauty apart, the very antithesis of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos, weaker of will, more pliably moulded, warm-hearted, impulsive, romantically natured, apt to be drawn into scrapes and mistakes which Ninon was astute enough rarely to encounter. The two women lived within a stone’s throw of each other, and it needed hardly the gossip of the place for Ninon to observe that Marsillac was but one more of the vast company of arch-deceivers. It was Voiture, the poet and renowned reformer of the French tongue, who hinted the fact to Ninon with, no doubt, all his wonted grace of expression, further inspired by jealousy of the handsome young captain, that at the very moment he was speaking, de la Rochefoucauld was spending the afternoon in Marion’s company, en tête-à-tête.
Thereupon, linking her arm in Voiture’s, Ninon begged him to conduct her to Number 6, rue des Tournelles. The poet, vastly enjoying the excitement his words had evoked, readily complied, and arrived at Marion’s apartments where the Capitaine de la Rochefoucauld was duly discovered. Then broke the storm, ending in Marsillac’s amazement when Ninon demanded how it was that he had not discovered in her his old friend Ninon de L’Enclos. Then, in the joy and delight of recognition, Marsillac, forgetting the very presence of her rival, sprang to her side, and offering her his arm, sallied forth back to Ninon’s abode, spending the rest of the day in recalling old times at Loches, and in transports of happiness. Only late into the night, long after Marsillac had left her presence and she was lost in dreamful sleep, it brought the faces of her mother and of
St Vincent de Paul vividly before her, gazing with sad reproachful eyes; and with her facile pen she recorded the memory of that day, fraught with its conflict of spirit and desire.
“O sweet emotions of love! blessed fusion of souls! ineffable joys that descend upon us from Heaven! Why is it that you are united to the troubles of the senses, and that at the bottom of the cup of such delight remorse is found?”
Whether through the silence of the small hours any echoes touched her vivid imagination of the Man in Black’s mocking laughter, no record tells; but in any case, with the fading of the visions, the disturbing reflections were quickly lost in the joy of Marsillac’s society, as also in that of St Evrémond—the very soul of gaiety and wit and every delightful characteristic.
“How happy could I be with either, Were t’other dear charmer away,”
says Captain MacHeath, and there were days together that Marsillac did absent himself. The grand passion of his life was not with either of the two women, or with any of the fair dames then immediately around. They were merely the toys of his gallant and amiable nature, and at that time he was deeply absorbed in the duties of his profession, and his ardent devotion to the queen’s cause. It was, indeed, one most difficult and dangerous, ever facing, as it did, the opposition of Richelieu, who saw in every friend and partisan of Anne of Austria Spanish aggression and a foe to France.
Some cause there surely was. Political and religious strife raged fast and hotly. From the outset—that is, at least, as far back as the time when the Calvinists banded together to resist the Catholics—it was not a question alone of reform or of change in religious conviction. It could not have remained at that: the whole framework of government would have been shaken to its foundation had the Reformed party ultimately triumphed; but the passing of a century had wrought startling changes. There were many of the Catholic nobility whose policy was as much to side with the Huguenot party, as it had been the wisdom of the Protestant Henri IV. to adopt the
Catholic creed. Richelieu, in conquering Rochelle, showed the vanquished Huguenots so much leniency, that public clamour nicknamed him “the Cardinal of Rochelle,” and “the Protestant Pope,” and he laughed, and said that there was more such scandal ahead; since he intended to achieve a marriage between the king’s sister, Henrietta Maria, and the non-Roman Catholic king, Charles I. of England.
To hedge his country from the encroachment of Spain was the lifelong aim and endeavour of Richelieu, and he was ruthless in the means. The eastern and northern frontiers of France were constantly menaced and invaded by Austria and Spain and their allies, and to and fro to Paris came the great captains and soldiers engaged in the constant warfare against the enemy—men of long lineage, brave, skilful in arms, dauntless in action, and certainly no laggards in love when opportunity afforded; and they returned loaded with honour, covered with glory, and often seriously wounded, to be welcomed and made much of in the salons of noble and titled women, like the Duchesse de Rambouillet, and other réunions scarcely less celebrated and brilliant, where the fine art of wit, and the culte of poetry and belles-lettres, mingled with a vast amount of love-making, and at least as much exquisite imitation of it, were assiduously conducted. It was the hall-mark of good society, a virtue indispensable, and to be assumed if it did not really exist, and too greatly valued for other virtues to be set great store by. So that the line of demarcation between women of unimpeachable repute, and those following a wider primrose path grew to be so very thinly defined as sometimes to be invisible and disregarded. Notably in the refined and elegant salon of Ninon de L’Enclos were to be counted many ladies of distinction and modes of life untouched by the faintest breath of scandal, who loved her and sought her friendship, as there were men who were quite content to worship from afar, and to hold themselves her friends pure and simple to life’s end.
Who of her admirers was the first winner of the smiles of a more tender intimacy, is not more than surmise, remaining recorded only in invisible ink in a lettre de cachet whose seal is intact. If the friend
of her early girlhood at Loches is indicated, it may be intentionally misleading. Count Coligny was an acquaintance at whose coming Ninon’s bright eyes acquired yet greater lustre, and de la Rouchefoucauld’s reappearance had not yet taken place—“ce cher Marsillac,” whose devotion, even while it lasted, was tinctured with divided homage, and was to dissolve altogether, in the way of love sentiments, in the sunshine of his deep undying attachment to Madame de Longueville. There was, however, no rupture in this connection; the burden of the old song was simply reversed, and if first Marsillac came for love, it was in friendship that he and Ninon parted, giving place to the adoration of St Evrémond—bonds which were never broken, and whose warm sentiments the waters of the English Channel, flowing between for forty years, could not efface. The effect might have been even the contrary one, and absence made the heart grow fonder, though the temperaments of Ninon and of St Evrémond were undoubtedly generously free of any petty malignance and small jealousies.
Monsieur de L’Enclos had survived his wife only by one year. He died of a wound received in an encounter arising from a private quarrel. Had he recovered, it would probably have been to lose his head by the axe, paying the penalty of the law for some years past rigorously enforced against duelling. The scene of such encounter being most frequently the open space of the Place Royale, the locality of the cardinal’s own house—as it was of Ninon and of Marion Delorme—so that his stern eyes were constantly reminded of the murderous conflicts. The law, having been enacted by Henri IV., had fallen into abeyance, until the specially sanguinary duel between the Comte de Bussy and the Comte de Bouteville, in 1622, when de Bouteville mortally wounded de Bussy, and Richelieu inflicted the penalty of decapitation on de Bouteville and on Rosmadec his second, as he did on others who disobeyed; so that the evil was scotched almost to stamping out. It was in this fashion that Richelieu made his power felt among the nobility and wealthier classes, and let it be understood that the law was the law for all.
Almost immediately following on the death of Monsieur de L’Enclos, came that of Ninon’s old nurse, Madeleine—whose kind soul and devoted attachment were in no wise ill-affected by the small nips of eau de vie she inclined to—and just about the same time died Madame de Montaigu, her aunt at Loches; and thus within six months she had lost the few of her nearest and dearest from childhood, and she felt so saddened and desolate and heart-broken, that she formed the resolution of giving up the world and being a nun after all—yearning for the consolation which religion promises of reunion, and a fulness of sympathy not to be found in ordinary and everyday environments! Scarcely as yet with her foot on womanhood’s bank of the river of life, the warm kindly nature of Ninon was chilled and dulled by sorrow and regret; and one evening, at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, in her ardent desire to find some peace and rest of spirit, she entered into conversation with the Père d’Orléans, a renowned Jesuit, on the subject of religious belief—but his best eloquence failed in convincing her of its efficacy.
The right of private judgment, ever one of her strongest characteristics, asserted itself, and she declared herself unconvinced. “Then, mademoiselle,” said the ecclesiastic, “until you find conviction, offer Heaven your incredulity.”
But while words failed, her heart still impelled her to the idea of the cloistered life, and she went to seek it in Lorraine, at a convent of Recollettes sisters near Nancy. There were many houses of this Order in the duchy. The one sought entrance to by Ninon, was under the patronage of St Francis, and she was received with effusion by the Reverend Mother, a charming lady, herself still youthful. She had not, however, been there many days, relegated to a small cell, whose diminutive casement looked upon some immediately-facing houses, before she became impressed with the idea that, great as the desire might be to snatch in her a brand from the consuming of the wicked world, it was greater still for the little fortune she was known to possess; and with the passing of time, the gentle assuager of more poignant grief, she was beginning to feel less attracted towards the conventual mode of existence, and to wonder whether
she really had the vocation for it. Meantime, the old spirit of adventure was strongly stirring her to defer the recital of a formidable list of Aves and penitential psalms, in favour of watching a window facing her loophole of a lattice, through which she could see a man busily engaged with burin and etching implements. While this in itself was not uninteresting, the interest was increased tenfold, when she contrived to discover that he was the already famous Jacques Callot, the engraver; and very little time was lost before the two had established means of communication by the aid of a long pole, to which they tied their manuscript interchange of messages and ideas —which culminated in Ninon’s descent by a ladder of ropes from the lattice, and flight from the convent.
More sober chronicles relate of Jacques Callot, that through all the curious vicissitudes and adventures of his earlier life, he remained blameless and of uncorrupted morality. It appears certain that his real inclination was ever for such paths, and the romantic love-affair which ended in his union with the woman he adored, was calculated to keep him in them; in which case the attributed version of his liaison with Ninon must be accepted with something over and above its grain of salt, and allowed to lie by. That he was a fearless, highminded man, as well as a great artist, stands by his honoured name in a golden record; for when the imbroglio occurred between Louis XIII. and the Duke of Lorraine—in which, under the all-conquering cardinal prime-minister, France was the victor—Callot was commanded to commemorate the siege with his pencil—he refused. Callot was a Lorrainer, and the duke was his patron and liege-lord, and Callot refused to turn traitor, and prostitute his gift by recording the defeat of the duke, preferring to run the very close chance of death for high treason sooner than comply. If, as it is asserted, Ninon obtained for him the pardon of Richelieu, by virtue of some former favour or service she had done the cardinal, leaving him as yet in her debt for it, all was well that so well ended; and it adds one more to the list of Ninon’s generous acts, never neglected where she had the power to perform them for those she loved.
Whether it is an undoubted fact that the fascination of Ninon—so absolutely all-potent as she herself claims for it—did tempt Callot temporarily even from his allegiance to the love of the woman he won under such romantic circumstances, it is certain that she mercifully decided to leave him in tranquillity with his wife in Lorraine, returning to Paris in company with a little contingent of her old friends and admirers who had been engaged in fighting for their king along the north-eastern borderlands. Paris was so rich in convents, that the question irresistibly suggests itself why she should have travelled that hundred or so of miles to Nancy to take the veil. Possibly, knowing that Coligny, Scarron, Gondi, de la Rochefoucauld, St Evrémond, and other bons camarades were all in that direction, she was prompted to go thither to take final farewells of them before she stepped over the threshold masculine foot must not desecrate; but in this instance it was the propositions of man that triumphed in the face of every spiritual consideration, and all idea of the contemplative life was flung to the four winds in the delight of the old companionships and renewal of the joie de vivre. The reunion was celebrated in an impromptu feast, of reason and recherché dishes, and flow of sparkling wine, and unrestrained merriment and sallies of wit; for where Scarron and St Evrémond and de la Rochefoucauld were, wit could but abound. Next day they all started for Paris, transported thither by matchlessly swift-footed post-horses, Ninon choosing for her travelling companion en tête-à-tête, Coligny; and when the two arrived at rue des Tournelles, they did not part company; but arranged to retire to the rus in urbe of her Picpus dwelling, away by Charenton, where they established ménage in the small but beautiful old house, once the dwelling of Henri Quatre and the fair Gabrielle, with one maid-servant, and one man servitor Ninon called Perrote, who had been the faithful valet of Monsieur de L’Enclos. Here the two passed an idyllic life, where more material enjoyments were diversified by intellectual conversation, sometimes profane, but more often taking a turn so far sacred, as to include the points of doctrine upon which Catholic and Protestant differed. Coligny, as a descendant of the great murdered Huguenot leader, was a Protestant; and while Richelieu treated the Huguenots socially
with indulgence, he would not tolerate them as a political party, and to be of the Reformed, was utterly to lose chance of advancement— and Ninon was ambitious for her lover, and hence the religious discussions and her endeavours to inoculate him with clear conceptions of Catholic teaching. Coligny, however, was apt to show signs of boredom on these occasions, and to yawn so portentously, that she had to desist, leaving him heretical still, when one morning the Picpus maisonette was invaded by messengers from Richelieu, accompanied by halberdiers from the Bastille, who demanded the delivering up of the young man’s sword, and bore him off a prisoner to the horrible old prison, on the charge of neglect of military duty. Once again Ninon’s intercessions with Richelieu procured release and restoration; but Coligny was ungrateful and jealous of the redrobed priest, and would-be galant homme, and passing away from Ninon’s presence, he never entered it again, and in a very few weeks was married to the sister of the Duc de Luxembourg, an alliance possibly already entered upon at an earlier date, and the real ground of his rupture with Ninon.
She soon found balm for the inflicted wounds of Coligny’s ingratitude, in the ardent admiration of the son of the Marquise de Rambouillet, seeing in him only the one absurd defect of desiring unchanging constancy, and on this point he was so tiresome that she was driven to promise fidelity for three months—“An eternity,” said Ninon, ever mocking at love, which she ranked far below friendship.
FRANÇOIS VIDUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Né en M·DC·XIII M en M·DC·LXXX
Peint en émail parGravéPetitot en 1770 par PP Choffard. Desel Grav. de L. M. Imp. et du Roi d’Espagne.
To face page 48.
The greatest apologist of the society of the seventeenth century could hardly describe it as strait-laced; except by comparison with the first half of the one succeeding; and if some of the grandes dames of the circle in which she moved held aloof and deprecated the unconventionalities of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos, for the most
part they accepted them, more or less silently, and treated her with cordiality, delighting in her friendship, and fascinated by the elegance and dignity with which she conducted the hospitalities of her crowded salons. The prevailing charm of one graced with the refinement of no surface education, and accomplishments never unduly self-asserted, shone through the gentle gaiety of her demeanour. She was absolutely innocent of any shadow of selfinterest; taste alone guided her inclinations, her competence protected her from greed, and natural generosity was ever prompting her to kindly actions. Once, at a later day, when Anne of Austria was beginning to settle into the calm austerities of maturer years, and urged by some prudes about her, she sent orders for the temporary retirement of Ninon into a convent, leaving her to select the one she preferred—the tale goes that she expressed her gratitude to the exempt of the guards who delivered the message, for the choice so left her, and that she would choose the convent of the Grands Cordeliers, an establishment about to be suppressed for the scandals attaching to it; but it is far more probable that the jest originated with some acquaintance; for to make light of orders from the Court was in no wise according with Ninon’s code.
That command, however, again reached her at a yet later time, and then was enforced. In Louis XIII.’s days, Ninon was often a guest at the Louvre, and on the occasion of one of the State balls given there, she was present with Rambouillet for her cavalier in chief. As she was entering her carriage to return home, she felt a pull at her mantle, and turning, she saw beside her “a little man, clad entirely in black velvet, whose smile was mocking and full of sarcasm, and his eyes shone like carbuncles. Rambouillet, seeing my terror,” she wrote later, “demanded of the man what he wanted; but the Man in Black silenced him with an imperious gesture, and said to me, in a tone of profound melancholy—‘You are proud of your beauty, mademoiselle, and you are right, for it is marvellous. But alas! all these charms will one day fade. The rosy hues of your skin will die out, age will come, and bring its wrinkles. Ah, believe me! Beware! Endeavour to hinder this misfortune, for afterwards there
will be nothing left to you.’ So saying, he gravely saluted me, and disappeared among the arches of the colonnade.”[1]
CHAPTER V
An Excursion to Gentilly “Uraniæ Sacrum” César and Ruggieri The rue d’Enfer and the Capucins Perditor The Love-philtre Seeing the Devil “Now You are Mine!”
Ninon’s pledge of eternal fidelity to Rambouillet did not hinder other friendships; and about this time she one day made an excursion to Gentilly with the Comte de Lude, intent on visiting the great magician, Perditor, who conducted there his famous incantations. She chose de Lude for her companion on this occasion, because he was an utter disbeliever. The adventure was prompted by the craze, ever latent in society, and then recently kindled to fever-heat, for magic and occultism. The theme, as old almost as the ages, is ever new, and likely to remain so until the mysteries of life and death are revealed. And some short time previously, the rumour had circulated that a man named Febroni, intensely hated by Richelieu, was endeavouring to compass the cardinal’s destruction, by causing a wax image of him to be made and exposed to a slow fire, and as the image melted, so the minister’s life would dwindle to the death. This was, of course, no new device of witchcraft and diablerie; but it served to arouse intense interest and curiosity, and the air was as full of sorcery and demonology as when the first Ruggieri practised his arts for Catherine de Médicis, and watched the stars from the old tower-top of Blois, the observatory of the terrible queen, “Uraniæ Sacrum.”
Some half-dozen years before Ninon was born, a man named César and another Ruggieri, probably taking the old magician for sponsor, had been notorious as potent masters of the “Black Art.”
That they were credited with possessing unlimited command over the elements, and to produce thunder and lightning at will, was but a small part of his power. He could manufacture love-potions to render the indifferent one enamoured of the wooer, and insidious poisons to destroy a hated human obstacle, and perform many services of the like nature for a price, but the fees were startlingly high.
An indiscretion, only in a measure connected with his profession, brought César inside the walls of the Bastille. He had, it appeared, been accustomed to attend the Witches’ Sabbath, and meeting there a great Court lady, he had, he said, induced her to listen too graciously to his soft speeches. The boasts, after his release from the old fortress, brought him condign punishment at the hands, it was said, of his Satanic chief, furious with jealousy it might be. It was on a wild March night that he came and went again with hideous din and clatter, leaving César strangled in his bed; and then making his way to the abode of Ruggieri, he despatched him in the same manner. There were some ready to contend that less supernatural agency might be answerable for these acts. On the other hand it was well known that the devil was no stranger in Paris, having once resided in a street on the left bank of the Seine, which was named after him, the rue d’Enfer From here he was at last ejected, thanks to a happy thought on the part of the city authorities, who handed the ground over to the Capucin brothers, and the foul fiend was heard of no more in that quarter. César extenuated his offence of magic by the assertion that he “was pestered to death by young courtiers and other young Parisians to show him the devil,” and not seeing why he should have the trouble of doing so for nothing, he set his price at forty and fifty pistoles, leaving it a matter of choice whether they would face the terrible ordeal to its ending, or take flight, leaving the pistoles of course behind them. It was this latter course which had been mostly adopted.
And now, at Gentilly, dwelt one magician named Perditor, whose power was reported to be greater than that of any of his predecessors; since he possessed the secret of concocting a philtre capable of maintaining a woman’s beauty and freshness to extreme
age. It was the idea of obtaining this inestimable thing, which determined Ninon to pay a visit to the mighty Perditor. The chronicles of the time confirm the facts related by Ninon of her adventure, which are best told in the fashion of her own experiences:
“On entering the village, we inquired for the dwelling of the celebrated necromancer, and a guide presented himself to conduct us thither. We soon arrived in front of a yawning cavern which was surrounded by large deep ditches. Our guide made a signal, and immediately a man dressed in red appeared on the opposite side of the ditches, and asked us what we wanted.
“‘I wish for a philtre,’ I replied, ‘which will make my beauty last the length of my life.’
“‘And I,’ said the count, ‘wish to see the devil.’
“‘You shall both be satisfied,’ replied the red man, as calmly as if we had asked the most natural thing in the world. Then he lowered a sort of drawbridge across the ditch, and, this crossed, he admitted us into the cavern, where we soon found ourselves in complete darkness. I felt not a little nervous.
“‘Do not be afraid,’ said the count to me; ‘I have my sword with me, a dagger, and two pistols; with them I think I can defy all the sorcerers in the world.’
“After proceeding for quite five minutes along underground galleries and passages, we found ourselves in a sort of large circular chamber hewn out of the solid rock. Some resin torches cast a fitful and gloomy glare up into its vaulted roof. At one end of this hall, upon a platform draped entirely in black, was seated a personage in the garb of a magician, who appeared to be waiting for us.
“‘That is the Master!’ solemnly said the man in red to us.
“And he left us alone in the presence of the great sorcerer himself.
“‘Approach!’ cried Perditor, addressing us in a terrible voice. ‘What do you wish?’
“‘I wish,’ murmured I, in a trembling voice, ‘a philtre to preserve to me my youth and beauty all my life.’
“‘Forty crowns. Pay first.’
“Taking out my purse, I laid down five louis, appalled by the defiant fierceness of his tones. The count did not wait for the questioning of the man on the platform.
“‘For my part, Sir Necromancer,’ he said, ‘I feel greatly curious to see the devil. How much do you want for showing him to me?’
“‘One hundred livres.’
“‘Peste! At that price what fine benefices you must be able to bestow.’
“The lord of the cavern vouchsafed no reply. He took the money from the count, which he put into a big purse hanging at his side, along with my louis. That done, he laid his hand upon a huge bell, which sounded as loud as the bourdon strokes of Notre-Dame towerbell. At this signal, which nearly deafened us, two nymph-like young women, fairly pretty, dressed in white and crowned with flowers, rose from the ground near. Perditor pointed me out to them, handed them an empty crystal phial, and then again struck his fearful bell. The nymphs disappeared. I gathered that they had gone to mix my philtre.
“‘And now,’ continued the necromancer, turning to us, ‘you are both decided that you will see the devil?’
“‘Very decided,’ said the count.
“‘Your name?’
“‘But is it necessary to give it to you, sir?’ stammered I.
“‘It is indispensable.’
“‘It is Anne de L’Enclos.’
“‘And I,’ hastened to add my companion, ‘I am called George de Sandrelles, Comte de Lude.’
“‘You swear never to reveal that which is about to take place before your eyes?’
“‘We swear it.’
“‘You promise not to be afraid, and not to invoke heaven or the saints?’
“‘We promise.’
“The magician rose; he took a long wand of ebony, approached us, and traced a large circle with it in the dust, inscribed with a number of cabalistic figures. Then he said to us—
“‘You can still go away—are you afraid?’
“I wanted to answer in the affirmative, but the count cried in resolute tones—
“‘Afraid of the devil? For shame! What do you take us for? Get on with you.’
“And at the same instant we heard thunderous peals—the voice of the magician sounding above the tumult. He gesticulated, shouted, and broke, in some unknown tongue, into a torrent of diabolic invocations. It made one’s hair stand on end. Terror seized me. I clung convulsively to the count’s arm, and implored him to leave the frightful place.
“‘The time is past for it,’ cried the sorcerer; ‘do not cross the circle, or you are dead.’
“Suddenly, to the noise of the thunder, succeeded a sound like the rattling of chains that were being dragged along the depths of the cavern. Then we heard dismal howlings. The necromancer’s contortions continued, and his cries redoubled. He uttered barbaric words, and appeared to be in fits of frenzy. In the twinkling of an eye, we were enveloped in flames.
