MICROSTORY OF ART ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM The Blue Hour in Louis Malle

Innumerable times, I seem to recall, if during the 1990s I switched on my TV, there was Damage, a 1992 film by Louis Malle, on the air. As if everyone was to know that film, or the wisdom transmitted by that film, that I do not recall was much talked about then. A film showing not only an obsessive affair getting out of control, but also the masks people wear in daily life; a film showing of what illusions and dissimulations daily life seems to be made of, but also, and on the other hand, showing people speaking remarkably frankly to other people, and the repercussions (and lacking repercussions) of speaking frankly. A son (Martyn) does speak to his father (Steven). A mother to the secret lover of her daughter Anna (the lover is this very father, Steven, who is betraying – fatally – his wife and his son, because his son is the fiancé of Anna, meant also to marry her).
The climax (after warnings have failed and fatal damage is done, and Steven has stepped out of his former life as a husband, father and politician) shows a photograph with Anna’s, with Juliette Binoche’s face, out of focus like a Richter painting it is rendered in the end, while the score, for the only time in the movie, cries out in full and unrestrained pathos. A musical cry transmitting, summarily, so to speak, all the desperate pain that goes along with the damage done.

(Picture: Damage)

A blue hour of Brussels is shown within that very movie (see picture above and on the left). Politicians have met, have conferred until the very early morning, that is: the break of day. It’s 1992, or let’s say that it is 1992, a year of many crucial political events, not only in Brussels, but also in Rio (the Rio conference). Bill Clinton got elected in November. But within Damage by Louis Malle, people are focussed on other things. Their social roles, their masks and lies. Their desperate attempts to control things while being driven, as far as the two main protagonists, Steven and Anna, are concerned, by their obsessive passion. And thus things get out of control completely, as if to quintessentially render how things may get out of control. And there is not much to discuss, indeed. But only to watch. Because the risk of damage seems to elicit further passion, or the awareness of risk is completely repressed by the two main protagonists.

(Picture: youtube.com)

This blue hour of Brussels is shown to us only briefly. Steven, the father (Jeremy Irons), a secretary of state, is hailing a taxi, to get to the train station, and to follow his lover Anna to Paris (where she is staying with Martyn). This is how things evolve. With the blue hour – and us – as witnesses. But only we as spectators are following the tragedy unfolding (the blue hour of Brussels perhaps is seeing other politicians doing other, perhaps less tragic, perhaps even historic things).

The film was based on a novel by Josephine Hart which seems to be remarkably good to me (much read at the time, in 1991, a bestseller obviously, but certainly little debated either). Maybe more on the wisdom, as far as Visual Apprenticeship is concerned, on the wisdom transmitted by the book on another occasion (or another rubric, for example our rubric/new series Visual Apprenticeship).

Titian, Leonardo and the Blue Hour

The Blue Hour Continued (into the 19th century)

The Blue Hour at Istanbul (Transcription of Cecom by Baba Zula)

The Blue Hour in Werner Herzog (Today Painting V)

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