April 6, 1992 [Delicatessen]

Delicatessen led me down to my basement--a terrible mess, an impenetrable personal archeology that goes back to childhood--and all of it encrusted with dust and rust and cobwebs, as though Delicatessen's prop-master had spent loving weeks down there, floating every dust-mote just so, aesthetically skewing each peeling magazine and long-forgotten student paper--with a mechanical bank and a Magic 8-Ball, a set of surveyor's tools and a tin box for Egyptian cigarettes someone else smoked decades ago--and on and on, mildewed books and bins full of toys and clothes and intimations--not of Wordsworthian immortality but its comforting opposite, the way of all flesh and flotsam.

Because there on the French screen the future stood like a circus clown about to juggle improbabilities--but scary and lost, the poor little handyman--poised somewhere between Emmett Kelly and a small frog (no insult intended)--fattened up for the post-apocalyptic menu.  And just like my basement the little man remains, his rhythm as perfect as his lithe frame and pushed-in face--and I remember him as the thug who hated everything in Diva--except now he is the closest thing to love in this hilarious and cruel movie, Chaplinesque without insulting Charlie.  Each cartoon bounce and Keystone Cop skitter warmed me against the cold of the world he had to live in--darker than the corner where our first-born's crib stood in neat pieces suitable for kindling and spiders.

Comments

  1. I just saw this for the first time a few weeks ago - "the thug who hated everything in Diva": that's where I'd seen him before (although actually I think he's in several Jeunets, isn't he)? Jeunet could be in some sort of category with Burton and Gilliam, and I'm not sure what it would be called: "directors as surrealist production designers" perhaps? It seems to have been very much a late 80s/early 90s phenomenon and I'm not sure they have any successors.

    I've been meaning to go back to the beginning of your entries and read them all the way through. I want to do so before you finish posting - do you have an end-date set or are you just posting until you hit the present?

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  2. @MovieMan0283: This started as the first draft of a book. It still is that: I have been revising diary entries offline since I've started. In the meantime, this blog serves as my main movie site, and will continue as such, even when I catch up with the present. If there is an end-date, it will be when an agent or publisher gets interested in it--at which point I may shut it down or limit access (to Faithful Followers such as yourself). In the meantime, the site plugs along, content that "a happy few" remain interested in Constant Viewing--as I am in Dancing Images.

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  3. Even as a Faithful Follower, I'd be happy to buy the book, so let me know...

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  4. @Joel Bocko: Thanks for the kind words.

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  5. I just started rewatching this after I got on a French film kick (it's actually paused somewhere in my Netflix queue, waiting for me to press "resume."). It's so much more complete and fulfilling than City of Lost Children, which I also admire. Though Delicatessen is dim, twisted, monochromatic and claustrophobic, it's beautiful and cheers me up every time I watch it. Pinon's oblivious optimism is infectious and endearing.

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  6. @Reese: Pinon is a marvel in this movie--but I always look forward to seeing him. Jeez, he even brings some sparkle to Alien: Resurrection.

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