The Reconciliation of Carl and Jean

In my opinion the richness of “reconcile” has been somewhat debased by the bean counters. They use it to mean the verification of financial accounts. But reconciliation has much more potential than simply ticking off the items on a credit card statement. I think that Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu had it right, in principle.

What got me thinking about it was the first time that Jean Renoir and Carl Koch really met. Of course they didn’t know about that meeting until later. I will let Renoir tell the story himself.

Carl Koch had been a German army captain of artillery in the First War. In 1916 he was in command of an anti-aircraft battery in the Rheims sector. “It was a good sector,” he told me. “Nothing against it except the incessant attack of the French squadron opposite us.” As it happens, in 1916 I was flying in a reconnaissance squadron in the same sector, and we were the main target of a Germany battery which gave us a lot of trouble. Koch and I concluded that this was his battery: so we had made war together. These things form a bond. The fact that we were on opposite sides was the merest detail.

From: My Life and My Films by Jean Renoir 1974

We met both Carl and Jean long after they had died. Carl’s wife, Lotte Reiniger, introduced us to them both with delightful stories of their first meeting in Paris at the première of Lotte’s Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed. And their subsequent adventures in working together on the Renoir films. Glorious days in Meudon as well as dedicated work on such masterpieces as La Marseillaise and La Grande Illusion. Carl left first, and when he did Jean wrote to Lotte from his home, which was by that time in Hollywood.

“The best times in my life working in film were with Carl. It was through this connection that The Rules of the Game was such a success. Carl, from Heaven on high, must surely be laughing.”

True reconciliation.

Leisure?

A recent article by Mark Kingwell stimulated me to reflect on this theme. Thoughts somehow led to Chaucer, and whether the pilgrims heading to Canterbury were engaged in work or leisure. I know little about his work, although we did explore The Tales as a possible project to be animated in the classical style of Lotte Reiniger. But I do love the oral flavour of his language, and presently have the leisure to track down his use of the very word for my “spare time”. From his The Book of the Duchesse:

165    Amid the valey, wonder depe.
166    Ther thise goddes laye and slepe,
167    Morpheus, and Eclympasteyre,
168    That was the god of slepes heyre,
169    That slepe and did non other werk.
170      This cave was also as derk
171    As helle pit over-al aboute;
172    They had good leyser for to route
173    To envye, who might slepe beste;

Why not read the whole poem? If you have the time.

Anyway, Kingwell’s article explores J. K. Galbraith’s notion
that increasing affluence and its attendant desire for
material acquisition would taper off as sufficient
goods and services brought about fulfillment of those
needs. He refers briefly to the classical Greek attitudes
to the contemplative life. Although without reference
to a slave society, and to the undoubted fact that
philosophical reflection required collaboration and hard
labour from the local vineyards***.

With insight, although not complete clarity, he examines
why this has not happened. The parameters have changed
as leisure in its many forms has been progressively
redefined and co-opted by commercialism. Leisure now
requires one to buy. The transformation of advertising
raises the question as to whether consumption itself is
consuming us. [see also previous posting
The Cult You're In August 22/07]

In the meantime, even my leisure time requires being
plugged in at a cost. 

***Horace’s Ode to a Wine Jar