Mária Traser

"Dream is a second life"

Hommage a André Delvaux


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André Delvaux, the world-renown Belgian film director is the "magic surrealistic director " of dreams, fantasy and man's innermost secrets. Born in 1926 to a Francophone upper-middle class family in a Flemish small town, he experienced Belgium's special double-faces feature and the painful coexistence of Flemish and French culture from his earliest childhood. “I love the region where I live. We have come to an age in out history when we must be loudly saying that we love this country of ours. I love to live here and I love to work here. I love the wealth of this cultural heritage, I love the intertwining of the two cultures. It is our duty to defend the principle of the mixing of cultures, defying the vassals of power who designate cultural ghettos for us.”

As a young man, Delvaux studied German language and literature as well as law at the University of Brussels, while completing the faculty of piano-playing and composing at the Royal Conservatory in parallel. He went into teaching German, and also habitually accompanied the screenings of silent films of the Cinématheque Royale on the piano. He was a great fan of film, shooting short films and composing music for feature films with his students. In 1962, he started to teach film theory at the University of Brussels, and in 1963 he went on to teach linguistics and film directing at the Academy of Film and Theatre.

His first, independent film was made in 1966, entitled The Skin-Head.

It was subsidised by Flemish Television. Already his first film defines that special language and subject matter which later characterise all his films. In line with the value-system of a surrealistic philosophy of life, he believes that the most important events of human life are what he calls "objective incidents", i.e. Love and Encounter. Quoting Andrea Briton, the apostle of the surrealists, "Man is an alien being on this earth, and he can only slow roots here through Woman. " Delvaux's first film professes the love that is "only, unrepeatable and mad". Love of course makes its appearance through the objective incidents and the desire that is born in reality (while being awake) is fulfilled in fantasy (dream). For Delvaux's heroes, love is a state of bliss, the only happy, redeeming and liberating sentiment. In his autobiographical writings Delvaux mentions that in addition to the theories of Freud, the 19th century visionary poet, Gérard Neval also contributed to his unique interpretation of dream. His thoughts may well be interpreted as a breakthrough in thinking. The magic realism of the 16th century painters of the Netherlands or René Magritte's neo-surrealistic visions all made a deep impact on his understanding of dream. "Dream is a second life " -writes Nerval, and Delvaux directs dreams. The main characteristic of many of his works is that he first creates an absurd situation and makes all subsequent events evolve as the logical outcome of that situation. In spite of the mysteriousness of the events and situations, he portrays a very real Belgian world, where dreaminess functions as a very powerful tool for exploring reality.

In his second film, i.e. One Evening, One Train, he deepens his subject matter and his aesthetics. The protagonist is on his way somewhere, as if beyond time and space, on the verge of dream and reality, and looses the woman with whom he has lived so far, whom perhaps he never learnt to know, and who suddenly appears more precious than anything in the world. As if Delvaux had directed a musical piece along the rhythm of the sophisticated dialogues and noises. The beautiful and mysterious Flemish landscape through the train window unfolds in parallel with the protagonists's thoughts, searching for moral and cultural identity.

His next oeuvre, Meeting in Bray , is again a literary adaptation. It is a romantic and nostalgic dream fantasy, designed in line with the principles of surrealism, with an elaborated and symbol-laden style, and with the effects of a painting or of music. Delvaux achieves surrealism, as the genre of art of discovery and adventure, through a sophisticated application of the dream and the unconscious. His subject matter this time balances on the verge of past and present, and music plays an unprecendentedly important role here. (The main character - just like the young Delvaux - accompanies silent films on the piano in the Film Archive of Brussels.)

In Belle, he gives a synthesis of the aesthetic principles of his life work. His subject matter speaks for itself. The main character, the author, lives a lonely life among people in a beautiful but dangerous and wild Flemish landscape, when he accidentally meets a mysterious woman, whose language he is unable to understand. This dream-like creature, with whom he falls fatally in love, gives meaning to his life. This absurd and lunatic love make its way into his life as another dimension, as possible human happiness, - while the woman may not even exist, being perhaps the ephemeral creation of his desires and fantasy.

In Woman in the Twilight Delvaux for once deals with one of Belgium’s grave historical problems. During World War II, some Flemish church leaders urged their believers to support the Germans whom they considered to do greater service to the Flemish cause that the Francophone Belgians did. Delvaux sets out to explore this until now debated - and for a long time repressed - question of Belgian history with a meticulous realism, portraying the then Belgian sentiments in a touching and true manner, but without drifting away from his supernatural visions.

Delvaux lives in a lonely woodland cottage with his wife and daughter, as well as his cats, dog, piano and books. He loves Belgium very much, and travels rarely. He has not visited Hungary yet. The Hungarian audience has not had the possibility to see his magic-surrealistic films.

What he professes in all his films is that happiness is perhaps only achieved in our dreams, but what really matters is that man has the ability, the fantasy and the desire to be happy.

André Delvaux
André Delvaux

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André Delvaux: Un soir, un train (1968)
André Delvaux:
Un soir, un train (1968)

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André Delvaux: Belle (1973)
André Delvaux:
Belle (1973)

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André Delvaux: Avec Dieric Bouts (1975)
André Delvaux:
Avec Dieric Bouts (1975)

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André Delvaux: Femme entre chien et loup (1979)
André Delvaux:
Femme entre chien et loup (1979)

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André Delvaux: Babel Opéra (1985)
André Delvaux:
Babel Opéra (1985)

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