Jean Cocteau's writings, however admirable they may be, seldom play on emotion. Distant in general from his characters, Cocteau explores their revolted, mythical, even monstrous side but not their heartbeats. As a matter of fact, even if his heroes are under the influence of passion, preferably deadly, they are not our brothers in soul. There is at least one exception to this rule though, "La Voix humaine" (Human voice), a singular dramatic monologue featuring no other character than a woman and no other props of importance than a telephone set and handset. As for the action, it can be summarized as follows: a woman speaks on the phone. Naturally, that is just the backbone of the play, which cannot be reduced to just that. First things first, the female protagonist is a great lover and her phone correspondent the object of her attachment. So feelings will matter. Secondly, what will spark interest is that the man, though we cannot hear him (but guess from her reactions) proves eager to leave her without knowing exactly how to tell her, aware as he is of the extent to which she has invested in their affair. The distraught female, who senses the disaster coming, will then weave, during the whole duration of the play, between intuition and denial, despair and hope, rage and self-abasement d. Alone on the stage, she soon becomes the emblematic figure of the woman facing an unwanted separation and, as a result, in the grip of great suffering. An unenviable situation Cocteau himself had to cope with when he wrote his play in 1929, a dark year for him, during which not only had he to manage his break-up with Jean Desbordes but also to undergo a trying drug rehab. His distress was immense and probably prevented him from keeping his distance from his character the way he usually did. Which resulted in the most moving, the most pathetic of his works.
The bruised poet, well inspired by his own experience, was rewarded by public and critical success, which must have been a balm on his wounds. All things equal, he had taken up a hell of a challenge. But wouldn't it be even more complicated supposing a composer dreamed of setting "The Human Voice" to music?
Well, that is precisely what Francis Poulenc did twenty years later. How to dress with music (without resorting to melody) the words both daily and tragic of the grieving lover? How to avoid redundancy? How not to fall into mawkishness? And which singer would be up to the character, physically as well as vocally? Those are the questions the musician could not avoid asking himself. What can be said, judging by the result, is that... he knew all the answers! In "La Voix humaine", Poulenc's greatest achievement is the creation of a melodic curve that succeeds in marrying all the emotions tearing the heroine apart. Also impressive is the dark and tormented orchestral mood amplifying the dramatic intensity of the situation. Even the choice of the vocal performee, soprano Denise Duval, is perfect. In what was to be her most memorable role, the singer knew how to bring out from within herself all the suffering of the one she embodied while expressing at the same time all the nuances required.
The musical piece, performed in 1959 with an orchestra conducted by Georges Prêtre, proved a great success, attesting to the relevance and quality of the joint work of Cocteau, Poulenc and Denise Duval.
Unfortunately, the year of glory (1959) turned into the year of disaster. Four years later, in 1963, Death took its ruthless toll, taking away Cocteau and Poulenc, to say nothing of popular singer Edith Piaf (another interpreter of a monologue by Cocteau, "Le Bel indifférent"). As for Denise Duval, she retired that same year for health reasons. Four human voices that would remain silent for ever...
But the story does not end there. Let's take another seven years to find ourselves in 1970. At the time, film director Dominique Delouche, whose love of music is well known, undertook to adapt Poulenc's version of "La Voix Humaine" for the screen, not as a mere opera recording but as a real film, in every sense of the word, possibly with Denise Duval. As the latter had given up singing, he offered her to lip-synch the opera to the 1959 recorded version, which she accepted. It resulted in a happy - and unique - experience, which allows us today to hear the artist's superb vocal performance and to discover up close, much better than from a theatre hall, all the expressiveness of her body language. Sitting, standing, lying on her back or flat on her stomach, her back turned, going to and fro, her right hand tightened on the handset, her left one feverish, all of her body and attitudes are never at rest, in the image of her troubled soul. Quite brilliant.. And just like Poulenc's music intensifies the perception of the heroine's pangs, its mostly jerky cadence strikingly reflecting the arrhythmia of her oppressed heart, Delouche's puts his empathetic camera at the service of her changing frames of mind. It follows her in her vertigo, spinning around her, taking her in low or high angle shots, approaching her or moving away from her in subtle forward or backward traveling tracks. It seems as if the camera is desperately trying to rescue the poor heroine until, in the beautiful last shot, it eventually admits its powerlessness. A remarkable work by Dominique Delouche, who not content to have initiated this atypical project and to film it so well, also designed the costumes and the settings. In this new version, "La Voix humaine" (distributed in DVD and VOD by Doriane Films, with English subtitles), Cocteau's heartbreaking words, reinforced by Poulenc's music and immortalized by Denise Duval's voice have reached yet another dimension, the one that only the seventh art allows: a total immersion in a human tragedy through the intimacy and proximity provided by the camera's eyepiece. To be watched and listened to with passion.
The bruised poet, well inspired by his own experience, was rewarded by public and critical success, which must have been a balm on his wounds. All things equal, he had taken up a hell of a challenge. But wouldn't it be even more complicated supposing a composer dreamed of setting "The Human Voice" to music?
Well, that is precisely what Francis Poulenc did twenty years later. How to dress with music (without resorting to melody) the words both daily and tragic of the grieving lover? How to avoid redundancy? How not to fall into mawkishness? And which singer would be up to the character, physically as well as vocally? Those are the questions the musician could not avoid asking himself. What can be said, judging by the result, is that... he knew all the answers! In "La Voix humaine", Poulenc's greatest achievement is the creation of a melodic curve that succeeds in marrying all the emotions tearing the heroine apart. Also impressive is the dark and tormented orchestral mood amplifying the dramatic intensity of the situation. Even the choice of the vocal performee, soprano Denise Duval, is perfect. In what was to be her most memorable role, the singer knew how to bring out from within herself all the suffering of the one she embodied while expressing at the same time all the nuances required.
The musical piece, performed in 1959 with an orchestra conducted by Georges Prêtre, proved a great success, attesting to the relevance and quality of the joint work of Cocteau, Poulenc and Denise Duval.
Unfortunately, the year of glory (1959) turned into the year of disaster. Four years later, in 1963, Death took its ruthless toll, taking away Cocteau and Poulenc, to say nothing of popular singer Edith Piaf (another interpreter of a monologue by Cocteau, "Le Bel indifférent"). As for Denise Duval, she retired that same year for health reasons. Four human voices that would remain silent for ever...
But the story does not end there. Let's take another seven years to find ourselves in 1970. At the time, film director Dominique Delouche, whose love of music is well known, undertook to adapt Poulenc's version of "La Voix Humaine" for the screen, not as a mere opera recording but as a real film, in every sense of the word, possibly with Denise Duval. As the latter had given up singing, he offered her to lip-synch the opera to the 1959 recorded version, which she accepted. It resulted in a happy - and unique - experience, which allows us today to hear the artist's superb vocal performance and to discover up close, much better than from a theatre hall, all the expressiveness of her body language. Sitting, standing, lying on her back or flat on her stomach, her back turned, going to and fro, her right hand tightened on the handset, her left one feverish, all of her body and attitudes are never at rest, in the image of her troubled soul. Quite brilliant.. And just like Poulenc's music intensifies the perception of the heroine's pangs, its mostly jerky cadence strikingly reflecting the arrhythmia of her oppressed heart, Delouche's puts his empathetic camera at the service of her changing frames of mind. It follows her in her vertigo, spinning around her, taking her in low or high angle shots, approaching her or moving away from her in subtle forward or backward traveling tracks. It seems as if the camera is desperately trying to rescue the poor heroine until, in the beautiful last shot, it eventually admits its powerlessness. A remarkable work by Dominique Delouche, who not content to have initiated this atypical project and to film it so well, also designed the costumes and the settings. In this new version, "La Voix humaine" (distributed in DVD and VOD by Doriane Films, with English subtitles), Cocteau's heartbreaking words, reinforced by Poulenc's music and immortalized by Denise Duval's voice have reached yet another dimension, the one that only the seventh art allows: a total immersion in a human tragedy through the intimacy and proximity provided by the camera's eyepiece. To be watched and listened to with passion.
