The "Perfect Discords" of Billy Wilder's Comedy Films Julie MICHOT Université du Littoral-Côte d'Opale Billy Wilder had a passion for jazz and he attached the utmost importance to music in his movies. He used to say: "I cannot whistle, I cannot sing, I cannot play the piano. I am totally unmusical. But I am musical as far as the song or the music for a picture is concerned. In that I am very, very finicky" (Crowe 107). Indeed, from the beginning of his career, he chose to work with some of the greatest soundtrack composers; what would his dramas and film noirs be without the collaboration of Miklós Rózsa or Franz Waxman? But Wilder was also a celebrated scriptwriter and director of comedy films in which diegetic music plays a key role. In a number of his movies, protagonists are atypical musicians or singers; in others, romantic tunes are in fact not so romantic after all; and finally, source music can be such an obsession that it turns into background music, the melodies the characters hear or hum becoming a leitmotiv and affecting the story in a practical way.

My analysis deliberately omitsWilder's only musical, The Emperor Waltz (1948), as well as his most famous and certainly most analyzed comedy involving professional musicians, Some Like It Hot (1959), to concentrate on his other comedic movies, whether acclaimed or undervalued. Thoughvery little has been written on that specific subject, I argue that diegetic music is fundamental at all levels in the language of Billy Wilder's comedy filmsby giving the action its tempo, introducing humor, but also from a metaphorical or lyrical point of view.

I. Unmusical Musicians

If Wilder confessed he was no musician, many of his comedy film characters, although they sometimes sing or play an instrument for a living, do not have real talent either, which makes them quite original. In The Fortune Cookie (1966), Sandy (Judi West) is a failed artist who started her career on television singing commercial jingles for a linoleum company in the tune of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." She then leaves Cleveland for New York, and her husband for "Gus Gilroy and his Gaslighters"but this group is no more successful than she is. As for Pamela's ex-boyfriend Bertram in Avanti! (1972), , he plays the guitar in a band called "The Four Apostles." She says he "is also a terrific composer, … writing a rock musical called Splash …about the sinking of the Titanic," which does not sound very promising either.

More interesting still, Pamela (Juliet Mills) proudly shows Wendell (Jack Lemmon) a photograph of the group (Fig. 1). The bass player standing on the extreme right looks a little like Frank Zappa, who was a brilliant musician. The hairstyle and general attitude of the four makes them resemble Aphrodite's Child. Vangelis belonged to Aphrodite's Child and he was a great composer too; Demis Roussos was another member of the band and he was not that acclaimed.Bertram, who is in the foreground, precisely bears some resemblance to Demis Roussos, which is certainly no coincidence. In addition, Bertram's guitar has nothing to do with the beautiful hollow body electrics made by prestigious American companies like Gibson, Guild, Gretsch or Rickenbacker; instead, it rather looks like the medium-range instruments manufactured in Europe in the 50s, that were not popular across the Atlantic in the 70s at the time Bertram's picture was taken. Finally, the position of the men's fingers on the necks of their instruments does not correspond to any existing chord, which means that they are really static, and it could even be wondered whether they can play at all. Fig. 1 -"The Four Apostles" from Avanti!, who are seen for a couple of seconds, and never heard. Source: MGM DVD Therefore, it seems that Wilder enjoyed making fun of musicians, and he also liked debunking myths. For instance, in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), the detective (Robert Stephens) appears to be a rather weak man who finds it hard to solve mysteries without Dr. Watson's help; he is a drug addict, andcannot play the violin well, although his friend writes that he is gifted. That may be why the famous ballerina (Tamara Toumanova) who asks Holmes to be the father of her child offers him a Stradivarius in exchange. In fact, in this film, the violin is relevant as an object and a metaphor: "[It] is always associated with sexuality;" it should be remembered too that "Holmes's first love was the daughter of his violin teacher" (Gemünden 160). That explains the presence of the Stradivarius, for what would Sherlock possibly do with such a beautiful instrument?

In another film yet another myth is smashed, this time with the consent of the person involved. Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) opens on Dean Martin singing "'S Wonderful" at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, the way he could have done it in real life during a performance of the Rat Pack. In fact, an actual record of his Italian Love Songs is used as a prop in one of the scenes (Fig. 2). It is clear that the singer and actor, whose character name Dino in the movie is actually the star's birth name, indulges in self-mockery by playing "a caricatured version of his own image" (Simsolo 85). Later on indeed, we understand that the ageing playboy is a bit oldfashioned to young and attractive Zelda (Felicia Farr), who used to be one of his greatest fans. The film's totally fictitious characters are in no way forgotten by Billy Wilder, who was well known for his wit: the director said of Cliff Osmond, one of his favorite supporting actors, that he had "the musical ear of van Gogh" (Wilder and Karasek 314). Interestingly, in Kiss Me, Stupid, Cliff Osmond plays the part of an obscure lyricist who thinks he can become famous with songs like "Pretzels in the Moonlight." His friend Orville (Ray Walston), who writes the music, is also convinced that they are geniuses; that is why he casually sings "I'm a Poached Egg" while following Dino to the toilets. Orville is silly enough to be convinced that it is a clever way to attract the crooner's attention; but of course, the effect is quite the opposite and Dino only feels like running away.

Orville is in fact obsessed by music. He is a piano teacher who gives his lessons in his home, in the middle of his living room, and who wears a sweater with Beethoven's prominent portrait on it; he also has a Bach sweater and a Brahms sweater in his wardrobe. His foolishness and the inanity of his ditties are there to prove that everything can be bought since the two friends will eventually become famous when Dino sings one of their songs on television… after having slept with Orville's wife.

Orville is an eccentric musician and a grotesque character, which is not the case for Ariane (Audrey Hepburn), the heroine of Love in the Afternoon (1957). That said, she does have something in common with him: the pianist of Kiss Me, Stupid is a very jealous and paranoid man, always spying on his wife, and thus, he cannot concentrate on what his pupils are playing; in the same way, Ariane finds it hard to focus on her music, simply because she is in love. The girl is a cello studentnot at the Sheboygan Conservatory of Some Like It Hot, but at the Paris Conservatory which is a "good school" too. Unlike Josephine (Tony Curtis) and Daphne (Jack Lemmon), Ariane did not get "time off for good behavior," so she spends her days carrying her instrument, practicing at her father's home or rehearsing with the other students in an orchestra. Ariane is not an amateur and cannot really be called an "unmusical" musician; rather, she is an "unusual" one. The only occasion on which she plays incorrect notes is when she places some articles about Frank Flannagan's private life on her stand and reads them with passion instead of the sheet music (Fig. 3). The originality of the girl also lies in the fact that she is not telling Flannagan (Gary Cooper) the truth about her age, her life and her sexual experience, and so she has to hide her cello when visiting the playboy at the Ritz. Thisis not easy since its case is almost bigger than she is. However, the case proves quite useful: Ariane hides her face behind it so as not to be recognized by one of her father's clients (John McGiver) (Fig. 4), and she also hides objects inside; in particular, an ermine coat she has borrowed and will wear in Flannagan's suite to impress him. So, the function of the cello case is altered and allows a well-behaved young girl to turn into a kind of femme fatale. Wilder's choice of Tristan and Isolde by Wagner for the opera house sequence of this romantic comedy is significant. Charlotte Chandler remarks: "Appropriately, that opera is about a casual relationship that grows into undying love, and is set in Ireland, Flannagan's ancestral home" (194). Once again, Ariane's behavior at the opera is not expected from a music student. She attends the performance with Michel (Van Doude), her friend from the Conservatory. While the boy is carried away by the music and cannot help "conducting" the orchestra from the balcony, thus annoying his neighbors with his many gestures, Ariane is not that absorbed, especially when she sees Flannagan in the audience below. From then on, her main preoccupation is to watch him, and she keeps using Michel's theater binoculars, to the latter's great displeasure (Fig. 5). Incidentally, Frank Flannagan is not captivated by the beauty of the music eitheras a matter of fact, he will later tell Ariane that he was planning to take his new conquest to the Folies Bergère and that the opera tickets were bought by mistake. If the "Friends of Italian Opera" in Some Like It Hot are actually uncultured mobsters, Flannagan is no music lover himself; the playboy is rather restless, looking at the audience around him although he is sitting in the first row, right in front of the orchestra pit. Likewise, Ariane does not pay much attention to the music or to what is happening on the stage, but for different reasons. This point is quite interesting, being reminiscent of a film by Ernst Lubitsch, Wilder's master. In the opera house sequence of Trouble in Paradise (1932), Monescu (Herbert Marshall), the elegant thief, spends his time looking closely at a rich widow's jewels through his binoculars (Fig. 6). Much of the scene is shot in subjective camera and not one reverse shot is used to show us the performers. Similarly, in Wilder's movie, most shots are of the audience and we barely see the members of the orchestra. Whether in Trouble in Paradise or Love in the Afternoon, an opera is a pretext for the meeting of a man and a woman, and source music serves as a clever and explicit backdrop for Monescu's intentions and Ariane's feelings. And yet, Lubitsch's musical choices for his love or seduction scenes were not always as classical, and in that, he also influenced Wilder tremendously.

II. Romantic Interludes?

Gypsy bands and music can be considered as Lubitsch's trademark since they are central in many of his films, having a lot to do with love stories. Interestingly, in The Shop Around the Corner (1940), there is hardly any source or background music and the only melodies come from the cigarette boxes that play "Otchi Tchernye" ("Dark Eyes") when opened. Their recurrent presence becomes a running gag whose topper is the scene in which the dishonest clerk (Joseph Schildkraut) is pushed into a pile of those music boxes that all start playing in an ear-piercing cacophony. "Otchi Tchernye" is a traditional Russian song with a Gypsy tune; in this film, it is also performed by the orchestra at the café when Klara (Margaret Sullavan) has her failed rendezvous with her mystery correspondent. The choice of such a tune is not surprising in a movie whose action takes place in Budapest. And yet, Lubitsch was so fond of Gypsy bands that he introduced them in some of his other stories even though they were not set in Eastern Europe. Angel(1937) is one notable example. The introduction of a Gypsy band happens in a Wilder film too.

In Love in the Afternoon, a quartet of Gypsies consisting of two violins, one accordion and one hammered dulcimer, is inseparable from Frank Flannagan (Fig. 7). Like the champagne, the quartet is one of the playboy's usual seductive tricks and it seems that he would never be able to be so successful with women without those musicians: they "[set] the mood for [his] seductions" (Chandler 194) and "[follow him] everywhere, providing a romantic soundtrack for all his pursuits" (Crowe 345). The musicians' presence, however, is certainly more humorous than truly glamorousas is the case, to some extent, with the disheveled violinist playing behind a door in The Prince and the Showgirl (Laurence Olivier), released on the same year. Indeed, in Love in the Afternoon, nothing is left to chance and timing is perfect: the Gypsies always arrive as scheduled, slipping away at the end of the evening without forgetting to place a "Do Not Disturb" sign at the door. In one of the scenes, they rush to Flannagan's suite on a non-diegetic "martial drum rhythm" (Chandler 194), which is meaningful. Every night, the pieces they are asked to play are the same, in the same order: they start with the staccato-paced "Hot Paprika," then perform some Liszt, Lehár and one or two czárdás. As the evening goes by, the rhythm of the music slows down: at five to ten exactly, "Fascination" is played and, invariably, Flannagan and one of his many conquests dance cheek to cheek while the first violin gets closer to them. At the end of "Fascination," the couple is left aloneat last since it seems there is nothing more the Gypsies can do. At one point, the four musicians go as far as following Ariane and Frank in a rowboat on the river. What is so romantic about that? A funny fact is that the Gypsies even follow the businessman (who is alone, for a change) to the Turkish bath (Fig. 8). The musicians have kept their suits and their bow ties on, which must be very uncomfortablethey are sweating streamsbut which shows that they are real professionals and would do anything to please Flannagan. And yet, such a setting is not plausible at all; indeed, the musicians would never take their instruments to a hammam for the excessive heat and humidity would ruin them. Besides, in just a few minutes, the stringsviolins and hammered dulcimerwould be out of tune and it would be impossible to tune them again for several days. As to the accordion, its bellows would fill with water vapor and it would soon be unplayable. Towards the end of the scene, the first violinist suddenly stops playing, empties his instrument of water, and then goes on performing with passion; but in reality, a fiddle full of water no longer produces any sound.

Thus, technically, the Gypsies would never be able to play the whole of "Fascination" in such extreme conditions. Wilder must have known it, especially as the members of the band were in fact actual Hungarian musicians (Crowe 147); but the director certainly did not mean to be credible since Love in the Afternoon is first and foremost a comedy. Beyond its witty and even farcical aspect, the scene is interesting because it proves that contrary to Flannagan, who always uses the same tricks to impress women, the Gypsies can adapt to all kinds of situations. Incidentally, during one of Ariane and Frank's dates at the Ritz, the musicians suddenly realize that what they are playing, "C'est Si Bon," is too lively, so they immediately switch to "Fascination."

The Gypsies are surely less predictable than their employer, but most importantly, they can be associated with the chorus in classical Greek plays; witnessing the action and commenting on it. They pay great attention to the lovers' behavior, which means thatthey are once again being rather intrusive, and that the couple's intimacy is almost non-existent. In the last shot of the film, the musicians stay on the platform while Ariane and Frank's train is drawing away. They play "Fascination," this time as a farewell song: "Since the quartet was associated with Frank's seductions, they have been left behind for good" (Phillips 194). Flannagan indeed does not have to pretend anymore and he proves to the girl that he is really in love with her. For the first time in his life, he behaves in a sincere and romantic way, and thus, he no longer needs the Gypsies' help. Another small musical ensemble, although not a Gypsy one, is an essential ingredient for David's successes with women in Sabrina (1954) (Fig. 9). Each time they give a party, the rich Larrabees have a sestet playing and their younger son David (William Holden), after a few dances with a beautiful girl, always uses the same technique: he asks her to go to the deserted indoor tennis court and meets her there with a bottle of champagne after having told the combo to play "Isn't It Romantic?" When the chauffeur's daughter, Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn), sees her dream come true and attends the party, she dances amorously with David and they are so fond of each other that they go on dancing even after the music stops. But that is where romanticism ends. Actually, Linus, the elder brother (Humphrey Bogart), places the family business above all else and wants David to marry the daughter of a rich industrialist. As David is ready to slip away with the champagne, Linus, fully aware that David has glasses in the back pockets of his trousers, asks him to sit down.

Instead of David, Sabrina is met by Linus who drinks with her, dances with her, and even kisses her. In the meantime, a cross-cutting allows us to see David, who is having the glass fragments removed from his bottom and is complainingnot because it is physically painful, but because he can also hear the orchestra play the song. However, Linus and Sabrina's dance is not that romantic either: indeed, Linus does all this for the Larrabee company, and tries to deal with the girl and buy her off. Over the following days, he goes on entertaining her while his brother is recovering, with the aim of getting David out of her mind. "Music might help," and he brings a portable phonograph as they go sailing so that Sabrina can play several records; she discovers, on that occasion, that Linus is in fact more sentimental than she thought. The "cold businessman," as he calls himself, was not planning to seduce her at all, and yet, that is what happens eventually: quite unexpectedly, they fall in love and leave for Paris. This unlikely love affair thus begins in a strange way with a tune programmed by a playboy, and on which he will never have looked so ridiculous.

Although Orville, the pianist of Kiss Me, Stupid, is ridiculous tooand nearly all the timehe manages to be romantic once thanks to a long piece of music he composes for his wife and performs for Polly, the prostitute (Kim Novak), who is sitting by his side on the bench (Fig. 10). This scene is the exact inversion of a sequence in The Seven Year Itch (1955) where Richard (Tom Ewell) is trying to seduce his gorgeous neighbor (Marilyn Monroe) by playing the piano. Interestingly, That Uncertain Feeling by Lubitsch ( 1941) is also the storynot of a manbut of a woman (Merle Oberon) who, after six years of marriage, wonders if she is still in love with her husband (Melvyn Douglas), and who is seduced by the talent of a classical pianist (Burgess Meredith). His arpeggios seem to be tickling her and the more he plays, the less she can resist. At one point, she even asks him to stop because of the effect his music has on her. In The Seven Year Itch, Richard is convinced that the second piano concerto by Rachmaninoff is some kind of universal seduction weapon, and he can even see himself performing it while his neighbor is so shaken that she can only fall into his arms. He thus plays the record of that concerto when she comes to his apartment. Unfortunately, there is a huge gap between his imagination and reality. Indeed, the girl is not that sophisticated and prefersEddie Fisher to "good old Rachmaninoff." Richard Armstrong writes that "Wilder revels in the vulgarity of a character who dunks potato chips in champagne and recognizes classical music because it lacks a vocal" (Armstrong 74). The other funny aspect is that Richard is in fact unable to play the piano; all he can perform is "Chopsticks"; -nothing is simpler than that, andbesides, the girl can play it too. So, they start playing together and, since that type of music makes her "goose-pimply," Richard stops and tries to kiss her. He only succeeds in making a fool of himself, and they both fall from the bench, which makes one more failed romantic interlude (Fig. 11).

Fig. 11 -The gulf between Richard's fantasies and reality in

The Seven Year Itch. Source: 20 th Century Fox DVD of the film and Cinémathèque française website.

If the girl played by Marilyn Monroe is insensitive to what many would consider romantic music, a number of Billy Wilder characters, on the contrary, are rather obsessed by specific songswhether sentimental or notto the point that a particular tune becomes pervasive: it is a kind of Ariadne's thread that precipitates the action and works as a structural plot device.

III. "Instrumental" Music

The most obvious example of a Wilder comedy film in which music affects the whole story and gives it its rhythm is, of course, Some Like It Hot. However, other movies and songs, although they are sometimes not numerous, do have a concrete role to play in the script. In Buddy Buddy (1981) for instance, while preparing his suicide,Victor Clooney (Jack Lemmon) plays the cassette on his transistor radio of a rather romantic song whose choice is not coincidental: its title is "Cecilia," and Victor wants to kill himself because he has been left by his wife, "Celia." Interestingly, the communicating hotel room is not soundproof, so contracted-killerTrabucco (Walter Matthau) can also hear the music while preparing his rifle to shoot a witness down. The contrast between this soppy tune and the situation is striking. Exactly when the music stops, Clooney hangs himself. The timing is perfect: the end of the song symbolically corresponds to the definitive end of a relationship and to the end of the man's life, but Victor fails because the water pipe of the bathroom is not strong enough to support the weight of his body.

Such a scene cannot be compared to the many scenes in Some Like It Hot where Wilder, directing Jack Lemmon, uses music in a very clever waywe can think of Osgood (Joe E. Brown) and Daphne dancing tango, or of Jerry/Daphne shaking his/her maracas "so that comic dialogue [is] not swallowed up by the audience's reaction" (Arens 49). Indeed, Wilder's last film Buddy Buddy, was definitely not his best and he was not happy with it. And yet, the suicide scene shows that source music was rarely absent from his stories. Incidentally, this farcical mood is reinforced by the recurrent presence of the Mexican chambermaid (Bette Raya) who is never surprised at anything and keeps singing "Cucurrucucú Paloma" no matter what happens.

Another suicide attempt involves music, this time on a far less humorous note. In The Apartment (1960), Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) and Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), her married lover, always meet in the same Chinese restaurant where the pianist plays "their" tune, "Jealous Lover." When Fran gives Jeff a record of that song for Christmas and receives a hundred dollars in return, she understands that she does not matter. Alone in someone else's flat on Christmas Eve, she plays the record Jeff left there, and intentionally takes too many sleeping pills. The deeply melancholic "Jealous Lover" is also the theme song of the film and can be heard on the opening credits and also in the final sequence, when Fran, understanding that Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is in love with her, runs to his apartment. The tune is thus both diegetic and non-diegetic, and it gives the movie its sweet-and-sour taste.

In Avanti! too, melancholy and tenderness mix, and Neapolitan music has a lot to do with it. Wendell and Pamela have come to Ischia to bury his father and her mother, who were lovers, and they choose to reenact one of their nights at the hotel as "a tribute to them." The orchestra plays Willie and Kate's favorite tune and then comes closer to their table to perform a song called "Caterina," in homage to Pamela's mother. The young woman is so touched that, at dawn, she is still there, the musicians playing while she is singing and drinking champagne with them, which of course is reminiscent of the Cuban band in Some Like It Hot. Pamela is humming "Senza Fine" ("Never Ending") and non-diegetic music progressively takes over. That tune is of particular importance: it is heard all through the film, whether as source or background music, and constitutes its theme song, used for the opening and closing credits. At the very end of the movie, Wendell thus leaves Pamela on "Senza Fine," which tends to suggest that they will meet again, probably as their parents always did. This motif is instrumental in giving the film its delicate nuances and lyrical aspect.

According to a witness of the car crash, Willie and Kate even died in music: they were found in each other's arms, with the radio playing "Hello, Dolly"which is not Italian but is nonetheless romantic. At the funeral, there is music again since the orchestra of the hotel has come to the cemetery to perform Willie and Kate's favorite tune for the last time (Fig. 12). Billy Wilder explained: "I bought six Italian songs that will be the themes throughout the film. They will act as the base of the score. But the music mustn't be invasive, as much as a certain number of songs naturally belong to the film (the orchestra, the funeral, etc.)" (Ciment 76). This makes Avanti! a perfect example of harmony between diegetic and non-diegetic music. The fact that source music sometimes becomes background music is, of course, not unique to Billy Wilder's films; a typical case is The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) when the British prisoners arrive at the camp whistling "Colonel Bogey March," and an accompaniment is then added and faded up. But Wilder's originality lies in the fact that, in at least two of his movies, he does the opposite, and characters whistle on a non-diegetic music they are not supposed to hear: it is the case of Captain Pringle (John Lund) in A Foreign Affair (1948) when he goes up to Erika's (Marlene Dietrich) apartmentor what is left of itand of the main character of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes when he leaves his brother's (Christopher Lee) club. Oddly enough, it seems that Wilder never mentioned that specificity in his interviews and preferred to talk about themore traditional -use of diegetic tunes in a film's soundtrack.

In particular, Wilder was proud of Kiss Me, Stupid where the pieces played at the piano "[become] the score of the movie" (Crowe 156). Gene D. Phillips indeed remarks that "[Previn] adroitly integrated into his score themes from the songs that Ira Gershwin had provided" (273). This feature is essential since it highlights the importance of music for the characters as well as Orville's obsession with classical piano composers, and also with his own stupid songs. The same kind of process is at work in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes: when the irritated detective puts his fiddle away after having played one or two incorrect notes, an identical tune can be heard, but this time as orchestral music: "Of central importance for the film [is] the score by Miklós Rózsa, which buil[ds] on a violin concerto written in 1953 for the virtuoso Jascha Heifetz that Wilder liked very much. Using a violin concerto [is] … an obvious choice for the violin amateur Holmes, and throughout the film, diegetic and non-diegetic violin music is used as a structuring device" (Gemünden 160).

Thus, Wilder's choices were, of course, based on his own tastes, and it is not surprising to find that he drew part of his inspiration from his favorite director when it comes to the intermingling of source and background music. In Angel by Lubitsch, the romantic evening of Maria (Marlene Dietrich) and Anthony (Melvyn Douglas) starts in a restaurant where a Gypsy band plays for them. They then kiss in a private dining room to non-diegetic music, which reproduces that of the Gypsies. Later on, Maria performs that tune on the piano of her English manor with her husband Frederick (Herbert Marshall) by her side; Frederick is far from imagining what this particular piece of music means to his wife and in fact, it is as if she were openly cheating him by playing the piano. Likewise, when the husband calls the lover, his butler tells him. but Anthony, who is precisely playing that tune on the piano, will never get the phone. Lubitsch does not show the husband's reaction and he chooses to end the scene with a fade to black preceded by a close-up on the lifted telephone handset, accompanied by the off-screen melody.

In this Lubitsch movie, music is central in suggesting Maria and Anthony's thoughts and emotions. In the same way, some of Wilder's characters cannot resist the power of a particular tune, and its haunting presence acts as a kind of musical voice-over. When Sabrina comes back to Long Island, she sings "La Vie en Rose", which she heard an accordionist play in a street of Paris. The lyrics of the song and the way she sings it are a sign that she will no longer live by proxy. This tune is also decisive in making Linus fall in love with her and is regularly heard as background music too, especially in the last scene of the film. In Love in the Afternoon, the same Audrey Hepburn cannot get "Fascination" out of her head. Just after having met Flannagan for the first time, she comes back home; very slow non-diegetic music takes the place of her humming, and dreamy Ariane has a "silent dance in the hallway with her cello" (Crowe 146), which is a visual, musical and poetic way of showing whom she is still thinking of.

The young girl is thus completely "fascinated" by Flannagan and by the tune which becomes an essential component of the movie's score: in the last shot, "the strains of 'Fascination' swell sublimely to a peak as Waxman marshals the full orchestra for the film's finale" (Phillips 195). Interestingly, "Fascination" was "one of Wilder's favorite songs from his student days in Vienna" (Phillips 191). It is worth noticing that towards the end of Love in the Afternoon, Flannagan the playboy happens to realize that he is in love, most likely for the first time in his life, as Gypsy music fills his suite: he is listening to a recording left by Ariane of her phony list of lovers over and over again while his private quartet is playing "Hot Paprika" in a loop. The repetitive pattern of the passage gives it great rhythm, all the more so as Frank and the musicians "pass the liquor cart back and forth, from room to room" (Crowe 345) in a kind of ballet; finally, the music stops since the Gypsies end the night as drunk as Frank is. Once again, Billy Wilder proves what he can do with a tune and no dialogue at all; Cameron Crowe notes that "most writers would have simply put [the leading man] at a bar, talking to a bartender. They are not Wilder" (146;345).

A tempo similar to that of "Hot Paprika" can be found in One, Two, Three (1961).The film hasa very different aim since ideologies of all kindsnot love affairspervade it, and Wilder satirizes Communists as well as Capitalists. Incidentally, MacNamara (James Cagney), a Coca-Cola executive, explains how he "got loused up by Benny Goodman" (though indirectly) because the artist did not show up for a concert, which led to his own "[exile] to South America." Thus, MacNamara wants to take his revenge, and he uses music to his own advantage. By manipulating stupid people, he intends to get what he regards as a well-deserved promotion. When he arrives at an East Berlin hotel to meet three Russian businessmen, Peripetchikoff (Leon Askin), Mishkin (Peter Capell), and Borodenko (Ralf Wolter), the general atmosphere is that of a tea dance: the orchestra, formed of seven elderly people, is playing "Yes! We Have No Bananas," which the conductor (Frederick Hollander) is singing, rather solemnly, in German. First, his way of performing cannot compare with Audrey Hepburn's lively version of that same song in Sabrina; second, Benny Goodman and his Orchestra happened to record it. The director's sense of humor is also obvious in the presence of "a young man steering an older woman around the dance floor", "an implicit reference to the Hotel Eden, where Wilder squired elderly matrons around the ballroom in 1929" (Phillips 251).

MacNamara promises to "give" the three Russians his gorgeous blonde secretary, Ingeborg (Lilo Pulver), if they can get Otto Piffl (Horst Buchholz) out of jail. So, one of the Soviets becomes quite enthusiastic and asks for "more rock'n'roll." The funny response of the musicians, who suddenly seem to be waking up, is the "Sabre Dance" by Khachaturian, which already opened the film and hinted at its tone and speed. The piece certainly has a fast pace, but has absolutely nothing to do with rock'n'roll. In fact, this scene is more than just a joke since Wilder simply hated rock music 215). As Ingeborg is dancing on the table (Fig. 13), Borodenko bangs on it with his shoe in rhythmanother allusion, this time a political one, to Khrushchev who is said to have pounded his shoe in protest on his desk at the United Nations. Because the walls of the room are trembling, a big picture of Khrushchev precisely falls out of its frame and reveals a portrait of Stalin that had been left underneath. The three Communists are going to be corrupted in the same way as the three Comrades (Sig Ruman, Felix Bressart and Alexander Granach) in Lubitsch's Ninotchka (1939) when they visit Paris, stay in a luxury hotel and have three girls and an orchestra come to their suitewhich is not surprising since Wilder co-wrote the screenplays of all his films and also that of Ninotchka. Russians furious at what he calls "cheap propaganda", butabove all, this "subversive" tune will be the driving factor behind Piffl's arrest by East German authorities. Indeed, the young Communist, totally unware of the real nature of the clock, accepts it as a wedding present from the unscrupulous MacNamara. This is just the beginning of Piffl's nightmare since the Stasi interrogates him using an American novelty song as an instrument of torture. Psychological torture turns into physical one: the young man is exhausted and shouts he wants to sleep. "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini" becomes even more unbearable when the LP is played at an EP speed, and Piffl eventually confesses that he is an American spy although he is not. And yet, beyond its absurdity in the choice of the song and in the exaggerated effects it produces, the scene in fact is not that funny; ironically, since the film was released, the US Army itself has been accused of employing musical torture on certain occasions.

In any case, it seems that Wilder had never gone so far in using music for practical reasons, and in expressing his distaste for rock and pop at the same time. Thus, it is not surprising to see "Itsy Bitsy (…)" associated with such suffering, while in some of the director's other movies, the recurrence of tunes like "Fascination" or "La Vie en Rose" will also make a character "surrender," but in a much more positive and pleasant way.

Conclusion

To the question: "What should a score do for a film?" Billy Wilder used to answer: "It should be invisible, of course. Sometimes not" (Crowe 214). This remark could appear to be selfcontradictory; and yet, it perfectly summarizes the director's own vision of the role of music in a movie. With the exception of Irma la Douce (1963), originally a stage musical adapted into a film with hardly any songs left (Arens 51), Wilder's works generally include relevant diegetic tunes. In particular, most of his comedy films seem to be immersed in a constant flow of music that becomes an integral part of the story, influencing the characters' decisions or expressing their intimate thoughts: just like the editing, source music turns to be "invisible" and nonetheless vital in giving the film its distinctive tone and color, and making the audiences like it and remember it.

Jazzman Matty Malneck, "who served as musical adviser on [Love in the Afternoon], said Wilder … knew how to integrate a song into the action, so that it heightened a moment" (Phillips 191). And indeed, the director was certainly more musical than many of his awkward characters: thanks to his intuition, inner sense of rhythm and dexterity at playing with a tune, he was able to articulate the different movements of a film. If Wilder mainly used his favorite style of music, he also enjoyed introducing what he considered stupid songs as grotesque counterpoints. Born in Austria-Hungary from Jewish parents, he spent many years in Vienna and lived in Berlin and Paris too before immigrating to Hollywood. This rich cultural background probably accounts for such eclecticism in the choice of source music, Wilder's comedy films being clearly a universal language able to cross national, cultural, and ethnic boundaries.

Fig. 2 -

 2 Fig. 2 -Early in the plot of Kiss Me, Stupid, Zelda has not yet found out what kind of man Dino really is. Source: scan of an original production photograph.

Fig. 3 -

 3 Fig. 3 -Ariane's love for music is quite forgotten from the moment she meets Flannagan (Love in the Afternoon). Source: scan of an original production photograph.

Fig. 4 -

 4 Fig. 4 -The cello case is successively a hindrance and an ally for Ariane in Love in the Afternoon. Source: scan of an original production photograph.Wilder's choice of Tristan and Isolde by Wagner for the opera house sequence of this romantic comedy is significant. Charlotte Chandler remarks: "Appropriately, that opera is about a casual relationship that grows into undying love, and is set in Ireland, Flannagan's ancestral home"(194). Once again, Ariane's behavior at the opera is not expected from a music student. She attends the performance with Michel (Van Doude), her friend from the Conservatory. While the boy is carried away by the music and cannot help "conducting" the orchestra from the balcony, thus annoying his neighbors with his many gestures, Ariane is not that absorbed, especially when she sees Flannagan in the audience below. From then on, her main preoccupation is to watch him, and she keeps using Michel's theater binoculars, to the latter's great displeasure (Fig.5).

Fig. 5 -

 5 Fig. 5 -An explicit subjective shot from Love in the Afternoon. Source: Carlotta DVD of the film.Incidentally, Frank Flannagan is not captivated by the beauty of the music eitheras a matter of fact, he will later tell Ariane that he was planning to take his new conquest to the Folies Bergère and that the opera tickets were bought by mistake. If the "Friends of Italian Opera" in Some Like It Hot are actually uncultured mobsters, Flannagan is no music lover himself; the playboy is rather restless, looking at the audience around him although he is sitting in the first row, right in front of the orchestra pit. Likewise, Ariane does not pay much attention to the music or to what is happening on the stage, but for different reasons. This point is quite interesting, being reminiscent of a film by Ernst Lubitsch, Wilder's master. In the opera house sequence of Trouble in Paradise (1932), Monescu (Herbert Marshall), the elegant thief, spends his time looking closely at a rich widow's jewels through his binoculars (Fig.6). Much of the scene is shot in subjective camera and not one reverse shot is used to show us the performers. Similarly, in Wilder's movie, most shots are of the audience and we barely see the members of the orchestra.

Fig. 6 -

 6 Fig. 6 -Lubitsch has always been Wilder's "mentor": a subjective shot showing what catches Monescu's attention in the opera house sequence of Trouble in Paradise. Source: Criterion Collection DVD of the film.Whether in Trouble in Paradise or Love in the Afternoon, an opera is a pretext for the meeting of a man and a woman, and source music serves as a clever and explicit backdrop for Monescu's intentions and Ariane's feelings. And yet, Lubitsch's musical choices for his love or seduction scenes were not always as classical, and in that, he also influenced Wilder tremendously.

Fig. 7

 7 Fig. 7 -Flannagan's peculiar definition of intimacy in Love in the Afternoon. Source: scans of original production photographs.Indeed, in Love in the Afternoon, nothing is left to chance and timing is perfect: the Gypsies always arrive as scheduled, slipping away at the end of the evening without forgetting to place a "Do Not Disturb" sign at the door. In one of the scenes, they rush to Flannagan's suite on a non-diegetic "martial drum rhythm"(Chandler 194), which is meaningful. Every night, the pieces they are asked to play are the same, in the same order: they start with the staccato-paced "Hot Paprika," then perform some Liszt, Lehár and one or two czárdás. As the evening goes by, the rhythm of the music slows down: at five to ten exactly, "Fascination" is played and, invariably, Flannagan and one of his many conquests dance cheek to cheek while the first violin gets closer to them. At the end of "Fascination," the couple is left aloneat last since it seems there is nothing more the Gypsies can do. At one point, the four musicians go as far as following Ariane and Frank in a rowboat on the river. What is so romantic about that?

Fig. 8 :

 8 Fig. 8:The tireless Gypsy musicians of Love in the Afternoon. Source: scan of an original production photograph.A funny fact is that the Gypsies even follow the businessman (who is alone, for a change) to the Turkish bath (Fig.8). The musicians have kept their suits and their bow ties on, which must be very uncomfortablethey are sweating streamsbut which shows that they are real professionals and would do anything to please Flannagan. And yet, such a setting is not plausible at all; indeed, the musicians would never take their instruments to a hammam for the excessive heat and humidity would ruin them. Besides, in just a few minutes, the stringsviolins and hammered dulcimerwould be out of tune and it would be impossible to tune them again for several days. As to the accordion, its bellows would fill with water vapor and it would soon be unplayable. Towards the end of the scene, the first violinist suddenly stops playing, empties his instrument of water, and then goes on performing with passion; but in reality, a fiddle full of water no longer produces any sound.Thus, technically, the Gypsies would never be able to play the whole of "Fascination" in such extreme conditions. Wilder must have known it, especially as the members of the band were in fact actual Hungarian musicians (Crowe 147); but the director certainly did not mean to be credible since Love in the Afternoon is first and foremost a comedy. Beyond its witty and even farcical aspect, the scene is interesting because it proves that contrary to Flannagan, who always uses the same tricks to impress women, the Gypsies can adapt to all kinds of situations. Incidentally, during one of Ariane and Frank's dates at the Ritz, the musicians suddenly realize that what they are playing, "C'est Si Bon," is too lively, so they immediately switch to "Fascination."The Gypsies are surely less predictable than their employer, but most importantly, they can be associated with the chorus in classical Greek plays; witnessing the action and

Fig. 9 -

 9 Fig.9-In the same way as the playboy of Love in the Afternoon, David would not manage to seduce so many women without the help of a group of musicians in Sabrina. Source: Paramount DVD of the film and scan of an original production photograph.Another small musical ensemble, although not a Gypsy one, is an essential ingredient for David's successes with women in Sabrina (1954) (Fig.9). Each time they give a party, the rich Larrabees have a sestet playing and their younger son David (William Holden), after a few dances with a beautiful girl, always uses the same technique: he asks her to go to the deserted indoor tennis court and meets her there with a bottle of champagne after having told the combo to play "Isn't It Romantic?" When the chauffeur's daughter, Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn), sees her dream come true and attends the party, she dances amorously with David and they are so fond of each other that they go on dancing even after the music stops. But that is where romanticism ends. Actually, Linus, the elder brother (Humphrey Bogart), places the family business above all else and wants David to marry the daughter of a rich industrialist. As David is ready to slip away with the champagne, Linus, fully aware that David has glasses in the back pockets of his trousers, asks him to sit down.Instead of David, Sabrina is met by Linus who drinks with her, dances with her, and even kisses her. In the meantime, a cross-cutting allows us to see David, who is having the glass fragments removed from his bottom and is complainingnot because it is physically painful, but because he can also hear the orchestra play the song. However, Linus and Sabrina's dance is not that romantic either: indeed, Linus does all this for the Larrabee company, and tries to deal with the girl and buy her off. Over the following days, he goes on entertaining her while his brother is recovering, with the aim of getting David out of her mind. "Music might help," and he brings a portable phonograph as they go sailing so that Sabrina can play several records; she discovers, on that occasion, that Linus is in fact more sentimental than she thought. The "cold businessman," as he calls himself, was not planning to seduce her at all, and yet, that is what happens eventually: quite unexpectedly, they fall in love and leave for Paris. This unlikely love affair thus begins in a strange way with a tune programmed by a playboy, and on which he will never have looked so ridiculous.Although Orville, the pianist of Kiss Me, Stupid, is ridiculous tooand nearly all the timehe manages to be romantic once thanks to a long piece of music he composes for his

Fig. 10 -

 10 Fig. 10 -One of the only romantic scenes in Kiss Me, Stupid. Source: MGM DVD of the film.In The Seven Year Itch, Richard is convinced that the second piano concerto by Rachmaninoff is some kind of universal seduction weapon, and he can even see himself performing it while his neighbor is so shaken that she can only fall into his arms. He thus plays the record of that concerto when she comes to his apartment. Unfortunately, there is a huge gap between his imagination and reality. Indeed, the girl is not that sophisticated and prefersEddie Fisher to "good old Rachmaninoff." Richard Armstrong writes that "Wilder revels in the vulgarity of a character who dunks potato chips in champagne and recognizes classical music because it lacks a vocal"(Armstrong 74). The other funny aspect is that Richard is in fact unable to play the piano; all he can perform is "Chopsticks"; -nothing is simpler than that, andbesides, the girl can play it too. So, they start playing together and, since that type of music makes her "goose-pimply," Richard stops and tries to kiss her. He only succeeds in making a fool of himself, and they both fall from the bench, which makes one more failed romantic interlude (Fig.11).

Fig. 12 -

 12 Fig. 12 -In Avanti!, the Neapolitan musicians adapt as easily as the Gypsies in Love in the Afternoon. Source: MGM DVD of the film.The fact that source music sometimes becomes background music is, of course, not unique to Billy Wilder's films; a typical case is The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) when the British prisoners arrive at the camp whistling "Colonel Bogey March," and an accompaniment is then added and faded up. But Wilder's originality lies in the fact that, in at least two of his movies, he does the opposite, and characters whistle on a non-diegetic music they are not supposed to hear: it is the case of Captain Pringle (John Lund) in A ForeignAffair (1948) when he goes up to Erika's (Marlene Dietrich) apartmentor what is left of itand of the main character of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes when he leaves his brother's (Christopher Lee) club. Oddly enough, it seems that Wilder never mentioned that specificity in his interviews and preferred to talk about themore traditional -use of diegetic tunes in a film's soundtrack.In particular, Wilder was proud of Kiss Me, Stupid where the pieces played at the piano "[become] the score of the movie" (Crowe 156). Gene D. Phillips indeed remarks that "[Previn] adroitly integrated into his score themes from the songs that Ira Gershwin had provided" (273). This feature is essential since it highlights the importance of music for the characters as well as Orville's obsession with classical piano composers, and also with his own stupid songs. The same kind of process is at work in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes: when the irritated detective puts his fiddle away after having played one or two incorrect notes, an identical tune can be heard, but this time as orchestral music: "Of central importance for the film [is] the score by Miklós Rózsa, which buil[ds] on a violin concerto written in 1953 for the virtuoso Jascha Heifetz that Wilder liked very much. Using a violin concerto [is] … an obvious choice for the

Fig. 13 :

 13 Fig. 13:Music is an essential ingredient to fool the Russian characters in One, Two, Three. Source: pinterest.fr. Earlier on in One, Two, Three, we discover, in MacNamara's office, "a cuckoo clock featur[ing] a flag-waving miniature figure of Uncle Sam while playing 'Yankee Doodle' every hour on the hour" (Phillips 250). The striking clock is a running gag and makes one of the


Keywords: space, place, David Lean, A Passage to India, British Raj, identity

East is East? The sense of place in David Lean's A Passage to India (1984) David Lean's name is immediately associated with Lawrence of Arabia or Doctor Zhivago while his last film, A Passage to India, is not as celebrated outside Britain. Set during the British Raj, its story highlights the misunderstandings between two cultures; interestingly, the Britons are not the only ones to be out of place in the subcontinent, and Indians too may no longer feel at home. Although both communities sometimes try to connect, it seems they are doomed to failure by the natural forces around themas the emphasis on the landscapes and water element in day or night scenes tends to prove.

Through an analysis of the film, its dialogues and the different types of shots used, this case study proposes to explore the representation of space and place in relation to questions of otherness, identity, sexuality and ethnicityan Indian doctor being tried for attempted rape of an English girl -, but also to the question of soundscapesthe echo, whether actual or in the heroine's head, being a central motif closely linked with forgiveness and the characters' final redemption and sense of belonging.

Introduction

Set in the 1920s in the lead-up to the country's independence, David Lean's A Passage to India, adapted from E. M. Forster's eponymous novel, has a documentary aspect: the mixed feelings of Adela Quested, the protagonist, certainly reflect those of many young English girls who had to go and live in the Indian Empire: the first scenes set in Bombay or Chandrapore stage incongruous Indian bands performing 'Tea for Two' or 'God Save the King', but also colonial characters who think it is their right and duty to rule the land, who look down on the natives and refuse to socialise with them or to discover their culture. But Adela has not travelled all the way from England to eat cucumber sandwiches and she is yearning to see 'the real India', which will lead her to understand who she is and where she belongs. She is captivated by the beauty of the architecture and of the landscapes, and David Lean, who includes many outdoor scenes filmed on location in India, particularly emphasizes water, with shots of the ocean, and imagery of the moon reflected in the Ganges and the monsoon rain. And yet, colourful India soon becomes mysterious India when Adela enters the Marabar Caves: the darkness of the caves can be seen as a metaphor for the inner demons of this girl who is supposed to marry soonthus, to leap into the unknownand has reached a crossroads in her life; she is shy and, at the same time, eager to discover physical love… but not necessarily with her fiancé. This case study proposes to explore the representation of space and place in relation to questions of otherness, identity, sexuality and ethnicity -Dr Aziz being tried for attempted rape of the English girlbut also to the question of soundscapesthe echo, whether actual or in Adela's head, being a central motif closely linked with forgiveness and the characters' final redemption.

A. British India: one place, two cultures David Lean's taste for epic, wide-open spaces and breathtaking scenery is well known, and his last film, A Passage to India, is in this respect characteristic. The director had visited the country several times; in fact, he used to travel a lot, often changed homes and chose to live in hotels around the world for most of his lifeeven settling in a caravan in the middle of the desert during the shooting of Lawrence of Arabia (1962). He declared, 'I sort of travelled in a car and put my clothing in a case and wandered around. It's a wonderful thing, you know, going to strange places'. He admitted he was 'a romantic', so that 'his heart [would] never be at home. […] He [lived] at a distance, a singular address for the movies' greatest poet of the far horizon'. 1 The character of Adela, who is to marry Ronny, an Anglo-Indian, is excited at the idea of travelling to the subcontinent, especially as she has never left England before. David

Lean explained:

There are two lots of people that go to India: some get off the plane and want to get the next plane out; others want to stay for six monthsand she obviously is one who wanted to stay for six months, and I wanted to catch a bit of that. 2 In a certain way, Adela's voyage starts in the P&O office in London where she buys her oneway ticket: her attention is captured by the photographs of a ship, the Taj Mahal and the Marabar Caves hanging from the wall. Interestingly, the girl will not visit the Taj Mahal, India's most famous monument. Moreover, the city she is going to, Chandrapore, is fictitious, and so are the caves and the ruined Hindu temple she will see. This means that taking such a journey is a leap into the unknown, not only for her, but also for the spectator who will find it hard to identify any of the locations.

The clerk, who probably spends his days sitting at his desk filling out forms for others, tells Adela he envies her because she is going to discover 'new horizons'; since she has never left her homeland, the phrase is of particular significance, and the framed pictures we are shown in subjective camera 'represent […] an unknown filled with promise of […] adventure, but far from the security of familiar surroundings'. 3 In an essay on space and place, Yi-Fu Tuan observes that: Space lies open; it suggests the future and invites action. On the negative side, space and freedom are a threat. […] Enclosed and humanised space is place.

Compared to space, place is a calm centre of established values. Human beings require both space and place. 4 Adela, indeed, looks ready to leave her daily routineplaceto cross the oceans and see the wider worldspace -, however upsetting it may be.

And yet, though the arrival in Bombay is definitely colourfulin every sense of the word -, the girl, as soon as she reaches Chandrapore, finds herself trapped in some kind of artificial environment and separate territory. As a matter of fact, 'the colonials are cocooned in their own insulated world' 5 and seem to need place more than space: they have recreated some usual settings, living in their own nicely-kept districts with symmetrical street planning, identical bungalows and red post boxes, which has nothing to do with the way space is organised in a genuine Indian town or city. So, Adela does not really feel uprooted at first; the 'strange places' and 'far horizon' she expected are absent, and instead of being able to explore an unknown country in an unknown subcontinent, she finds herself confined to small bounded spaces, being invited to the Club, to a game of polo, or having to attend 'a tiresome musical play' which she and Mrs Moore, her future mother-in-law, have already seen in London. Thus, aside from the climate, it is almost as if Adela had never left the British Isles.

The young woman does not hesitate to express her wishes and, since she and Mrs Moore really want to meet some Indians, Collector Turton, albeit with little enthusiasm, proposes to organise 'a Bridge Party'. Not surprisingly, this ambitious event, supposed to bring together East and West, does not meet the two ladies' expectations, especially because the English, far from playing the game, remain distant on that occasion. Only Fielding, the schoolmaster, appears to be naturally kind towards the Indians, and he promises Adela to organise a tea party at his home with just a few guests, among whom will be Aziz and Godbole, a Brahman.

Communication is easy with Aziz, who is happy and proud to socialise with the English and who even invites Adela and Mrs Moore to his place; however, quickly realising how ashamed he would be if they ever crossed the threshold of his modest house, he changes his plans to propose a picnic at the caves. As to Professor Godbole, he speaks very little and stays apart, not sitting at the table with the others. He does not approve the project of Aziz but fails to explain why. Godbole is 'obscure and fatalistic, [and this] character […] represents the inscrutability of the East'. 6 Indeed, he seems to mistrust the English; and yet, a little while later, he will speak quite freely to Adela and they will casually sit side by side, their feet in the water tank. This moment of peace will nevertheless be broken by the intrusion of a furious Ronny who will order his fiancée to leave at once, thus putting everybody in their place.

In fact, racial tensions are manifest from the moment the girl and Mrs Moore set foot in Chandrapore. As they are going from the railway station to Ronny's house in a carriage, a couple of revealing incidents occur. Two Indians riding their bicycles, Aziz and his friend, make their first appearance as they are hit by Turton's car. His chauffeur, who was driving too fast, will not bother to stop. Such an attitude illustrates the arrogance and domineering mood of the British as well as their refusal to share public space in a country that is not their own. Adela, who will not witness that scene, is amazed by the hustle and bustle of the town and its marketplace, but suddenly the look on her face changes when she sees Indians carrying a body wrapped in a shroud. Her fiancé, who is no less than the City Magistrate, tells her, 'I'm sorry.

We'll soon be out of this'. And indeed, the next shot is a close-up on a signpost that reads 'Trafalgar Rd.', 'Kitchener Ave.' and 'Wellington Rd.'.

What the girl does when she enters Ronny's bungalow for the first time is meaningful: she crosses to the other side of the room, stops on the terraceas though she needed some breathing spaceand looks at the distant Marabar Hills. After such a long and tiring trip, and although she is thousands of miles away from home, Adela still seems to be quite frustrated and unable to stand still. From here onward, she is going to be constantly on the move, whether on her bicycle, on an early morning train or even sitting atop an elephant: getting to India is not an end as such, but just the beginning of a new journey and Adela will 'escape' as often as she can.

B. Exotic landscapes and personal doubts

The first sequences of A Passage to India, and in particular the rail journey between Bombay and Chandrapore, suggest that the film will be built on a series of contrasts between open and confined spaces. June Perry Levine observes that:

[…] in a scene in the dining car, with the Englishwomen and the Turtons talking about how Ronny and Adela met in the Lake [District], Lean moves the camera to an out-the-window shot of moonlight on water. The mysterious night is crosscut with Adela and Mrs Moore's wanting to meet Indians socially and being lectured by Mrs Turton: 'East is East… a question of culture'. This editing pattern feels as if an adventurous conflict is being set up: the English inside, India outside […]. 8 It is noteworthy that the shot of the moonlight is a tracking sideways assuming Adela's point of view: the girl, who visibly dislikes the Turtons and their conversation, and also realises that Ronny may have changed for the worse, looks through the window. In filming the landscape from her point of view, David Lean shows that she wants to get awayalready. There is obviously some irony in the juxtaposition of such shots, the majestic scenery highlighting even more the emptiness of the Anglo-Indians' comments, and Adela's disappointment and loneliness.

Mrs Moore is shocked too by the Turtons' attitude. Though she is not physically fit for long walks in the sun and will not be able to climb to the upper Marabar Caves, she is also longing to see authentic India and meet its people. During the performance of Cousin Kate at the Club, she is the one who actually slips away to go to the mosque. The place has neither roof nor windows, is overgrown with vegetation, and thus the emphasis is on nature again; besides, the scene starts with a shot of the moon reflected in the tank where Aziz is making his ablutions.

Since he has just been treated rudely by Major Callendar, his wife, a friend of hers and their servant, the deserted place of worship has a symbolic function: '[Aziz] has gone from the hostility of the English world to the comfort of Islam'. 9 Interestingly, Mrs Moore, who is a Christian and wears a cross, has not gone to the church built by the Anglo-Indians to find God; instead, she chooses to approach a religion that is very different from hers. The passage has a dreamlike dimension with the wind blowing dead leaves, and Aziz is startled by Mrs Moore's appearance, thinking he has seen a ghost; then, realising it is an English lady, he imagines that, like many of her fellow countrywomen, she has not bothered to take off her shoes. And yet, she has, and they start a conversation; the Indian doctor is amazed at her kindness and they discover they have several things in common.

Ironically, in just a few minutes, he and Mrs Moore seem to have filled the gap between their two cultures much more than Turton's 'Bridge Party' ever As they look at the Ganges, Aziz explains there can be dead bodies floating past, as well as crocodiles. Mrs Moore cannot help exclaiming, 'What a terrible river'. But, overcome by the splendour of such a view, she promptly adds, 'What a wonderful river'. Alain Silver and James Ursini note that the whole scene implies 'the power of the natural forces', and that 'Mrs Moore's impulsive remarks […] summarise the conflicting qualities of the environment in which Lean situates his characters'. 10 Indeed, a moment later, Mrs Moore is back at the Club where no native is allowed except as a servant; she feels very uncomfortable as 'God Save the King' is performed and everybody stands in silence, including the Indian staff.

The director makes a close-up on her face, and she looks back. He then cuts to a long shot of the Ganges which could seem subjective; but the elderly lady is in the middle of a big room and, though she may catch a glimpse of the quiet river, there would be furniture in the foreground were this a point-of-view shot, whereas here, the Ganges fills the frame. A medium long shot follows and shows a crocodile eating a body. This has two denotations. First, yet again, the idea of contrast between two worlds is obvious, and the anthem sounds even more out of place; second, Levine reminds us that in the novel, 'Forster gives Mrs Moore a certain prescience, a connection with the universe', a feature emerging in this particular scene where Lean suggests that 'Mrs Moore is in tune with what happens in the Indian landscape '. 11 And yet, the elderly lady is frequently disoriented by those exotic surroundings, and she quickly realises that she does not belong in British India. Her doubts, as we will see, are also mystical and metaphysical. But Adela is younger and her experience of the subcontinent will lead her to other kinds of uncertainties. The first major turning point in the story is the bicycle ride in the countryside during which the girl ventures off the beaten track and discovers 10 Silver and Ursini, David Lean, 219; 218. 11 Levine, 'Passage to the Odeon', 143.

a number of erotic statues on an ancient temple colonised by vines. The scene is commonly called Adela's 'sexual awakening' 12 for she is upset by the sculptures as the shot/reverse shot pattern of the passage and Maurice Jarre's music make clear. She suddenly notices dozens of monkeys perched atop the shrine, and they start screaming and chasing her. The young woman is both fascinated and frightened by the incident 13 , as David Lean himself explained 14 On the night of her engagement to Ronny, while in bed, she cannot help thinking about the statues: the insertion of shots quite similar to those of the previous scene and the use of the same musical theme are a clever substitute for a voice-over. The only difference is that the sculptures are shown at dusk whereas the girl saw them in broad daylight; thus, it is as though she had not really left that place, or found herself in two places at the same time, which hints at her turmoil. The fact that a storm breaks outside and the wind starts blowing through Adela's open window strengthens such an impression, the roaring thunder being reminiscent of the monkeys. Silver and Ursini point out that, 'as the narrative develops, so does the depth of her conflict, for […] she will try to balance her needs for personal independence, social enfranchisement through marriage, and sexual fulfilment'. 15 The episode of the temple buried in the forest, as well as revealing Adela's hidden face and latent sexual desire, shows that, by 'repeatedly cross[ing] frontiers' and 'subvert[ing] […] spatial conventions' 16 , she is taking risks. Maybe Ronny's anger when he finds her sitting by the pool with Godbole and Aziz is not only the consequence of simple racism. 'If […] Adela is the "independent sort," it is in the context of colonial India in the 1920s, neither a time nor a place much receptive to women with minds of their own'. 17 By choosing to follow Aziz on a tour of the Marabar Caves, the English girl will lose her bearings even more, and the impressive hills will act as a point of no return for her, Mrs Moore, but also their Indian guide.

C. In darkest India?

'India forces one to come face to face with oneself. It can be rather disturbing', Mrs Moore tells Adela on the day of her engagement, summarising perfectly the role of space and place in 12 Constantine Santas, The Epic Films of David Lean, (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2012), 138. 13 Silver and Ursini, David Lean, 213. 14 Kennedy, 'I'm a Picture Chap', 82. 15 Silver and Ursini, David Lean, 212. 16 Wendy Everett and Axel Goodbody, 'Introduction', in Revisiting Space: Space and Place in European Cinema, edited by Wendy Everett and Axel Goodbody, (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005), 9-21; here 15. the film, and announcing the fateful excursion to the Marabar Caves. In A Passage to India, the landscape and cityscape are definitely 'more than mere inert backdrops'. 18 Richard Schickel even considers that 'Lean uses India not just as a colourful and exotic setting but as a decisive force in shaping the story he is telling, almost as a character'. 19 Indeed, the numerous long shots or extreme long shots of natural siteswhether rivers, steep mountains, valleys, ravines or foreststend to suggest that the elements are all-powerful, in particular when the main characters are included in those shots, lost in the immense surroundings, looking so insignificant and vulnerable.

The two ladies are equally impressed by their train journey and the elephant ride to reach the caves, high in the mountains. But whereas Adela's enthusiasm appears to be unabated, Mrs Moore collapses as soon as they visit the first cave. The small dark chamber is inherently stressful, especially as too many people enter at the same time. And yet, claustrophobia is not the only cause of such physical and mental distress. Indeed, Aziz, keen to please Mrs Moore, calls her name; the ensuing echo, strange and haunting, is unbearable for the elderly woman who rushes out, though the blazing sun is no less oppressive. She sits down in the shade waiting to recover and we see the moon from her point of view; an extreme closeup of its surface follows, making the craters clearly visible. This shot is supposed to be subjective, but Mrs Moore could not possibly see the lunar ground in such detail 20 ; so, the purpose, here again, is to insist on her 'prescience'.

From that moment, the elderly lady is changed forever. What she then says -'I suppose, like many old people, I sometimes think we are merely passing figures in a godless universe' is to be contrasted with what she told Aziz in the mosque -'God is here'. Thus, Mrs Moore is so unnerved by this experience that, as David Lean put it, '[she] loses her faith in there, or her faith is badly shaken'. 21 While wide-open spaces could be a source of anxiety for her, confinement proves to be even more terrifying. Silver quality defies comprehension, Mrs Moore is violently confronted with the emptiness of human life.

Adela's vision of the world is to be deeply shaken too. While she is proceeding to the Kawa Dol Caves accompanied only by Aziz and a guide, they stop and she looks down at Chandrapore through binoculars. 'It's almost a mirage', she says. She then starts asking Aziz personal questions about his feelings for his wife. It seems she is wondering whether she should marry Ronny. Confirmation is given later at the trial, when Adela declares, 'Seeing Chandrapore so far away, I realised I didn't love him'. There is thus a direct link between a specific place in a foreign countrythe hillsand the fact Adela is keeping a distance. Lean explained, 'You know, it happens to people when they go down to the Mediterranean on holiday -Swedes, Finns, English peoplecome down to Spain and behave as they wouldn't normally. It's that sort of thing'. [START_REF] Kennedy | I'm a Picture Chap[END_REF] Adela is indeed a rather prudish girl when she lands in India. But now that she is climbing up to the second site with Aziz, she cannot conceal her physical attraction for him, especially when he extends his hand to her. Once they have reached Kawa Dol, Aziz steps away to smoke a cigarette, and Adela decides to walk into one of the caves alone. She strikes a match, which creates an 'explosion of sound' that hits her 24 , and the noises heard from then on become subjective as the girl is overwhelmed by some kind of strong rumbling echo. When Aziz appears at the entrance and calls for her, she blows out the match, stays motionless and does not answer. The resonance suddenly grows intolerable and she starts crying; Lean cuts to water spilling over the tank below where the elephant is bathing. A hysterical Adela finally rushes down the slope while Aziz is left desperately looking for her.

Lean does not show us what exactly happened to the girl; in fact, Adela herself will never really know. And yet, the editing clearly suggests that she has not been assaulted, her repressed sexuality, combined with a feeling of guilt, having led her to imagine the attempted rape. [START_REF] Phillips ; Levine | Beyond the Epic, 430; Santas, The Epic Films, 139. 26[END_REF] Of course, the puzzling echo also has a crucial role to play in what seems to be 'a fullblown hallucination'. 26 Interestingly, Aziz is in no way shown penetrating the cave: he only appears in backlighting, seen from Adela's point of view, framed in the rectangular openingarches being a recurrent motif in the film 27 , notably when the girl ventures to the monkey shrine. Apart from 'the Freudian suggestions' of the shot 28 , the emphasis here is on liminal space, which implies some inevitable change, whatever Aziz decides to do. After the 'sexual awakening' at the temple, the caves have taken Adela a step further, and the spilling of water could imply that she had her 'first orgasm'. 29 In the same way as Mrs Moore has to face the idea of her imminent death, Adela is brutally confronted with conflicting emotions at Marabar. The hills and caves bring the two women back to reality and in that sense, the place matches the definition proposed by Evelyn Preuss, according to which 'the landscape emerges as a metaphor for the liability of the unacknowledged and dissimulated part of ourselves and our world, i.e. that which is invisible, because it is eschewed by our minds or otherwise eludes our perception'. 30 Ironically, it is in the dark that both characters start opening their eyes, but Mrs Moore will never rid herself of the obsessive echo, which will result in a permanent gloominess.

The elderly lady thus refuses to testify on Aziz's behalf and leaves India before his trial starts. She is adamant that 'nothing [she] can say or do will make the least difference', thereby suggesting that people are not in control of their own fate. Lean almost put the following Hindu proverb into the film:

In very simple terms, we're like a leaf on a river and we've got a very small paddle.

We can go this way or that way, but only minutely. We're on that damn river and we're going to be taken down it to some destination. 31 This applies to all characters, and particularly to Mrs Moore. Indeed, she tells Ronny she must 'get away from all this muddle and fuss into some cave of [her] own, some shelf', but she will die before reaching home, on a starry night, and will be buried at seathe ultimate proof of her unfathomable link with the natural world.

A few minutes before she passes away, Mrs Moore, standing alone on the deck of the ship, seems to be at peace. In her last conversation with Ronny about the incident at the caves, she had bitterly told him, 'You will never understand the nature of that place […], nor will anyone else in that ridiculous court of yours'. The elderly lady had very little sense of community when she arrived in Chandrapore, preferring to meet Indians, and now that the 28 Arthur Lindley, 'Raj as Romance/Raj as Parody: Lean's and Forster's Passages to India', Literature Film Quarterly 20 (1) (1992): 61-67; here 66. 29 English and the Indians are turning against each other because of Adela's accusations, Mrs Moore has to admit that, by coming there, she wandered astray. According to Gene D. Phillips:

The Marabar Caves provide the central metaphor of both the novel and the film: individuals call out to each other and receive nothing but an echo in reply, suggesting the failure of human beings to communicate with each other in a meaningful way. 32 Such an analysis reflects the misunderstandings between the mother and her son, Adela and Aziz, as well as the cultural and social gap between two races in the context of the British Raj.

The scene in which Adela is taken to the courthouse in the Turtons' car is the exact opposite of that of the Collector's arrival at the beginning of the film: the streets are now crowded with angry demonstrators swarming around the vehicle, breaking one of its windows, forcing the chauffeur to drive slowly. The Indians are thus reappropriating public space; in a way, they are taking power. The girl being the cause of all this chaos, it is obvious that the English courtroom will be the last step of her stay in India. As for Mrs Moore, although she has already left the country, she '[hangs] over the trial', dying in the middle of it 33 ; if the characters, unlike the spectators, will learn about it later, the elderly lady's presence is none the less clearly felt in the sequence for the crowd chants her name and it resonates in the courtroom. But this kind of echo, contrary to that of the caves, offers temporary relief to Adela.

When Adela testifies, she goes back, mentally, into the cave, and '[her] flashbacks […] are an exorcism, or a shock treatment'. 34 Just after she recants, the rain starts to fall and she looks at it through the glass roof: the rumble of thunder seems to blow away her echo and torments, and this sudden 'deluge […] provides a "catharsis" of emotions'. 35 But Adela's ambivalence has led her to be ostracisednot so much by the Indians as by the British community itself. A similar paradox applies to Aziz: though he is free and has become a national hero, he cannot forgive the English and no longer feels at home in Chandrapore. A simple visit to some caves, combined with prejudices and colonial feelings, has blurred the characters' sense of place, making this film, like many others by David Lean, an 'epic [journey] of disillusioned self-discovery'. 36 32 Phillips, Beyond the Epic, 430. 33 Kennedy, 'I'm a Picture Chap', 83. 34 Silver and Ursini, David Lean, 217. 35 Santas, The Epic Films, 144. 36 Cocks, 'Adventures in the Dream Department', 61.

Conclusion

E. M. Forster borrowed the title of his novel from Walt Whitman who regarded the opening of the Suez Canal as the start of a new era in which the nations would become closer to one another, eventually turning into 'a single global family'. 37 In that respect, the book is far less optimistic than the poem; but David Lean chose quite a different ending, for the film does not stop immediately after the trial whose outcome, though fairly positive, leaves a bitter taste to the protagonists. Instead, a single dissolve takes the spectator to Kashmir where Aziz has started a new life in a place not directly under British rule, and that he can call his own. Fielding comes to visit him and they are reconciled. He is travelling with his wife, who happens to be Mrs Moore's daughter; thus, in a way, Aziz is allowed to meet the reincarnation of his beloved Mrs Moore, which definitively wipes out past resentments. Aziz also writes a letter to Adela, in which he forgives her: he now realises that she had got 'the worst of both worlds' 38 and that, thanks to her courage, he is free rather than in prison.

With this epilogue, Lean seems to gather East and West. And yet, the Fieldings leave and Aziz remains alone. As for Adela, who was unstable during most of the narrative, she went back to England long ago and now lives there on a permanent basis. In the last scene, 'she reads [the letter] by a window, where outside it is raining. This brings the film, which opens with her standing in the rain, looking inside the [travel agent's] office where she will book [her] passage to India, full circle'. 39 The young woman no longer yearns for adventure and new horizons; she finds herself in an enclosed space, in familiar surroundings, and seems to belong to no other place. So, it appears that the English should live in England and the Indians, in India. French philosopher Vincent Descombes asks:

Where is the character at home? The question bears less on a geographical territory than a rhetorical territory […]. The character is at home when he is at ease in the rhetoric of the people with whom he shares life. The sign of being at home is the ability to make oneself understood without too much difficulty, and to follow the reasoning of others without any need for long explanations. 40 Would a 'third space' exist -one 'in which former dichotomies preventing intercultural 37 Phillips, Beyond the Epic, 405. 38 Ibid., 431. 39 Stephen M. Silverman, David Lean, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992), 187. 40 Vincent Descombes, Proust: Philosophie du Roman, (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1987), 179.

friendship and understanding could be erased', as Elena Oliete-Aldea puts it? 41 If Aziz will probably never see his English friends again, communication is nevertheless fully restored in the final sequence, and misjudgements have disappeared on both sides. Moreover, the Indian doctor is reconciled with Adela while he is in Asia and she is in Europe; the cross-cutting and voice-over used in the scene transcend not only place but time: Aziz writes his letter to Miss Quested, and she reads it simultaneously. Lean's ending, far from being a cliché, is more convincing than one in which the two protagonists might have met again in a particular environment. They are now at peace and have found their place; yet, their respective homes are not so much distinct geographical territories as symbolic ones, and this makes Aziz and Adela's sense of inner and spatial harmony all the stronger. 41 Elena Oliete-Aldea, Hybrid Heritage on Screen: The 'Raj Revival' in the Thatcher Era, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 5.

  and Ursini argue that 'if what happens at the caves shakes [her] beliefs, it is because they expose her to nature's darker, more secret and unsettling side'. 22 This means that, by accepting to go into a simple hole in the rock, whose 18 Mikel J. Koven, 'Space and Place in Italian Giallo Cinema: The Ambivalence of Modernity', in Revisiting Space: Space and Place in European Cinema, edited by Wendy Everett and Axel Goodbody, (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005), 115-131; here 126. 19 Richard Schickel, 'A Superb Passage to India', Time (31 December 1984), 54. 20 Silver and Ursini, David Lean, 223. 21 David Ehrenstein, 'Epic Dialogue', in David Lean: Interviews, edited by Steven Organ, (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009), 67-76; here 72.

22

Silver and Ursini, David Lean, 223.

  Howard Maxford, David Lean, (London: B. T. Batsford, 2000), 152. 30 Evelyn Preuss, 'To See or Not to See? Topographies of Repression in Konrad Wolf's I Was Nineteen and The Naked Man on the Sportsground', in Revisiting Space: Space and Place in European Cinema, edited by Wendy Everett and Axel Goodbody, (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005), 209-240; here 228. 31 Cocks, 'Adventures in the Dream Department', 64.

Alain Silver and James Ursini, David Lean and His Films, (Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1992), 212.

Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, (London: Edward Arnold, 1977),

5 Gene D. Phillips, Beyond the Epic: The Life and Films of David Lean, (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006), 428.

June Perry Levine, 'Passage to the Odeon: Too Lean', Literature Film Quarterly 14 (3) (1986): 139-150; here 148.

Ibid., 149.