Wings of Fame 

The last time we saw him he was left in the sands of "Lawrence of Arabia", we find him again deep in the heart of the flat, lowland country which is not his own. After twenty-seven years, Peter O' Toole still has the same ability of dissecting his interviewers with his incredibly blue eyes. In "Wings of Fame", the film, which he is about to complete in the Netherlands, he incarnates a character that sticks to him rather well in the skin, though in his defence: a star. With the origin of this company, there is an intriguing observation made by the Czech director Otakar Votocek. (Me: I guess here they mean the object of the movie – I could be wrong)  "Notoriety exerts a fascination which can become an obsession for some. The sheer fact of seeing celebrities on television, evening after evening, there is the feeling of intimately knowing them and one feels the right to adapt them by pure admiration. However it is an illusion, the high-rated stars have little time consecrated for/with their public. "Wings of Fame" is based on this observation. By studying the attempts at an assassination perpetrated against Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy or John Lennon, one notices that the killers have, in fact, tried to steal one moment of glory from their victims and that their name will remain forever associated with their victim. It is acted in fact of an extreme solution to arrive at notoriety when one does not have any other hope to come out of anonymity. 

The second topic of this movie is the fact that relations are established between glory and posterity. Only those who have tasted a day of celebrity or fame can understand what it is to sink into the lapse of memory.  One will remember you only if you have left a tangible trace of your passage (work/ existence).  Besides it is what justifies any creation. The meaning of life is to live on as a long as possible, even after one’s death.

To illustrate this postulate, Otakar Votocek decided to be surrounded by the guaranteed best. After the first grinding of the scenario written in three weeks, it was some five years later before he was to conclude this production which profited from the active support of First Floor Features, a 100% Dutch company directed by Dick Maas, more known like film-maker/director of "The Elevator". 

"Wings of Fame" begins in a large European town where a film festival is being held. Brian Smith, an anonymous writer, assassinates Cesar Valentine, a star whom he hopelessly tried to meet. He himself also gets killed. The fan joined his idol in a deluxe hotel in the beyond where comfort is proportional to the celebrity. Whereas the glory of Smith increases post-mortem, Valentine sinks little by little in the lapse of memory.

“When one locates a film in the vast Beyond”, says Otakar Votocek, “one can allow all the audacities. Still it is necessary to choose a certain party and to hold to it at any costs. We chose a realistic approach”, he continues. “Our The Beyond resembles a vast waiting room which represents the deformed reflection of reality”

Provided with the script and instructions from the director, assistants, as scouts, leave for Europe in order to unearth the most suitable decorations.  In spite of the prohibitory cost of the Riviera, famously known as one of the most expensive film making locations in the world, it is in Nice where they found the ideal “hotel” location. The team thus settled there at the end of spring in the Palais de la Mediterranée (Mediterranean Palace) where the essence of the action was filmed.

The service sheet indicates: This Tuesday, June 6 is the sixty first day of filming. Those attending by order of appearance: Colin Firth, Marie Trintignant and Peter O' Toole. The team has taken over the gardens of a small castle located at a hundred kilometers to the east of Amsterdam. A reflector covered with aluminium really collects the shy rays of a too fugacious off-season sun. In the landscape one finds the traditional colours of Dutch paintings, of Vermeer with Van Dyck. Countered by a capricious sky where the winds stretch the clouds at high speed, the head operator grumbles behind his contrast glass. The head operator, his assistants and the electricians are all British.  Alex Thomson is, in effect a long time celebrity on the other side of the Channel: "Excalibur" of John Boorman, “Legend", of Ridley Scott, and "The Year of the Dragon" by Michael Cimino, appear in his list of achievements.. He is accustomed to rising to the challenges. 

With the intersection of two alleys traced in the chalk line, Colin Firth and Marie Trintignant must meet. The installation takes time. The director runs from one to the other then turns over under the tent from where he supervises the action. It is not a question of whim but of a need. Indeed, Otakar Votocek has attained an evil illness which is as mysterious as it is incurable which strikes only men but is transmitted hereditarily by women: it’s been five years and the director has lost partial use of his sight. In spite of this critical situation, he all the same made a point of working on the scenes himself; this scenario in which he has invested so much.  Unable to read, he must permanently scan a video screen so as to lose nothing, no sequences that he regulates. On the plateau, he observes his actors using a pair of binoculars; his team, sometimes were but a few meters away.  His swiftness and his precision demand respect. Another obstacle: the language. To be fair to include & understand everyone, Votocek alternates from/to Dutch and to/from English. 

The sun having finally agreed to show itself, the actors set up. Marie Trintignant concentrates, seated in the bushes, eyes closed. Colin Firth is not part of that scene. The director comes to explain the course of the plan to him. At the clap, Marie Trintignant emerges from an alley, a Teppaz (??) in her left hand. She incarnates Bianca, a French chanteuse "between Sylvie Vartan and Françoise Hardy" who disappeared in plain glory at the beginning of the Sixties. (Me” remember them anyone? Ah! Those were the days!) Two months before this role was proposed to her, she learned from a script-person that her name was one of four that had been considered for the part. "One always hears of a good scenario”, she explains.  “To convince Otakar I showed him "Le garçonne" and "Une affaire de femmes” (“A business of women") but I refused to pass any tests: I find it completely absurd to play with somebody who is not an actor, in a costume and a decoration which are not those of the film."  During the filming on "Valmont" of Milos Foreman of which he is the principal actor Colin Firth also had wind of this famous script. Like Marie Trintignant he fought for the role and succeeded in obtaining it. 

"Wings of Fame" has the characteristic to be held at one unspecified time. Marie Trintignant carries grated Perfecto, Colin Firth a worn gabardine. The costumière explains that the characters wardrobes falls anywhere between 1920 and 1990; Peter O' Toole having the privilege to have at his disposal a whole wardrobe from the 1960’s. He arrives at this time on the plateau ... jogging, as a runner warming up. It’s good that he does not start work before lunch, O’Toole is able to soak in and accustom himself to this decoration which he does not know yet. After the usual greetings, he isolates himself with Colin Firth and they enter into a lengthy conversation and every now and then insane laughter escapes. Holding a luster cigarette holder between the index and the major, he brutally finds his serious side to evoke the events of China. He tells of "the last emperor" and the three months that he spent in Peking. Seizing a pencil Peter O' Toole draws a sketch of Tiananmen Square on the title page of the novel by Evelyn Waugh, which he reads then, delivers a lecture on military strategy.….

In the afternoon, the camera is hoisted on a mat/stage which dominates a labyrinth of greenery. Otakar Votocek uses a detailed plan of the place. A cross-chase takes place between Marie Trintignant, Colin Firth and a Dutch actor who strangely resembles John Belushi. One also imagines a film of the doubles of Einstein and Hemingway. Alex Thomson having located the formation of a threatening cloudy mass, the race with the light commences.  The pursuit in the labyrinth is organised with the arrival of Peter O' Toole. He finds himself face to face with Colin Firth. Valentine recognises him as Smith, the person who assassinated him. "Who are you, Mr. Nobody?" he asks with an impeccable British accent with a light hint of the arrogant well-to-do.  In saying these words, O' Toole seems taken by true jubilation. He however keeps identifying with his role and speaks about glory while not taken into the dangerous play of narcissism. "It’s the others who look at us like a star”, he explains. “Without them, you are only yourself.  Moreover, the cinema is a den of charlatans."  Without letting sourness show through, O' Toole is readily wild with high regard of its piers. By no means a prophet in his country, if not on the theatre where he appears regularly, he denies any existence with the British cinema and claims to be unaware of even Stephen Frears... 

Marie Trintignant completes her race. She is the one who wanted that her character is perpetually moving. Bianca, her character, had a racing car accident and she lost her memory; she believes she’s in a psychiatric hospital. “It’s good to play the part of an amnesiac” comments the actress. Everything is permitted. Marie Trintignant shoots a few more scenes and then she’s gone.  She’s never seen the rushes but she feels confident. “I did not shoot everyday; that would have been likely to block me.”   Moreover, for the first time in her career, she was entitled to a body double. “That disturbs me a lot,” she says, “because that forced me to take my marks during the shooting instead of taking them during rehearsals”.

The light falls on the labyrinth where the reflectors compensate for the failures of the sun. Alex Thomson made some exposure corrections.  Otakar Votocek worries regularly for the clearness of the image. His black animal (major problem or pet peeve) seems to be the famous polished one that interacts sometimes between the window of the camera and the film. (Me:Very technical stuff here) The kind of incident which one detects often too late and which forces you to turn over plans, with all that of supposed surplus expenditure. For his first film, Votocek is given to make redoubled efforts. The day of shooting completed, before going back to Amsterdam where filming continues in a studio, the director tells his own epic. 

He arrived in Czechoslovakia in 1966 to follow a training course in a Dutch company; Otakar Votocek never went back home again.  At the time he worked as a nuclear chemist. "My parents not being members of the Communist Party, it was the only sector in which they let me study”, he explains. “I began working in a chemical factory which they allowed me to leave only on the condition that I perfect this field.  In the beginning of the Seventies, I realised that I had engaged in a dead end. I thus set out again from zero”.  Of his first trade, Votocek says that it taught him logic. By seeing him, evolving/moving on a plateau, by listening to the discourse on his function, one feels that this scenario writer is different from the others. Even if he worked for television and carried out short, appreciated medium-length films, he practices existential doubt permanently. "All my problems consist in knowing if I am made for such a life; if I am able to assume it” he declares. “My greater ambition is to become a writer. The stake excites me more. I am still in expectancy”. It will undoubtedly be necessary for him to wait for "Wings of Fame" to decide his future.