I am evident or apparent, I am visible, I appear.

Compareo! The German term Komparse goes back to the Latin verb comparere, 'to appear'. Thus on Thursday and Friday I appeared to be aged, infirm and confined to a wheelchair. While the first of these descriptors may be deemed accurate, my infirmity was a pretense for the movie production for which I was booked as one of about twenty extras for scenes shot in a retirement home.

In this previous post I reflected on the times when I had previously appeared before the camera in such a subordinate role. Extras or walk-ons I have always likened to the colours on a painter's palette, hues in human form which a film director can use to animate the emptiness behind the principal action in the foreground. And so it was that in my wheelchair I was trundled around the garden and along hallways of the residential home while the film's protagonists played their scenes for the camera.

My comportment was informed by the behaviour of those I saw and closely watched... who actually were living there with their various ailments and in many cases with incipient dementia. It was an interesting experience in many ways, some with absolutely nothing to do with the process of making a movie. 

However my reason for making myself available for such humble jobs was (apart from the desire to take paid work where available) was the chance to be back in the environment in which I feel most at home... that in which storytelling is fabricated as screen entertainment. It is a fact never to be overlooked that the seventh art emerged as a side-show when the circus came to town. And as is the case with the circus, all involved feel part of a privileged community, from the ringmaster controlling the show to the shit-shoveller who cleans up after Dumbo.

So I have been ringmaster and I have been shit-shoveller but in both situations there is the wonderful feeling of returning to the 'big top'!

On Thursday the day spent doing my bit to animate the background was especially enjoyable, since it was an experience shared with Jessi. My daughter is also up for even modestly paid jobs to augment what she earns from her current internship and was by chance also booked as an extra for the same day. In her nurse's uniform, furthermore, she could have stepped off the set of the 'hospital soap' Geliebte Schwester which I produced for the Sat 1 network at the end of the nineties!

 

The assistant director responsible for the extras (the sweetest nineteen-year-old lass imaginable, intent on studying film in Łódź) immediately decided that my daughter should be my 'carer', pushing the wheelchair with allure back to the designated starting position for each re-take.

Oddly this was the second time that playing as a supernumerary was a sort of family affair. Back in the eighties Jessica's god-mother was the producer of Beethoven's Nephew (director was Paul Morrisey) and I was her assistant. Again it was not so much a matter of earning a fee as saving the production money... and so my wife and I both donned glorious Biedermeier costumes for a crowd scene in the gardens of a sumptuous Viennese palace!

Anyway, on Thursday for one of the exterior set-ups I was wheeled into the foreground, asleep in my wheelchair. I was to constitute an obstacle in the way of the movie's leading lady as she made a dramatic exit from a key scene.

At this point all became even more bizarre. The director, Niki Müllerschön,  stared at me and said "Ich kenne Dich, doch!". Recognition! In fact we had been acquaintances in Munich at the end of the eighties and the photo below is of my daughter and his son, both aged one and celebrating her birthday in 1989!

Fade in audio... As Time Goes By! 

Perhaps as a result of this unexpected encounter I became known to the crew by name, and was given some 'featured extra' instructions for the interior scenes. In sloppy pyjamas and bathrobe, I animated the background to the best of my ability, inexpertly propelling the wheelchair with my feet down endless corridors, told by the director to imagine myself as being ninety-three rather than a mere youngster! Yes, scratch the surface of the Sandlander and a Rampensau comes to light... one who is never happier than when hogging the stage!

Not all of the extras called that day were as fortunate, and indeed some picked up their fee without ever having appeared on set.

Which started me thinking of another issue. The production is question is categorized as a 'made for television' movie, with one of Germany's most popular actresses in the lead, Senta Berger, still a radiant presence at the age of seventy-two and one of the nation's best loved stars. Understandable, therefore, that the production is all else than a low budget undertaking. Used as I am to the rigorous economies of soap opera, I was struck by the size of the crew and the and all of the trappings of a major feature film shoot.

Arri was present with three trucks carrying gear, and the camera was Arri's Alexa, the digital system said to be giving celluloid a protracted reading of its last rites since its introduction in 2010. But excepted the digital cinema image capture and the hi-tech lamps, it was the classic crowded set and controlled chaos of film shoots I have know for over fifty years.

There was, however, a sign of the times. In a sequence scheduled later Ms Berger will herself... I suspect... be in a wheelchair, with one leg stretched in front of her, supported on a cantilevered support bracket. This has been given two extension rods at the front carrying at the end a lateral bar with mounting for a compact DSLR camera, a Panaxonic Lumix GH3 capable of shooting high-definition. It will be able to capture the erratic progress of the wheelchair as its occupant presumably swerves and flails, pictured in a low-angle close shot which could not be realized using a normal dolly. I am convinced that the finished sequence will be visually very arresting.

All of which brings me to mention a movie I learned of very recently, Jean-Claude Brisseau's La fille du nulle part. There is a fascinating story here, but the take-away is that the film won the prestigious Golden Leopard award at the Locarno Film Festival a year ago.

Brisseau used his own savings to make The Girl From Nowhere on a budget of just 62,000 euro. The director's Paris apartment acted as the film set and he used just one digital camera, a Canon XF 100, in his desire to "break with the prison of the traditional film production".

This was the achievement of a man over seventy year old who also played the leading role opposite Virginie Legeay (below), previously his assistant director on an earlier film and one of his students at the renowned film school  which used to be called the IDHEC before that. The camera was handled by David Chambille. And that was it... just the three of them and the director's own savings as the entire production budget.

The story... if not the film... has a happy end. Brisseau's Locarno prize money put the project instantly in profit! 

In our circus which is the world of the cinema I think Brisseau must be seen as a very important, provocative clown.

Provocative, indeed! Could I imagine writing and directing a film, and being enough of a Rampensau to play the lead? Could I fill the bare minimum of crew positions with ambitious youngsters met in the course of gigs as an extra in the coming months... kids like the AD determined to study cinema in Łódź?

Compareo! I am evident or apparent, I am visible, I appear.

I wonder!