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4.0 out of 5 stars
"I've never had anything to live for but you.", 15 Aug 2008
Jean Cocteau's landmark "voice play," published in 1947, is dated after sixty years, a reflection of a society which has changed irrevocably. A middle-aged woman, devastated because her five-year relationship has ended and her lover has moved on, tries to come to grips with her future and largely fails. When her lover calls to offer whatever support he can--and to ask for his belongings by tomorrow--his call becomes her lifeline. "I knew you would give me a ring," she says, with ponderous irony, then adds to herself, "A wring of the neck," or "a boxing ring" from which there is no escape.
The entire play consists the woman talking with her former lover in a series of increasingly fraught phone calls, as the connection keeps getting lost. Though she tells him she is "absolutely calm," she has taken fourteen sleeping pills the previous night, and though she also says "It is all my fault," the viewer sees that the lover has lied to her. Yet he has cared for her, repeatedly calling back to be sure that this increasingly hysterical woman will somehow go on--and that he will be able to pick up his belongings the next day.
The play contains a number of dramatic effects which are now clichés--the constant ticking of the clock, the frantic smoking of the woman, a basket full of empty pill bottles, a photo of the new, much younger, woman, and especially the telephone itself, which offers the only chance for communication here. The focus is almost completely on the actress at center stage for about an hour, however, a change of style for Cocteau, whose plays until then contained carefully circumscribed roles.
Obviously, the play calls for an actress of extraordinary ability to make the role come alive, one who can use body language, gesture, and facial expressions to convey her pain without hysterical emoting into the telephone. The play itself reflects its society, which offered little place for a rejected middle-aged "wife" whose "career" consisted of promoting her lover's happiness. To make this play work in the present day, only an actress capable of enormous subtlety will be able to create empathy, as her role is intrinsically over-the-top in emotion, considered excessive for the present day. n Mary Whipple
The Human Voice [1966] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
The Infernal Machine, and Other Plays.
Opium: The Illustrated Diary of His Cure
Jean Cocteau (French Film Directors)
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