(published in Billionaire, December 2010)
Allegro
“I brought along my barong, is it ok?”, he asks. Jojo lugs bags full of photography equipment. I have a notebook and pen. We all exchange hands and smiles. He is taller than us. The only non-Filipino. He seems quite at home.
Olivier Ochanine, Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra’s music director and principal conductor. He excuses himself to retreat to his office. We agree to meet in a few minutes in the hallway of the CCP.
Jojo begins to scout the area. He looks for lighting and background. He settles on the driveway of the CCP, fronting the fountain. The sun is bright. The guards look unsure of what we’re up to. They obediently follow our instructions and remove a trashcan blocking Jojo’s shot.
“To be here now”. John Lennon was quoted as saying on what rock and roll means. To me, the same goes for classical music, eternal as to be always in the present.
Olivier arrives. We all look around awkwardly. I suggest we do the interview first. We sit in one of the benches.
A Frenchman who journeyed around Europe and practically grew up in the US. The traveling “has certainly helped me understand music better. Expanded my sensibilities.” Music is a story and every musician essentially deals with the telling of that story.
“As I grow older I’ll definitely be able to tell the story better. Take Tchaikovsky 5. I will keep noticing new things about it. 50 years later, I’ll still be looking how to do Tchaikovsky.”
“Must it be? It must be! It must be!”, wrote Beethoven on the score sheet of his String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135.
Adagio
Mercifully we move to the photo shoot. In fact, Jojo was shooting the whole time we’re talking. I notice Olivier never loses awareness of Jojo’s presence. He has done all this before.
In shirt and jeans, we go to the driveway. He gamefully poses along the steps of the CCP entrance. Smile. Click. We move inside the CCP. No sweat.
Jojo found a decorative doorway in front of the Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo. Perfect for the shoot. Olivier asks if it would be better if he gets his barong. He goes gets it.
“It’s not too rumpled, is it?” We tell him it’s meant to be rumpled. That actually it looks better with the rumple. He looks puzzled. Shrugs. Jojo aims. Olivier doesn’t know what to do with his baton. I sat on the carpet watching them shoot. Click. Click.
Why not a shot outside with you in barong? Jojo asks. Ok, says Olivier. And he walks outside. A casual, natural way of walking, to a suggestion that seemed the most natural. For that moment.
"Ah, Mendelssohn!", Snoopy listening ecstatically to Schroeder.
The next day, at rehearsal, he greets me cordially. But clearly music is on his mind. He moves in front of the orchestra and smiles. All nonchalance. I expect him to tap his baton but he doesn’t. The violinists in front keep talking but he doesn’t mind.
“I played the flute and the bass.” That was his life previous to conducting. “I think it has made me more understanding of the orchestra. I fight for the orchestra as I was one of them before.” It certainly made the PPO musicians comfortable with him. Him they do not fear. He is them. They work with him. He grins to make them all quiet. They start.
The music for today are Filipino songs. It’s for Corazon Aquino’s death anniversary. Dulce Amor sings In My Heart. It was moving. The musicians know it. Olivier acknowledges it. A majestically slow Bayan Ko follows.
Somebody from the wind section mistimes. Olivier sings the notes to demonstrate the force necessary for that portion. No wisecracks. But many banter among themselves. Smile at the ready. They listen. They start again.
“One aspect of a country’s growth depends also on its cultural components – this includes the arts, which in your country are yearning to be shared by Filipinos with fellow Filipinos but also with the rest of the world. The amount of talent in this country is impressive.” Letter of Olivier Ochanine to Philippine President Noynoy Aquino.
Members of the PPO go in and out but the rehearsal goes on. He is imperturbable. The musicians absorb his tranquility. The Frenchman who wandered around Europe and studied in the States who now lives in Manila. He consciously or not “gets” the Filipino. And the music? They nail it.
“Olivier Ochanine: loves his job, the musicians he works with, and the city he lives in. Nice trilogy, no?” Facebook entry, 17 August 2010.
Scherzo
“Basically, I'm for anything that gets you through the night - be it prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniels.” Frank Sinatra.
“Olivier Ochanine: having a nice San Miguel..... then off to bed.” Facebook entry, 24 August 2010.
“Technology has, in a way, made it more difficult to take a more unique approach.” Globalization certainly made it easier for more people to access more music. But, he notes ruefully, “one can also easily get lost in the shuffle.”
“I’ll always be learning.” To gain wisdom in music is vital. There is today a certain degree of an “artificial quality to conducting in general. The emphasis is on technique. But you take a musician like Vladmir Horowitz or Ashkenazy, they certainly experienced more in life and it showed in their music.”
Herbert von Karajan. Zubin Mehta. George Solti. Leonard Bernstein. Great names. Leopold Stokowski shook hands with Mickey Mouse in Fantasia.
“At the most fundamental level, a conductor must stress the musical pulse so that all the performers can follow the same metrical rhythm.” (Encyclopedia Britannica, on the “Conductor”)
Olivier Ochanine: “As a conductor, the orchestra is my instrument of choice.” But isn’t classical music too Western? Irrelevant for a poor developing country like the Philippines? “Perhaps.” But he brushes the idea off. “In the end, the importance of the music is not really the melody but how it changes your mood, what it does to you.”
He talks about bringing the music closer to the common folk, to children, to prisoners in jail. He talks of gigs in malls. But, he grins, “I’m a purist” and admits that malls aren’t the ideal places acoustically.
On May 29, 1913, the Rite of Spring, with its intense depiction of primitive fertility rites, premiered and promptly led outraged Parisiens to riot.
“I haven’t really observed anything in that regard”, on whether the Filipino’s Catholic upbringing affected how they play or appreciate music. In fact, the musicians seem quite open to whatever music needs to be played.
Admittedly, however, the audience could do with a little more introduction to other works of classical music. Their receptivity to, say Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik would be more enthusiastic than to “the Turangalîla Symphony by Messiaen.” But that’s part of the job, to introduce the old with the new, to promote music to Filipinos.
Three days before the concert he celebrates his birthday. A gazillion greetings on Facebook. Many from Filipinos. The taga-Prances is at home in Manille.
Olivier: “Music should be inspiring and at the same time inspired.” Albert Einstein: “It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure."
Sonata
In 1687, conductor Jean-Baptiste Lully died after stabbing his foot during a concert with a large staff that was used at that time as the baton. The baton has now been changed to the light stick that you see nowadays, harmless, with as yet no eye being poked by it on record.
Details from the concert program - 8:00pm, 10 September 2010, CCP. La Musique Francaise (Sayaka Kokubo, viola. Olivier Ochanine, conductor).
Olivier takes to the stage. His stride is relaxed, quick. He shakes hands with the first violinist. He faces the audience, smiles. Happy to be here. That you’re here. “We're glad that you're here. The orchestra needs the audience, the energy that it gets from the audience." He is comfortable in his skin.
Olivier: “Where I am is where I am.” Also, “where I am is where my home is.” He is certainly at home on the stage. On the podium, facing the orchestra, the audience at his back. He looks like one immersed completely in the place. And yet detached, free.
The first piece is Berlioz’s Harold in Italy. Olivier good-naturedly told the audience to hold their applause until the end. They clap at every break.
After the intermission, they play Milhaud’s Le Boeuf Sur le Toit. However, it is with Honneger’s Pastorale d’Ete that the orchestra truly hits its stride, approaches sublimity.
“An orchestra is a psychological being, with different personalities. What makes an orchestra special are the inner voices, the colors that you feel but can’t really hear.” (Olivier Ochanine)
By the last piece, Maurice Ravel’s Bolero, the orchestra’s musicianship is as tight as the snare drum that drives the music. Finish. The audience wildly erupts in applause. Olivier returns to the podium, grins and jokingly threatens: “Ok, you asked for it.” Strauss’ Thunder and Lightning Polka. But it is the PPO’s profoundly intimate rendition of the Intermezzo from Cavaleria Rusticana (by Pietro Mascagni) that the audience is sent out to the warm, salty Manila night. Light steps, happy, strangers smile at each other. Life is good.
“In the end, the importance of the music is not really the melody but how it changes your mood, what it does to you.”
Encore
“Olivier Ochanine: hmmmmm, did I mention I love my job? oh yeah that's right. I did.” Facebook entry, 20 August 2010.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Fictional men and their fictional styles
(published in Billionaire, October 2010)
Was watching Die Hard the other day. Frankly, I was watching it for Alan Rickman. He was probably the guy who invented the techno-Euro-suave terrorist. With his trim beard, well-barbered hair, precisely cut clothes, and relaxed smooth way of talking, Rickman’s Hans Gruber simply stole Die Hard (although he did fail to steal the bearer bonds of Nakatomi Corporation).
How could one not appreciate a guy with semi-automatics and surrounded by hardened terrorists who whistles relaxedly in an elevator, pauses, then compliment his hostage by saying: “Nice suit. John Phillips, London. I have two myself. Rumor has it Arafat buys his there.”
And Gruber doesn’t stop there. Upon seeing the models of Nakatomi Corporation’s buildings, he lets out a groan of pleasure and ad libs from Plutarch: “"When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer." Then, almost apologetically, he mutters smiling: “The benefits of a classical education.” That is style. Pity that John McClane threw him off the Nakatomi building.
The thing is, style is really that important for men. Or at least fictional men. And they’re probably even more important than fictional women’s style or fashion. Who remembers what Elizabeth Bennet wore, or of Catherine Earnshaw, or even Ms. Marple? As one lady friend of mine says, it’s a given that women will have their fashion or style. So except for Holly Golightly or Annie Hall (and we’re talking here of their cinematic versions), apparently it’s the men’s sense of style that seems to have the greater significance, particularly as to how the story progresses.
Thus, as Alexander Pushkin tells us, Onegin was a "dandy on the boulevards ... strolling at leisure until his Breguet, ever vigilant, reminds him it is midday." This automatically tells us loads of details about Pushkin’s lead character: that he was a man of leisure, vain, worldly, and yet kept a certain amount of discipline about him. Characteristics that would manifest itself in the dueling sequence of the verse novel.
Breguet would appear as well in Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, this time worn by Baron Danglar, one of the enemies of the Count. Here, Danglar’s “watch, a masterpiece by Breguet which he had rewound with care ... chimed half past five in the morning." Again, certain facets of the character are revealed: his wealth, punctiliousness, and deliberation. All of which the Count had to take into consideration when carrying out his revenge against Danglars.
However, perhaps no other novel carried the weight of the character’s personal style to the plot and denouement than that of The Age of Innocence. Edith Wharton’s devastatingly sad tale of a man caught between two loves and two worlds is rife with details of Newland Archer’s appearance and the New York that he navigates. Thus, Archer would be careful to wear the correct leather shoes to the play, making sure that the flower in his buttonhole is neither to showy nor too shy as to be invisible, his cufflinks are worn within the precise amount of distance from his coat, his cigar cutter hanging rightly by its chain, along with the turnip watch. In the movie version, Archer would have a little bit of difficulty in writing with his pen, complaining that while such is very modern it’s still not as good as the old pens.
But it is in the way Archer selects the flowers for the two women in his life that makes the manifestation of the fictional man’s sense of taste and style highly relevant to the internal struggles going on within the characters’ minds and soul. To his fiancé May, he sends pure white lilies-of-the-valley. To his real love Ellen, he sends bright yellow roses. The contrast between the religious overtones that the lilies represent, along with its notes of innocence and virginity, to the blatant, intense, and overt sexuality of the roses couldn’t be more apparent. That he was buying the flowers from the same shop and at the same time is incredibly telling as well.
True, The Age of Innocence does make much symbolism of what the women wore or how they carry themselves. Thus, when May’s wedding dress was depicted as muddied and torn, it was supposed to depict the marital problems between her and Archer. But in the end, it is Archer’s style that grabs us because it says so much about him. May and Ellen and the rest of New York in The Age of Innocence are revealed through what they say or do, not really by what they wear or how they appear. In the case of Archer, a man who wears the most conservative of clothes that could not be faulted by his peers and yet retreats to his study to appreciate the smell of his newly delivered books, we get to know that he is a man bound by duty to his family and class, and yet looks longingly at the possibilities offered by going beyond them.
Obviously, no such conflict can be found with Hercule Poirot. Very elegantly tailored, well coiffed mustache, very shiny patent shoes, a large turnip pocket watch. He is the very embodiment of what Agatha Christie thought a Belgian detective would look like: loud, expressive, emotional. Nevertheless, Christie does give one telling detail: Poirot’s extreme cleanliness.
This is important because, no matter the obvious differences between Poirot and Sherlock Holmes, the similarity with regard to their clarity of thought is palpable. So, despite Arthur Conan Doyle giving Holmes a quite bohemian lifestyle, nevertheless, the need for the character to have a deep regard for personal neatness and cleanliness is quite indicative of how both authors believed external order to be a manifestation of their characters’ internal order.
Holmes appearance and style, of course, are so central his personality and perhaps is the single most important reason why the movies find him such an appealing character. Thus, we know that Holmes keeps his correspondence fixed by a knife stuck into the mantelpiece, that he keeps his tobacco in the toe-end of a Persian slipper, he plays the violin well into the night, he target practices inside his room by making out the letter V in honor of Queen Victoria, he takes cocaine for relaxation, is clean shaven, and he is very correct in his clothes. The last detail is important because it again reveals Holmes to be a man of method and precision. He is also not above crawling around in the dirt to pursue a lead. And that is also the reason why depictions of Holmes wearing the famous deerstalker are wrong. One simply does not wear the deerstalker anywhere but in the countryside.
Of course, Philip Marlowe has his own style to set him apart from his predecessors. While not a cocaine addict or sugar junkie (like Poirot), Marlowe prefers to smoke Camels. But then again, to indicate how different he is from other men, he is a pipe smoker at home, at a time when pipe smoking is for granddads. And it is a testament to his professionalism that he is seen wearing nothing extraordinary but his Luger, Colt, or Smith & Wesson. Interestingly enough, he plays chess, which, to even heighten the symbolism of the thing, he plays mostly against himself.
From the other side of the fence would be the correct and formal style of Michael Corleone. Whether it be in Mario Puzo’s book or Francis Ford Coppola’s telling, Michael Corleone is the same: correct, bland, almost invisible. This is a thing missed by most men who watch the Godfather movies. Contrary to what is usually though of Michael, he is not quick to show off his wealth, power, or how dangerous he is. What is constantly emphasized by the books and the movies is how much he wanted to blend in among the businessmen and community leaders he so much wanted to be and never will. Thus, the gold cufflinks, the tie-clasps, and the Italian suits were all supposed to convey a middle-aged businessman in the 1970’s. Al Pacino did wear shades, which unfortunately conveyed a more sinister look to Michael Corleone but even that was actually there to protect the gang leader’s eyes from the effects of diabetes. In the end, Michael Corleone’s appearance reveals to us what he really is: the former college kid who wanted to be a normal member of the community, the monster who wanted to deny his true self, the pathetic figure misunderstood for the wrong reasons.
Of course, for the sheer fun of combining blandness and lethality, one could not better Tom Ripley. Here, the style is simply not to have a style. Everything is hidden. From his ordinary, inoffensive face, to the correctness of his clothes, to his utterly impeccable manners, Ripley would be a great friend or neighbor to have were it not for the fact that he is a brutal but methodical serial killer. But it cannot be denied, the man has style: from his thin beautiful French wife Heloise, to his learning German, ability to cook French cuisine, appreciation of wines and art (even forgeries of Derwatt), gardening, painting with water colors, to playing the harpsichord. He loves his Patek Philippe (on a brown leather strap) and, perhaps as indication that every man has his snobbish side, couldn’t stand the vulgar tastes of David Pritchard (who’d eventually be found dead), with his round eyeglasses and wristwatch of “the stretchable gold-bracelet variety, expensive and flashy, with gold surround for the watch, gold-coloured face even” (which Ripley thought suitable for a “pimp”).
But then, when discussing fictional men and style, it all comes back to Bond. James Bond. We don’t really need to repeat much of what has been written about him. Entire articles have been written about his tastes, jewelry, food, wardrobe, cars, weapon, and women. Like Marlow, he drinks copious doses of alcohol. And contrary to what many people think, Bond, like Marlowe, has whiskey as the favored drink. Not vodka. Not vodka martini, shaken not stirred, which has actually the effect of watering down the martini. Not the Vesper, which he only drank in the book Casino Royale, and really doesn’t contain any vermouth whatsoever. In the books, he has probably drunk more whiskey’s, champagne’s, and sake’s than he has ever drunk martinis (whether it be vodka or gin).
But the thing with Bond and which most people miss is how “the job” takes up almost his entire existence. His wardrobe is easy to wear and carry, his luggage (battered Louis Vuitton’s) he prefers more for their durability than for their style (unlike The Jackal, in The Day of the Jackal), he has a battered gunmetal cigarette case, old set of golf clubs, and shoes that have seen a lot of wear and tear. The Rolex Oyster Perpetual is there as it can never be broken even in the most violent of fistfights. Indeed, “battered” is a word that keeps cropping in Ian Fleming’s depiction of Bond. The effect here is not the Bond of the movies, invulnerable and unflappable, but a man nearly past his youth on the cusp of middle age, who has just seen too much and yet knows no other existence but to create mayhem. Indeed, even the Vesper was not drunk out of enjoyment or for some gastronomic showing off. Bond drank the Vesper as he thought it would make him perform better in his card game against Le Chiffre. In fact, one of the reasons “Bond” was chosen as his name was to give the connotation of reliability, of one who could get the job done.
But precisely because Bond was misunderstood, particularly as to how glamour bafflingly crept into the movie versions, that the so-called “anti-Bond” was made. Everything about Harry Palmer was supposed to be about ordinary. He was ordinary. From the government issued thick black-framed glasses, to his trench coat, to his working class background and accent, Harry Palmer’s style was to be as ordinary as possible. He was so ordinary that Len Deighton didn’t even bother giving him a name and it had to come to the movie version for him to have a name and even then the makers of The Ipcress File (including Michael Caine) decided on the most ordinary name they could come up with.
In the end, it’s the man who makes the clothes not the other way around (as the cliché would rather make us believe). It’s what’s inside the man, even the fictional man (as envisaged by his author), that matters. The rest are just commentary.
In any event, as Hans Gruber would say: “I could talk about men's fashion and industrialization all day but I'm afraid work must intrude.”
Was watching Die Hard the other day. Frankly, I was watching it for Alan Rickman. He was probably the guy who invented the techno-Euro-suave terrorist. With his trim beard, well-barbered hair, precisely cut clothes, and relaxed smooth way of talking, Rickman’s Hans Gruber simply stole Die Hard (although he did fail to steal the bearer bonds of Nakatomi Corporation).
How could one not appreciate a guy with semi-automatics and surrounded by hardened terrorists who whistles relaxedly in an elevator, pauses, then compliment his hostage by saying: “Nice suit. John Phillips, London. I have two myself. Rumor has it Arafat buys his there.”
And Gruber doesn’t stop there. Upon seeing the models of Nakatomi Corporation’s buildings, he lets out a groan of pleasure and ad libs from Plutarch: “"When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer." Then, almost apologetically, he mutters smiling: “The benefits of a classical education.” That is style. Pity that John McClane threw him off the Nakatomi building.
The thing is, style is really that important for men. Or at least fictional men. And they’re probably even more important than fictional women’s style or fashion. Who remembers what Elizabeth Bennet wore, or of Catherine Earnshaw, or even Ms. Marple? As one lady friend of mine says, it’s a given that women will have their fashion or style. So except for Holly Golightly or Annie Hall (and we’re talking here of their cinematic versions), apparently it’s the men’s sense of style that seems to have the greater significance, particularly as to how the story progresses.
Thus, as Alexander Pushkin tells us, Onegin was a "dandy on the boulevards ... strolling at leisure until his Breguet, ever vigilant, reminds him it is midday." This automatically tells us loads of details about Pushkin’s lead character: that he was a man of leisure, vain, worldly, and yet kept a certain amount of discipline about him. Characteristics that would manifest itself in the dueling sequence of the verse novel.
Breguet would appear as well in Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, this time worn by Baron Danglar, one of the enemies of the Count. Here, Danglar’s “watch, a masterpiece by Breguet which he had rewound with care ... chimed half past five in the morning." Again, certain facets of the character are revealed: his wealth, punctiliousness, and deliberation. All of which the Count had to take into consideration when carrying out his revenge against Danglars.
However, perhaps no other novel carried the weight of the character’s personal style to the plot and denouement than that of The Age of Innocence. Edith Wharton’s devastatingly sad tale of a man caught between two loves and two worlds is rife with details of Newland Archer’s appearance and the New York that he navigates. Thus, Archer would be careful to wear the correct leather shoes to the play, making sure that the flower in his buttonhole is neither to showy nor too shy as to be invisible, his cufflinks are worn within the precise amount of distance from his coat, his cigar cutter hanging rightly by its chain, along with the turnip watch. In the movie version, Archer would have a little bit of difficulty in writing with his pen, complaining that while such is very modern it’s still not as good as the old pens.
But it is in the way Archer selects the flowers for the two women in his life that makes the manifestation of the fictional man’s sense of taste and style highly relevant to the internal struggles going on within the characters’ minds and soul. To his fiancé May, he sends pure white lilies-of-the-valley. To his real love Ellen, he sends bright yellow roses. The contrast between the religious overtones that the lilies represent, along with its notes of innocence and virginity, to the blatant, intense, and overt sexuality of the roses couldn’t be more apparent. That he was buying the flowers from the same shop and at the same time is incredibly telling as well.
True, The Age of Innocence does make much symbolism of what the women wore or how they carry themselves. Thus, when May’s wedding dress was depicted as muddied and torn, it was supposed to depict the marital problems between her and Archer. But in the end, it is Archer’s style that grabs us because it says so much about him. May and Ellen and the rest of New York in The Age of Innocence are revealed through what they say or do, not really by what they wear or how they appear. In the case of Archer, a man who wears the most conservative of clothes that could not be faulted by his peers and yet retreats to his study to appreciate the smell of his newly delivered books, we get to know that he is a man bound by duty to his family and class, and yet looks longingly at the possibilities offered by going beyond them.
Obviously, no such conflict can be found with Hercule Poirot. Very elegantly tailored, well coiffed mustache, very shiny patent shoes, a large turnip pocket watch. He is the very embodiment of what Agatha Christie thought a Belgian detective would look like: loud, expressive, emotional. Nevertheless, Christie does give one telling detail: Poirot’s extreme cleanliness.
This is important because, no matter the obvious differences between Poirot and Sherlock Holmes, the similarity with regard to their clarity of thought is palpable. So, despite Arthur Conan Doyle giving Holmes a quite bohemian lifestyle, nevertheless, the need for the character to have a deep regard for personal neatness and cleanliness is quite indicative of how both authors believed external order to be a manifestation of their characters’ internal order.
Holmes appearance and style, of course, are so central his personality and perhaps is the single most important reason why the movies find him such an appealing character. Thus, we know that Holmes keeps his correspondence fixed by a knife stuck into the mantelpiece, that he keeps his tobacco in the toe-end of a Persian slipper, he plays the violin well into the night, he target practices inside his room by making out the letter V in honor of Queen Victoria, he takes cocaine for relaxation, is clean shaven, and he is very correct in his clothes. The last detail is important because it again reveals Holmes to be a man of method and precision. He is also not above crawling around in the dirt to pursue a lead. And that is also the reason why depictions of Holmes wearing the famous deerstalker are wrong. One simply does not wear the deerstalker anywhere but in the countryside.
Of course, Philip Marlowe has his own style to set him apart from his predecessors. While not a cocaine addict or sugar junkie (like Poirot), Marlowe prefers to smoke Camels. But then again, to indicate how different he is from other men, he is a pipe smoker at home, at a time when pipe smoking is for granddads. And it is a testament to his professionalism that he is seen wearing nothing extraordinary but his Luger, Colt, or Smith & Wesson. Interestingly enough, he plays chess, which, to even heighten the symbolism of the thing, he plays mostly against himself.
From the other side of the fence would be the correct and formal style of Michael Corleone. Whether it be in Mario Puzo’s book or Francis Ford Coppola’s telling, Michael Corleone is the same: correct, bland, almost invisible. This is a thing missed by most men who watch the Godfather movies. Contrary to what is usually though of Michael, he is not quick to show off his wealth, power, or how dangerous he is. What is constantly emphasized by the books and the movies is how much he wanted to blend in among the businessmen and community leaders he so much wanted to be and never will. Thus, the gold cufflinks, the tie-clasps, and the Italian suits were all supposed to convey a middle-aged businessman in the 1970’s. Al Pacino did wear shades, which unfortunately conveyed a more sinister look to Michael Corleone but even that was actually there to protect the gang leader’s eyes from the effects of diabetes. In the end, Michael Corleone’s appearance reveals to us what he really is: the former college kid who wanted to be a normal member of the community, the monster who wanted to deny his true self, the pathetic figure misunderstood for the wrong reasons.
Of course, for the sheer fun of combining blandness and lethality, one could not better Tom Ripley. Here, the style is simply not to have a style. Everything is hidden. From his ordinary, inoffensive face, to the correctness of his clothes, to his utterly impeccable manners, Ripley would be a great friend or neighbor to have were it not for the fact that he is a brutal but methodical serial killer. But it cannot be denied, the man has style: from his thin beautiful French wife Heloise, to his learning German, ability to cook French cuisine, appreciation of wines and art (even forgeries of Derwatt), gardening, painting with water colors, to playing the harpsichord. He loves his Patek Philippe (on a brown leather strap) and, perhaps as indication that every man has his snobbish side, couldn’t stand the vulgar tastes of David Pritchard (who’d eventually be found dead), with his round eyeglasses and wristwatch of “the stretchable gold-bracelet variety, expensive and flashy, with gold surround for the watch, gold-coloured face even” (which Ripley thought suitable for a “pimp”).
But then, when discussing fictional men and style, it all comes back to Bond. James Bond. We don’t really need to repeat much of what has been written about him. Entire articles have been written about his tastes, jewelry, food, wardrobe, cars, weapon, and women. Like Marlow, he drinks copious doses of alcohol. And contrary to what many people think, Bond, like Marlowe, has whiskey as the favored drink. Not vodka. Not vodka martini, shaken not stirred, which has actually the effect of watering down the martini. Not the Vesper, which he only drank in the book Casino Royale, and really doesn’t contain any vermouth whatsoever. In the books, he has probably drunk more whiskey’s, champagne’s, and sake’s than he has ever drunk martinis (whether it be vodka or gin).
But the thing with Bond and which most people miss is how “the job” takes up almost his entire existence. His wardrobe is easy to wear and carry, his luggage (battered Louis Vuitton’s) he prefers more for their durability than for their style (unlike The Jackal, in The Day of the Jackal), he has a battered gunmetal cigarette case, old set of golf clubs, and shoes that have seen a lot of wear and tear. The Rolex Oyster Perpetual is there as it can never be broken even in the most violent of fistfights. Indeed, “battered” is a word that keeps cropping in Ian Fleming’s depiction of Bond. The effect here is not the Bond of the movies, invulnerable and unflappable, but a man nearly past his youth on the cusp of middle age, who has just seen too much and yet knows no other existence but to create mayhem. Indeed, even the Vesper was not drunk out of enjoyment or for some gastronomic showing off. Bond drank the Vesper as he thought it would make him perform better in his card game against Le Chiffre. In fact, one of the reasons “Bond” was chosen as his name was to give the connotation of reliability, of one who could get the job done.
But precisely because Bond was misunderstood, particularly as to how glamour bafflingly crept into the movie versions, that the so-called “anti-Bond” was made. Everything about Harry Palmer was supposed to be about ordinary. He was ordinary. From the government issued thick black-framed glasses, to his trench coat, to his working class background and accent, Harry Palmer’s style was to be as ordinary as possible. He was so ordinary that Len Deighton didn’t even bother giving him a name and it had to come to the movie version for him to have a name and even then the makers of The Ipcress File (including Michael Caine) decided on the most ordinary name they could come up with.
In the end, it’s the man who makes the clothes not the other way around (as the cliché would rather make us believe). It’s what’s inside the man, even the fictional man (as envisaged by his author), that matters. The rest are just commentary.
In any event, as Hans Gruber would say: “I could talk about men's fashion and industrialization all day but I'm afraid work must intrude.”
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