The magician, the dead, & Deux Magots

Georges Méliès’ grave is one I should have visited when we were at the Pere Lachaise cemetery.  I’ve always thought that the imaginative silent films he made at the turn-of-the-century were extraordinary.  When most of the other filmmakers at that time were shooting rudimentary slices-of-life, Méliès was already experimenting with special effects.  Based on a Jules Verne story, his movie “Le Voyage dans la lune” was shot in a Parisian suburb in 1902.  It’s a crazy wonderful short film that is still fun to watch.  Film buffs consider it a classic, so that’s talking a lot of fun.  You don’t have to channel Henry Miller to feel merry, Méliès visuals will do the job.

This Wednesday morning we took the metro south, almost to the Orly airport, to see the Méliès museum.  It’s in a modern building by Parc de Bercy.  No entry times, no crowd.  There’s a wonderful collection of early film cameras and projection devices.  

Along with equipment he used in his magic shows. 

Apparently one of his best-known illusions was the Recalcitrant Decapitated Man, in which a professor’s head is cut off in the middle of a speech and continues talking until it is returned to his body.

There were storyboards recounting his life already popularized by Ben Kingsley in Martin Scorsese’s film “Hugo.”  Of the 200 Méliès movies that exist (300 have been lost), the museum has a selective sampling.  Nevertheless, the exhibition featured excellent restored prints including two I hadn’t seen before, “Gulliver’s Travels,” where he changed the size of different actors in the same scene, and “The Fantastic Dirigible” where actors flew over Paris.  

I was so jazzed after leaving the museum Ella convinced me to join her having crêpes for lunch.  Our next trip was to Montparnasse on the Left Bank.  Exiting the metro we found ourselves, believe it or not, outside a cemetery.  Paris for me is full of ghosts, so I wasn’t all that surprised.   And who else would be buried here but Simone and Jean-Paul?  Together!

See, Simone was saying to me as I snapped off shots of their shared headstone, how more free can you feel than when you unexpectedly run across old friends?  

Unexpected perhaps, but the graveyard is well laid out, and finding anyone interred there isn’t difficult.  Well, okay, we had a little problem at first in searching out Baudelaire, but he was part of what looked like sandwich board list.

And Samuel Beckett was no help with his practically self-deprecating slab.

My favorite, however, was this headstone. 

Then we took a turn in the Luxembourg Gardens.

I love artistic renderings of Silenus; it reminds me of my misspent youth.

It was starting to get dark when we left the park so we tried to go in the random direction of the Seine to find a restaurant.  The spirit of Simone was still with us.  We stopped at a busy intersection to wait for the light to change and there, across the street, was Café Deux Magots, famous hangout of Jean-Paul and Simone.  It’s where they held intellectual court and where we had to have dinner.  

I didn’t care if the food stunk and the service was lousy, there were the red leather seats, the booths, the huge mirrors (Simone and Jean-Paul were not bashful), all that was missing was the cigarette smoke and the philosophical banter.  Wait—I thought I just saw Camus walk through the door.  Oh, he quickly turned and left.  He must have seen Jean-Paul.  Lately their editorial disagreements are the talk of the town.  Hmm, I wonder if the food was cheaper in their day….  

As it turned out, the service was good, and the dinner just fine…although way overpriced.  The cost, I suppose, of eating at a historical venue.  That’s the thing with ghosts, their essence, or spiritual Being if you will, is predicated on you not forgetting their presence which you’re not likely to do when you get the bill and consider why it’s so high.