Thursday, 6 March 2014
Tuesday, 4 March 2014
Remembering ... Ten Dukes gathered together.
By ROBERT HARDMAN
UPDATED: 11:21 GMT, 7 October 2009 / http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218628/Ten-dukes-dining-Gathered-lunch-unique-picture-grandees-2bn-340-000-acres-them.html
At first glance, it might resemble the board meeting of a
firm of auctioneers or a convention of prep school headmasters.
On closer inspection, it is actually a remarkable portrait
of the grandest club in Britain, a super-elite who account for some 340,000 acres , more
than £2billion and 4,505 years of aristocratic moving and shaking.
Some owe their fortunes to bravery in battle, others to
royal philandering or political chicanery. But they are all distantly related
to each other and they are all addressed in exactly the same way: Your Grace.
Outside the Royal Family, dukedoms have only ever been
granted to a handful of men of power and influence.
Dukes are just one rung down from royalty in the social
pecking order and enjoy a special status way above the rank and file of the
aristocracy. As peerages go, it's the jackpot.
Today, there are just 24 non-royal dukes in existence, down
from a total of 40 in
their Georgian heyday. And it's fair to say that no modern monarch or
government is likely to create any more.
So, to celebrate its 300th birthday, Tatler magazine decided
to invite this dwindling band of mega-toffs to a ducal lunch. The result was
the largest gathering of dukes since the Coronation of 1953.
Some were too frail to attend. Some live abroad. But ten of
them gathered for oysters and Dover sole in London's clubland. And the result
is this intriguing study of 21st century nobility.
'After 300 years, we wanted to recapture the spirit of the
original Tatler, and what better than a room full of dukes,' says Tatler editor
Catherine Ostler.
Once, the holders of these titles would have been the A-list
celebrities of their time. Today, most people would be pushed to name a single
one of them.
With hereditary peers cast out into the political
wilderness, dukes might seem little more than a comic anachronism in modern
Britain. While they retain their rank and social clout, their only power is
financial.
In the case of, say, the Duke of Bedford, this amounts to
£500million in art, London property and a large slab of Home Counties commuter
belt. As for the Duke of Leinster, whose grandfather ran a teashop, it is next
to nothing.
Yet many dukes still play an active part in public life. The
Duke of Norfolk, as hereditary Earl Marshal, is still responsible for
organising the State Opening of Parliament and any coronations which should
occur.
The Duke of Northumberland runs several public bodies across
the North East while his wife is the local Lord Lieutenant.
The very first dukedom was a royal affair. In 1337, Edward
III created his son, the Black Prince, the Duke of Cornwall. The title derives
from the Latin dux - leader - and, throughout history, fewer than 500 British
men have held the rank of 'Duke'.
The last non-royal dukedom was created in 1900 for the
former Earl of Fife, who was upgraded to Duke following his wedding to Queen
Victoria's granddaughter.
There might have been a new one in 1955 when the Queen
offered one to Churchill, but he declined, preferring to die a commoner.
The only non-duke at the Tatler gathering was historian
Andrew Roberts, invited to chronicle the event.
'They're all related and they all stick up for each other,'
he recalls.
But he fears that dukes could become an endangered species.
'Not long ago, two important dukedoms - Newcastle and Portland - became
extinct,' says the historian.
'So, my parting plea to the dukes was simple, even if it
startled some of them. I simply said: 'Keep procreating!'
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The assembled: (from left to right) 1. James Graham, 8th
Duke of Montrose; 2. David Manners, 11th Duke of Rutland; 3. John Seymour, 19th
Duke of Somerset; 4. Ralph Percy, 12th Duke of Northumberland; 5. Andrew
Russell, 15th Duke of Bedford; 6. Edward Fizalan-Howard, 18th Duke of Norfolk;
7. Torquhil Campbell, 18th Duke of Argyll; 8. Maurice FitzGerald, 9th Duke of
Leinster; 9. Murray Beauclerk, 14th Duke of St Albans; 10. Arthur Wellesey, 8th
Duke of Wellington. See list below for details
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A very special edition: The picture appears in the November
issue of Tatler magazine
1 James Graham, 8th Duke of Montrose
Age: 72.
Title created: 1707. Other titles include Viscount Dundaff
and Lord Aberuthven, Mugdock and Fintrie.
Seat: Auchmar, a modest estate near Loch Lomond.
Wealth: A high-ranking, but lower league landowner with
History: The dukedom was awarded for supporting the Act of
Union in 1707. The sixth Duke helped to invent the aircraft carrier during
World War I. The present Duke spent part of his childhood in a mud hut in
Rhodesia (where his father was building a farm). Instead of the usual Eton
education, he attended Loretto School in Edinburgh - just like the Chancellor, Alistair
Darling.
2 David Manners, 11th Duke of Rutland
Age: 50.
Title created: 1703. Other titles include Marquess of Granby
and Baron Roos of Belvoir.
Seat: Belvoir Castle, Leicestershire.
Wealth: Ranked 474th in the latest Rich List, he is valued
at £115 million. Estates across Leicestershire (
History: While the main seat, Belvoir, is a magnificent
365-room pile with an underground railway and £100 million of art, the family
also owns Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, widely recognised as one of Britain's
finest medieval and Tudor manor houses. A previous Marquess of Granby (later
the third duke) was a popular soldier and helped many of his men with their
retirement, hence the number of pubs called the Marquess of Granby.
3 John Seymour, 19th Duke of Somerset
Age: 56. Title created: 1547. His other title is Lord
Seymour.
Seat: Maiden Bradley, Somerset.
Wealth: Around
History: He is a descendant of Jane Seymour, Henry VIII's
third wife. The first Duke of Somerset, Edward Seymour, was Jane's brother.
The family owns the fourposter oak bed in which Edward VI is
said to have been conceived.
Having rented out his main house at £50,000 a year, the Duke
runs the estate from a smaller house in Devon.
4 Ralph Percy, 12th Duke of Northumberland
Age: 52.
Title created: 1766. Other titles include Earl Percy, Earl
of Beverley, Baron Warkworth.
Seat: Alnwick Castle, Northumberland.
Wealth: With
History: Part of the original Norman Conquest gang, the
Percy family have been dominant in their part of the country for centuries.
Alnwick Castle is the authentic knight-in-shining-armour fortress and has
featured in Blackadder and the Harry Potter films. The present Duke recently
sold a Raphael painting to the nation for £22 million, a deal which attracted
controversy because of the use of Lottery funds. The newly-refurbished Alnwick
Garden is a major tourist attraction.
5 Andrew Russell, 15th Duke of Bedford
Age: 47.
Title created: 1694. Other titles include Marquess of
Tavistock and Baron Howland
Seat: Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire
Wealth: Valued at £489million. Owns
History: The first Duke fought on both sides in the Civil
War and was ennobled after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The family has made
Woburn Abbey a major tourist attraction and the present Duke is busy
refurbishing much of the London estate (significantly smaller than it once was
after much of it became part of London University).
The family were stars of the BBC's Country House series.
6 Edward Fizalan-Howard, 18th Duke of Norfolk
Age: 53.
Title created: 1483. Other titles include Earl of Surrey and
Baron Maltravers.
Seat: Arundel Castle, West Sussex.
Wealth: Half his
History: As England's senior duke, Norfolk carries the
hereditary title of Earl Marshal. As such, he plays an important role in
running state occasions. The family's royal links stretch back centuries and
the present Duke's wife, Georgina, stands in for the Queen at rehearsals of the
State Opening of Parliament. The Duke's eldest son and heir, Henry, the Earl of
Arundel, 21, is a promising Formula Three driver.
7 Torquhil Campbell, 13th Duke of Argyll
Age: 41.
Title created: 1701. Other titles include Marquess of
Kintyre and Lorne, Viscount Lochow and Glenilla and Lord Morvern.
Seat: Inveraray Castle, Argyllshire.
Wealth: Family owns
History: The dukedom comes with plenty of baggage, including
the hereditary posts of Master of HM's Household in Scotland and Keeper of the
Great Seal of Scotland.
The family suffered serious scandal in the Sixties, when the
divorce proceedings of the 11th duke unearthed a famous photograph of his
soon-to-be former wife with a mysterious naked man. The present duke, when not
working in the whisky trade, is captain of the Scottish elephant polo team.
8 Maurice FitzGerald, 9th Duke of Leinster
Age: 61.
Title created: 1766. Other titles include Marquess of
Kildare and Earl of Offaly
Seat: Formerly Carton House, Co. Kildare. Now a farmhouse in
Oxfordshire.
Wealth: No landholdings of any note, the Duke works as a
landscape gardener.
History: The FitzGeralds assisted Edward I in his battles
against the Scots. The family fortunes declined in the 20th century after the
7th Duke sold his interests in the family estates and was then declared
bankrupt. His fourth wife, with whom he opened a teashop in Rye in 1965, was
the caretaker of the block of flats in which he lived. Educated at Millfield,
the present Duke is president of the Oxfordshire Dyslexia Association.
9 Murray Beauclerk, 14th Duke of St Albans
Age: 70. Title created: 1684. Other titles include Earl of
Burford, and Baron Heddington.
Seat: A terrace house in Knightsbridge, London.
Wealth: Never a great landowning family, the Beauclerks were
said to own
History: The first Duke was the illegitimate son of Charles
II and Nell Gwyn. Though the present Duke is a Tonbridge-educated chartered accountant,
an eccentric strain still runs through family.
His heir, the Earl of Burford, has long campaigned to prove
his ancestor, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, was the true author of the
works of Shakespeare. In 1999, the young Earl was forcibly expelled from the
House of Lords for jumping on the Woolsack and accusing the Government of
treason in its expulsion of hereditary peers.
10 Arthur Wellesley, 8th Duke of Wellington
Age: 94.
Title created: 1814. Other titles include Prince of
Waterloo, Duke of Vittoria and Earl of Mornington.
Seat: Stratfield Saye House, Hampshire and Apsley House,
London.
Wealth: 7,000-acre Hampshire estate,
History: Like the original Iron Duke, the present Duke had a
long Army career, winning the Military Cross and reaching the rank of
Brigadier. In later life, he has devoted himself to his estates and charities,
coming top in Country Life's 'Good Duke Guide' in 1991. His heir, the Marquess
of Douro, is a former Tory MEP while his daughter, Lady Jane Wellesley, was
once talked of as a bride for the Prince of Wales. More recent beaux include
Melvyn Bragg and Loyd Grossman.
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Monday, 3 March 2014
In pictures: London street scenes then and now
In pictures: London street scenes then and now
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1 - The Streetmuseum
App 2.0 from the Museum of London gives the user a chance to explore how
locations across the capital looked in times gone by. Hundreds of images are
visible through the app, showcasing London's history, from the Great Fire of
1666 through to the Swinging Sixties.
Here: A street seller of sherbert and water is photographed
on Cheapside in 1893, completely unaware of the camera. Paul Martin was the
first photographer to roam around the streets of London with a disguised camera
taking candid pictures such as this solely for the purpose of showing 'life as
it is'.
Picture: Paul Martin
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2 - View of Duncannon
Street near Charing Cross in 1902, decorated with bunting and banners for the
coronation ceremony of Edward VII. There are pedestrians and vehicles in the
foreground and the National Gallery is visible in the distance
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3 - George Davison
Reid took this photo of Blackfriars station entrance from outside 179 Queen
Victoria Street around 1930. The station was originally called St Paul's and
was opened by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway in 1886. Above the station
were the premises of Oppenheimer Son and Co Limited, which manufactured
pharmaceutical specialities. The Times newspaper was also based here in Queen
Victoria Street. A decade or so after Reid photographed this exterior, the
station was bombed in the Blitz of 1940 and largely destroyed. The offices of
The Times newspaper were also hit.
Picture: George Davison Reid
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4 - A view of Bow Lane circa 1930, off Cheapside in the City
of London, looking south to the crossing with Watling Street and St. Mary
Aldermary in the middle distance. 'Ye Olde Watling' tavern was originally built
just after the Great Fire of 1666. George Davison Reid supported the Society of
Antiquaries of London, which promoted the study of London's architecture, and
was interested in photographing older architecture and locations. He took this
photo of Bow Lane in the late 1920s.
Picture: George Davison Reid
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5 - A view of the forecourt of the Southern Railway's
terminus at London Bridge circa 1930. This was the oldest railway terminus in
London, having been built for the line linking London and Greenwich in 1836.
Picture: George Davison Reid
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6 - From the west
side of Tower Bridge, George Davison Reid composed this photo looking out
across the Upper Pool circa 1930. This image is atypical of Reid's work, being
a posed shot. The children appeared in other photos at different riverside
locations. It has been suggested that some of the girls could be Reid's
daughters.
Picture: George Davison Reid
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7 - Charing Cross Road is renowned for its specialist and
second-hand bookshops. Wolf Suschitzky was attracted by the extensive array of
second-hand bookshops and teahouses, and the crowds that flocked to them. The
resulting series of photographs, circa 1935, are amongst Suschitzky's most
acclaimed work.
Picture: Wolf Suschitzky/Museum of London
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8 - This photograph
shows Byward Street near Tower Hill circa 1930, looking west with the church of
All Hallows by the tower on the left and the former Mark Lane Underground
station on the right. George Davison Reid photographed the streets and
buildings of London and the activity in them in the 1920s and 1930s.
Picture: George Davison Reid
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9 - Boy shining shoes outside the Tea Room at Victoria
station in
Picture: Henry Grant
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10 - Piccadilly Circus, Coronation day, June 1953. Crowds
gather to witness the Coronation procession of Elizabeth II. The coronation
went ahead in Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953, and at the Queen's request, the
entire ceremony was televised throughout the Commonwealth, and watched by an
estimated twenty million people.
Picture: Wolf Suschitzky/Museum of London
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11 - People
sunbathing in Hyde Park in 1956, with Marble Arch and the Odeon cinema in the
background. The attendant is selling tickets for the deckchairs which are
available for hire in the park. The Odeon which was originally a 'Regal'
cinema, opened in 1928. The facade of the building was made from Portland Stone
and featured columns and statues however in 1964 it was thought too small and
the building was demolished and a larger cinema complex was built in its place.
Picture: Henry Grant
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12 - Oxford Street
circa 1903. Horse-drawn Hansom cabs dominate the traffic.
Picture: Christina Broom
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13 - Street scene at
Covent Garden circa 1930 with underground station and horse and cart in the
background. George Davison Reid photographed activity in the marketplace from
opposite Covent Garden Underground station on Long Acre. A police constable was
often needed to control the congestion of the horses and carts and increasing
numbers of motorised vehicles. The long established market place was under
pressure to move. The congested facilities were described at the time as
'altogether inadequate to the necessities of the trade'. However, the fruit and
vegetable market did not relocate until 1973.
Picture: George Davison reid
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14 - A night shot
outside the Palace Theatre before an evening's performance in 1958. The Frankie
Vaughan Season ran from 20 January to 16 February 1958 and included Vaughan as
the headliner and artists such as Petula Clark, who was to sing her latest
hits. Bob Collins created a number of night-time photographs playing with the
bright lights of the West End to record people enjoying the buzz of fifties
nightlife.
Picture: Bob Collins
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15 - The exterior of
the completed Gloucester Road Station on the underground Metropolitan and
District Railway, which was opened on 3rd October 1868. From a series of 64
photographs taken in the late 1860s by Henry Flather to document the
construction of the railway from Paddington to Blackfriars via Kensington,
Westminster and the new Victoria Embankment. Construction was by the
'cut-and-cover' method used to build the first underground railways before the
development of the tunneling shield by James Henry Greathead . The first
tunneled, or 'tube', railway in London was the City & South London Line,
which opened in 1890.
Picture: Henry Flather
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16 - This 1957
photograph captures the view north up Brick Lane in Spitalfields, close to the
markets. Some of the textile businesses can be seen. Bengali migrants began to
arrive in the area from the late 1950s onwards.
Picture: Roger Mayne/Museum of London
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Saturday, 1 March 2014
Friday, 28 February 2014
The "LOOK" of Charlotte Rampling: The Look ~ Documentary Trailer / Charlotte Rampling: 'I know my power'
Charlotte Rampling: The Look (2011)
What’s Behind That Mona Lisa Smirk?
By STEPHEN HOLDEN in The New York Times
Published: November 3, 2011 / http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/movies/charlotte-rampling-the-look-review.html?_r=0
A lesson to be gleaned from “Charlotte Rampling: The Look,”
Angelina Maccarone’s fascinating and frustrating documentary portrait of an
enigmatic star, might be that it would be foolish to suppose that Ms. Rampling
is anything like the transgressive women she portrays on the screen. The same
is true of her photographic image, that of a heavy-lidded femme fatale. Could
“The Look” be an accident of physiognomy? In this evasive film neither the
director nor the star is about to speculate.
Ms. Rampling, now 65, belongs to the short list of cult
movie actresses whose combination of
exotic beauty, intelligence and fierce independence lends
them a particular erotic mystique. Along with Jeanne Moreau and Isabelle
Huppert, she is a screen personality whose smoldering characters project an
imperial confidence tinged with disdain. Those catlike eyes, lowered in a seemingly
seductive gaze in tandem with a Mona Lisa smirk, send the same danger signals
associated with Ms. Rampling’s Hollywood prototype, Lauren Bacall. Both also
have deep voices that convey an ominous authority.
Ms. Rampling’s greatest screen performance, a clip from
which is included in “The Look,” may be her portrayal of Ellen, an unmarried
New England professor of French literature in Laurent Cantet’s “Heading South.”
Ellen is the queen bee among a group of middle-aged women who make an annual
pilgrimage to a resort in Haiti in the late 1970s to avail themselves of the
sexual favors of handsome impoverished beach boys. It is hard to imagine Ms.
Rampling as anything like Ellen.
Ms. Maccarone’s admiring study catches Ms. Rampling in
conversation with friends and artists on different topics — “Exposure,” “Age,”
“Beauty,” “Resonance,” “Taboo,” “Demons,” Desire,” “Death” and “Love” — which
the film uses as pretentious chapter titles. The conversations are interspersed
with scenes from Ms. Rampling’s films, including Woody Allen’s “Stardust
Memories”; Luchino Visconti’s “Damned”; François Ozon’s “Swimming Pool” and
“Under the Sand”; Silvio Narizzano’s “Georgy Girl,” the 1966 British film that made
her star; and Liliana Cavani’s “Night Porter,” in which she plays a
concentration camp survivor who reunites years later in a Vienna hotel with the
sadistic Nazi guard (Dirk Bogarde) who tormented her.
Rounding out the list are “The Verdict” (Sidney Lumet) and
“Max Mon Amour,” Nagisa Oshima’s comedy in which she plays a diplomat’s wife
who has a passionate affair with a chimpanzee. Conspicuously missing is her
recent cameo in Todd Solondz’s “Life During Wartime.”
The conversations seem unrehearsed. Although Ms. Rampling
has more to say on some topics than on others, there are no blinding
revelations or titillating confessions. Talking with the photographer Peter
Lindbergh in “Exposure,” she remarks, “If you want to give anything worthwhile
of yourself, you have to feel completely exposed.” For her nudity seems never to
have been a big deal. The “Taboo” segment examines a risqué series of
self-portraits, “Louis XV,” that the German fashion photographer Juergen Teller
shot.
For all her readiness to bare her flesh, Ms. Rampling
reveals little of her inner life, and the film stints on biographical
information. The closest thing to a nugget of wisdom is her stated belief in
not running away from emotional pain. You should “let it happen to you,” she
declares.
Her scattered observations on life, love and death are
eminently sensible, rooted in an unflappable self-possession. She makes one
reference to the emotional “chaos” of her younger days and more than one to her
sister’s suicide at the age of 23, but her tone is dispassionate. Her major
relationships — with the actor and publicist Bryan Southcombe; the French
composer Jean-Michel Jarre; and to her current longtime companion, Jean-Noël
Tassez, a French businessman — go unmentioned. Many of the artists and intellectuals
with whom she converses are barely introduced, if at all.
This is not to say that “Charlotte Rampling: The Look” is a
complete washout. A tease is more like it, an examination of the surface. Ms.
Rampling is presented as an endlessly watchable mystery, an aloof but affable
sphinx. But we knew that already.
CHARLOTTE RAMPLING: THE LOOK
Opens on Friday in Manhattan.
Written and directed by Angelina Maccarone; director of
photography, Bernd Meiners; edited by Bettina Böhler; music by Judith Kaufmann;
produced by Charlotte Uzu, Gerd Haag, Michael Trabitzsch and Serge Lalou;
released by Kino Lorber. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 1
hour 34 minutes. This film is not rated.
A version of this review appears in print on November 4, 2011,
on page C12 of the New York edition with
Charlotte Rampling: 'I know my power'
Her chilly sensuality has
hooked directors from Woody Allen to Lars von Trier. Charlotte Rampling talks
to Catherine Shoard about her no-go areas, Hollywood 'crap' – and why we might
not like her new documentary
Catherine Shoard
The Guardian, Wednesday 18 May 2011 / http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/may/18/charlotte-rampling-look-melancholia-cannes
If you were to create an installation that captured the
essence of Charlotte Rampling, it would almost certainly involve a stuffed lion
and a king-sized bed. And you'd probably place them not in a room, but by a
bar, on a beach, at the French Riviera. In this way you'd convey the imperious
gloss, the fearsome sensuality, the hint of the ridiculous in Rampling's
eat-you-for-breakfast pose.
As luck would have it, this is exactly the scene when we sit
down to talk in Cannes. There is a stuffed lion, there is a king-sized bed.
Impervious to the taxidermical horror behind her, Rampling perches on a pouffe
and fixes me with her laser gaze. The lion peeps over her shoulder; by
comparison, he is a pussycat.
Rampling, now 65, is all over this year's festival: she is
drumming up interest in Julia, a thriller by her son Barnaby Southcombe, as
well as promoting Lars von Trier's Palme d'Or contender Melancholia, in which
she plays a woman based on the director's own mother. "She's dead, so he
can do it now," she explains. "He hated her. She ruined his life, he
said."
It's a small role, yet still a recognisable Rampling
monster: all lipstick and bitterness and icy outbursts. So recognisable, in
fact, that a ripple of laughter greeted her first line at yesterday's press
screening. "Domineering? What a load of crap," she says when her
ex-husband (John Hurt) describes her as such in a speech at the wedding of
their daughter (Kirsten Dunst).
Rampling is also the subject of a new documentary, The Look,
which is screening out of competition. The title comes from two-time co-star
Dirk Bogarde, who once wrote: "I have seen the Look under many different
circumstances . . . The glowing emerald eyes turn to steel within a second,
[and] fade gently to the softest, tenderest, most doe-eyed bracken-brown."
The film features plenty more like this: Paul Auster, a friend, tells her that
she is more beautiful now than she was as a young woman. A group of elderly men
who bump into her in the Tuileries garden in Paris are delighted when she gives
one of them a kiss.
Shot by German newcomer Angelina Maccarone, The Look carries
Rampling's "absolute stamp of approval"; the actor had final cut.
"It was simply a condition of my involvement," Rampling says evenly.
"If this film is about me then I have to accept it, and if I can't accept
it, I have to know it can be destroyed. I'd rather it didn't exist if it wasn't
something I couldn't recognise as being in some way close to who I am."
Not everyone has the confidence to be so unapologetically
controlling, but Rampling has form. Last year, she made headlines when an
attempt to co-author an autobiography with a friend came undone, ending in
legal action. "A lot of people have asked me to do written things or have
someone else write them for me," she says. "I've tried lots,
nothing's worked. I can't express what I want to express yet."
She says she wasn't interested in Maccarone making a
conventional documentary. "If you were to find all the people I've worked
with and ask them what they think of me, they're all just going to say, 'Oh,
wonderful', and it'll just be a lot of blah." So instead we have eight
conversations between Rampling and one or other of her pals, each with a
particular theme, sometimes involving a bottle of red, always drawing on one of
her landmark performances. She talks exposure with the photographer Peter
Lindbergh, as well as her breakthrough role in Georgy Girl. She hops aboard
Auster's houseboat in Brooklyn to chew the fat about getting old. The subject
of taboo is put to bed with the artist Juergen Teller, who shot her (and
himself) naked for a 2004 fashion campaign. Cue footage of her two films with
Bogarde: Visconti's The Damned, in which she played a young wife sent to a Nazi
concentration camp; and Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter, featuring Rampling
as a former camp inmate in a sadomasochistic relationship with her ex-guard.
The film ends with the theme of love, a conversation with French
writer-director Joy Fleury and Fleury's daughter, spliced with footage from
Max, Mon Amour, starring Rampling as a diplomat's wife besotted with a chimp.
The Look is an unsettling film, even at its cosiest.
Evidently, Rampling wants to make some kind of personal statement after years
of submitting to the vision of others, but it is also incredibly exposing. So
this is what makes her tick, these are her friends, her family, her
confidantes, her concerns. And this is the look, the side of herself, that
Rampling thinks the most flattering – or at least the one she wants to share
with the world. Did she have any doubts about making it quite so intimate?
"I needed those types of people," she says.
"Otherwise it would have been false. At one stage, it was suggested one of
them might be a well-known actress, and I thought, 'I don't think it would
really work.' I know a lot of actresses, but I don't have that kind of
relationship with them." Why not? "Perhaps there's a competitivity,
something animal there."
In Cannes, the film has been warmly received. Is she
expecting a British audience to be tougher? There is a pause. "Possibly
England might not like it. Although it's not French, they'd say it's
self-indulgent, chatting away about oneself. The British can be like that. They
can put barriers up on certain interesting pieces of cinema for that reason –
it's a pity."
'I'm not staying in this madhouse'
Rampling was born in Essex, the daughter of a colonel and a
painter. She still keeps a flat in London, but has been based abroad since the
late 60s, working in Italy, and then relocating to France with her second
husband, Jean-Michel Jarre, in 1976. They divorced some 20 years later; since
then she has been engaged to the Parisian tycoon Jean-Noël Tassez.
She says she is comfortable Channel-straddling: it means she
has stranger status wherever she is, an extra edge of mystery. In France, she
is known simply as La Legende; in Britain, she stands on the edgy end of
national treasure. (Some years ago, Barry Norman coined the verb "to
rample", which he defined as "an ability to reduce a man to
helplessness though a chilly sensuality".)
This duality also aids Rampling's inbuilt contrarianism.
"Ever since I was a small child I've had this feeling – it's in my nature,
and so it's not even pretentious – that if everyone's going one way I will go
the other, just by some kind of spirit of defiance. That's how I can keep myself
alive and interested and my emotions going. I could have been a superstar in
America – I was certainly taken out there. But I said, 'No way, Jose, I'm not
staying here in this madhouse.' So I left and I said, 'I'm gonna make arthouse
films now.' I'm gonna find directors that want me for deeper things than all
this crap. I knew I couldn't survive in Hollywood, actually. It would send me
really round the bend."
She speaks with the certainty of someone who is rarely
disagreed with, though what she says is essentially true: Woody Allen, for one,
adjusted the schedule of Stardust Memories to fit around Rampling's diary, so
that she could play his dream woman. The world has been her oyster; it's just
that she has sometimes opted not to shuck it.
In the past, Rampling has said that her choice of roles is
dictated not by a desire to entertain, nor by financial imperative, but as a
means of self-examination, a way of testing her own limits. (A breakdown in the
early 80s, following the birth of her second son, only amplified that impulse.)
She laughs when I ask if this is still what drives her – less gravelly now, a
touch more grandmotherly. "Yes, that's one of those grand statements I
make. I must explore desert ground and see what can grow. But there are limits.
I know in my heart what I would never do." What's that? "It's very
simple. I'm actually very straight. In all areas. Funnily enough. But my
straightness allows me to be incredibly daring in where I'm prepared to
go."
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