Plus ça change: Perfume and Morality in Le Corbeau (1943), directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot

It is rare to happen upon a great movie among recent releases. Long before the decline of the movie theater, I adopted a strategy to protect myself from the flood of mediocrity pouring out of the Hollywood faucet. I simply stopped watching first-run movies. I still enjoyed going to the cinema, but I'd stick to revival houses or places like the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where I've been known to watch the entire French Film Festival. (It is held every summer over a two- or three-week period.) For most of my film viewing, I have depended on rentals: DVDs, and before that video tapes. This strategy is much less safe today, as many DVDs are now released within weeks of live screenings, so lots of "stuff" not worth watching is always mixed in with the greats when I peruse the shelves at the Cambridge Public Library, which has supplanted Netflix as my primary source of films.

I've noticed of late that there seems to be a trend going on in movie-making similar to the one I've witnessed in publishing. Movie makers and authors appear to be landing contracts before producing works, and then when deadline time rolls around, they sometimes have to hustle to get the thing done. In movies, there seems to be a further factor involved. A number of productions starring big names start out pretty decently, but then seem to end prematurely, as in twenty or thirty minutes before the standard Hollywood mark of two hours. It's not that the works are finished--they are not. Instead, they are hurriedly wrapped up, it seems, with a makeshift dénouement thrown together to get the job done sufficiently to satisfy the terms of the contract. 

My hunch is that in the case of inadequately incubated films the moviemaking team (and these days they are huge, by the way) has exceeded their budget, and the big names in question probably have better things to do, other commitments, even if the producers were able to pull together the extra cash needed to keep them around. I've read many books in the twenty-first century with similarly weak endings, relative to the quality of the opening pages and chapters. It's as though the author has simply run out of steam but is obligated to sign off on the thing by a certain date and so rushes to finish it up. Many books published today also appear not to have been edited. 

Needless to say, I find these trends regrettable, though fully comprehensible in this highly capitalized world. Nearly everyone seems to be more interested in the outer packaging and hype than in the content and form. Similar dynamics appear to be affecting the perfume industry as well. The sheer number of new launches each year virtually guarantees that many of these fragrances have been rush jobs. What else could they be, with flankers running rampant? Anyone who does not believe that most flankers are trivial probably has not given enough of them a sniff.  Not that I think that it's olfactorily worthwhile for anyone to do so.

I imagine that serious perfumers working for the conglomerates may be a bit jaded by now, given the tough budgets, low-grade materials, and IFRA restrictions all conspiring to impose severe constraints on their creative output and ultimately reining in their heartfelt desire to produce something great. Some among them may think of themselves more as hacks than as persons in a position to realize their olfactory dreams through the launch of a masterpiece. Not going to happen, if the creator has to come up with a "new" scent by cobbling together a bunch of inferior "stuff" determined by marketers to be in demand among Jill Q. and Joe. Q Consumer.

I've been thinking about old films and old perfumes and old books recently--and also old tea (pu-erh), but I'll save those thoughts for another day. Unlike vintage lovers, who worship most any perfume launched pre-Y2K, I do not believe that something old is automatically better than anything new. It's just not true. There were plenty of mediocre books published in centuries past about which we know nothing because they have been essentially forgotten. Some of them were bestsellers back in the day, but they have not stood the test of time. The problem for perfume, of course, is that it degrades and fades away, so we can never really know what it was like when it was launched. All we have are surviving bottles, and all we can do is hope that they reflect in some way the intended scent of their creator. 

I do believe, however, that the percentage of excellent perfumes in the twentieth century was much greater than today. That is not because I prostrate myself before all things said to be vintage. No, not at all. It's a recognition of the fact that many more perfumes are being produced much more quickly and using much less natural material than ever before in the history of perfumery. A big part of this trend has to do with who runs the show. The head honcho at Procter & Gamble gets the last word on the scent of shampoo and deodorant and also perfume. 

Aren't they all really just variations on a theme? A toiletry is a toiletry by any other name.

A toiletry by any other name would smell as clean.

That's the sort of wisdom I imagine bubbling up in the mind of the CEO of a megaconglomerate such as P&G. Everything they produce, at the end of the day, is a source of profit, no more and no less. The key to maximizing profit in the perfume arena appears to involve, the savviest of marketing strategists have figured out, persuading people to believe that they really prefer to smell clean and abstract, not complicated like real flowers and other natural substances, but streamlined and simple. The perfume equivalent to SSRI happiness. Don't worry, be happy. And if you begin to entertain ever so faintly the idea that there might be something awry somewhere in the universe, something which you might set out to do something about, our culture tutors you to Shut it out, which is remarkably easy to do these days. Take a chill pill. Literally.

What about old movies? Are old movies automatically better than new movies? Well, not automatically, but they have stood the test of time. If people are still watching them seventy years after they were produced, then there is probably a good reason for that. 

With that rather circumlocutory introduction, I would like without further ado to commend to your attention a film which I only just discovered, though it was produced way back in 1943:

Le Corbeau [The Raven] 

directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot

The first clue that this film is worth watching--aside from sherapop's enthusiastic recommendation--is the fact that Le Corbeau was reviled by the Nazis, the Partisans, and the Catholic Church! This film is so modern, and so intelligent, and so well-paced, and so complete and fully incubated that it would bear your sustained attention even if it were not also beautiful. This work is not, as you may surmise, a movie version of the classic narrative poem by Edgar Allan Poe, many of whose texts, for your information (in case you didn't know) were translated into French by the equally great Charles Baudelaire. 

Instead, Le Corbeau offers a rather La Rochefoucauldian (or is it Maupassantian???)  morality tale using a long concatenation of multivalent metaphors. The setting is St. Robin, "any village", and the residents present the complete range of human qualities: the good, the bad, and above all, the ugly.

The main character is the dashing Dr. Germain, after whom every single woman--and some married as well!--lusts. You know the drill: a handsome doctor who happens also to be an eligible bachelor! Sound familiar? Plus ça change. 

Salon de Parfum readers may by now be growing restless. Has sherapop lost her marbles? Isn't this supposed to be a perfume blog? 

Calmez-vous, mes chers amis. Indeed, I have brought this film to your attention not only because it is a masterful representative of several genres of cinema simultaneously, but because it further features the following scene in which perfume is touched upon in an incredibly modern way--remarkably relevant to what we are seeing in contemporary society today.

Dr. Germain has been summoned to examine Denise, a young woman with a decidedly femme fatale demeanor and a snarl that could give Sid Vicious a run for his money. Denise is bedridden, where she is painting her toenails and smoking, for want of anything better to do:

Upon hearing the doctor knock at her door, Denise immediately buries herself under the bed covers, though it is clear that her wet polish must be smearing the sheets.

She extinguishes her cigarette in an ashtray located conveniently next to an open bottle of champagne. She then begins to cough and deploys her most feeble-sounding voice to instruct the doctor to enter her chambers.

Before commencing the examination, Dr. Germain rushes to shut the windows, as the sound of the children yelling in the courtyard is grating on his nerves.  He then pauses for a moment, sniffs the air, and asks Denise whether she is wearing perfume.

Denise replies, "You don't like it?" To which the doctor curtly retorts that he should have left the windows open. 

Why is this exchange so interesting? First of all, because the scent which displeases Dr. Germain is in all likelihood a commingling of smoke from Denise's recently extinguished cigarette and the fumes of her wet nail polish. Perhaps she is also wearing Chanel no 5 (apparently all the rage at that time), but surely those two strong non-perfume odors would still be hanging in the air and dominate the space. 

Dr. Germain, in other words, is a member of the perfume police, who bristles at the slightest detection of any scent which he can denounce as foreign and unnatural. He simply assumes that the odor in question is perfume, for he is opposed to the very idea of perfume, whether beautiful or ugly.

For Dr. Germain, perfume is a part of Denise's slutty lifestyle. Her reputation precedes her, and the good doctor soon discovers that she has no illness whatsoever. This house call was only a pretext for a physical examination! While putting his stethoscope away in preparation to depart, Dr. Germain brusquely informs the young woman that she has no need of a doctor--at least not one like him, the snide insinuation of course being that she needs to see a shrink.

Rather than spoil this fabulous work for you, let me simply assuage any concerns you may be having about what is going to transpire between these two comely characters. A bit later, Denise has a second chance with Dr. Germain, and this time, she takes a slightly different tack.

In the end, the much larger mystery, of who is sending the townspeople letters filled with the juicy details of all their viciousness, is solved. But to find out the rest of the story, you'll have to watch the film!

"Parce que c'est aussi bête que ça: 
Je t'aime."

Perfume Destiny

My journey through perfume, a universe unto itself, began rather late in life: as a freshman in college, I had taken to wearing a heavily rose-laden scent received from someone (whose name I forget or repress) as a gift, to which my boyfriend at the time swiftly retaliated with a 3.4 ounce bottle of Oscar de la Renta eau de toilette. He nearly begged me to abandon the octogenarian rose water (its name, A Rose is a Rose, exemplified truth in advertising) for his offering, a far more sophisticated and olfactorily complex scent. I immediately grasped the superior quality of Oscar, though I was entirely ignorant as to the how and the why. Little did I know that Oscar’s own rose and tuberose components were deeply ensconced in a layer of jasmine, ylang-ylang, and broom; and fixed from below with a sweet spiciness comprising patchouli, lavender, opopanax, cloves, vetiver, castoreum, myrrh, and sandalwood. I did not even know the general category under which this perfume was subsumed: floral oriental. I only knew that it smelled good.

By the bottom of the first bottle, I was already addicted. Oscar had become my scent, and everyone knew, above all my family, who literally showered me with eau de toilette, eau de parfum, and sundry bath products for years to come. Oscar was so much my signature, that when I smelled it on others, I thought of myself. I was hypnotized by Oscar to the point where other widely worn fragrances at the time—the loud fruity-fresh floral Lauren comes immediately to mind—elicited from me an immediate attitude of disdain toward the wearer. Only a sorority girl would sport such a scent, while I, a GDI, had transcended the ranks of la foule. Today, with the benefit of hindsight, I recognize that my total devotion to Oscar was not so different from the Christianity of those who happen to have been born in Christian, as opposed to Muslim nations.

Like the middle ages, my Oscar period was devoid of the type of critical analysis that might lead one to apostasy. No, none of the details mattered to me. Why Oscar smelled so delectable, and inspired a smile each time I lifted the collar of my shirt to take a sniff, was as irrelevant in my view as the rules of tonal counterpoint to the synoptic perfection of the music of J. S. Bach. Dissecting Oscar into its tripartite components held no interest for me—-my love of the scent had as much to do with the precise identity of the top notes (orange flower, basil, cilantro, and cascarilla), as the key (E major) in which Beethoven happened to have composed the divine Opus 109. Looking back, such a comparison seems particularly apt, for the perfumes of Oscar de la Renta have proven, as a group, to be as uneven to my nose as is the oeuvre of the great creator of Opus 109 to my mind. But, at the time, I was living in Oscar’s heaven on earth, and no one, it seemed, was capable of shaking my faith.

That I came at last to abandon Oscar, like my fortuitous introduction to the perfume, was the result of a man. This time, my new beau harbored a deep-seated rancor toward not a particular scent, whether grandmotherly or cloyingly sweet, but any scent at all that did not emanate naturally from my own cells. There was no use putting up resistance, I could no longer wear Oscar—-or any perfume-—during this relationship, which somehow lasted a few years. Eventually we parted ways, which clearly demonstrates a fundamental metaphysical truth. While some would say that the rupture had more to do with our divergent views on the importance of building a family, on whether it would be appropriate for an agnostic to convert to Judaism, or whether a woman should trade her name for that of her husband, I, on the contrary, attribute the end of the relationship to our differences regarding a far more weighty matter: perfume.

Like a child with a large bag in a candy store with no clerk or surveillance camera, I made the most of my liberation from the olfactory ascetic formerly known as my fiancé. It would be difficult to re-create or trace the precise trajectory of what transpired, given the panoply of perfumes I now face, the dozens of geometrically unique bottles that grace my boudoir, stored in what from the outside might appear to be a clothing armoire. In a deep, dark corner, hidden in the very back, is a bottle of Oscar, which I have not worn in years, but whose sight still induces a deep feeling of reverence and gratitude for the role that it played in my awakening. No, I no longer wear it—-and it took years to call a halt to the barrage of Oscar bottles with which I was bombarded by my family on the slightest pretext, in their persistent belief that I was still enamored of the scent and that theirs were benevolent interventions. (At one point, I gathered up the unopened gifts and returned them to a department store, offering what must have been a plausible explanation for why I needed to trade them for some other, indeed, any other perfumes.) Today I find Oscar syrupy sweet and viscous, though the mere thought of the scent, etched indelibly in the incredibly resilient receptors in some wondrous part of my brain, still reminds me of the person I once was.

I do not discount sweet viscous perfumes altogether, and indeed am quite fond of some which I believe on some level that I should not like: Amarige, by Givenchy; Mahora, by Guerlain; Il Bacio, by Borghese; Casmir, by Chôpard, and Trésor, by Lancôme, number among the perfumes that I want not to like, generally prefer not to wear, and yet find luscious all the same. This is perhaps easiest to explain in the case of Trésor, with its heady floral top notes of lilac, lily of the valley, and rose; its supporting middle notes of iris and heliotrope; and its solid foundation of sandalwood, musk, amber, vanilla, apricot, and peach. Of the sweet viscous perfumes, only Trésor has enjoyed such enormous popular success that I actually detect it wafting by me on a fairly regular basis, happy for the women whose signature scent it has become—-and that I know why. These are perfumes which, in all of their sweetness, transport me back to my Oscar days, the days of benighted bliss before I discovered the perfection embodied in the floral aldehyde.

The journey was not direct, however, and I tried ever so diligently to become the woman who could and would, indeed should, wear L’heure bleue or Shalimar. These are two of Guerlain’s great solo stars, accompanied of course by an admirable chorus that includes Mitsouko, Nahéma, Jicky, and more. The Guerlain creation of which I have emptied the most bottles is Samsara, a relatively new (1989) fragrance (for this venerable old perfumery to royal Europe), whose vanilla base moves it dangerously close to the sweet viscous category, but which is saved by the purity of its top tier (jasmine); the floral simplicity of its middle notes (jasmine, rose, narcissus, violet, orris-—obtained from the roots of the iris); and its foundational complements of sandalwood, tonka, and iris (encore). Samsara is an eminently wearable perfume, to which I return again and again, seeking reprieve from my problematic relationships with L’heure bleue and Shalimar, which I want so ardently to wear, deeply believe deserve to be worn, but tend to reserve for weekends home alone, where their intoxicating seriousness will be shocking to no one but me.

Not all perfumes “serious” in this sense are made by Guerlain, of course. Eau du Soir, by Sisley; Madame Rochas, by Rochas; and Cabochard, by Grès; in addition to Guerlain’s Mitsouko number among those which I admire and occasionally wear, but regard as strictly wintry evening affairs. (Ah, but winters are long and winter days short where I happen to live…) At the other end of the spectrum lies a seeming infinity of “blue” perfumes—inspired by oceans or waterfalls, it seems, and characterized by their weak and insubstantial, flimsy-—literally watery—-nature. The list goes on and on, so there’s no real point in attempting to name them all here. I will say that they often are tinged blue, come in blue bottles, and/or have the word blue or water in their name (for ready identification?), and I infer from the fact that they continue to be produced for mass consumption, that hordes of women prefer scents that do not linger and have very little, if anything, to say. I do not claim that the blues are evil elixirs, but rather that they are not elixirs at all. These are insipid liquids, and, while of a generally innocuous and in some cases even likeable nature, they do not merit the accolade contained within the name perfume. These are fragrances, pure and simple, nothing more and nothing less. (Blue scents are sometimes classified as hesperidic, which is to say, fruity, which is only partly misleading, since fruits contain a very high percentage of water indeed—perhaps even more than human beings.)

As for my own experience with mass-marketed scents, the ones featured in advertisements with tear out “testers” in fashion magazines, I think it’s fair to say that I’ve been around the block. I never actually buy bottles of perfume on the basis of the magazine “testers”, not so much because I doubt the capacity of paper to convey its essence-—I always rip open the testers and sniff them out of curiosity, and I may have definitively vetoed some on this basis—-but, rather, because the sorts of scents advertised in magazines are reaching out to a broad swath of consumers who cluster around the midpoint of the bellcurve representing all of the people who appreciate and purchase perfume, and my tastes obviously diverge rather radically from theirs. Scents that scream out “grapefruit” or “baby powder,” for example, are simply not for me. Indeed, I often prefer the men’s versions of the perfumes advertised in magazines. And, no, I have no qualms whatsoever about wearing a great men’s scent, Guerlain’s Vetiver, to name but one.

In thinking about people whose concepts of perfume are determined by extremely vague and inchoate ideas, traces from a more or less incoherent pastiche of cultural influences, I reach naturally for one of my own: the woman in Scorsese’s film Goodfellas (1990), who upon sniffing the bottle of perfume in her friend Janice’s bedroom (Janice is the concubine of the character played by Ray Liotta), nods approvingly and remarks, “French.” I am equally tickled by allusions to perfume when they reveal the identifier’s familiarity with a scent that truly deserves to be remembered and worn in order to be remembered again. Take Al Pacino’s reference to Fleurs de Rocaille, in Scent of a Woman (1992). I admire people in real life who are capable of identifying scents, even if it is only because their significant other has adopted it as her own. I recall with great fondness the day in Home Depot (I was buying new light switch plates for my apartment) when the man in front of me at the check-out line turned around and smiled knowingly as he whispered, “Eternity.”

While they are not my favorites, I will say that Calvin Klein’s works are distinctive creations, which cannot be confused with the run-of-the-mill, dime-a-dozen, throw-away fragrances whose names evaporate from one’s memory as quickly as their scent from the skin. There is a great virtue to memorable perfumes, those which manage to carve out their own unique niche in the infinitely amorphous olfactory Ur-sphere. I am confident that some among them have endured not for the diligence of their marketers, but for the throngs of fans who have formed with them sacred trysts, to love and cherish ‘til death or divorce do they part.

In reflecting upon truly original scents, which cannot be mistaken for anything but precisely what they are, my mind gravitates naturally toward Chanel’s Allure. This linear perfume-—which flouts the reigning tripartite regime with a veritable burst of citrus, mandarin, jasmine, magnolia, honeysuckle, waterlily, vetiver, and vanilla—-is a recent revelation (1996) which I find compelling, though I wish that I did not. Stated starkly: I want not to love a perfume which has been and continues to be marketed into my brain. Still, Chanel’s Allure has a similar effect upon me to that of Peet’s French roast coffee: I keep going back for more. I suspect that the people at Peet’s accomplish their aim with the aid of beakers of white crystalline caffeine sitting in the backroom and ready to shovel into each freshly brewed vat. (Or is it simply that they use robusta in their mix?) As for Allure, I suppose that, beyond its admirable consistency—-as a linear creation, it can be counted upon always and everywhere to deliver the same-—there’s not much to say: Against empty eau de parfum bottles, there can be no defense. Still, the deepest loves are fickle and unpredictable. The objects of such passion are all the more endearing for their defiance of any reasonable expectation. For comfort and stability, Allure will always be there. For profundity and richness that wax and wane in undulating waves, you’re better off with Lanvin Arpège.

Although I naturally believe myself to have arrived at the family of floral aldehydes through a veridical path leading directly to the ineffable olfactory Truth, in my more pensive moments, I recognize that I have been seduced anew by a range of scents united by what is perhaps most accurately characterized as the sharp scent of soap. Stripping all differences away, this is my reading of the most salient element in Calèche, by Hermès; Arpège, by Lanvin; First, by Van Cleef & Arpels; and, of course, Chanel No. 5. But now a small confession: because of its unfortunate pop-culture associations with Marilyn Monroe and Zsa-Zsa Gabor—-among many others—-I do not in fact wear Chanel No. 5. This is obviously as a good a reason as it would be to avoid Beethoven’s Ninth because of Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. But there it is, in the arbitrary constellation of associations that constitutes my mind: Green Acres and Chanel No. 5. (A subliminally mortal fear of becoming an Almodóvar protagonist may also drive me away.)

Thanks to the internet, even a woman trapped on a farm can today buy her favorite scents from around the globe. Thanks to modern aviation, it is even possible to travel swiftly to faraway lands, to visit the blessed artists who continue to create ever anew what has become the universe of perfume, a world sadly enjoyed, or even known to exist, by all too few. How many people know that amber is short for ambergris, which in times past was derived from concretions formed in the intestines of sperm whales, but today is primarily produced synthetically? How many have any idea that eau de parfum contains from 15% to 18% of perfume oil, while what is labeled “perfume” contains between 15% and 30%? Perhaps these facts seem as irrelevant to most people as the provenance of civet (a butter-like secretion taken from a pouch under the tail of the civet cat, found in Ethiopia, Burma, and Thailand), castoreum (a creamy, reddish-brown secretion taken from sacs on the beaver), or musk (grains or seeds from a walnut-sized pod removed harmlessly(?) from the male musk deer of the Himalayas) once seemed to me. But times have changed. No longer do I labor under the false belief that the primary, indeed the only, use for bergamot (a citrus which no one dares to eat) is to flavor Earl Gray tea. Today I number among the few who recognize and appreciate bergamot’s true raison d’être: as an essential component in 33% of perfumes.

My ever-deepening love has led me on new adventures in my insatiable quest to learn more and more about the object of my fascination, including a visit to Grasse, France, where I met with real live perfumers, who mix and bottle in-house and sell their creations in small quantities to strange people like me whose lives and armoires have become filled with perfume. I visited the house of Galimard, where I sat at a perfumist’s “organ” stocked with hundreds of glistening glass vials of pure extraits, which I, guided by a professional, combined through a series of stages into my own perfume: Samanthe.

While in Grasse, I also participated in the Concours du Nez, an annual contest to choose the best “nose” for perfume. The competition was more than challenging; it was demoralizing. Could I discern something as subtle as coriander when mixed in with several other elements? In a word: No. I found that identifying a single note in a complex mixture was as difficult for my nose as would be hearing a single voice in a fugue for someone who had never played the piano. Humbled, I returned home, happy in my knowledge of my ignorance, and sure, if of nothing else, that I know what I like. Samanthe now shares the armoire with the stars, and I do own that I derived no small consolation from my discovery, sometime after having returned home, that my creation bears a striking similarity to Bvlgari’s Bvlgari pour Femme, which, no, I had never tried before.

Only time will tell how long this floral aldehyde/soap penchant will last, though today it is hard to imagine how anything might shake my faith. But I felt that way for years about Oscar, now firmly woven into the fabric of my past. Will another fortuitous encounter determine a new and profounder object of my affection? These mysteries confound the shrewdest scientist, defy the keenest powers of deduction. Still, one thing is clear: any person who wishes to determine what perfume path I’ll next take will have to begin in my boudoir, replete with beautiful bottles of secret scents, the experience of which gave rise to the traces of base notes that cling to this page.


Connections

The world is a temple where slender spirits
Emit streams of ambiguous signals.
Man there traverses thickets of symbols,
Finding himself, without seeing that he does.

Just as myriad distant echoes merge
To form a single sound, indivisible
As blinding sunlight or the dark of night,
The revelations of the senses become one.

There are simple scents, soft as a baby's bottom,
Verdant as a lush meadow, sonorous as an oboe.
Others are complex, deep intoxicants,

Harboring within them
Amber, chypre, fougère,
The songs of awakened souls. 


(sherapop’s translation of Correspondances by Charles Baudelaire,
from Les Fleurs du Mal)editorial note: the above essay was written in January 2007...