Hello my friends, :) I have difficulties understanding the words of characters in some places in the film Interlude, because they speak too quickly or because of their pronunciation, or because it put an emotion that changes the sound of words. Is it someone can write me these words at the following locations : In the end, Sally spoke on the phone and said something. I did not understand all the words. Before leaving finally Sally, Stephan said a few words that I did not understand. After making love, Sthephan says something to Sally. I do not understand the words, and then it asks forgiveness. Why she asks that to Stephan ? When Sally went to Stephan after to see Stephan's wife at the hairdresser, what she says to Sthephan. Her voice is distorted by her tears. I cannot understand. The journalist who introduced Sally to Stephan says something in a restaurant. What? He speaks too fast and not separately. I did not understand. Stephan offers a book by Sally in the hotel room. The book is "The poetry of John Donne." What is the title of the poem that she read or can you write me the words. What exactly is the title of the book can be found in bookstores, I did not find an exact title in french. There are other small places that I did not understand but less important than in these passages. If someone can write a litte abstract, it will be very nice. Thanks to those who help me. Friendly, Marie-Jeanne

Hello, Marie Jeanne - The poem's title is "On His Mistress." I would be included in any volume of John Donne's complete works. I have to laugh about you're not being able to understand the "publicity man" in the restaurant. His being in the film is funny all by itself. He is not a journalist, he is a fool, and supposed to be one. Did you ever hear of the British comedy series "Monty Python's Flying Circus?" It was something of a really new experience in comedy/satire and started just a year or two after this film was released. The man is John Cleese, in real life a qualified British barrister, he is also one of the cutting edge comedians of the late '60's and remains one today! He is supposed to be very silly and, in the tv control room when he is told by the director to "shut up!" it is really funny because he has been trying to get "Sally" to help him with subjects for satire. His character says this is the comedy of the future and the "public is crying out for it." He got the role in the film because he was a friend of Kevin Billington's, the film's director. Oskar liked him, and found him intelligent enough to converse with a bit. I knew Oskar remembered him from the film but I didn't know whether he liked him and felt enough at ease to talk to him. I went to a book about the comedians involved with the world famous "Python" group and what they had done before their hit comedy. John Cleese wrote that he found Oskar "very interesting and liked him a lot." This shows that Oskar had felt at ease with John so remembered him for that as well. What Cleese's character tells Sally in the restaurant is that the famous conductor is not really sick but has had an argument ("a real old ding-dong") with the orchestra management. After Sally has seen Antonia in the hairdresser's she finds she is now "real" to her and feels very guilty about hurting her and so cannot continue her relationship with Stephan. After their first lovemaking Sally says she doesn't want to see Stefan again because it will "end in a mess." Before that, Stefan, while doing something only Oskar would think to do, stroking Sally's ankle (he thought the ankles were the sexiest part of a woman... really!), he acknowledges that while he is "generally faithful" to his wife; when in foreign cities and lonely he will sometimes enjoy the company of a woman. He says "it is natural for a man to find women attractive." Not too smart a thing for him to say when he is leaving Sally to go home to his wife and children. Then Sally, crying, says she doesn't want to see him again. But, Stefan comes back, and, despite Sally's saying he'd "much better go", seduces her all over again. I don't blame you for having trouble understanding Sally since she spends so much time weeping it affects her speech. The call she makes at the end of the film is to her husband in what is now their flat.... crying again she wants to be sure he is there and will wait up for her. I will have to check on Oskar/Stefan's words when he is leaving at the very end of the film. When he leaves Sally after she has refused to marry him he says that "it is not over....". He may be saying, at the very end, that he is often traveling.... with Antonia (smart woman) in the present time. He drops the key he had to Sally's flat into her hand and kisses her hand as he does so. This is also a gesture Oskar often used in scenes like this. He loved women, but in a rather innocent kind of way. He also had the "old fashioned" comprehension of women, loving them but still holding them in respect. Not like today's celebrities!! Hope this helps some!

Many thanks Pamela ! :) I thought Sally told him she wanted to marry, have children and not only remain the mistress of a married man. I thought he was reluctant to leave his wife and, finally, he wanted to leave as he had requested, because he felt guilty after seeing his wife at the hairdresser then have encountered in a restaurant. It seemed logical when they are found in Sally. But I could not understand. I saw that John Cleese was a comic actor. It made me think of one that plays in "Bewitched" http://www.coucoucircus.org/series/generique.php?id=891 I did not know Monty Python. I did not watching television. I found this : :lol: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqhlQfXUk7w If I can summarize what I understood the film. And if you can correct my mistakes that I did not understand because it is a pity : I have realized that songs and it's possible then to make a misinterpretation. Ah ! I remember Sally's fish ! What is his name ? Sall : I see her as a girl full of life and very young. It will gradually lose the smile because it will be caught in a love story that will put to the difficulties : the man is married, he does not have the same relationship with her, that she has it with him. She is completely innocent and will become very serious, she will suffer and I think she will suffer much more than Stefan. It seems to me a man who takes this relationship as a conquest that will satisfy his need. But Stefan is a man who seeks love, without having found it before Sally. It seems to me. To speak of Oskar ... There is a passage that I particularly liked when Stefan comes home at night, drink a glass and then listen a disc. Then he opened the door and he leaves in the park. He stops and there, it swings on itself. This is one of his usual gestures. There is a photo where you can see on the edge of a sidewalk in the process of looking at his feet. He looks at his feet in general or he looks ahead in the distance. The hands in the pockets of his trousers. We see it also as a Ship of Folls before the rail before his heart attack. Nice and usual attitude among Oskar: he speaks, he smiles and leans hir head on the side. You see it in several films. Pamela, thank you for your help. It's really very nice. With all my affection, :) Marie-Jeanne

Sally's fish was called "Rover". That is a very ordinary name in England and over here for a dog. That is the little joke in that. I have the book that came out at the same time as the film and was very amused to find that there is not one animal even mentioned in that. Oskar has clearly asked that his name in the movie be the male version of his own mother's name; Stefanie Zelta. That much made it into the book. None of the music is the same, whether Oskar had anything to do with that I am not sure. However, in the book there is a part from Wagner's "Ring Cycle"; 'Seigfried's Idyll." That would have been deleted most harshly by Oskar. He once said he "hate(d) Wagner like the plague." He, of course, associated it with Hitlerism and nothing could change that. The music that was included in the film was (in order) the last movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (when Sally is arriving at the recording studio); Tchaikovsky's First Symphony, Third Movement to be exact before Sally gets her interview; then parts of that are used during the film, I had thought so and have since had confirmation from a person familiar with the film and the music; Mozart's Adagio for Flute, oboe etc. and 'Glass Armonica' this last piece rolls out of the scene when Stefan is showing Sally how tones can be played on water glasses, then, though I may be missing something, at Festival Hall, the modern concert hall where Sally calls his dressing room and gets Antonia instead, there is Dvorak's "Carnival Overture" and, later Brahms "Third Symphony". When Sally is watching Stefan in rehearsal at the round "Royal Albert Hall" he is rehearsing Albinoni's "Adagio for Organ and Strings." There was supposed to be something of Rachmaninov's but, since they pretty much deleted everything (except Sally's running back to Stefan in tears, having seen Antonia for the first time) from the music at Kenwood Lakeside, I don't think we get any of the Rachmaninov at all. The person Stefan sees in the restaurant that makes him hurry out and go elsewhere in a cab with Sally is not his wife it is her father. Her father has maintained (a really May/December!) relationship with the young woman who once was his secretary before he retired and moved from London to the country. Stefan doesn't want his father-in-law to see him with Sally. Later, his father-in-law talks privately to Stefan trying to excuse what he saw and include Stefan in this fellowship of "old/young" infidelity. Stefan feels he really is in love with Sally and wants to marry her. After their dinner with Antonia, they are up the rest of the night talking. Stefan asks Sally if "in (all the possible ends she imagined of their relationship) did she ever think that she would let him down?" She says she didn't but wants to be what he had and could look back on rather than something he "has" and might take for granted. Oskar, at the dinner party before everything comes out with Antonia, argues that even an "older" person can love deeply someone a bit younger. Antonia notices this. She loves him deeply and is the right wife for him, Sally has nothing much in common but the physical attraction, none of the cultural things that surround Stefan as a Maestro of international fame are things she is familar with. Just the fact of her constant weeping would be enough to drive one crazy. In the book I mentioned, it is made clear that once she and Stefan have begun their affair she stops going to work! This really would make her even duller!!! After a while his contact with Antonia through the children would have seemed the right relationship it always was. Sally, in the end, in turning Stefan's proposal down, shows, finally, her bit of wisdom. He still looks back at their time together with pleasure but even in the film we are shown he does care more deeply than he knows for Antonia. Do you remember the scene when they are in bed after he has been away? She says she has missed his presence and turns and embraces him. He cannot help but return her affection. It is a telling scene. Speaking of scenes. Have you noticed anything strange in the one single true love making session between Stefan and Sally (after the aborted 'tea')? Here's a hint..... it is something that suddenly Stefan is wearing which then disappears again by the scene's end. I admit that until I had a good color tv I did not notice it myself but it had to be really noticable on the movie screen. I have often thought that John Cleese's 'ami', the director needed to have his brain examined - mixing two love scenes like that is really strange. But, he asked Oskar to make love to "Sally" on a tiger skin rug, I suppose at the inn they visit. Oskar said, "Certainly not!!! But, there was another love scene which Mr. Billlington apparently thought he could merge into one with editing. I doesn't work. I will be interested to know if you have noticed what I mean!!!

Many thanks again, Pamela ! :) Is it in an interview or in a biography that we learn Oskar wanted to be called Stefan ? The director would have given many freedoms to Oskar for the interpretation of the role and he was right, he allowed Oskar put much of his personality. What is the title of the novel and what is its author ? I would like to read it. I found nothing on the book. Maybe the title has a different name in french. But if I know the author's name, I can find. Why Sally led Stefan in the apartment she had left ? Why she took the -*test*-('") to come back with Stefan where they have lived their love story ? I noticed something unusual in the film, and I watch several times, telling me that I did not understand or that there was a break in the film by the director. I said "This is not normal" They love, they are naked: shoulders bare. They were stripped. And in one fell swoop, Stefan is dressed with his black polo neck that we see in the hotel room when they are ready to go, to leave the hotel. But the love scene I am talking about is the scene that happens when they love the first time. And in the hotel, they are supposed to have already made several times. This is not normal, is an anachronism: they are naked and in one fell swoop, Stefan is dressed, then he is naked again. Is this is what you want to talk? There is also another mistake. The Sally's car is red, it's a Mini. When they go to the hotel, they arrive in a street, far from home. The Mini is parked there ! Ah yes. I have not understood who is the man that Antonia will see and we see the beginning of the movie and gives piano lessons to a baby girl. And what Stefan say him in down the stairs. Stefan does not agree. Why Antonia will see this man? In truth, I did anot understood many things. The actors speak too fast. Aps I have time to decompose. And in the garden, a veranda, where they will sit at a table in white iron. Sally is nervous, Stefan also. What would they say exactly? That tells the young woman brown Sally when she is at Sally? The phone rings, she landed too late, and then Stefan ring at the door. I have reviewed a portion of the film, and thanks to you Pamela, I began to understand history. If you can help me to better understand the dialogues, this is wonderful. :) With all my affection, Pamela :) Marie-Jeanne

The man you are referring to is named Lawrence in the film. He is supposedly a composer and also a teacher of music. He also chases young girls as you must have understood from his behavior. He even tries to interest Antonia, who is impervious to his many mini skirted flirtations and rather revolted at his attempt to "put a move on" her when she goes to see him. She is wanting him to tell her about Stefan's suspected affair and he says he would not. You see, Stefan has come to see him and asked him to "cover" for him if Antonia or anyone else asks probing questions. The only place where I remember Sally and Stefan sitting in iron chairs appears to be a part of Kew Gardens (?) in London. Sally is wishing to see more of Stefan and Stefan is explaining how his life is so arranged for years in advance. But, he will try his best to be able to see her when he can. This is what you get if you are silly enough to stop working during a relationship. Antonia, you see, does understand that you marry a man like Stefan, you better realize you are also marrying his work, his music, his career. It is much the same for women who marry doctors or clergymen and others who have to spend much time where their careers take them. Hope this helps, The "man", Lawrence, is played by Donald Sutherland and is the first film we, over here, saw him in. Cosie and I send our love. Pam..... let me know if there are any other questions!

Hello Pamela, :) You forgot to give me an answer on what seemed to me a few errors in the films. It seemed that you also had to notice. What do you think about that things in the film ? It was the same ? There are other things I would ask about the film. I need to look again and I tell you then. Many thanks Pamela, you are very nice. With all my affection and a kiss to Cosie :) Marie-Jeanne

Hi, Marie Jeanne - I sent you a private message which you should have received notice of the same way we get notices of all the Forum replies. I am a little aquainted with Felix Werner and also with the writer who is now working on what will be the newest book on Oskar. I know the writer does check the Forum, but, I am unsure about Felix. I just like to keep some things a bit more private sometimes. I notice that a message is still on the 'net that indicates the Forum is in "maintenance mode." This may have affected things at your end in receiving a private message. Feel free to send me a direct email with any questions.... I will answer.... I promise! There may be a lot of questions and that is only to be expected since you are watching it in English, and for the first few time(s?) maybe more by now?? I will say, and this is true of all of Oskar's work that we are priviledged to see or hear, the more often you watch and listen the more you see and understand. Even after all these years I find I notice things I never did before even after seeing a film dozens of times over the years. So feel free to just email me and we'll take care of any more questions you have! Cosie and I send our love! Pamela

Hi!
I'm going to jump in here...Is this biography of Oskar in English? Rsason I am asking? I had wanted to write the first biography in English. I am an author...you can find me on Amazon...However, I needed to know more about Oskar to do that...and no one to this point has been able to furnish me with what I wanted...I needed to know a way to get in touch with Felix...to see about rights to photos, etc...but was unable to find out... So...if this biography is NOT in English...let me know, Pamela. Since you know so much about him and are in touch with Felix, perhaps you could assist me in this? If it is in English...then guess I won't be the first one...Oh well...that's life. I have a number of novels and anthologies on Amazon and other stores... Sandra E. Waldron is my professional name. Any suggestions here would be appreciated... Thanks in advance for your help.

OK Pamela. :) I go to see and write to you. Not today but more late, maybe tomorrow. :) It's for late in France. It's funny: there is here a nice writer who gives way to show that it's a writer, and there is here another writer, I am that writer also professionnal with a great editor for his books), that hides its name ( real name of author as a civil status) More at ease without saying my name :lol: But for me, it's simply to discover what I know of Oskar. Because I love Oskar. But I am not alone to love Oskar ! :D There is a Charles Trennet's song where words are : "The sun has face to face with the moon. The sun is there, but the moon not seen it." It's funny here also, it's in the same idea. To be here altogether but like the sun or the moon are altogether. :D I have a particularity: I am like Oskar, I say what I think. :idea: This is normal, we almost the same date of birth: same character. Here also, it’s funny. But excuse-me... To say what we think does not always like the others. It was the same for Oskar who said what he thought. :) And it's tue, because all my life is like with that words also : "Unser Charakter ist unser Schicksal". I think that also. :wink: Friendly, Marie-Jeanne

Hi! Again...
Marie-Jeanne, I take it then that the biography is NOT in English? I think it's great that anyone wants to write a book about Oskar. I just wanted to be the first one to write his biography in English...but if I'm not...that's okay. I wish you the best, though, in your endeavors...and I'm pretty good at saying what i think, too! My professional name IS my name. I do not use a pen name...

Sandra, :) If one day I write a biography of Oskar, it will be in french. Just an act of love for those who do not understand German, and who do not understand English. I shall not talk about his life, but only his art on stage. I wish you a good chance for biography in English. To write a biography: no errors are allowed. But be quick, because you are not alone in having had the idea, certainly. For now, I learn how was Oskar. :) We share the same art: writing. And there is no rivalry, but rather it is a common strength. :) Friendly, :) Marie-Jeanne

Again...hello...
Marie-Jeanne, Yes... We do share something in common...much I would say. Our love for Oskar Werner and our love for writing. I do not know any French...but I have been studying German for about two years...But...there is no one close to me here in USA that understands or speaks German. Nici has been most helpful in times of need in that department...Which I more than apprecaite... I applaude you in writing a book about Oskar...but sadly...I will not be able to read it...I know some Spanish, too...I have some Spanish relatives...but I doubt if I'll try to learn a fourth language...I want to master the two I'm working on ... I wish you the best. Sandra

Sandra, When someone wants to read documents that are only in German, he is forced to learn German in passing a lot of time in dictionaries. :) It's a pity that someone could not read authors because there is no correct translation to understand the subtleties of language and subtleties of these authors. Friendly, Marie-Jeanne

Question...
Marie-Jeanne and Pamela, Did Oskar also hate Chopin and Schubert? I am learning German...but sometimes misunderstand...So...he hated Wager...and I understand why...but what about Chopin and Schubert? Thanks in advance...