A SEASON IN HELL

Italy, 1970, 130 minutes, Colour.
Terence Stamp, Jean- Claude Brialy, Florinda Balkan.
Directed by Nelo Risi.

A Season In Hell takes its title from a prose poem by French poet Arthur Rimbaud. It shows something of Rimbaud's poetic intensity, his background and his opting out of life in Europe and moving to Africa where he spent the last decade of his comparatively short life. Whether the film will please Rimbaud devotees and students is one matter. It is, on the other hand, a tantalising and offbeat portrait of a poet.

The film is an Italian production. It has interesting recreations of 19th. century France, but, more especially, of 19th century Ethiopia. Some of the location photography is quite spectacular. An international cast brings the film to life - Terence Stamp in another of his intense, not quite of this world, characterisations as the young poet as well as the cynical recluse in Africa. Jean-Claude? Brialy is the poet Paul Verlaine. Florinda Balkan is the Ethiopian Gennet.

The film tries to show something of Rimbaud's background, his rebellion against his society, his ambitions to be a poet, his bohemian lifestyle, the homosexual relationship with Verlaine, his opting out of Europe and becoming involved in gunrunning and other mercenary deals in Africa. Leonardo di Caprio and David Thewliss were Rimbaud and Verlaine in Agnieszka Holland's Total Eclipse.

(An interesting American film, Eddie and the Cruisers, showed a fictitious portrait of Jim Morrison and his music career, his alleged death and the parallel with Rimbaud's young intensity and creativity and his disappearance fromthe cultural scene.)

1. A portrait of Arthur Rimbaud? The 19th. century, a poet from France, his being shaped by his environment, reacting against it? Character study? The title and its focus on Rimbaud's experience, his work?

2. An Italian production: Ethiopian and European locations, the contrast? Visual beauty? The international star cast? Maurice Jarre's score? A cinematic interpretation of Rimbaud?

3. The structure of the film: the credits and the use of letters and symbols, Rimbaud's poetry and images, mood? The background of the Ethiopian military situation, the waging of wars? The introduction to Rimbaud and the arms deals? The gradual intercutting of the past? Were the scenes of the past flashbacks, memories or mere intercutting of past times? The placement of these inserts? The relationship between past and present? The past illuminating the present? Vice versa?

4. Audience knowledge of and appreciation of French 19th. century poetry? Verlaine and Rimbaud? French society? Revolution? The creativity of poets? Their eccentricity? Relationships?

5. Rimbaud as young and visionary, a rebel, his opting out of European society, the development of his cruel streak? The reasons for his exit, his living in Africa. his theories of art and poetry, of revolution yet his being involved in mercenary deals, arms sales, coffee exports? His becoming an exploiter? His hold on life, his last journey and the desperate clinging to existence? A man of enigma and contradictions?

6. Rimbaud as a young man: the prizes that he won, his scholarship, vision, enthusiasm, writing of poetry, his mother not listening to him, his reaction? His friends at home? The decision to go to Paris, his hopes? meeting the revolutionaries? The homosexual abuse and its repercussions? His passivity? His acceptance of this situation? His going to meet Verlaine, his admiration and idealising of him? His staying in the household, Verlaine's wife reacting to him as a scruffy vagabond? His being enamoured of Verlaine? His taking him away from his wife? Their work together, Verlaine's visits to the church and Rimbaud's taunts? Going to England? The writing of poetry? Lodgings, poverty, food? Clashes? The buying of the top hat and Rimbaud's wearing it - sitting nude on the chair with his hat, in bed with the hat? The stealing of the books from the British museum, the herring sequence, the melodrama of Verlaine's shooting him? The prison scenes, testimony in court, Rimbaud's admiration for Verlaine? Seeking him out, bringing him the book of A Season in Hell? The decision to leave Europe? The credibility of his life?

7. Ethiopia and the wars and their military spectacle? Menelik and his political situation, his cousin and his deputy, the battles, the peace? Arms deals? 19th century
Ethiopia? The influence of Europe?

8. Rimbaud and his being on the ship, the arms deals, the deaths, the violence in the African cities, the difficulties of travel, the plea for the selling of the arms, the audience with Menelik? Diplomacy? The camera and his photographing Gennet in the water? Attraction, the sexual relationship, love? The compatibility with his homosexual attitudes? His settling in Africa, with Gennet? His reaction against her relations? The coffee deals? His leg injury? The doctors, his reaction against the Ethiopian doctors? His growing desperate, the long journey, the bearers, offering them money, his surviving? The information given about his return to Marseilles and his death? What kind of a life?

9. The portrait of Verlaine, his poetic reputation, marriage, relationship with his wife, drinking, his being besotted with Rimbaud, leaving his wife, his suffering in the relationship, his religious background, the visits to the church, his conscience, his image of a stern God punishing him? The firing of the gun? The court sequence and his denunciation by his relations, support from Rimbaud? The experience of prison - and its effect on his writing, his religious awareness?

10. The sketch of Verlaine's wife, the relationship, her disgust with Rimbaud, her animosity towards Verlaine, her family not understanding him?

11. Gennet and her place in the Ethiopian society, her relationship with Menelik, with Rimbaud, the sensual and sexual relationship, her becoming domesticated, her care for Rimbaud and his health, his leg? The farewell?

12. The portrait of the Ethiopians: officials, Gennet's relations, the children?

13. The visual impact of the film - and its poetic evocations?

14. An intelligible cinematic portrait of a poet and his vision and struggles?