KEY POINTS:
Beginning in 1969, when he and his lifelong companion Tony Forwood left England for the Continent because opportunities for satisfying film work at home had been drying up, this collection of letters tracks the last 30 years of Bogarde's life. It's a terrific read.
Considered by many to be one of the greatest film actors of the last century, Bogarde was a prolific, natural and critically acclaimed writer. During the 18 years he and Forwood lived at their beloved home, Claremont, Bogarde made only nine films (including Death in Venice and The Night Porter), and his need to write was given more than ample time to develop as the need to support his lifestyle became acute.
There were no secretaries or assistants, no gardeners, no private jets or chauffer-driven cars, no multimillion-dollar contracts. He worked hard at everything he did. The letters are fascinating - full of references to people and locations we delight in: "That terrible Anthony Quinn", "Burton plays the whole thing with the unctuousness of a car salesman", "They don't have any irony, the Americans.
You have to spell it out, pubic hair and all", "I really do detest Australia", and one of my favorite passages describing sex scenes in The Night Porter - "during my fifth simulated orgasm... I wondered what the hell I was doing at 53 with my back on the floor, my flies undone, being straddled by Miss Rampling, with an entire Italian crew watching and eating pizza!"
Bogarde, the outsider, despaired of the film industry, even when he made such great movies as Death in Venice, saying at one point, "I really do detest it and the uglies who surround it." Reading these letters, and putting aside the obvious "actor appeal", the humour, the humanity and the sheer cleverness of his writing, I found myself left with an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia. The death of Forwood from a long battle with cancer and the eventual return to England brings out such moving and brutally honest writing that it is sometimes difficult to read on without pause for reflection.
Later critical acclaim notwithstanding, Bogarde's life decisions ("I prefer to sit up here on my hill and regret nothing, rather than make that awful crap and regret it all") caused him to feel estranged from the mainstream, creating a sometimes waspish sense of bitterness and a yearning for something he clearly wanted (and came close to having during his years at Claremont) but felt was gone forever.
Describing the reaction of readers to his first book, A Postilion Struck by Lightning, Bogarde sums it up rather neatly - "it is more a sense of loss... loss of simplicity... loss of ease... of safety... of sureness in life... it brings back a time when the Arabs sat in the sand eating dates instead of screaming for their bloody democratic freedom, whatever that is!"
And later, in a letter from his small flat in London: "Why is it that the English have become so foul? Vicious, loud, swigging from cans in the street, chewing gum and spitting it out in disgusting lumps..." He clearly felt the loss - "What a good time it was! How lucky we have been! No one will enjoy it more than we did, will they? Nothing will ever be quite the same again!"
Despite the entrenched snobbishness, there is a warm, deeply sincere side to this man, a loving and delightful character who comes through most clearly in his description of the gardens and fields at Claremont - "Oh! How you would have cried out in wonder! A mass of wild flowers..."
I found reading these letters (and revisiting the movies) a very moving experience, especially considering that many of the real, vital, alive and complex people he corresponded with are gone forever, only to be fleshed out in memoirs and collections such as this. A lost time indeed.
Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters
John Coldstream (Weidenfield and Nicholson $77)
* Michael Hurst is an actor-director based in Auckland.
