MARIO DEL PAPA

Via Urbana 12

Rome, December 22, 1952.

Dear Mrs. Andrews,

In accordance with our understanding, I am enclosing
an English translation of the synopsis of sequences for the story
of "NEW WINE".

As suggested during our last conversation on Saturday,
I believe that the best way to find out if a definite collaboration
on this story can be established between yourself and Mr. Rossellini
would be for you to express, in the form of a letter addressed
directly to Mr. Rossellini, your observations, remarks, suggestions,
regarding, for the time being, only the general outlines of the story
itself.

Aside from the circumstance of the finalization of plans for
George Sanders participation in the film, as I told you briefly, which
might necessitate postponement of the beginning of production, I
believe that once Mr. Rossellini has been able to examine your
suggestions, we can immediately work out the necessary arrangements.

Mr. Rossellini, to whom I spoke after seeing you, is
anxiously looking forward to your reply, which I would beg you to
let him have as early as conveniently possible.

It has been a great privilege for me to have met you and
Mr. Andrews.

With kindest regards,

COMMENTS ON SYNOPSIS OF NEW WINE.

2

REBECCA WEST.

A simple woman, and jealous, she might indeed be carried away by the odd and novel experience, and if John were a conventional man, the scene described in Section 11 might well be vehement.

The subsequent scene in Naples might also be magnificent, but requires careful thought. If John Joyce is a man without rigid conventions then the affair with John is commonplace, and bizarre only as a new form of a commonplace experience, and unlikely to be followed by horror and remorse. If John Joyce is a man of position and conventional, he is unlikely to follow the pimp the whole way, into the darkened house, unless he is slightly drunk; when indeed the scene will have a dreamlike quality which could be superb. I don't mean that he would be unlikely to follow a pimp but he would think this is a dangerously squalid form of prostitution, "what about my wallet?" And once up in the room, I think he would be too puzzled by the social quality of the reception he gets, which is too much unlike anything he has known before, that I doubt if he would go through with it, or that the interest of the film would be helped if he did. It would be helped if he were frustrated and baited.

It would be quite beyond the comprehension of any English, American, or French audience that Isabel should be disturbed in any way by the experience at the villa. She could, whatever the degree of her sophistication, and whatever her relations with her husband, hardly be deeply moved by the fact that a peasant woman of forty-five has refused to go to bed with her husband and has got beaten, except by her in the sense that her humanitarian sympathies might be roused. It could hardly touch her sexual emotions.

The motor-boat trip could of course be a beautiful episode, revealing the beauty and capacity for feeling of Miss Bergman. The rest of the story is impossible to judge now, until the end of the story is decided. It could be written with great austerity and dramatic power, if there is a climax of sufficient intensity. But it is impossible to know how to build it up till one knows what that climax is.

To recapitulate; this story seems to me to require that the man and woman are conventional and immature people of unrealised potentialities, who are suddenly forced in Italy to confront the fact that they are a man and a woman. I would urge that they are never shown as having anything in their past experience which links them to the unrestrained types they encountered. These must make a new revelation to them - or there is no story. And they frame the use they make of this revelation in terms not incompatible with the inherent purity of Miss Bergman's personality, the exalted quality of her passion.

COPY.

IBSTONE HOUSE.
IBSTONE.
Nr HIGH WYCOMBE.
BUCKS.

March 10, 1953.

Dear Miss Bergman,

Thank you very much for your letter, which I am going to answer honestly. My feelings were not in the least hurt by the abandonment of what was for both of us a trial tip. But I was distressed by the whole incident, from your point of view. I had been asked to write the dial gue of a film which was being founded on an important novel, *Duo*, by an important writer, Colette. Instead I was faced with a ridiculous idea, incapable of development in any way not likely to be prejudicial to your reputation.

You may love your husband very much, but you should face the fact that he has no talent. You have great talent and a great personality, and it is absurd that for the sake of your private emotions you should allow these gifts to be wasted in a film like *Europe 1951*, which is so inept that even your performance, which excites admiration by itself, cannot save it.

You will not believe this when you read it, and you will think me an odious woman. But when your husband has made two more films for you, you remember this letter, and think about putting yourself in the hands of a competent director.

I never wrote such an extraordinary letter as this in my life. But I have also never seen such an extraordinary situation as the wreck of your artistic life.

With all good wishes,

I am, Yours sincerely,

REBECCA WEST.

NEW WINE

Synopses of Sequences

1. Journey, as indicated.

2. Arrival in Naples. Stop over at the hotel Excelsior.

3. Hotel Excelsior. Concierge. Are some rooms reserved for Mr. and Mrs. Joyce? Is it possible to make a telephone call to Torre del Greco? No. The Torre del Greco switchboard closes at 7 p.m. The couple go to their room.

4. Alone in their room, they look at one another for the first time. They are bored. After all, they don't know one another even though they have been married for eight years. Three days before, landing at Albuquerque, it was their wedding anniversary. Neither has remembered it. Neither of them think it strange that they did not remember. What will they do now? The dialog could take place between them from one room to another as they wash, bed, dress. They decide to go down to the bar for a drink.

5. At the bar they meet some friends. A homosexual and three women (of the type that live between Poitano, Capri and Ischia, or perhaps Elenore and Saint Tropes, with muscular young men with whom the English women sleep). One such young man, with a new suit of clothes, and obviously well dressed for the first time in his life, who speaks English with a Neapolitan accent, could be part of the group. We learn that the Joyces' have inherited a property left by their uncle Horace, who has died two months before; that they have come to Italy both to take over the uncle's property and to take a vacation, the first vacation John Joyce has taken since the end of the war. We learn of his occupation. They discuss plans for dining.

6. They go to "Zi Tersa". Idiotic local folklore. During the dinner, it somehow becomes apparent that John has had an affair with Edith, one of the women they have met at the bar.

7. They go back to the Excelsior. It is night, they are alone. Isabel is curious to know from John what there has been with Edith. He admits the relationship freely and appears unconcerned whether what has happened or his telling of it.

8. The couple go to the villa left to them by uncle Horace. They are received by Horace's secretary, who has kept things in shape for their arrival. He shows them around. He begins to tell them something about their uncle. All about the grounds are peasants, bare footed and ragged, who look curiously at the new owners. The wife of the English secretary is an abundantly sexed woman - it is quite obvious why the secretary has settled down in this place and has no other desire but to go to

2.

bed with his wife, to sleep, to eat, and then to go to bed again with
his wife. They live in a little house a short distance away from the
villa. The secretary's wife will interpret for Isabel, who knows no
Italian, the life that goes on about the place, the comments made by the
peasants, their questions. Visit of the villa and its antiques filled
interior. Lunch at the villa, served by a peasant girl.

9. Siesta in the sun, after lunch. Crickets, poppies, the small noises made by insects. First verbal exchange between the couple (jealousy has not yet crept in; only curiosity) following the revelation of the Edith affair. Isabel wants to know what John's attitude toward women is. He replies evasively that he hasn't had much time for that sort of thing. Isabel presses further. How then can he explain the Edith episode? John answers with a question: has Isabel always been faithful to him? She too replies evasively, that yes, there has been something. It is not understood, and we ourselves should not know, if Isabel is speaking the truth, even though it must appear very probable. Or if this vague confession is made by Isabel only to avenge herself for John's unfaithfulness. She may, later on, deny the entire thing. At any rate this ghost of a lover will never take on a clearer form.

The argument is interrupted by a phone call from Naples. It is an aristocratic family, friends of Horace, who invite the couple to a tardy wake. They feel that they have been cheated by old Horace out of a fitting celebration of his death by his having had his death announced after burial. They have learned of the arrival of the couple, and now wish to make up for the lost opportunity.

10. Back in Naples, in the Palace of the Duke of Acquara. The entrance to the building is a filthy sty. The staircase is overrun with ragged screaming children. You have to put a coin in the rickety elevator to be lifted to the desired floor. The apartment itself is regal, the waiters are in uniform. There are expensive rugs on the pavement, huge mirrors on the walls. Everything is in white and gold. There are precious objects everywhere. Some of the people present appear to have stepped out of the paintings on the wall; others appear absolutely plebeian, or perverted. But all have high sounding names. Refreshments are served. Many men stare at Isabel, engage her in conversation, fawn on her, perhaps even excessively. John gazes at all this, and the thing that irritates him most is the glint of sensuality in the eyes of the men as they look at Isabel.

11. It is night, at the villa. In their respective rooms, neither John nor Isabel can sleep. They toss. They look out the window; go out into the terrace. A few bitter words are exchanged. There is the perfume of flowers, the flying of birds in the night. There are sounds, singing (perhaps fireworks!) Snatches of heated arguments here and there.

12. The following morning, John begins to question Isabel. He begins to be consumed by a pang of jealousy. The scene ends by John slamming the door, and leaving the house to go to Naples.

4.

16. Boat trip with the Strongolis' to Marina Piccola. A few semi-acid remarks. During lunch there will be a general discussion which bores Isabel terribly.

A young man (of the equivocal type that lives by satisfying the sexual appetite of old English spinsters) proposes to Isabel that they go for a boat ride. Isabel accepts and goes. The young man behaves himself, or if he makes some clear proposal, Isabel will discourage any advance.

17. Night. At the villa. There is a scene of wild jealousy between them. They have almost reached the breaking point.

18. The following morning. They cannot speak, alone, as there are always people about the house. The secretary accompanies them to Pompei.

19. Pompei. Both (but especially John) absorb a sort of atmosphere of sensuality. They examine a plaster cast of two levers in the act of embracing, that has been dug out from the lava.

20. John and Isabel leave the secretary and his wife and drive to Paestum. The conversation between them is short but heavy with significance.

Paestum. Ruins. Ravens, etc.

There is a wild scene between them. She is now madly in love with him. They are both furiously jealous of one another.

A young man passes by on a bycycle. He looks longingly toward Isabel. John catches him and beats him furiously.

They return to the villa. She accuses of John of being mad, violent. They decide to obtain a divorce. It will be better to settle things here in Italy. They will avoid a scandal. They will return to England when everything has been settled.

The ending has still to be worked out.

My dear Peter,

This job has taken a very disagreeable turn, and I am not going on after
this week.

I was extremely puzzled as to why Rossellini had engaged me to do
the dialogue. He himself had written the dialogue of "Europe 1951", and had
been for the English adaptation had employed an unknown Negro writer
and some other obscure people to whom I expect he paid only a few pounds. There
is an atmosphere of extreme neediness about the organisation and timing
household, and it seemed to me odd that they should suddenly engage a writer at
the same price that Selznik is paying his dialogue writers.

A light dawned on me yesterday. I realized that, when I decided to work with Rossellini, I had been on the wrong side all the time.

Selznik had told me that Rossellini wished a writer to write dialogue
for a film written on a story called DUO. When I got here I enquired of Mr De
Papa whether this was Colette's DUO, and was told that it had been, but that it
had all been changed about, and that Mr De Papa was under the impression that
it had been abandoned and the story was to be started afresh round the theme
of a man and woman travelling in Italy and having a null relationship vivified
by the man discovering evidence that his wife had been unfaithful to him some time
years before. When my husband and I got to Rossellini's house, Rossellini talked
at random for a long time (till eleven o'clock or so) then I asked Ingrid Bergman
if I could get a copy of DUO so that I could get the feel of the dialogue. I found
Shre applied that they were not going to use DUO, and that Rossellini was going to
feel out a story of his own. This he proceeded at enormous length to do. He
Put down simply this theme: that a man and woman who had inherited a house in
Italy came here and there was a discovery of infidelity and they were both worked
on by the atmosphere of Italy to feel jealousy and passion and it ended in a reconciliation.
Beyond that they met some old friends in a bar in the Excelsior at
Naples, that the man spent a night with a prostitute in Naples, that they talked
about a divorce at Paestum, where the husband beat a boy on a bicycle (surely
almost as bad as shooting a sitting rabbit) for looking at his wife. The outlines
of the story, Rossellini said again and again, had to be filled in. My husband
can bear witness to hearing him say this many times. I enquired about DUO, as the
discovery of infidelity an infidelity many years after the event and its awakening
of passion between the husband and wife (ended in her story by death) and Rossellini
told me had had an option on the story but had abandoned it, and that it would
not have served his purpose, and would have put him in danger owing to a new law in
France which gives the author the right to veto a film if it departs from the text
of his book.

There was no ambiguity at all in this request in me to provide incidents
for the story. Ingrid Bergman expressed concern that they were starting to shoot
on January 15 with nothing prepared, and in the car going home Mr De Papa said that
he wanted hoped I could work fast on it, as never had they come so near to the date
line with absolutely nothing to work on. He said, "Of course, as Rossellini has the
story now, there isn't a film there, there's nothing."