Original subtitles

(Indistinct shouting)

Right, yeah, we've got it.

OK.

(Man over megaphone ) Over here with the pumps, please.

Mr. Hamilton, you're wanted over here, please.

Let's get them lined up as quickly as possible.

(Horse neighing)

Make-up, please, make-up over here.

Now, this great composer has died of cancer.

He's known hundreds of people in his life

but because of quarrels and because a war was going on,

there's hardly anyone at the funeral.

This was the worst period of the war for Paris.

The city's being shelled, Germans are threatening to take it,

France is about to collapse

and hardly anybody notices the death of a man

who has now taken to signing himself ''Musician of France''.

His wife is there, of course, and Chouchou his daughter

but hardly anyone else.

Now, when the carriage gets there to the end,

I want you to run out into the road, look at the wreaths for the name,

run back and say to your mother, ''It seems he was a musician.''

All right? Good.

We'll wait until it's turning. Turn over.

Action!

(Director) More water to foreground.

Steady with the coffin.

Steady.

Spray the hearse. More water!

OK, pull away now.

Start to zoom...

Follow them with the hoses.

There's more rain than you have here.

Just keep walking on.

It seems

he was a musician.

(Melvyn Bragg) Claude Debussy, born in poverty in 1862,

died friendless in 1918.

A film based on incidents in his life, his own words and his relationships -

with Gabrielle Dupont, attempted suicide,

Lily Rosalie Texier, attempted suicide,

Chouchou, died at the age of 13,

Madame Bardac, wife of a wealthy banker,

and the man who took most of these pictures, Pierre Louÿs,

pornographer, novelist, photographer.

Cut! Cut!

OK. That's it.

Pull out the arrows.

reak for lunch, everybody. Thank you.

(Man ) One hour for lunch only! One hour only.

- Eastbourne Gazette. - OK, thank you.

- Hello. How do you do? - How do you do?

Ah! I believe you've been having some fun on our beach this morning?

You should've done your reporting then.

- Oh, yes? - Yeah.

The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian.

When they first did this, they wanted Sebastian to played by a naked woman.

Really?

Well, you didn't...? I mean, she didn't er...?

(Clears throat) Are you doing it all here? I thought he was French.

Most of it here and in London.

When we shoot in France, the unions make us double up the crews

and we can't afford it.

I see.

- That's Debussy, over there. - Oh, aye?

This scene is when Debussy is in his early twenties,

long before he came to England.

He is with Madame Vanier.

She was looking after him at the time.

He always needed someone to look after him,

always found someone, usually a woman.

(Laughs) He gave her singing lessons, she gave him money.

You know, he loved gambling at cards

and whenever he lost, which was often,

she would slip into his pocket enough change to get him home.

And a packet of cigarettes - consolation prize.

But it was with Madame Vanier that he first played his composition in public.

She sang the songs he had written especially for her.

There's Monsieur Vanier.

He liked Debussy

but he doesn't seem to have known all that was going on

between the young composer and his wife.

(Debussy ) And before he could find out, I met Gaby.

(Director) Gabrielle Dupont. (Debussy ) Gaby.

(Director) They met when Debussy was 26, he lived with her for ten years.

He was back from the Prix de Rome.

He'd won this great scholarship from the conservatoire in Paris.

(Debussy ) Forced labor. I hated it.

(Director) Gaby was as poor as he was.

He had a good time with her.

( #Jardins Sous La Pluie )

Debussy was born poor.

(Debussy ) My father was a soldier, a shop-keeper, a prisoner,

a salesman, a clerk and a layabout.

I never went to school. He wanted me to be a sailor.

(Director) He only took up music because of a meeting with Verlaine's mother-in-law.

She taught him the piano.

(Debussy ) I owe her the little I know about the piano. She knew Chopin.

(Director) He needed somewhere to live, someone to love him,

(Debussy ) My only memory of my mother is that she used to slap my face.

I can't afford to live at home, anyway,

my father expects my music to pay for his billiards.

(Director) And Gaby was prepared to be his housekeeper.

(Gaby ) To go out and work for you, to do anything you want.

(Director) He wanted to be free, free to roam Paris at night,

to meet poets, painters, critics,

to row with the conservatoire, to experiment.

(Gaby ) As long as you stay with me.

(Director) Now he wrote his music for her.

(Debussy ) Gardens In The Rain, for Gaby.

(Director) Most of the young students and artists in France in the '9s

were impressed by the Pre-Raphaelites, especially Debussy.

They seemed to choose the subjects that he himself wanted to do.

For instance, one of the things he wrote while he was on the Prix de Rome

was based on a poem by Rossetti, The lessed Damozel.

You see, Rossetti's situation was similar to that of Debussy.

The poem is about this illiterate Cockney woman, an English Gaby,

whom Rossetti is supposed to have loved for her very willingness.

He double-crossed her, of course, just as Debussy double-crossed Gaby.

Art Nouveau aestheticism,

it was all going on in Paris and in London in the 199s.

( # La Demoiselle Élue )

(Women's voices) # La Demoiselle Élue s'appuyait

# Sur la barriére d'or du Ciel

# Ses yeux étaient plus profonds que l'abîme

# Des eaux calmes

# Au soir

# Elle avait trois lys a la main

# Et sept etoiles dans les cheveux... #

You know, they wanted all the arts to be mixed together.

Now read this, this is by audelaire,

but Debussy said the same sort of thing himself.

''It would be truly surprising if sound were not capable of suggesting color,

''if colors could not give the idea of a melody.''

He saw Turner's paintings when he was in London.

He wanted his music to be like paintings, to be paintings in sound.

His titles are for paintings - clouds, moonlight, fog,

sketches for La Mer, Studies In lack And White.

Sorry, start again.

''It would be truly surprising if sound were not capable of suggesting color,

''if colors could not give the idea of a melody,

''and if sound and color were inadequate to express ideas.

''For things have ever found expression in reciprocal analogies

''since the day when God put forth the world as a complex and indivisible whole.''

Amen.

Oh, can't we go?

I'm bored.

Yeah, OK.

Ciao.

Wait.

Let me show you just one more.

Whistler.

He called his paintings ''nocturnes'',

and Debussy, who wrote three nocturnes himself,

said that they were studies in gray.

The one I like best is Ftes.

The fantastic procession,

the vibrating, dancing rhythm of the atmosphere

with sudden flashes of light.

( # March-like music)

(Music fades)

- Is this Lily? - Yes.

- Hello. - Hi.

Come along here, darling, I want to talk to you.

- All right? Can I help you? - That's OK.

- Are you cold? - No.

- Did you have a nice swim? - It was fine, thanks.

This is er... Debussy.

Hello.

This is er...

Sorry, darling.

This is er...our little Gaby.

Hello.

And this is my secretary.

All right? Shall we go and see the rough cut?

All right?

Oh, please. Not again! You behave!

- What am I going to see? - Did you read that book I told you about?

Most of it.

Oh.

I'm surprised.

And did you read this chapter about Pierre Louÿs?

I didn't get that far.

Ah.

To follow this, you must know.

Well, er... Can we hold it for a few minutes, please?

Thank you.

Er, Debussy is working in Paris,

living with Gaby.

Or rather she's working and he's living,

he earned next to nothing.

Then he met Pierre Louÿs. Louÿs was rich.

He collected rare books, oriental tapestries,

cocktail recipes, betting systems

and as many experiences as money and agility could buy.

Debussy became his favorite

or he sponged from him, whichever way you want to put it.

Anyway, they were friends and er...

worked together on various projects,

most of which collapsed.

ut Louÿs introduces him to all sorts of writers.

The two of them were going to share a house at one time.

He wanted Debussy to come to North Africa and the Middle East with him

but Debussy didn't go.

Louÿs liked young girls.

He wrote to Debussy saying he couldn't get on with the work they were planning

because he did nothing with his fingers except unmentionable things.

Mm. And the music behind this scene is from L'Après-midi D'un Faune.

Debussy took the poem from Mallarmé.

- We're ready. - All right.

What happened to Louÿs, the kinky one?

Kinky.

He got what he deserved.

He lived to a cultured old... dirty old age.

OK?

OK, let's run.

Who's playing Louÿs?

I am.

Me.

That's me. That's Louÿs.

He wrote a very successful pornographic book,

took lots of strange photographs.

What he really liked to do was manipulate people,

a kind of Svengali.

And Debussy was good material for him, always dreaming.

At one time, he and Gaby used to spend more time in Louÿs's home than their own.

And Debussy would always be dreaming,

dreaming his way through the strange beauty of all Louÿs's possessions,

dreaming his way through a hot summer afternoon with Gaby.

They did play with balloons. I checked.

( # Prélude À L'Aprés-midi D'un Faune )

( # Jazz )

- Toulet, René, Peter... - René Peter.

- René Peter, audelaire... - Mm.

- Mater... Materlich? - Maeterlinck.

Mallarmé.

- Yes. - Louÿs, also?

What, and he based his music on writings of all these?

Yes, 9% of his music started from a painting or a poem or a play.

They're just a selection, they were all in Paris.

If I put down everyone he worked with or knew well,

it would sound like the last roll call of all the brilliant dead.

- Who were Chocolat and... Footitt, is it? - Yes. Clowns, friends of his.

- And the Revue lanche? - A magazine.

He was music editor for a time.

According to your list, he was pianist at every nightclub.

- What did he do for kicks? - It's all in his music.

What's this Gigue bit?

It's a poem by Verlaine.

He came to London for a time to get away from scandals in France.

- What, like Debussy? - Like Debussy.

''Dansée La Gigue''.

Dansons La Gigue, that's the title of the poem.

''Everybody danced a jig.''

- It sounds lousy in English. - Yes.

Yes. He wrote it here in Soho in a café.

- The jig that's the Keel Row. - Keel Row?

Keel Row. It was being played on a barrel organ outside.

It's about the streets. Debussy based one of his Images on it.

It goes like this, er...

''Dansons la gigue! Most of all I like her dancing eyes,

''Sharper than stars, malicious, I love her eyes.

''Dansons la gigue!''

( # Images - Gigues)

''She had the fine gift of making her lover desperate

''and doing it so charmingly. Dansons la gigue!

''Even more, I liked the ripe feeling of her kiss,

''especially as she was dead for me. Dansons la gigue!

''I remember, I remember those hours,

''those embraces -

''my finest possessions.

''Dansons la gigue!''

( # Images - Gigues)

(Debussy ) ''Even more I liked the ripe feeling of her kiss,

''Especially as she was dead for me.

''Dansons la gigueI''

Right. You are depressed. You don't know where Debussy is.

You have no money.

He's gone to buy meat but he'll probably bring back a bit of silk,

a dirty statuette or something.

OK, walk it through. That's right.

Now remember, he was lazy. All his friends said that he was lazy.

He never appeared to do any work.

He would only write the music he wanted to write.

And he would only write it in his own time.

He took ten years - ten years! -

over Maeterlinck's play Pelléas and Mélisande,

turning it into an opera.

And you didn't understand any of it.

You're fed up with him. He's probably with another woman.

Or talking. Always talking about things that don't interest you.

He won't even give music lessons to help feed himself.

You have to look after him, you serve him.

Is he going to be all right, this man?

Well, it depends how much I like him and how much you can hate him.

- I hope he's not drunk today. - Exactly.

- Is he always drunk? - I don't know.

( # Wagner on record player)

(Yells)

- (Gun pops, cat yowls) - Death to Debussy!

Next time, it will be the real thing.

A real bullet or me?

oth.

Let's have a drink.

(Turns music down )

- Do you mind? - Yes, I do, since you ask.

I certainly bloody well do.

- Isn't it to your refined French taste? - Yes.

ut sometimes it tastes a little too strong and I have to spit it out.

He's a spirited lad.

Well, I suppose I'm to be filled in.

Do you know anything about Maeterlinck's spirit?

I know he wanted to shoot Debussy and practiced on the local cats.

Yes, I'm aware he was the elgian Shakespeare

and wrote many beautiful Symbolist dramas,

including The lue ird and Pelléas et Mélisande.

in which Debussy saw the perfect subject for an opera.

So he begged Maeterlinck's permission to be allowed to use it,

which Maeterlinck very generously granted him.

And ten years later, very generously took it back again.

I was betrayed.

You forget we agreed

that Georgette Leblanc, my mistress, was to sing Mélisande

and you engaged Mary Garden, a Scottish soprano.

Do you honestly believe that that's the true reason?

Mm?

You walk around here like some third-rate clown

because you haven't got the guts to face up to the fact that your play

was a monumental failure.

Furthermore, I find you uninteresting, a self-opinionated bore,

and what is worse to me, tone deaf.

Let's have a drink.

And let's have some music.

- You hate Debussy's music, don't you? - It doesn't go with any drink I've got.

- ( # Ride of the Valkyries ) - And that does?

Oh, on that I could get drunk before I start drinking.

You know something, I find this music like you - loud and vulgar.

Come on!

(Director) The whole thing was crazy.

Maeterlinck jumped through Debussy's windows,

threatened to beat him up with a walking stick

and promptly challenged him to a duel with pistols.

He even found a fortune-teller who saw Debussy drenched in blood.

After that, he tried to sabotage the opera, failed,

shot as many cats as he could find

and, honor satisfied, went back to Belgium and Wagner - crazy.

Olé - oop!

(Debussy laughing)

Where have you been?

Got the meat?

Well, are you gonna answer or not?

You never listen to me.

ut I suppose I'm not worth listening to

or talking to or looking at or sleeping with or living with.

Oh, I'm not good enough for you, go on, say it, go on.

You never even seem to notice I'm around these days.

That's it. Ignore the statuette, Gaby.

Your taste is different.

( # The Kinks:: You Really Got Me )

# See, don't ever set me free I always want to be by your side

# Girl, you really got me now

# You get me so I can't sleep at night

# Yeah, you really got me now

# You got me so I don't know what I'm doing

# Oh, yeah you really got me now

# You got me so I can't sleep at night

# You really got me, you really got me

# You really got me #

What's that?

It's Debussy, Danse Profane.

Oh, this is a party. Who wants to listen to that?

I do.

Does anybody wanna shake to Debussy?

(Shouting)

This is a party, we're all supposed to be enjoying ourselves, aren't we?

Oh, you don't want to listen to that. You're only doing it to annoy me.

It's a load of old crap.

Oh! Can't anybody ever have a good time while you're around?

Look, I want to listen to the music, do you mind?

(Record player mechanism clicks )

- ( # Gentle, string chords ) - (Man ) Hey, come on!

- (Whistling) - Put some music on!

- What's this? - Come on, music.

(Shushing)

( # Music becomes a lilting waltz)

- (Man ) Come on, then. - That's it.

Gaby's got the idea.

That's more like it.

(Laughs )

(Man ) Ooohh!

(Cheering and clapping)

(Man ) Come on, come on.

Yes...

Mmm...

Whoo...

(Clapping and cheering)

(Man ) Over here, dear.

(Shouting and whooping)

(Man ) The suspense is killing us.

Here she goes!

(Cheering)

(Clapping and whistling)

- (Record skids ) - (Cheering and laughter)

(Cheering)

More! More!

Don't be so bloody miserable. Stuff them down you.

I've earned it.

Damn your earnings! I've told you before, leave me alone.

- I won't, why should I? - Leave me alone!

You're rotten, you bastard, you bastard.

I'm fed up with living in this bloody place.

Why don't you flippin' get out and do some work instead of sitting around

looking at those stupid statues?

I've fed up with everything in this place, there's no clothes, no food.

Leave me alone. I'll give you bloody money.

All right, then, where is it?

Money, it's there.

And there!

Go on, eat it. Tell that to some of your friends.

- You never understood anything I did! - You hate me!

- You never will! - You're mean, you're selfish, you bastard.

- You filthy tart! - You hate me, hate me.

Get away.

You bastard, you bastard.

You bastard.

- Stop it. - You're lousy, you're mean...

- How about some money? - I hate you, I hate you.

- Stop it. - (Sobbing)

She destroys me. She doesn't understand anything.

- She hates everything I do. - I can't blame her.

- (Sobbing) - This is awful.

Now, darling, smell this flower, it will be...

Oh, I don't want it.

How lovely.

I like it.

Cut!

Can I have my script, please? Thank you very much.

And my pencil.

- Was he really such a bastard? - Oh...

Didn't he ever do any work?

Well, er, he played in one or two nightclubs, he taught,

but mainly, he wrote music

and that didn't sell well enough to buy him a decent piano.

What about her? Wasn't she on the game before she went to Debussy?

Ah, probably.

There's isn't a great deal known about her.

She only seems to have had one friend, Lily.

Good, er, thank you, it was really lovely.

Close-ups after lunch, OK?

Thank you. Is the pianist there?

( # Images - Gigues)

Ugh!

(Debussy laughs )

(Shot)

''And then...

''Gaby with her steely eyes found the letter in my pocket

''which left no doubt as to the advanced state of a love affair

''with all the most romantic trappings to move the most hardened heart.

''Whereupon...

''tears, drama,

''a real revolver and a report in the Petit Journal.''

You wrote that just afterwards.

You hated melodrama in real life.

Gaby had offended against your taste.

ut you were lucky this time.

She didn't die.

Now it was Lily.

Lily was Marie Texier, a dress model.

Once again, the Bohemian life closed in around him

and he dreamt his way through it,

this time with Lily.

And, as always, with the help and cash of his patron Louÿs.

He had decided to marry. He wrote to Debussy,

''Write me a wedding march, pompous, lustful and ejaculatory in character. ''

For he was having, as he said, a volcanic experience, he announced.

''Because of her love for a rich rhyme,

''Mademoiselle Louise de Heredia is changing her name to Louise Louÿs. ''

- Soon Debussy replied. - ''Please remain seated.

''Mademoiselle Lily Texier has changed her disharmonious name to Lily Debussy

''much more euphonious, as everyone will agree. ''

(Director) But Louÿs was gone.

His wife disliked Debussy, this scruffy musician,

and he was dismissed.

(Debussy ) No money.

To pay for the wedding breakfast

I gave a piano lesson an hour before the ceremony.

Lily fell ill.

We hadn't the money to carry out the doctor's instructions.

I had to support her.

(Director) No patron, no one to support his long trances,

his rejected work.

( # La Mer)

Cut!

Stop it, for heaven's sake.

What are you doing?

Come along here.

You don't have to be like that in front of her.

What is it all about, this clowning?

Well, it's...

It's difficult to get the feeling that I'm finding refuge in a foreign country.

Well, I don't understand what you're talking about.

That's got nothing to do with it,

all this clowning.

The only thing you are really concerned about is the sea.

Madame ardac and Debussy stayed here all summer

and it was here he finished writing La Mer,

his greatest piece.

- He used to listen to the sea. - ut she's not going to accept this.

I mean, what's she going to think? She leaves her husband, her position in society

and elopes with this composer, goes all the way to exotic Eastbourne

and then he sits down on the beach and listens to the sea - it won't work.

- You mean, it's all wrong? - It's wrong.

- No, it isn't. - Why?

ecause she would understand. She wasn't like Lily or Gaby.

She was like Madame Vernier or Camille Claudel.

She was very intelligent. She was an artist herself.

- And she was rich. - Exactly.

For the first time in your life, you had no money worries

and you could concentrate on your music.

And just listen to the sea.

Right?

Right.

Good. Let's get on with it.

(Director) The Grand Hotel, Eastbourne.

It was here that Debussy came to get away from the scandal in Paris.

Madame Bardac left her husband for Debussy.

She was his new patron.

Debussy was no longer an enfant terrible.

For 20 years he had been absorbed in composition,

taking new ideas from poets and painters,

slowly working out new patterns of music,

ignoring his rejection.

His work came out of this long daydream.

(Debussy ) Music will begin where words are impotent.

Music is made for the inexpressible.

I would like it to appear that it came from a shadow

and from time to time, it will return there.

(Director) And here, with Madame Bardac supporting him,

he finished La Mer,

this sea in which all his experiments blended into a new and strong form.

( # La Mer)

La Mer proved him.

From now on, he was regarded as a great composer.

The listless drifting of garret life was over.

The listless drifting of garret life was over

and with it, Lily.

He had married Lily and he had introduced her to his friends.

She was very popular with them.

She was excited by the new people she met.

Life was slovenly and difficult

but to her it appeared secure, sophisticated, different.

But Debussy abandoned her

when he realized that she had nothing to give him

and left her isolated.

And this caused a scandal.

It was this that forced Debussy and Madame Bardac to quit Paris.

I have discovered you.

It was so charming, just the two of you.

Just look at her get-up.

You've chosen well, my dear. My congratulations.

And your eyes - your horrible eyes, both of you.

Tie your tie again properly, you idiot.

That's enough.

Get out now, I order you, or I'll use force.

I told you, I want to talk.

I'm going to talk you and nothing is going to stop me,

- not even your threats. - You're crazy, come away!

- No! - Don't interfere!

Madame has a right - we do owe it to her.

Oh, God. She doesn't look a bit like Madame ardac.

- I suppose you think you do? - Shh! ehave yourselves.

They are giving a special performance for us.

My most sincere desire is to put right as far as possible

the wrong I've done you and to offer you a life worthy of you,

and that of a kind your husband cannot afford.

I know this is only a small compensation.

Now it's charity!

And your charity. I'd be ashamed to accept it.

ut if I don't, I can go and die on the bare floor, that's the alternative.

Well, my offer, as I see it, cannot be called charity.

elieve me, it will be much more generous than anything usually known by that name.

Huh! I should hope so!

You'd take everything away from me and not do anything to make up for it?

Money? I should say I shall need money, and lots of it.

You're rich, you.

When one pays for the luxury of getting a man,

one should learn what it costs.

- Lily! - Congratulations, Madame,

On this ground, we will understand each other much more.

Now, let's talk about the practical side of it first.

- You will have a regular income... - ut I don't want your filthy money.

Keep it! Do you really think I would soil my hands with it?

- Who wrote this? - Henri ataille.

It's called the Naked Lady. Most of it was based on Debussy's own experiences.

- Didn't Debussy sue him? - He couldn't do anything about it.

To have sued would've been admitting it was true.

Oh, what a mess it all was.

Well, it's a bloody bore. I'm off.

Shut up and stay where you are. It's just that one scene.

- I wouldn't say no to Lily. - For heaven's sake.

What must I do to remake my life?

Run from one man to another to find one who will take care of me?

(Gasps ) Must I return to prostitution?

I couldn't do it.

It's your fault, you have given me a conscience.

What for, good Lord?

Every time I failed you, you dragged me back to the heights.

Well, I'm there.

At last, I have become the woman you wanted me to be.

I can no longer go back.

It's finished and you have a duty to perform.

It is me whom you have to keep

and you are going to keep me.

I've made you what you are.

I have helped you to attain a certain social standing.

I am leaving you on a higher plane which can serve you as a springboard.

Life is far richer in its resources than you think.

You can remake your circle of friends.

Like everybody else in the world, you can find a better love than mine

and far, far happier.

My poor girl, if you know how I'm torn, torn to pieces.

(Lily) You see? He has pity on me.

You are not going to take him away, you are going to leave him to me.

You have no idea what you are doing. Don't do this, don't do this.

Have pity on me!

Come away, let's go home now, my dear, my love.

You do love me a little, don't you? Let's go home now.

- (Screams ) - (Screams )

( # La Mer)

(Shots )

- Again? - Yes.

ut this time it happened six months after you left her.

I don't understand it.

ut why all the scandal??

I mean, he had done it before.

Other people had done it.

- And she didn't kill herself. - I know.

There is so little real evidence for what happened.

Maybe you were a swine with women, as they said.

Everybody was against you.

They said that you had in fact told her

that she could always make money out of prostitution.

Some people said that Debussy's father robbed her when he visited her in hospital.

ut this list...

This public fund set up to provide for Lily, hmm?

Yes.

Debussy cut everyone who signed that list.

And nearly all his friends did sign it.

And what happened?

He never spoke to any of them again.

Not even to me...

Louÿs.

( # La Mer)

(Director) Madame Bardac secured a divorce,

and with it, a large settlement of money.

Debussy and she were married

but before the marriage,

she had already given him his first and only child, Chouchou.

(Debussy ) I write only for her.

(Director) A ballet, a suite.

(Debussy ) To my dearest Chouchou,

with her father's apologies for what is to follow.

But the first sign began to appear

of what was to be a long and agonizing illness.

(Debussy ) I began to work on two stories by Edgar Allan Poe,

The Devil In The Belfry and The Fall Of The House Of Usher.

(Director) He wrote little.

Life was highly respectable and luxurious.

Debussy's luck didn't hold.

His wife's income was cut off and he was back looking for money.

Everything was more difficult now.

He had a daughter to support and a big house to maintain.

And although he was very sick, he had to travel all over Europe on conducting trips.

Start the P.

He was the leader of a movement in music

and so the commissions poured in

at a time when all the experiments and struggles which he had undergone

were being hauled into the open

and thrown up in concert halls and on stages

all over Europe.

Ida Rubinstein, it was for her Debussy wrote The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian,

a big, phoney epic

contrived to satisfy the ego of an aging Russian ballerina.

On the opening night, she caused a scandal -

a Jewess impersonating a Christian saint.

The whole thing was a flop.

And yet Debussy worked on it as he had never worked before.

- Why? - (Debussy ) For Chouchou,

with her father's apologies for what is to follow.

(Director) He continued with his conducting trips all over Europe,

even though he collapsed many times.

And contracts - he signed to do films, operas, ballets, anything.

(Debussy ) I needed the money.

(Director) And sometimes, he was so ill that he let others orchestrate his music

and just signed his name to it.

(Debussy ) It's ugly.

Paris is becoming more and more odious to me

and I wish I could leave.

Literally, I cannot endure it any longer.

(Director) A week later, war was declared.

The Daily Telegraph commissioned him to write a piece of war music.

(Debussy ) It was to be for Albert, King of the Belgians.

It had to include the Belgian national anthem.

(Director) Berceuses Héroique is possibly

the most unheroic, unbloodthirsty war music ever written.

( # Dark, melancholy music)

Now, for the last years of his life, Debussy locked himself away.

There is mention of his daughter but of no one else.

His dreaming became a sort of endless, isolated self-communion.

Time, place, the pattern of life -

none of these had ever mattered much to him.

Now they mattered not at all.

He was working on The Fall Of The House Of Usher

by Edgar Allan Poe.

(Debussy ) Roderick Usher is sensitive,

as I am sensitive.

He hears and feels everything in the world

and tries to force these impulses into his work.

(Director) Roderick Usher lived with his twin sister in a large, lonely house.

He was morbidly engrossed in his artistic experiments

and in his sister.

(Debussy ) She died and he incarcerated her in one of his vaults.

(Director) Debussy become obsessed with Roderick Usher.

(Debussy ) Working on Usher is an excellent way to steady one's nerves

against all sorts of horrors.

There are moments when I lose the feelings of things around me

and if Roderick Usher's sister was suddenly to walk into my home

I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

(Director) Enormous effort, all his impulses were put into this

which was to be his greatest work.

For 12 years, this composition drove him to anguish.

And all that he had, after those 12 years,

were two or three sheets of music.

(Debussy ) I am Roderick Usher.

(Director) A violent thunderstorm releases Usher's dead sister from the vault.

(Debussy ) I am Roderick Usher.

( # La Mer)