The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1988) is a film adaptation directed by Ermanno Olmi of Joseph Roth's last novella. Some years ago after reading Roth's spectacular The Radetzky March, my enthusiasm for the writer carried me to his final book, the odyssey of an incurable alcoholic very similar to Roth himself. I thought the book enthralling, simultaneously very simple in outline but complex in ideas and characterizations. Olmi is a committed believer, a pious Catholic, and he is clearly sympathetic with the mystical religious sensibility in the book.(It seems probable that Roth who was Jewish converted to Catholicism before his death.) The Tree of Wooden Clogs had been a big art-house success for Olmi in the United States -- for several years, the film played as a kind of Christmas offering for intelligentsia in the Twin Cities -- and the director wanted to score another success of that kind: he first interviewed Robert de Niro for the part of the drunk; de Niro didn't understand the plot and Olmi determined he was unsuitable for the role. Ultimately, Olmi hired Rutger Hauer, an excessively handsome actor working, at that time, in Amercian action films. (Hauer's most famous role is that of the dying replicant in Ridley Scott's Bladerunner; he's one who utters the renowned "tears in the rain" speech at that end of that film.) Hauer was an unlikely choice for the part of Andreas, the doomed alcoholic, but, in fact, he does a wonderful job with the part. The movie was made in English to attract American audiences -- that is, shot in a curious mixture of French and English: minor characters speak French, but the principal dialogue is in English. These measures were unavailing: the movie wasn't understood by the executives at American studios and was never released in the States, this despite the picture winning a gold Lion at the prestigious Venice film festival.
Andreas is a drunk, lurking in the shadows of Paris, and avoiding authorities -- he was implicated in a murder and his passport is marked that he has been expelled from the country. He sleeps under newspapers scrounged for waste baskets in the subway under a bridge over the Seine. Notwithstanding his straitened circumstances, Andreas regards himself as a "man of honor". One day at sunset, he encounters a mysterious fellow dressed like a businessman with a bowler hat, but all in black. Andreas is too proud to beg, but the man approaches him and offers money. Andreas asks for 20 francs. The man gives him 200 francs with the proviso that when he has sufficient funds, he go to a church and, after mass, give the priest the 200 francs in honor of the little flower, St. Therese of Lisieux. Immediately after this meeting, Olmi signifies the miraculous by showing the sunset brilliantly illumining the arched bridge over the Seine -- the openings under the stone arches look like entries into another world, a sort of brightly lit paradise. Of course, the hero immediately goes to a brothel and, then, a bar where he orders some drinks and meets another peculiar fellow, a great voluptuous fat man who hires Andreas to help move fragile items from the house -- offering him both drinks and another 200 francs. Andreas buys a wallet for his new-found money and discovers that there are two-thousand francs in the wallet. He goes to the Church to pay his debt, but there encounters an old girlfriend, the woman involved in his crime -- he accidentally killed her abusive husband while helping her to escape from him. The woman seems to now be some kind of high-price courtesan. He has a meal with her and spends the night in her apartment. The next day, he goes to the church to repay his debt but, in the tavern conveniently adjacent to the place of worship, sees a poster of an old friend who has now become a famous Parisian prize-fighter. He looks up the prize-fighter who recalls him with warmth and they have a feast together. The prize-fighter puts up his friend in a luxury boutique hotel, the Mercedes. There, the hero meets a fantastically beautiful young girl, a dancer in a casino, and she seduces him. They go to Fountainbleu and enjoy a few days of romance -- once again, squandering almost all Andreas' money. He has just 200 francs remaining and so he goes to the Church. When he awoke that morning under the bridge, Andreas saw in the mist a frightening-looking and eerie schoolgirl who asked why he had not come to her and he knows this is an apparition of St. Therese. Waiting for mass to end at the Church, Andreas goes into the bar next door and runs into an old friend. The old friend claims to be on the lam and needs Andreas 200 francs to avoid a fatal encounter with his creditors. Andreas gives the man the money -- the so-called "friend" is just a runty swindler -- and, then, they go off to the brothel and spend another night on the town. (Sometimes, Andreas frequents a dimly lit dance-hall where he watches couples gliding to and fro in the gloom as they tango). He meets the mysterious man in black who claims that he has never encountered him before -- the man in black gives him 200 francs and asks him to repay his debt to St. Therese. Again, Andreas gets side-lined and loses most of the money. Now, almost destitute he goes to a favorite dive and spends the night drinking there -- at dawn, when everyone seems to be passed out, he does something dishonorable: he tries to skip out on the bill. But the dwarf innkeeper wakes up and presents him with the tab. Now, he has no money at all, He wanders the streets, walking toward the church. A cop stops him, jabbers in French, and Andreas is terrified -- is he about to be deported? But, no, the cop tells him that he has dropped his wallet. It's not his wallet but no matter -- there are two one-hundred franc bills in the wallet. Andreas goes to the tavern next door to the Church where he orders a drink. The eerie-looking little girl comes into the tavern and says that her parents are at mass -- she waits for them in the bar. She says: "Because you didn't come to me, I have come to you." Andreas tries to give her the 200 francs but she won't take the money. He collapses and is carried into the church where he dies, glimpsing the strange-looking child through a crack in the door.
Olmi's direction is clear and brilliantly staged. Paris seems miraculous, sometimes frighteningly beautiful. Andreas' two lovers seem like apparitions and the little girl has something about her that causes chills to run up your spine. The lowdown bars and whorehouses with their lonely, isolated drinkers look like images from Toulouse-Lautrec or Degas -- everything is suffused in a melancholy absinthe-green light. Olmi has scored the entire film to late works by Stravinsky and the music matches the images brilliantly. With his startling blue eyes, Hauer is handsome enough that his effect on women is plausible -- but he has red around his eyes and a quivering hand and the drink is clearly eating away at him. Even aspects of the film that might seem misguided or amateurish are used to wonderful effect -- the huge fat man who offers Andreas 200 francs to help him move is played by an actor who spoke nine languages, but none of them English. Accordingly, he had to learn his lines phonetically -- in an interview with Hauer, the actor says that the man spoke "like the voice of God," an interesting observation and true to the odd impression the fellow makes in the film. As someone schooled in rudimentary Lutheran theology, I had no difficulty making sense of the movie. It is a religious parable about God's grace: human beings are innately sinful and disobedient and they can not serve righteousness. There is nothing I can do to earn God's grace -- I will always fuck things up. But if I can't come to God, God comes to me and grants me his grace, as a free gift despite my complete lack of merit. Olmi's beautiful film makes this doctrine crystal clear.
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