Burning books

Fahrenheit 451, Francois Truffaut 1966

  

A sneaky shot with a copy of the Cahiers du Cinema

Wax & Paper

I'm an old soul. I like old products, rituals and processes, the traditional ways of life. I'm analog in a digital world. I like books, real books; not e-books. I like the look, the feel, the smell and the feeling of reading a compendium of pages printed with the written word. I like reading magazines & newspapers on real, physical paper - not on a computer screen, because I think paper is as essential to magazines and newspapers as the words and images upon them. I prefer jotting things down with a pencil rather than a keypad, I like the tactility of marking the page with my own unique style of hand. I prefer honest materials to plastic. I like walking into shops, perusing and handling, rather than clicking a mouse. And I have physical copies that contain my music and film collections; I don't download. I like to use cash over debit cards. I want a fireplace, not an electric heater. And I prefer handwritten letters and postboxes to emails and inboxes, because nothing feels as personal and thoughtful as receiving a handwritten letter in the mail.

Which is why I purchased a brass & timber wax seal, engraved with my first initial, from the Wax Seal Shop.

Now I can make handwritten letters that extra bit special by sealing the envelope by using a hand-forged ritual of days gone by. Infinitely more pleasant than a bit of saliva on an adhesive strip, for both the sender and the recipient.
My fascination with imperfectly hand-stamped wax seals began in childhood when I witnessed Ms. Bennett excitedly receiving her post in a much-loved BBC period drama. Two lovely and honest materials, paper & wax, fashioned together with a petite, personalised, hand-engraved design. Perfection.

The fascination continues..

Lone wolf in an urban jungle

Le Samourai, Jean-Pierre Melville 1967

Alain Delon, the brilliant embodiment of the contract killer Jef Costello

Jef Costello (Alain Delon) is a lone wolf, an assassin living in Paris, surviving in his own quiet, minimalist world. Costello is a perfectionist, ultra-calm and poised, and he always gets the hit done. On this occasion however, someone witnesses him leaving the murder scene, and gradually his expertly-prepared alibi appears to be coming undone at the seams.

Caty Rosier is witness to the crime

Melville's film is an ultra-stylistic, nuanced offering with perfect temporal sensibilities. The muted, almost hollow, tones of Costello's world are perfectly reflected in the very considered set design. Le Samourai is part-suspense, part-crime drama, part-noir, part-gangster, and part-psychological drama with a police procedural thrown in for good measure, yet it is so carefully crafted that it doesn't at all feel disjointed; Melville makes it his own.

Delon is so completely transformed from previous roles and his film star persona in his media interviews, his eyes harbouring the unsettling disquiet and loneliness that bubble beneath his poised surface. Melville has said that he created Costello as a contract killer suffering from schizophrenia.

Melville uses Hollywood elements such as the police line-up and the noir trenchcoat-and-hat combo

Delon and the exceptional Francois Perier

The main character is captured numerously from a front-on angle, and it's these shots of Delon's face and eyes that continually draw the viewer in, revealing the stormy yet empty vessels on his skeletal face. Costello is a solitary figure with very few connections in the world, his only true ally and friend being his caged bird which he has an almost supernatural connection with.

Note how the figure perfectly emulates that in the painting on the left

Rosier's world of the rich, modernist piano bar is vastly different to Costello's stark and muted apartment

Rosier switches between being dressed in white, and sparkling; to being framed suspiciously in black

Le Samourai is a highly-stylised, expertly and tightly crafted film that is definitely worth a watch. A highly absorbing, nuanced film that is definitively a classic and a stalwart of the auteur film.

The Criterion collection's included essay