Burning Secret (1988)

Burning Secret (1988)

"Burning Secret" was my first effort at making a feature film back in 1988. Based on a short story by Stefan Zweig, it had originally been commissioned by MGM five years earlier, but my script languished until Norma Heyman picked it up and got the now-defunct Vestron to finance it. 

Making the movie was something of a nightmare, not least because we shot it in Mariánské Lázně, then languishing in the twilight throes of communist Czechoslovakia. Formerly named Marienbad (as in 'Last Year in'), the town gave us some great locations, but in freezing conditions and amid a downtrodden, somewhat surly populace. Add to the mix two prima donnas who thoroughly disliked one another, a lighting DP and camera operator who harboured long-held animosities, a daily diet of starch-laden fodder, plus a trio of squabbling producers, and a happy first-time experience it was not, indeed the ordeal almost cured me of any further desire to direct movies. 

On the positive side,  young David Eberts was a joy to direct, and made the behaviour of his adult confreres seem childish by comparison. The supremely talented production designer Bernd Lepel was also a delight to work with, and it was only fitting that both he and David picked up big awards at the Venice Film Festival later that year. The sharp-eyed may notice an odd credit at the end: "Snowman - Jaromer Mlezika". His job was to shovel snow as required, but although he was always more than willing and able to do so, we all noticed something strange about him. It turned out that as a child he had witnessed the Nazi liquidation of his village, Lidice, including the murder of his parents and siblings, and had never fully recovered from the trauma. Any problems that I faced faded in comparison ... 

Post-production back in London was no picnic, but it brought the enormous pleasure of working with Hans Zimmer on what was only his second feature, even though his score seemed more suited to a David Lean epic than a small-scale ensemble. Nor did the film do particularly well at the box-office, despite some pleasing reviews and a bunch of festival awards, not helped by the fact that Vestron was slowly going bankrupt and were strapped for cash when it came to promotion, but heigh ho.

So, do I regret making it? Not a bit, and I thank all who helped pull it off, not least Bee Gilbert, without whom....

What were the various projects that you have dropped?

One was a screenplay of Stefan Zweig's story, "The Burning Secret," which Calder Willingham and I wrote in the middle fifties, for Dore Schary at MGM, after I made The Killing. The story is about a mother who goes away on vacation without her husband but accompanied by her young son. At the resort hotel where they are staying, she is seduced by an attractive gentleman she meets there. Her son discovers this but when mother and son eventually return home the boy lies at a crucial moment to prevent his father from discovering the truth. It's a good story but I don't know how good the screenplay was. A few years later, I wrote an incomplete screenplay about Mosby's Rangers, a Southern guerilla force in the American Civil War.

Around that time I also wrote a screenplay called "I Stole 16 Million Dollars," based on the autobiography of Herbert Emmerson Wilson, a famous safe-cracker. It was written for Kirk Douglas who didn't like it, and that was the end of it. I must confess I have never subsequently been interested in any of these screenplays.

There is also a novel by Arthur Schnitzler, Rhapsody: A Dream Novel, which I intend to do but on which I have not yet started to work. It's a difficult book to describe -- what good book isn't? It explores the sexual ambivalence of a happy marriage, and tries to equate the importance of sexual dreams and might-have-beens with reality. All of Schnitzler's work is psychologically brilliant, and he was greatly admired by Freud, who once wrote to him, apologising for having always avoided a personal meeting. Making a joke (a joke?), Freud said this was because he was afraid of the popular superstition that if you meet your Doppelgänger (double) you would die.