Yet Untitled 150 - Il Cielo In Una Stanza
A Delirious Meditation on Art and Beauty
Dearest Yet Untitler,
I’ve been down with the flu. At such times, I enjoy watching my mind drift here and there in mild delirium: it’s one way to amuse myself while convalescing. I also amuse myself by bingeing TV, something I don’t do that often.
This instalment is, thus, (Binge x Delirium).
Humour me
This time around, I binged The White Lotus Season 2 and was quite seduced by its beauty (it’s populated by very beautiful people in a very beautiful place). Previously, I’ve also been similarly seduced by Steve Zallian’s ‘Ripley’. There’s a common theme running through these two very watchable series dramas - rich Americans coming to Italy in search of beauty, unable to escape the darkness within themselves. Needless to say, a lot of beauty - human, art, landscape - are on display, plentifully, in both.
There was a moment of great beauty in Ripley that I revisited after watching ‘The White Lotus’ - a scene where Ripley (played with awesome nuance by Andrew Scott) is moved to tears by a song (so nice to see this happen in a non-Bollywood context!)
Turns out that this song is a famous one: ‘Il Cielo in Una Stanza’. It was national sensation in the 1960s Italy after it was sung by popular singer Mina. Later, it widened its reach when Martin Scorsese used it in an introduction scene in ‘Goodfellas’. Later, Carla Bruni sang a version that was considered better than Mina’s by Gino Paoli, the man who wrote the song. in short, it’s a real artefact of pop culture.
But when I watched ‘Ripley’, I knew none of this.
The said song sequence from ‘Ripley’ struck me deep, even without me knowing the meaning of the words; just the rendition of it being sung with a lot of feeling by an actor styled to look like and directed to mimic Mina - the singer who made the song popular - had a powerful effect. There’s something significant about how the amoral Ripley is visibly moved upon hearing this song. What also stayed with me was ‘Mina’ delivers it to him in a very unique and expressive performance - with her hands, gestures and expressions combining with the song itself to deliver something…ethereal? Divine? Eternal?
As a filmmaker, capturing and transmitting beauty is part of what I do. I’m in awe when it’s done well. Thinking about this, I revisited the Tango scene from Scent of a Woman, experiencing afresh how it fills me with awe each time I see it.
Stealing Beauty
Remember that film? More Americans desperately seeking beauty in Italy!
Initially, I thought that the ‘Il Cielo’ scene from Ripley carried its power in and of itself; that it was the director doing all the work, successfully ‘creating’ great beauty in the scene. After a little bit of Wikipedia research, it turns out that Zallian had a lot to draw from. The singer Mina is very well documented, especially while singing ‘Il Cielo’.
Seeing this YouTube video, it’s clear that her particular way of singing - her very powerful projection and emphatic gestures - were faithfully recreated in Ripley. The choice of the song is also noteworthy, because of its history, because of all its associations. The lyrics are also beautiful, composed as it turns out, when Gino Paoli was lying, post coital, on a brothel bed.
Delirium Thoughts…
…is this ‘stealing beauty’, with Zallian picking from various places and decking up his nest as a magpie does, stealing from various places?
Delirium Thoughts II
Is this beauty all artifice, then? Even though it moves one? Me?
I find it interesting that the song could still evoke real feelings for me even when I didn’t know anything about it. What’s the rub?
Well - Delirium thought: let’s take a look at The song’s lyrics:
The Sky in the Room (English)
When you are here with me
this room has no more walls
but trees
infinite trees.
When you are here near me
this purple ceiling,
no, it doesn’t exist anymore.
I see the sky above us.
We stay here
abandoned
as though there were
nothing, nothing left in the world.
A harmonica is playing.
To me it seems like an organ
that vibrates for you and for me
up in the immensity of the sky.
For you, for me:
in the sky.Regardless of where Gino Paoli may have been when this song came to him, I feel he was very deeply inspired when he wrote it. Others have said (and I believe them) that he experienced - even if momentarily - a glimpse of spiritual enlightenment when he lay next to a prostitute in a brothel. He wanted to preserve this feeling, so he bottled it into a song.
Delirium thoughts III
Beauty pre exists Art.
Humans have been moved by Beauty ever since Humans existed.
Humans wanted to bottle Beauty and take it with them, so they invented Art.
This is a form of commodification.
Anything that’s a Thing, you can potentially sell.
There are a lot of films/series about Americans coming to Italy in search of Beauty, and they flirt with the theme of whether beauty can be bought or possessed at all.
In the film The Agony and The Ecstasy, I remember Raphael telling Michelangelo about artists: “We are but harlots peddling beauty at the doorsteps of the rich.”
Delirium thoughts IV
When Vani and I went to Italy in 2011, we pretty much went through it all - the sights, the places, the history - without reading up or knowing too much. I mean, my point of reference for the Sistine chapel was what Robin Williams says to Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting!
But, we still carried back an indelible impression of the country - of its light and of its beautiful statues and edifices catching that wonderful light at different times of day.
Delirium Thoughts V
In my delirium - I kept churning the idea of Beauty in my head.
The rendition of ‘Il Cielo’ that eventually reached me via ‘Ripley’ was at the end of a chain passed down across decades. I see it - the song’s history, context and associations - also as a chain of feelings and emotions, all organically linked, strengthened and amplified by each other over the years.
The thing that reached me and touched me, I believe, is the engine of genuine inspiration that propelled the song across the friction of time, generating more and more value in each phase.
What a feeling that man on the brothel bed must have experienced! While you can put a price on a record bearing the song, you can’t put a price on that inspiration!
Delirium Thoughts IV
At some point, A.I. will step into this chain of human creation, giving its own response to Beauty.
Delirious wondering about what will happen to this chain when The Machine steps in in a bigger way.
Since we’ve spent so much time talking about Americans in Italy on screen, here are a few more films that entered my delirious thoughts in the past week, both enjoyable, one of them totally brilliant!
Thanks for listening,
Lots of love
V
PS. Always happy to hear from you!
PPS. Stay healthy! But if a fever gets you delirious, write a Substack!
And…