The Eternal Day of Michel de Ghelderode 1892-1962. Synthesis - Mask - Spectacle - ACE103.3

Ghelderode reading. VO, "I believe that the theatre is a sort of ideal, almost religious, ceremonial, where … all social and philosophical systems can take refuge." Photographs of carnivals. Ghelderode writing; VO saying that the theatre chose him. Ghelderode walking in the street; VO talking about choosing paintings by Bosch, Brueghel (The Triumph of Death/De Triomf van de Dood, c.1562) and James Ensor (The Masks and Death/Les masques et la mort, 1897; photograph of Ensor in front of his Christ’s Entry into Brussels/L’Entrée du Christ à Bruxelles (1889); Masks Arguing About a Hanged Man/Les Masques se disputant un pendu, 1891). Nuns at canal-side; Bruges; funeral procession; Ghelderode’s VO on his liking for the city. Ghelderode writing; leaving his house; his VO talking about Elizabethan and Spanish theatre. Caption: "Between 1923 and 1946 de Ghelderode worked as a civil servant at the Administration Communale de Schaerbeek." Ghelderode walking in the streets; his VO talking about wanting "to break the conventional frame of the theatre. Caption: "His writing was virtually unknown outside Belgium until 1949. If his fame is postwar, his theatre is no for nearly all 47 plays were written between 1918 and 1937." Caption: "1935. Hop, Signor! Drama in one act. Extract." Caption: "Scene. Juréal: called "Signor"; two dwarfs; Margaret: Juréal’s wife; the executioner." The dwarfs argue and pretend to joust; Juréal joins them. Marionettes Margaret and Executioner.