A La Mort Subite on Rue Montagne aux Herbes Potagères is a Brussels institution, a wonderful café brasserie that retains its original 1928 decor.
Its glorious interior is a little faded in a warm, lived-in way.
The place has a marble floor, high ceiling, long wooden tables, sturdy old radiators, and elegantly arched mirrors along the light yellow walls.
The waiting staff are good-humoured and friendly, unlike in some other Brussels establishments, and they patrol the premises attentively, smartly turned out in white shirts and black waistcoats.
When I drop in to A La Mort Subite just after midday for a salad and a couple of beers, no background music is playing, which in this case is a good thing.
Some venues don’t need music to create an atmosphere. This is one such place.
The volume of ambient noise gradually rises as more people turn up and there is soon a contented hum from the day’s customers. Maybe they have background music playing later in the day but for this laidback Sunday lunchtime none is needed.
I wash down my salad with beer of the month Arend Tripel from Brouwerij de Ryck, a family-run brewery located between Ghent and Brussels.
Described on the menu as a gold-blond top fermented beer, the Arend Tripel is very good. It’s refreshing, with a strong deep flavour.
After the Arend Tripel I move on to another Belgian blond beer, Hopus Blond from Brasserie Lefebvre.
This beer has a very nice dry bitterness.
It is served in a spectacular vase-shaped glass that is big enough to house a bunch of flowers.
Well fuelled by these terrific beers, I leave A La Mort Subite and head in the direction of the Belgian Comic Strip Center at Rue des Sables 20, just a few minutes walk away.
Before I get there I wonder if it will be full of Big Bang Theory geeks.
But it isn’t crawling with Sheldons at all.
In fact, it has attracted a very diverse range of visitors today: students, parents with young kids, some arty types, a few couples, all ages represented.
Rather than the comics, it is the building that houses them that has lured me here.
The Belgian Comic Strip Center occupies a superb 1906 art nouveau building designed by architect Victor Horta.
The elegance and splendour hit you straightaway when you enter.
There is a curved stained glass ceiling, tiny floor tiles arranged in flowing interlocking circles, and an elegant lamp post standing surprisingly in the middle of the ground floor, anchoring the whole scene.
As I wander around this wonderful interior, I see that even ironwork which would conventionally be merely functional, such as the buttress supports by the street-facing first floor window, is executed in intricate and aesthetically pleasing fluid curves.
Belgium has produced an extraordinary number of successful comic strip heroes, such as Spirou, Lucky Luke, Bob and Bobette, and Tintin, amongst many others, and their spirit suffuses this building.
Although the building holds my attention more than the comics, one exhibit is particularly engaging: a brilliant two-page comic strip on the process of creating a comic strip, ‘Le coloriste et le lettreur vus par André Geerts’. The visual imagination of this exhibit brings to life the creative process far more effectively than just the written word could.
Opposite the Belgian Comic Strip Center stands the Fondation Marc Sleen, housed in an old newspaper building with an attractive tiled facade that still carries traces of its newspaper origins.
Above the door entrance there is elegant lettering for ‘Abonnements’, ‘Publicité’ and ‘Photogrammes’, whilst higher up there is a sign for La Presse Socialiste Cooperative.
It looks well worth a visit some other occasion, but today’s film time is approaching so I make my way uphill towards Cinemathek on Rue Baron Horta for the 4 p.m. showing of director Frank Borzage’s 1939 film Disputed Passage.
This film is part of a Frank Borzage retrospective.
Borzage is reckoned by some to be an underrated director, less widely revered than his better known contemporaries Howard Hawks, King Vidor and John Ford.
Borzage’s most popular film is probably his 1932 version of Ernest Hemingway’s ‘A Farewell To Arms’, starring Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes.
In ‘Disputed Passage’ I can see why Borzage is regarded highly enough to be the subject of a retrospective such as the one currently running here at Cinemathek in Brussels.
His shots are beautifully composed and he gets the pacing of the action just right, driving the story forward with a light touch underpinned by great authority.
‘Disputed Passage’ is showing in Salle Plateau, a tiny auditorium comprising just four steeply sloped rows of seats, twenty-nine seats in total.
This auditorium is a black box. The walls are black, the ceiling is black, the carpet is black and the piano down on the stage is, guess what, black.
But rather than being bleakly oppressive, the auditorium has a chic, arty aura.
Before the film begins there is no background music, no advertisements, no trailers.
As almost everyone in the audience has come here on their own, nobody is speaking.
We are all sitting in total silence, broken only by the sound of me turning the pages of my Cinematek programme.
It is amazing how loud a turning page can sound in the midst of utter silence.
The opening credits show Lloyd C. Douglas, author of the Disputed Passage novel upon which the film is based, writing a letter of thanks to Paramount Pictures for making a film that is so faithful to the book.
It makes me wonder if nowadays authors have to sign some kind of non-disclosure agreement for movie adaptations of their books, to prevent authors from denigrating a film if they believe it is a poor rendition of their original work.
It wouldn’t help a film’s promotional campaign if the author gave interviews telling everyone that the film version of his or her book stinks.
But Lloyd C. Douglas was clearly happy to endorse Frank Borzage’s film of the Disputed Passage book, and I can understand his satisfaction with the film version as it really is quite captivating.
The main theme of ‘Disputed Passage’ is the same as in ‘The Red Shoes’, namely the need imposed by a charismatic despot figure for one of the heroes to choose between total dedication to their vocation or sacrificing their career to be with the one that they love.
In ‘The Red Shoes’ the despot was Anton Walbrook in the role of Boris Lermontov, whilst in ‘Disputed Passage’ the equivalent role is played by Akim Tamiroff as Dr Forster.
Tamiroff gives a terrific performance as the tyrannical Dr Forster, starting with a superbly delivered derogatory speech to the newly enrolled medical students who have gathered to observe his anatomy class.
There might not have been any Sheldon lookalikes at the Belgian Comic Strip Center earlier today, but Tamiroff’s opening gambit to his students is very similar to Sheldon’s habitual condescension to what he considers to be the lesser mortals with inferior minds that attend his university lectures.
Akim Tamiroff was trained by Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre School.
This illustrious background may explain Tamiroff’s seemingly effortless ability to command an audience’s attention. He doesn’t overact or use gimmicky affectations.
He just projects so well that you hang on his every word.
John Howard and Dorothy Lamour are the other two main members of the cast.
John Howard is very good as John Beaven, blending cool professional detachment with a late dawning realization that in his relentless pursuit of perfection in his work, he has sacrificed too much.
Dorothy Lamour in her role radiates old-style Hollywood glamour. There is a wryness to Lamour’s phrasing that prevents her lines from degenerating into faux naïf soppiness.
In a small supporting role, Judith Barrett gives a memorable performance as Winifred Bane, the only female student in the medical class.
Winifred stands up to Dr Forster’s patronizing comments, but she is less successful in her efforts to tempt the workaholic Beaven to take a break from his studies and come out and party with her.
The scene between Beaven and Bane is played perfectly. Judith Barrett is funny and vivacious and as I’m watching that scene I feel like yelling to the Beaven character, “What are you waiting for, you fool? Go with her!”
The final scene of ‘Disputed Passage’ is done quite subtly. It is simple and strong, and doesn’t resort to exaggerated melodrama.
Today’s film print is jumpy, which makes watching the film a bit of an effort on the eyes.
But that doesn’t detract from the pleasure of seeing such a good film projected in a cinema to an appreciative audience, as it was intended to be.
Related Post: ‘One Summer of Happiness’, Cinemathek Brussels