psmv5: French affairs

Simenon

I have now finally finished the story at reference 1 last noticed at reference 2. I think I have now got the idea – even if it all seems a bit improbable when picked at in this way. That said, the portrait of the unpleasant, driven, self-made man is convincing enough. And Maigret has the flair needed to lock onto the villain more or less from the word go and to hang on to him for the few days it takes to bring him to an unforced confession, two deaths later.

The point of present interest being the wheeze the self-made man comes up with to circumvent the law of France which says that you cannot leave all of your money away from your family. They have to get a decent share. Not like here in the UK where Henry VIII had said that you could leave your money to whomsoever you wished, with the result that dynastically minded aristos used to go in for entails and lawyers used to make lots of money out of breaking them.

The wheeze being to come to a contract with some suitable party, perhaps a lawyer or a bank, whereby, on your death, all your assets are cashed in and the proceeds invested for a fixed term – perhaps twenty years – after which they revert to the regular heirs. A contract which, in effect, only comes into effect on your death. Legal because you have not left the money away from your family, merely slowed them down a bit. All this to spite them.

Tautou

After a well-made but rather unsavoury drama from BBC about dead bodies, we needed something lighter, and lighted upon ‘Coco before Chanel’. We then moved onto ‘Delicacy’, also starring Audrey Tautou; which was OK but which expired before we had finished it. Next up was the rather more successful ‘Thérèse Desqueyroux’.

It turned out that I had owned a copy of this story for more than fifteen years, more or less untouched and certainly unread, at reference 6, with its arrival having been noticed at reference 7. Somehow it had survived the culls.

For little more than the cost of the postage, this has now been supplemented by the Penguin version of all four of the Thérèse stories, also to be found at reference 8.

Having been prompted, and with Maigret being out of the way for the moment, we will see how I get on. And will BH have a go?

Austen & Schubert

Sticking with Studio Canal on Prime and reverting to romcom, we have just watched ‘Jane Austen Wrecked My Life’. I am not usually a big on romcom, but we both liked this one well enough.

I was also struck by the some the mood music, which seemed terribly familiar, but which I could not name. I could not dig it out of the vinyl for a proper replay.

However, I thought perhaps a Beethoven or Schubert piano sonata. Maybe this was something that Gemini could help with.

At the end of the first column, which was fair enough, I cranked up the film on the laptop and started on discs. And while I found it difficult to compare one piece with another, compared serially rather than in parallel, perhaps because my (musical) short term memory is feeble, impromptus did not seem to work.

I tried a few Beethoven slow sonata movements and that did not seem to work either.

But I then turned up another place in the film with piano music, a place with a visible score and went back to Gemini.

Unfortunately, the Wanderer Fantasy was not only not a sonata, it did not seem to fit at all. A piece which I once knew quite well. See, for example, reference 12.

At which, Gemini goes back to the Impromptu, also not a sonata.

I then struck out on my own, tried hearing some more discs, looking at some more scores and doing some more searches, eventually turning up the impressively addressed reference 12, which contained what I think is the right answer, Schubert’s fantasia for four hands in F minor, D940. With the plus that the four hands business fits in nicely with the use made of the music in the film.

Having got this far, I searched my discs for the piece in question, and turned up reference 14, snapped above. From the date, probably once the property of my elder brother, rather than my father. From a time a little before the arrival of cassette tapes (where have they all gone?) and well before the arrival of compact discs. An impressive piece which I do not think I had heard before – and impressively different heard entire than heard in soft snippets. But I do not carp: the soft snippets did very well in the film.

I think it would be fair to say that Gemini’s role in all this was supportive rather then decisive. But taking about two elapsed hours, in two bursts, between us we did get there. And I did get treated to a good dose of waffly encouragement. Just the sort of thing a good teacher should go in for!

Some odds and ends

There are several people in my family who probably would have known where the snippets came from without needing to go to all this bother. There are several other people in my acquaintance who could, or could have, known.

And with bit more geekery, I dare say I could have deployed one of those music identification gadgets, as noticed at reference 15. Gadgets which depend, as I recall, on statistical oddities in particular performances, rather than on any understanding of the music concerned.

The outstanding puzzle is why the music seemed so familiar when I heard the snippets in the film. Did Schubert recycle the tunes from somewhere else?

Familiarity which lured me down the sonata path, rather than sticking with regular search, which might have got me there faster. And poking around with scores was, in the event, another red herring, although I suppose the three parts (rather than the usual two) might have turned up something – had the French scene dressers been more careful than seems to have been the case.

All part of learning how to get the best out of Gemini. Out of the vast amount of electricity he is said to be gobbling up.

PS 1: for some reason I now know not of, I had thought that Mauriac was a right-wing collaborator. It is clear that from reference 8 that this is not the case, although there is track record: ‘… A former Action Française supporter, he turned to the left during the Spanish Civil War…’ – and joined the Resistance quite early on, after the fall of France, in the Second War.

PS 2: the Jane Austen film was brought to us on Prime. On my laptop, the snipping tool seem to be blocked in this context, giving just solid black in the film area. I can take snaps with my telephone, but these were not much good for puzzling out glimpses of scores.

References

Reference 1: L'Écluse No.1 - Georges Simenon - 1933. Story 2, Volume V of the collected Maigret. Rencontre.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/10/crusher.html.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coco_Before_Chanel.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delicacy_(film).

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se_Desqueyroux_(2012_film).

Reference 6: Oeuvres Romanesques – François Mauriac, Flammarion – 1965. Two fat volumes. Copy No.1920.

Reference 7: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2009/06/cornucopeia.html.

Reference 8: Thérèse – François Mauriac, Gerard Hopkins, Penguin – 1972. The four Thérèse stories.

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Mauriac.

Reference 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Austen_Wrecked_My_Life.

Reference 11: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2011/04/day-of-stake.html.