When Patrick Süskind's novel The Perfume was first published in Germany in 1985, I soon read it, and with great pleasure. The author succeeded in rendering the universe of Grenouille, a human being with an infallible nose. Grenouille's ability to tell what a man has eaten or done hours before by the smell he emits is a source of surprise and amusement for the reader. Sure enough, the novel depends on the faculty of language to name and describe almost everything, odors included.
When the screen adaptation was advertised, I asked myself how scent was going to be rendered by this medium. The simplest means is to show things, for example dead fish or young ladies, and then show Grenouille sniffing, so the spectator knows what Grenouille is smelling. The film makes indeed ample use of this means. But there is more to it. Our senses are not as independent of each other as it may seem. Physiologists or our own experience tell us that sense of smell and of taste are intimately connected, and poets have discovered long ago that vowels may evoke colors and that the smell of fancy cakes dipped into tea may raise childhood memories. Simply showing a fruit or a flower can thus evoke its smell, and the film makes use of this means also.
Compared to the eye, the nose is a sense organ of short distances. In the film, the camera approaches its objects to such a degree that you can discern e.g. every hair and pore of a human skin. But with Grenouille, the nose bridges also long distances. When he pursues Laura and her father, the camera follows in acceleration the trace of scent the two left from the bifurcation where Grenouille is sniffing around up to their actual position miles ahead.
Odors can provoke visions. The film shows us the flowers and maidens Baldini sees when he smells the perfume Grenouille has mixed. Baldini teaches Grenouille that a good perfume is composed of twelve single essences, grouped into three chords of four which become discernible in the course of time. Now this combination of simultaneity and succession is also a characteristic of music (harmony and melody), and in fact, the harmony-centered film music causes feelings of well-being which might stem also from a well-prepared scent.
In one scene towards the end of the film, Grenouille's perfume acts like a drug. A whole crowd falls into a love-delirium. People strip off their clothes and embrace each other. The screen fills up with masses of human flesh similar to a Rubens canvas.
Apart from these intermedial features, the film offers also a lively illustration of 18th-century France. Highly recommended!
When the screen adaptation was advertised, I asked myself how scent was going to be rendered by this medium. The simplest means is to show things, for example dead fish or young ladies, and then show Grenouille sniffing, so the spectator knows what Grenouille is smelling. The film makes indeed ample use of this means. But there is more to it. Our senses are not as independent of each other as it may seem. Physiologists or our own experience tell us that sense of smell and of taste are intimately connected, and poets have discovered long ago that vowels may evoke colors and that the smell of fancy cakes dipped into tea may raise childhood memories. Simply showing a fruit or a flower can thus evoke its smell, and the film makes use of this means also.
Compared to the eye, the nose is a sense organ of short distances. In the film, the camera approaches its objects to such a degree that you can discern e.g. every hair and pore of a human skin. But with Grenouille, the nose bridges also long distances. When he pursues Laura and her father, the camera follows in acceleration the trace of scent the two left from the bifurcation where Grenouille is sniffing around up to their actual position miles ahead.
Odors can provoke visions. The film shows us the flowers and maidens Baldini sees when he smells the perfume Grenouille has mixed. Baldini teaches Grenouille that a good perfume is composed of twelve single essences, grouped into three chords of four which become discernible in the course of time. Now this combination of simultaneity and succession is also a characteristic of music (harmony and melody), and in fact, the harmony-centered film music causes feelings of well-being which might stem also from a well-prepared scent.
In one scene towards the end of the film, Grenouille's perfume acts like a drug. A whole crowd falls into a love-delirium. People strip off their clothes and embrace each other. The screen fills up with masses of human flesh similar to a Rubens canvas.
Apart from these intermedial features, the film offers also a lively illustration of 18th-century France. Highly recommended!
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