au centre :Jack Wild - Gavin l' apprenti de Melius

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Demy displays a subdued sense of rage against his authority figures throughout, but it bubbles to the surface in the final scenes. His fairy tale certainly possesses a very adult subtext, engaged and angry. It has some of the spirit of Angela Carter’s worldly recasting of the old stories – sharp and wise. The cast of fairy tale villains, shaded incontemporary colours, are given particular prominence in Demy’s sombre fable. But we start with the wagon of a travelling troupe of players trundling across the countryside, the painted cloth backdrop of a beatific female martyr smiling in the flames like a bright sail helping them along the way.

The painting is almost like a precognitive representation of Joan of Arc, who was burned at the stake in 1431, many decades after the mid-fourteenth century setting of the film (the post-credits historical screed informing us that the year is 1349). They pick up two further travellers as they approach Hamelin: a peddlar pilgrim, hawking relics and crusade souvenirs; and Donovan’s mysterious troubadour, the sharply pointed prow of his cap shading his gaze. The piper’s fey, otherworldly character is underlined by the magical storm which flashes around the encampment the night after he joins them.

Theatrical lighting illuminates the stage set, its artificiality lending the scene an eerie charge, as if we were on the borders of some otherplace. This motley group are strongly reminiscent of the wandering players in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. They too are seen as innocents, free from the corruption of the world they move through and open and generous to those they meet. The pilgrim offers a more worldly perspective akin to that of the knight’s squire in Bergman’s film. They are a band of outsiders, whose lowly, vagabond status is made abundantly clear to them as soon as they arrive at the gates of Hamelin.

The bawdy, knockabout popular entertainments they put on in front of their large Marian screen purvey a different, more honest and open vision of the sacred to that put forward by the Church. It’s a vision which finds the sacrosanct present in the common experiences of everyday life, in the pleasures which the Church would taint with sin.

There’s also a subversive element to the players, a mockery and peasant disregard for authority which anticipates non-conformist beliefs to come. The backdrop with the burning female saint has an enthroned king to the side gesturing his approval whilst a flunky does the hot and dirty work and fans the flames to enhance the spectacle. The woman’s sanctity is made evident by the golden headdress of her halo and the angel reaching down her hand in preparation to usher her into heaven. The king and the state he commands is thus portrayed as the villainous party, creating martyrs of holy innocents.

In the show they put on outside the walls of the town, silent comedy angels suspended in the air (flying Keatons or Chaplins) deliver boots up the backside to prowling baddies who look suspiciously like castle guards. Again, there are parallels with The Seventh Seal. In Bergman’s film, the players’ life affirming farce is disrupted by a procession of self-flagellating penitents, who oppose it with their own theatrical spectacle of wailing and suffering. In Demy’s film, the players put on a show for the wedding feast which makes play with the story of Eve’s temptation of Adam. Here, a giant hopping apple and a frustrated serpent arrive too late to perform their assigned roles.

Eve is beaming and caressing her rounded belly while Adam stands to the side, looking very pleased with himself. There’s no hint of sin or shame in this Garden, over which the painted figure of another female figure looks with an approving eye. The players and artists are associated with a more Marian worldview, heralds of a female future in which male power holds less sway. This is in marked contrast with the Bishop’s wedding ceremony, during which he venomously hisses about Eve’s curse and voices the Church’s abhorrence of female sexuality.

The players remain essentially peripheral to the story, however, never becoming directly involved in its unfolding intrigues. Even the pied piper is a rather shadowy presence, a keenly observant onlooker from the wings who only takes centre stage to perform his three significant acts of musical enchantment: the waking of the Burgermeister’s daughter from her trance; the herding of the plague-carrying rats to the watery end; and the leading of the children in a merrily dancing parade to elsewhere. In a way, he is a little like Bob Dylan’s character in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (although a lot less twitchy) - the artist observer, taking in what he sees and storing it for future use.

In the Pied Piper, however, Donovan’s songs are directly incorporated into the story rather than serving as its background soundtrack. Donovan’s piper is a figure from beyond time. Whilst the theatrical band take up hurdy-gurdy, cittern and tabor to play through a medieval estampie dance, he carries his psychedelically daubed acoustic guitar and sings songs which could have been taken from Donovan’s own albums for children, HMS Donovan and For Little Ones. Songs steeped in 60s Pre-Raphaelite medievalism like Guinevere and Celeste make him something of a natural for such a role, and he would go on to write songs for Franco Zeffirelli’s portrayal of St Francis as hippy saint, Brother Sun, Sister Moon.

The central characters outside the conglomerate circle of villainy, however, are Michael Hordern’s Melius, the Jewish alchemist, and his surrogate son Gavin, played by Jack Wild. Wild brings some of the urchinry he put to good use as the Artful Dodger in Oliver to the character. But here he has a settled home and a scholarly Jewish guardian with his best interests at heart. Melius’ laboratory cum library is a far more welcoming home than the Baron’s forbiddingly dark and labyrinthine castle. It’s filled with light, books, pots and bottles, alembics, bird cages and curios (preserved crocodiles and turtles) which suggest a lively curiosity about the wider world.

Its busy but relaxed atmosphere is in complete contrast with the morbid interiority of the Baron’s gloomy surrounds, or the fussy quarters of the Burgermeister and his wife, where harried servants are constantly having orders shouted at them. Melius and Gavin offer an alternative vision of family life, one which doesn’t involve direct descent, but which does involve a great deal more love.

Where Baron and Burgermeister use their children as bargaining pieces to gain position or wealth, Melius seeks to guide Gavin towards the fulfilment of his nascent artistic talents, pointing him towards the Netherlands and the new schools of secular painting emerging there. This was the time leading up to the establishment of the Flemish School under the patronage of the Duke of Burgundy in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, which would reach a pinnacle with the paintings of Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, and a little later the densely populated fantasias of heaven and hell by Hieronymous Bosch. Gavin makes a connection with the visiting players, recognising fellow spirits from whom he might learn.

Demy depicts his artists as outsiders, looking in on society from a slight remove. There’s obviously a fair degree of self-portraiture here. These artists are either a part of a group, have the support of a sympathetic patron (Melius in Gavin’s case) or are loners who follow their own muse (Donovan’s piper) and who seem to be not just outside of society but from another world entirely. At the end of the film, Gavin return disconsolately to Melius’ room. It’s still filled with the objects which mirrored the contents of his mind, but its now empty of his spirit.

He takes up the pipe and begins to play, and when the players turn up and invite him to join them, he agrees with scarcely a moment’s hesitation. He will travel to the Netherlands, explore new art forms and perhaps attain the almost supernatural power of the piper. A power which is achieved through art or music rather than sorcery, however.