JAMES DAY: Marcel Marceau is the world's greatest
living pantomimist, an eloquent poet of silence
who manages to express through the language of a
disciplined body the universality of man's
struggle against life's minor problems. In the
years since World War II, he's toured the world,
delighting audiences in Europe, America, and Asia
with an artistry that speaks in a language
easily and readily understood in every
country. Bip, the character of Marceau's
lively imagination, is the character of every man set
against the vicissitudes of his own tiny and
teasing world. Twenty years ago, Marcel Marceau
established his own company of pantomimists in Paris,
and attached to it a school where the skills of his ancient
art are passed on to those who will follow.
♪ [Theme Music] ♪
JAMES DAY: Mr. Marceau, I suppose
every art has its limitations; it's one
thing that makes it art. Do you find limitations in
mime in your ability to express all that you might
wish to express; in abstractions, for example?
MARCEL MARCEAU: Well, there are limitations, as
you say very well, in every art. But we have not
to mix limitations and limitants. If we are
limited, something is missing. But limitations
are very good because they force you to become very
rich within the borders of a discipline. And I would
say that life is limited by death and it could be
unlimited because we can go on in the memories of
people, as civilizations have done, that it's unlimited.
JAMES DAY: Without limitations
there'd be no life, and no art.
MARCEL MARCEAU: That's right. And I think,
for instance, a painting is limited in
the frame, a matador in a bull-- and this bull is limited
because he is in an arena. A boxer is limited in a ring.
I think a piece is limited by the construction, which
has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But
within those rules, what is marvelous is that those
limits force us to choose, and the choice is the
freedom of expressing one's self within the
frames of strict definitions. Like in
music, the definitions, the writing -- like
writing, itself. And mime has the same discipline.
And very often people have thought that pantomime is
just gesturing or imitating.
JAMES DAY: It is movement. Only movement.
MARCEL MARCEAU: It's movement, attitude, and a reflection of
situations which happen in our lives which are funny, sad;
which could be dreams, which could be hopes, transformations,
frustrations. Everything we feel, we hear, we think;
expressed through body movement.
JAMES DAY: So the fact that there's limited movement does
not limit the kind of expression which you --
MARCEL MARCEAU: On the contrary,
it's more strict than to choose the right
movement for the right situation. And it has to
be specific. You see, there's a grammar of
language. When you look at the Indian mudra, it is a
sign language the Indians use. They have 48
positions of hands. But if I have to use movements, I
would refer also to a grammar which is codified
-- we have -- and which comes from Greek, Roman
civilization, it comes from all the [PH] sartes
of all the civilizations we know about Indian,
Japanese, Chinese, Greek, Roman, Latin. But you will
be surprised to see that the convention of those
gestures -- people do them without being aware that
they do conventional gestures. When you say,
"Get out," "Come here," "Hello, how are you?"
Shaking hands. These are all conventions. And --
JAMES DAY: Are they universal conventions?
MARCEL MARCEAU: Oh yes. But of course if you go to
Japan, the Japanese are the people who have two
civilizations in one. They are Western, and they
become Japanese when they are home, when the
Japanese woman puts on his -- I would say kimono, you see.
JAMES DAY: Kimono.
MARCEL MARCEAU: And she would move in a different
way than when she has Western clothes.
JAMES DAY: Even gestures are different. As I recall
in Japan, the gesture of waving means, "Come here."
MARCEL MARCEAU: Yes.
JAMES DAY: Do you have to be conscious of that when you're --
MARCEL MARCEAU: Yeah, absolutely.
JAMES DAY: - when you're performing
in different countries?
MARCEL MARCEAU: Well, but you see, in life
the gestures people do and the gestures I would do
would not be the same I do on a stage. But the
gestures I do on a stage are very close to the
Japanese. And the choice of the subject is almost
very Asiatic sometimes. Let's say the mask maker.
Because all the Japanese theater is based with a
face expression also and movements of course of the
body. But the combination of expression of face and
movement is a whole painting in movement. And
the Chinese too. And I played very often in Japan
and I was amazed to see how immediately -- you see,
the world, our world, has grown very quickly in the
best and in the worst. But in the best too. For in
the best, let's speak a little about the best
because we always learn from so -- terrible things
happening that sometimes it's good to speak about
good things. And the best for me is a knowledge
people have about art, which is much stronger.
When I arrived in Japan in '55, my stylized
character, Bip, or the man in white, was immediately
very natural to the Japanese who live in this
stylized Kabuki. But for America, it was suddenly
something completely new. And maybe because it was
so new, it attracted immediately attention.
Then critics wrote about the connection of mime
with circus, clowns, the difference between I -- or,
we, as mimes, because I represent a lot and I will
often say "we" instead of saying "I" because in
French we say, "le moi ee ay ee sable". I don't
know how to say it in English. I don't like to
say "I" because I am not alone on a stage. Even
being alone, I am with people; I have the
technicians, the lighting, the music. It's a whole team.
JAMES DAY: What about the relationship
between you and the audience? Even as I watch
you, I find myself empathizing with your
movements. Are you conscious of the audience?
MARCEL MARCEAU: Yes.
JAMES DAY: Turning their heads,
opening their eyes or whatever we do?
MARCEL MARCEAU: Absolutely. I can feel them, you see. First
of all you have a black hole before you because
you don't see the audience. You feel the
audience. You feel when they laugh; at one second
-- if you miss the cue, they don't laugh anymore.
You have to slide over a banana peel the right
moment. They will be moved if the movement is
lyrical, but they will be moved because they relate.
And also, we have not to forget, there are two
things which are very important: style and
meaning. The public is moved by meaning, but also
by the style, though he is not aware that it is a
style. I give you an example.
JAMES DAY: The artist is well aware that it is a style.
MARCEL MARCEAU: Oh, absolutely. I think that when I do
"Youth, Maturity, Old Age, and Death," the public
cannot be moved because I die, because they know
that I am not dead. But they are moved from the
poetry, the flow, the [PH] samble of the image of
death, the timing, exactly as you're moved through
music. It gives to you a soul, a certain excitement
and nostalgia. For instance, there's another
number called "The Butterfly."
JAMES DAY: Very well-known.
MARCEL MARCEAU: Well, and I did it when I was very young.
And I don't think that this is a mystery.
You see, when I create numbers now, I know why,
but the first numbers I did, maybe 10, 20 numbers because I
have a repertoire now of 80 pieces. 80.
JAMES DAY: 80?
MARCEL MARCEAU: 80, yes. Some numbers I just
did it because it was in me.
I think that between 20 and 30, you have in you
all the -- it's like an egg. But then it develops,
you see, it grows. But a piece like "The
Butterfly," I wondered why the public was so moved
because a butterfly is dying. But I found out
later that when I catch the butterfly, first of
all, it's an identification with the
butterfly. Then I play with it, and I kill the
butterfly, and then in the wings -- and there was
utter silence the moment the butterfly is dead. And
suddenly it was a reflection of our hearts.
It was no more a butterfly. It became --
JAMES DAY: It's the beating of the heart.
MARCEL MARCEAU: It was the beating of the heart. And
when the heart stops to beat, it was as if our
heart would have stopped beating.
JAMES DAY: A moment of terror, I suppose.
MARCEL MARCEAU: Well, of terror, and of suspension of time. And
then -- Bip was a butterfly hunter; he had many
butterflies. And there is one -- and then he
understood what death is, to destroy, he has to
love. And he took a butterfly, and he let him
free. But the same moment he let him free, he was
crying inside because it was like losing his own
freedom or losing his own youth, trying to protect
freedom. At the same time there was a loss because
he has lost something. And there was a remembrance,
still, of death. You see? And then the public begins
to dream. And I think -- I defined one day that mime
is a language of identification of men with
elements, people, and nature which surrounds us.
JAMES DAY: Over the past 20 or more years that
you've been creating this repertoire of more than 80
pieces, are you conscious of the passage of time
over those years? Do you have to be conscious of
contemporary thought, contemporary opinion?
MARCEL MARCEAU: Yes.
JAMES DAY: Does it change?
MARCEL MARCEAU: Yes. Time, and time. There is time
with us because, well, time passes. Then there
has to be growth. The older one gets, the better
one has to be, or he has to quit. You see? You have
to grow like a tree. If there is no more growth,
you stop. And, like Maria Rilke said, "The
further we go, the further the aim." And of course,
life has changed, and the mime is a silent witness
of his time. And then first of all I created
what we call pantomime distill, which was to make
a public aware that man is struggling against the
wind, fire, air, tight ropes. Mountains were on
the stage and the mountains were there. I
did not go to the mountain; the mountain was
in me. I was a flower, a tree, I break through
walls. And I create the character of Bip, who
first was pretending to skate, going in the social
party, hunting butterflies. But life
learned me also to look at life with not my two eyes,
but I would say a third eye. You have an eye here,
you have an eye here. Here. And in the center.
And then the world became much nearer, smaller, but
at the same time, infinite. And then I chose
themes like Bip in confrontation with
technology, modern and future life, heart
transplants, brain transplants, going in the
search of eternity, and lost in space and
discovering that if he's a small point among millions
of stars and planets, he is the center of the world
because our thought is still that we know about
the universe, that the universe knows about us.
You see? This is the great enigma of life. And I was
aware to go deeper in subjects like, Bip Dreams
of a Better World. And I think that mime is a very,
very modern and futuristic art because...going to the
moon -- have you seen? It's like a ballet, you know?
The astronauts are like ballet, they're doing
ballet slow motion. And we always played in slow
motion, you see? And we do this. I think that the
greatest problem of mime, though there is no
language -- words -- is time. Because in silence
we have to give a structure to the movement,
that in time it is like vibration of music, or
like words you understand because you know the
language. And the silence has -- in tragic moments --
to be a silent music for the soul.
JAMES DAY: Yes. Which must be very difficult, and require a
high degree of skill. Let me ask you how you first
became interested in mime. Because I'm told that this
interest goes back to the age of five, six years?
MARCEL MARCEAU: I say I was a mime in the womb of
my mother, you see?
JAMES DAY: You were.
MARCEL MARCEAU: Yes, certainly. Because I think that
everything is written before even you are born,
and you have it in you what you will become if
fate gives you the chance to express it. When I was a child--
JAMES DAY: And fate gave you the chance.
MARCEL MARCEAU: Well, fate gave me the chance, it's
true. And I'm very grateful for that because
when I was a child, I was forming with kids, I was playing
in the streets of Paris and in the streets of France. I had a
small group and we played -- you know, I was Charlie Chaplin.
I stole the clothes of my father.
JAMES DAY: Did you see Charlie Chaplin in the movies?
MARCEL MARCEAU: Of course,
when I was five years old. And when it was
funny, I cried, you see? Well, this is another
story. And then I was Jesus Christ, I was the
great heroes Napoleon, upon that curl, you
know. Children always are heroes, you know. I was a
bird, I was a tree. And it was such a part of my life
that I did not think I would become a mime one
day. It was -- I lived to be an actor. It was life.
I played all the time. I was before a mirror and I
played that there was in the desert a thirsty
traveler who dies because he has nothing to drink.
And I looked at myself, and I loved very much to
see how I'd die, you see? I was playing all the
time. It was my camera. The mirror of my room was
my camera. And I listened through walls. There were
rumors of other worlds. I played with my double. And
slowly I wanted to become a painter. I went to art
school. Then we had, unfortunately, the German
occupation when we were kids, you know, five
years? I went in the underground, in the French
underground. I went in the French army. And after --
JAMES DAY: Some of the effects; your father was
killed, was he not?
MARCEL MARCEAU: Yes. Yes.
JAMES DAY: As a result of your brother
being in the underground.
MARCEL MARCEAU: Yes. We were both. My brother and myself.
JAMES DAY: What did you
do in those years with respect to your art?
MARCEL MARCEAU: In one way I was in the art school,
and I was in a cell, as you say, doing underground.
Sabotage, you know, doing forging cards
with my brother, I did it. Forging cards.
JAMES DAY: Forging.
MARCEL MARCEAU: Forging cards, identity cards. And I brought
children through borders who were threatened
because they were Jewish or because the parents
were political -- well, the patriots. And, well, this
is another story. It's a whole -- but it's so near,
now that I speak about it, it's so near that it is
possible that I became the mime I am because I've
witnessed all these -- I would have become the mime
anyhow. I wonder if I would have been --
JAMES DAY: But life's experiences has added to that.
MARCEL MARCEAU: Yes. It has certainly added a
dimension. And then after the war, Paris was Paris,
and all arts came to Paris. It was really the
center, you know? Saint Germain de Prés, jazz, you
know? We were fans of jazz also, you know? Armstrong
were our heroes, you know? And also Sartre, Camus,
and...you know? We had this thirst for life. But --
JAMES DAY: It was Jean-Louis Barrault, however, who was
your godfather, was he not? In a sense?
MARCEL MARCEAU: Well, when you say
"godfather," you remind me of something else.
JAMES DAY: It has a new meaning now, doesn't it?
MARCEL MARCEAU: Yes. Well, he was, if you want, because
Jean-Louis Barrault did a marvelous thing called
Les Enfants du Paradis where he played the great
Pierrot, who was a great mime of the 19th century,
the white face signed act of the 19's. And I played,
then -- I was very young -- I played Arlequin,
opposite to him. There's a confusion because people
think I was the white face, but he was.
JAMES DAY: He was the white face.
MARCEL MARCEAU: Yes. And then I created my own company.
And with a company -- you would be surprised,
but America has not seen my work as a director.
JAMES DAY: It's never been played here in the full length.
MARCEL MARCEAU: Well, in '60, in 1960 we arrived in New
York and Chicago, and I played with my company,
and we produced and played the "The Overcoat" by
Nicolai Gogol, the great Russian novelist of the
19th century. And the laws of mime with a company are
completely different from the laws of mime when I'm
alone. If you have one minute I will just give an --
JAMES DAY: Yes.
MARCEL MARCEAU: When I'm alone,
I make the invisible visible, the abstract
concrete, and the concrete abstract, to give an
example. You know, there are no walls; you see the
walls. There is no butterfly; you see the
butterfly. A man passes, I look at him. Is he tall?
Is he small? The invisible world becomes tangible,
it's here. I lean against a mantelpiece, I take a
flower, I eat a piece of cake. Everything is mimed.
When you have a company, you play with characters
like in a play. Then the characters are women,
also; men. And you play with the characters, and
you limit yourself because the --
JAMES DAY: It's an ensemble.
MARCEL MARCEAU: It's an ensemble, you see?
And then you play "The Overcoat," which is a
story you have to read, because if I would tell
the story, it would be too long. But the great thing
about "The Overcoat" was to express that this poor
clerk who worked all his life to gain a coat had to
work ten years in an office. But to make the
change of time, we worked and worked, and became old
on our bench. And this concentration of time was
something completely new, even in the theater. And I
think, really, that mime has brought new blood to
the contemporary theater today, and even has
influenced ballet, exactly like ballet has influenced mime.
JAMES DAY: And how have you been influenced
by people outside of mime? Have you been influenced
by ballet; have you been influenced by particular
people in what you do?
MARCEL MARCEAU: You are always influenced by culture. You are
influenced when you go to museums, when you know --
for instance, when I see the [PH] Gordan. I'm
influenced through Michelangelo; when you see
The Last Judgment, Chapel Sistine in Rome. You are
influenced through the movement, you learn that
the movement -- to have style -- has to be like the
painters and the sculptures do it. And I
think this is so important that all the reflection of
a civilization goes through art. And of course
ballet has been influenced by us; we have been
influenced by them. I have met interesting people in
all fields; scientists, writers.
JAMES DAY: And they've influenced you and your art?
MARCEL MARCEAU: Certainly. The ideas have influenced me, of
course. Astronauts, certainly, and so writers also. But I
would say that life is so strong that sometimes you
meet people who are unknown who can be very
important in your life too.
JAMES DAY: Are you constantly observing those around you?
MARCEL MARCEAU: Yes. I think that a mime has to be an active
witness of his time. And, like a writer or like a
painter, he paints the deeds and thoughts of men
of his time, and it is reflected through his art.
JAMES DAY: You mentioned earlier, going to art
school during the war -- you still paint, do you not?
MARCEL MARCEAU: Yes. I have done two books. One
is called the La ballade de Paris et du Monde,
where you see something happened which is a little
sad. When I was a child, I painted -- as a child, but
they are good painters sometimes. But when I went
to art school it became more serious; in a sense,
more disciplined, if you want. Because I think that
children paint, they are serious too, and they have
also a great discipline because they make
fantastic drawings. The example of painting is
very strange with children, because to be a
mime you have to have knowledge of life. A child
can be a great painter without knowledge of life
because it's color, and it can be absolutely
realistic and fantastic. But, nevertheless, the
renaissance painter had the knowledge of men, and
you can see it through the art.
JAMES DAY: Yes.
MARCEL MARCEAU: And I wanted to give the example
because -- what was the beginning of the question?
JAMES DAY: I think to do with your own painting.
Because I want to --
MARCEL MARCEAU: Oh yes, yes.
My own paintings actually. I'm lost in my thoughts. I
painted when my company collapsed and I was the
one man, I painted. My company was no more there,
and you could see mimes in the street of Paris, mimes
flying over the roofs of Paris which was Bip.
JAMES DAY: We have some of your paintings. If we can take
a look at them, perhaps if we can take a look at them
you can tell us exactly what they are.
MARCEL MARCEAU: I painted -- I imagined all the Pierrots,
which were the French mimes of the 19th century,
gathering one night at 12:00 or 1:00 in the
morning, or 12:00 night -- it's more romantic -- on
the moonlight they all gather and there is
Chaplin, Keaton, Harpo Marx, Jean-Louis Barrault,
Etienne Decroux was my master. Myself. We are all
dressed in costumes of Pierrot in white, and we
are gathering in the same place. It was a dream.
JAMES DAY: What satisfactions do
you get from painting?
MARCEL MARCEAU: The satisfaction, first of all,
of never being alone. And not of
noticing the time is passing. And just -- it is
projecting on a piece of paper the frames of life,
exactly as I project on a stage every night myself.
But at the same time, I have a feeling that I
share 2,000 lives. Because I laugh, I make people
laugh, I laugh inside. I cry, I make people cry,
and this moment you are part of the 2,000 people.
And when I paint, I think it's beautiful to just
draw life. You see, sometimes words give us an
image which is right, and sometimes words go beyond
our thought. This is what the poet does when
somebody would say, "A train entered my room."
It's absolutely impossible --
JAMES DAY: Yes.
MARCEL MARCEAU: - but it's an image. And this is what a
painter, a mime, has to do; the impossible possible.
JAMES DAY: What you do is a highly
disciplined art. Are there moments on the stage when
you get a particular satisfaction when something
happens that, in a sense your own heart stops beating for the
moment to say, "This is a lovely moment."
MARCEL MARCEAU: Well, sometimes a baby was crying
because it was in the lap of his
mother in the moment which is very dramatic. I'm not
very glad at that moment. Sometimes it has happened
-- you see, surprisingly, the audience has never,
never said, "Shut up," or "Speak louder." You know,
it could happen that somebody wants to be -- to
make fun. Never. It's very interesting that you are
moved because you have a feeling that, among those
2,000 people who watch every night -- and I play
300 nights a year in 65 countries -- you would
imagine that there could be somebody who is crazy!
Somebody just who does something absolutely -- no,
I've witnessed people collapsing from an
illness, you know? I've witnessed somebody
collapsing on his chair because he laughed so much
that he falls from his chair; because I can hear
it, I don't see it. But in general, I witness silence
when it had to be. And if you would have put a [PH]
magnetophone in Tokyo, New York, Paris, San
Francisco, or India at the same second people laugh,
at the same second they're moved, this is really a proof
that mime is really a common denominator to every man.
JAMES DAY: Thank you.
♪ [Theme Music] ♪