Arthur Rimbaud + That most important thing: LOVE. (Patreon)

I think that the film is beautifully summarized in these final stanzas of a poem by Arthur Rimbaud:

“The tempest sealed you in supreme poetry;

The huge stirring of strength comes to your aid;

Your work comes to the boil, death groans, O chosen City!

Hoard in your heart the stridors of the ominous trumpet.

The Poet will take the sobs of the Infamous,

The hate of the Galley slaves, the clamour of the Damned;

And the beams of his love will scourge Womankind.

His verses will leap out: There’s for you! There! Villains!

- Society, and everything, is restored: - the orgies

Are weeping with dry sobs in the old brothels:

And on the reddened walls, the gaslights in frenzy,

Flare balefully upwards to the wan blue skies!”

— Arthur Rimbaud

.

The film is formally based on the novel The American Night (La Nuit américaine) by Christopher Frank, but I believe a parallel can be drawn with this excerpt from the poem “The Parisian Orgy, or Paris Repopulated” (“L’Orgie parisienne ou Paris se repeuple”) by Arthur Rimbaud.

1. The Poet and Servais: 'The Poet will gather the sobs of the Infamous...'

In the poem, the Poet is a witness who descends into the mud, who does not judge the baseness of the city but rather gathers the pain of the damned. Servais Mont is exactly that 'poet' with a camera. He works by photographing decadence, embedding himself in brothels and cheap pornography sets. He does not do it out of malice, but because he is an observer trapped in the misery of others, gathering 'the sobs of the infamous.'

2. Nadine and 'the lightning bolts of his love will strike the Woman'

This verse seems to predict the tortuous relationship between Servais and Nadine. Servais's love for her is neither tender nor peaceful; it is obsessive, painful, and violent. It 'strikes' her in the sense that it shakes her miserable reality (by secretly paying for the theatrical production, putting pressure on her marriage). Servais's love forces her to confront her own pain.

3. The orgies and the ancient brothels

The poem speaks of delirious gas lights, orgies weeping with dry sobs, and reddened walls. This is a perfect description of Żuławski's visual aesthetic. The entire film is shrouded in sordid lights, blood, decadent theatrical sets, and backdrops where degrading sex blends with weeping (much like the uncomfortable opening scene of the film where Nadine cries on the movie set).

4. 'This is for you! There you have it! Scoundrels!'

This cry of rage from the poem fits beautifully with the tone of the dialogues and performances in the film. The characters in That Most Important Thing: Love (especially the one played by Klaus Kinski) do not just speak; they shout from their guts. It is the rage of the misunderstood artist spitting his art in the face of a society ('scoundrels') that only seeks to consume flesh and cheap entertainment."