Susan Sontag - Duet for Cannibals: A Screenplay

A S C R E E N P L A Y B Y

F A R R A R, S T R A U S A N D G I R O U X N E W Y O R K

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For Susan Taubes (19281969)

The first version of the script of Duet for Cannibals, which I wrote in Stockholm in August 1968, was an old-fashioned, numbered shot-by-shot dcoupage, each page divided into two columns, with the image on the left and the dialogue plus sound effects on the right. What follows is the second version, written in early September to facilitate work with the actors, in which I eliminated much of the explicit visual material (indications of how the image was to be framed, specifics of camera movement) and added descriptions of the dcor, clothes, and of the characters and their moods.

While preparing this second version of the script, I was also choosing the locations and completing the casting. Agneta Ekmanner, who plays Ingrid, had already agreed to take part in the film in May, during my first, brief visit to Stockholm, when I had only a rough idea of the story in my head. I had asked Adriana Asti to be in the film in July, when I was in Rome, and the part of Francesca was written for her. Gsta Ekman, who plays Tomas, and Lars Ekborg, who plays Bauer, were cast in September.

Filming took place on locations in and around Stockholm in October and November, over a period of six weeks. We had thirty-four shooting days. The film was shot in black and white 35 mm. film with one Arriflex camera; all the dialogue and most of the effects were recorded direct with a Nagra. Since Duet for Cannibals was, as the expression goes, edited in the camera, the actual editing, done in February and March 1969, went fairly smoothly. The first screening was at the Cannes Film Festival, under the auspices of the Quinzaine des Ralisateurs, in May 1969.

Although fortified with a detailed script when I began shooting, I had expected that many elements would be altered or dropped in the course of the shooting, and many new things invented and improvised by myself, the cameraman, and the actors. To my surprise, very little of this happened. I was not conscious of feeling, as the films director, any particular loyalty to myself as the author of the script. But as we began working, and especially when I saw that the actors felt the script was sound and their roles performable as Id conceived them, there seemed no reason not to follow the script closely throughout the shooting. Because this is what did happen, Im now publishing what I wrote in September, despite some tiny discrepancies between the script and the finished film, rather than a new, third version. The only change Ive made now is to omit eleven sequences (the original script consisted of seventy-five sequences) which I dropped in the editingin most cases, to keep down the films length; in two cases, because the sequence simply didnt work. I had wanted Duet for Cannibals to run no more than 95 minutes; in the final editing I settled for 104 minutes, though I now regret not having been tougher with the film and sticking to my original resolution.

Susan Sontag

New York
November 1969

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY : Susan Sontag

PRODUCER : Gran Lindgren

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER : Peter Hald

PHOTOGRAPHY : Lars Swanberg / Hans Welin

SOUND : Ulf Darin / Kjell Nicklasson

ASSISTANT TO THE DIRECTOR : Brita Werkmster

CONTINUITY : Kerstin Eriksdotter

CLOTHING AND PROPERTIES : Katerina Lindgren

ELECTRICIAN : Ulf Bjrk

MAKE-UP : Tina Johansson / Barbro Holmbring

EDITOR : C. O. Skeppstedt

MIXING : Sven Fahln

MUSIC : Dvok, Mahler, Wagner

FRANCESCA BAUER : Adriana Asti

ARTHUR BAUER : Lars Ekborg

TOMAS : Gsta Ekman

INGRID : Agneta Ekmanner

MRS. GRUNDBERG : Brita Brunius

LARS : Stig Engstrm

MAN IN CAFETERIA : Gunnar Lindqvist

Duet for Cannibals was produced by Sandrew Film & Teater AB (Sweden). It is distributed by Evergreen Films in the United States and Canada and by Contemporary Films in Great Britain.

Credits, in plain, book-face black type.

Slow, rhythmic, hammering noise over the credits.

A big, light, studio-like room with three windows, sparsely furnished: double bed; small table under the large window stacked with books; table with two wooden kitchen chairs against one wall under another window; one comfortable, seedy upholstered chair; homemade bookshelves filled with books (mostly paperbacks), some records, and a portable phonograph; a sink and small stove along another wall; posters and photographs on several walls, including a poster of Hugo Blanco, and NLF flag, photographs of the black athletes at the Mexico Olympics giving the Black Power salute and a fashion model, and the front pages of newspapers announcing the death of Robert Kennedy and the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The general appearance of the room is messy. Clothes slung over the chairs, unmade bed, dirty dishes piled up in the sink. The big window at the far end of the room gives onto the roof. The window starts about four feet off the floor, so to get out to the roof one must step up on the low table stacked with books. From the roofit is the eighth floor of a modern apartment buildingthere is a spectacular view of the city and water.

The film opens with a close-up of a womans hand. Silence. The camera pulls back a little, showing the hand picking up a hammer.

Medium shot (from behind): INGRID is nailing up a poster of ARTHUR BAUER . Continuation of the sound heard during the credits. INGRID wears slacks and a sweater. More hammering. She steps back to look at the poster.

Medium shot of TOMAS : standing before the small mirror left of the sink, shaving. TOMAS is an ex-student, in his late twenties, intense-looking but somewhat inexpressive facially, methodical but graceful in his movements; there is something faintly abrasive in his manner. He wears jeans and is bare-chested.

(Off) Coffee?

TOMAS nods yes. Cuts himself. Puts a small Band-Aid on his cheek, while we hear INGRIDS voice again, still off, this time flat and impersonal as if she were reading what she says. (Such narrative passages will be in quotes throughout the script to distinguish them from lines that are said off.)

Bauer asked Tomas to come at 6 p.m. tomorrow. And afterwards they would make a schedule for the work.

Medium long shot of INGRID , the first time we get any real sense of the room. INGRID stands by the phonograph. She is also an ex-student, around twenty-six, pretty, thin, slightly nervous in her movements. She has on different pants and sweater from those she wore in the preceding sequence. She puts on a record: the Prize Song from