Proust's Overcoat - Lorenza Foschini [1]
Tosi, though reserved, began to elaborate in great detail: “We were so enthusiastic, so hopeful about finally bringing this project to life. Luchino had already made contact with some of the biggest names in world cinema. We were talking to Laurence Olivier, Dustin Hoffman, certainly Greta Garbo, actors of international renown whose names would help finance the film. But personally, I was a bit hesitant. Lila de Nobili, a great costume designer I revere, had said to me: ‘It’s not possible. To make a film based on Proust is absolutely impossible. The cinema is something concrete. You can’t transpose memory into film.’ But Visconti was determined, and sent me to Paris to oversee the project and begin the research. I met Proust’s niece, Suzy Mante-Proust, and several aristocrats who had known the models that inspired certain of the characters, such as the Duchesse de Guermantes and Baron de Charlus. I spent a lot of time speaking with them, but they had nothing I could really use. Then, one day, someone mentioned a gentleman whose name I have forgotten. . . . I know I still have his calling card somewhere, because I never threw it away. I was told that he was a collector of Proust’s manuscripts and that he might be very helpful.”
Tosi tracked the gentleman down, requested an appointment, and went to meet him. It wasn’t a simple trip, going out and finding an office in the suburbs of Paris. Finally, Tosi arrived at sunset in front of the gates. “I remember,” he told me, “a brick wall, a grove of horse chestnut trees, a factory. This gentleman was the owner of a business that manufactured perfumes. He received me in his office, a vast room with pink walls, lined with shelves laden with bars of soap. The scent of lavender and violet perfumed the air around me. As he sat behind his desk, the image I had of him was of a large nocturnal bird, black and fantastic. He spoke an old-fashioned French—marvelous, sublime.”
The man sitting behind the desk proceeded to tell Tosi the extraordinary story of how a growing passion for the writings of Marcel Proust had overlapped with a serious medical condition. One summer, as a young man in Paris, he suffered what seemed to be a bout of appendicitis. An eminent surgeon was summoned to operate on the young perfume magnate. Called back to Paris from his vacation in Vichy, the doctor was Robert Proust, the brother of Marcel. Some time after the operation, the patient paid a call on his doctor, who gave him the opportunity to see some of his legendary brother’s manuscript notebooks. This experience left a profound impression on the young man, and he began to hunt for anything that had to do with the great writer. He made contact with the family, with relatives, with friends. He pored over obituary listings in Le Figaro, and when someone who had played a part in the Proustian world died, he would attend the funeral, worming his way into the church, pretending to be a relation. Singling out the one person at the gathering who most interested him, he would ingratiate himself, initiate a conversation, then pump the person for information.
Tosi listened, rapt. At the end of this unforgettable meeting, the man revealed to Tosi that he had once possessed Marcel Proust’s bedroom furniture, which he eventually donated to the great museum of the history of Paris, the Musée Carnavalet. However, he further confided, he still owned the famous overcoat, the coat in which Marcel had swaddled himself while out on various adventures and escapades, the coat that doubled as a blanket when he wrote in bed at night.
Tosi was dumbfounded. The gentleman “rose and took down from the shelves a box tied in string. He unwrapped it and pulled out a dark gray, almost black wool coat, lined in fur.” Tosi described the coat to me, with his wardrobe master