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Peter Greenaway |
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H is for House |
Here is the script to Greenaway's 1973 film.
A naturalist of very fixed habits followed the sun around his house. Soon after dawn
he sat at breakfast with his family on the porch that faced east. At eleven o'clock
he joined his family for a cup of coffee on the verandah that faced the sun towards
the south-east. At lunch-time he ate on the terrace with his family overlooking the garden
that lay due south. At about seven o'clock the naturalist dined with his family in
the conservatory that faced the sunset, and as soon as it was dark the naturalist
went to bed.
When the world began to spin anti-clockwise, the naturalist couldn't change his habits
and he spent the day alone living in the shadow of his house, and never sat or ate
with his family again.
H is for house.
H is for heel, hip, heart, [ham?], haunch, hair and head.
R is for robin.
The robin is an abundant and widespread resident.
H is for hawk, hoopoe, hawfinch, heron, harrier.
A is for apple.
B is for butterflies.
H is for housesparrow, hedgesparrow.
H is for hen.
C is for cat.
H is for hedge, hedgehog, horsetail, hawthorn, heather, hemlock, holly, hellebore
and hazel.
H is for [hats?], my [hat?]
H is for haberdashery, hunting, [harthing?], [halfing?], hog, horse and hiccup.
W is for the wren has a loud, dramatic song with high pitched phrases and trills.
H is for houseparrow, hedgesparrow. H is for holiday. H is for [hero?]. H is for
[harris?].
H is for homemovie and Hollywood and R is for russets. G is for grannysmiths. C is
for cox's orange pippins.
H is for harvest.
The carrion crow is a widespread and sometimes common bird.
H is for harpsichord.
H is for health and happiness, hearst, hepatitis, heretic, heaven, hell, horror, holocaust
and His Holiness.
H is for hero and heroine.
H is for homily.
H is for hysteria.
H is for hapaxlegomenon. H is for hosepipe. H is for [?].
H is for hammock.
H is for hopelessness, happiness, homelessness.... hesitation.
B is for blackberries. I like those ones.
C is for cows.
H is for heifer.
B is for bike.
H is for horse.
M is for music.
H is for hocus-pocus, helter-skelter, harum-scarum, hoity-toity, hokey-cokey, hotchpotch,
hubble-bubble, [?-?], [hurdy-gurdy?], [?-?].
T is for table.
H is for horsepower.
H is for hemiptera, homoptera and hymenoptera.
H is for hookworm, hornet and hoverfly.
H is for haberdashery. H is for hump. H is for hacienda. H is for having. H is for
hiatus. H is for hungry. H is for horology. H is for hybrid. H is for haplography.
H is for cigars - Havana cigars.
L is for the ladder.
H is for hermaphroditism, hibernation, [holozoic?].
H is for haemophilia, haemorrhage, hemisphere, habilitate.
H is for habits.
H is for hat, [hugh?], hatchet, hammer and Hitchcock.
H is for handicap, handicraft, handiwork, handkerchief and [handle/Handel].
H is for house.
S is for sun.
H is for heliolithic, heliotrope, [helois?], helium and helix.
H is for Homburg.
H is for hoover and honey.
S is for sun.
H is for half-past six, half-past seven, half-past eight, half-past nine, half-past
ten, half-past eleven, half-past twelve...
H is for hosepipe and H2O
...half-past one, half-past two, half-past three, half-past four, half-past five,
half-past six.
H is for housesparrow.
Housesparrows are abundant. And the treesparrow is common in many places where it
often has small colonies.
P is for [?]
H is for bean - haricot bean, and has-been.
Rooks may often breed in small copses and along the edges of woods.
A woman who lived in the country watched and waited for the approach of the city.
She was convinced it would come directly from the North, and only in the afternoon.
So she scanned the northern horizon through binoculars until tea-time.
H is for horizon
Her expectations and her anxieties, however fearful, always ceased abrupty
and absolutely at four o'clock.
The speculators grew wise and parked their lorries to the East of her property and
they unloaded their bricks on the western and southern sides of her garden whilst
she was pouring tea.
When the city was built in the woods and fields around the woman's house, the town-planners
had left the woman an open corridor to the North. But at four o'clock every afternoon
they confidently filled that corridor in with temporary buildings and disposable traffic.
H is for halo, halation, helix, halcyon, heliotrope, [haliosis?], helium and helix.
H is for [heliolithic?].
A man believed that the human eye was like some sort of battery that the
sun alone could recharge. Avoiding the dangerous glare of the day, he took to watching
summer sunsets in the hope that his sight would thus be much improved for the winter.
He persuaded his friends to watch with him, and soon, in various parts of the country,
groups people sat out of doors in the evening, looking westwards.
Before very long, rival societies sprang up to watch the dawn. Sun-watching to recharge
sight became endemic.
Controversy arose: the rift between those who looked east in the morning and those
who looked west in the evening led to argument and abuse, and ultimately to blows.
Cynical observers began to look west in the morning and east in the evening, and
a group of of satirical opticians began to look north and south in the middle of the night.
H is for house.
D is for [it's very dark outside. Go to bed!]
Footnotes
House
The house at the centre of this film is in the village of Wardour on the Wiltshire-Dorset border. This house is also the subject of 'Windows'. There is a 1969 painting by Greenaway - 'Hannah Takes a Trip' - which depicts this house and the surrounding countryside. The painting features a stone castle-tower in the upper register, Wardour Castle, now maintained by English Heritage. It also depicts the river Nadder and a few small lakes - Hog, Pole, Pale, Basset, and Horridor - which are the subject of 'Water Wrackets'. A series of modest walks back and forth across the Wiltshire Hills informed 'A Walk Through H'. About the woods, fields and lakes of Wardour and nearby Fonthill Greenaway has said, 'Every landscape I have since encountered has to measure up to this landscape's history, mystery, variety, drama and charm. I am not in any doubt that its ten square miles have been largely refashioned in my imagination.' After completing the filming of 'A Zed and Two Noughts', Greenaway took a short holiday back to Wardour, 'to renew an acquaintance that would not satisfactorily be renewed. A mistake'.
During the memorably hot summer of 1976 Greenaway stayed in Woodlands - a modest Edwardian villa at Glasbury-on-Wye, Herefordshire - and attempted to make 12 drawings of the villa - flat facaded and front-on - from a single vantage point at two-hourly intervals. Closely observed differences in the changing light and the fall of the shadows on the facade were to be minutely recorded for their own sake and for the discipline of an idea relentlessly pursued. This exacting project was undermined by the heat and the distractions of a far more interesting view of the Herefordshire Black Mountain in the other direction. In the summer of 1977 the drawing project was attempted a second time at the Victorian house in Wardour, and the extreme minimal approach was softened a little, permitting the twelve viewpoints of the same feature to be different. The drawings spawned 'Vertical Features Remake' and 'The Draughtsman's Contract'.
Greenaway has acknowedged the influence of 'Land Artists' such as Richard Long and Hamish Fulton, specifically their interest in mapping out landscape through new, conceptual forms. One issue these artists faced was how to make a place personal and yet avoid the subjective response to landscape which values that quasi-magical character of a particular site enshrined in the idea of the 'genius loci'. Landscape as anti-Romantic subject needs the map and the geography book: an inventory can also prove useful.
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Hoopoe
The hoopoe is a bird with variegated plumage and a large erectile crest. 'The Falls' informs us that 'The Hoopoe' is a screen magazine whose rare issues appear to be concerned with the significance of birds in feature film-making. This magazine is financed by the Hitchcock Estate.
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Hen
The hen is a female bird, especially of the common domestic fowl, and excerpts from Rameau's 'La Poule' can be heard in this film. In 'The Falls' we learn that Agostine Fallmut, in an attempt to explain the Violent Unknown Event, has put forward an eccentric theory known as Ratite Revenge. Its crux is that ratites, ousted by the greed and the ignorance of man, are attempting a come-back, a return to their former supremacy. They had perpetrated the Violent Unknown Event to transform man himself into a ratite, a flightless bird.
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Harpsichord
Rameau's 'La Poule' can be heard at this moment in the film. Greenaway also used 'La Poule' for 'Windows'. 'La Poule' is composed of a number of short motifs containing a clucking pattern in various forms. All counterpoint has gone, and the music largely falls into theme and accompaniment. The piece is a drama, with alternations of hope and despair, not a barnyard comedy.
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Hapax legomenon
This is a word, generally in a dead language or writing system, of which only one instance is recorded: 'hugger-mugger' is hapax legomenon in Shakespeare. We learn in 'The Falls' that a version of Bardin's Catalogue of VUE Pornography is being translated into 'Hapaxlegomenia'.
The Britannica Online has made a game out of hapax legomenia. To participate click here.
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M is for...
M is also for 'Man, Music and Mozart', the title of a Greenaway film. M is for mimic, mansion, masonary, metal, mildew, mortgage, meter, mat, mop, mirror, matches, mug, milk, museli, mustard, malt, mace, marmalade, margarine, monosodium glutamate, muscle, mucuous, mouth, male, Melia and Manchester. M is for Apple Macintosh and misrpint. M is the 13th letter of the alphabet.
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Hocus-pocus
That is, trickery.
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Helter-skelter
A helter-sketer is a tall structure with an external spiral track for sliding down. The phrase is also used to connote disordery haste in a person.
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Harum-scarum
Harum-scarum is a colloquialism for wild and reckless conduct.
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Hoity-toity
To be hoity-toity is to be riotous or giddy in conduct, even haughty and petulant.
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Hokey-cokey
The hokey-cokey is a playground dance.
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Hotchpotch
A hotchpotch is a dish of many mixed ingredients, especially mutton broth or stew with vegetables.
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Hubble-bubble
A hubble-bubble is a simple form of hookah. The phrase is also used to describe a bubbling sound or confused talk.
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Hurdy-gurdy
A hurdy-gurdy is a type of musical instrument.
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Introductory notes
Different styles of type are used to indicate the different voices used in the film.
Lines with a slightly larger size of type in italic indicate the sentence is begun by Peter Greenaway and (usually) completed by Hannah Greenaway, his - at this date - very young daughter.
Lines in bold indicate the sentence is heard as though coming from a radio or sounds like it is borrowed from a recording.
Plain text indicates the words are spoken by the principal narrator, Colin Cantile.
Three short narratives are featured in this film. Indeed, 'H is for House' begins with one. All three were included in 'One dozen economical stories by Peter Greenaway - corrupted, manipulated and accompanied by the Halfer Trio', recorded between 1989 and 1993, published by Touch Music.
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H is for... The inventory begins! Here, H stands for parts of the human body, perhaps a particular body: Hannah's.
We will encounter other groups of words whose proximity to one another is motivated - they may, for example, share the same number of syllables, allowing the narrator's voice to become markedly rythmic. The reasoning that led to most words being grouped is usually opaque, however. If you have any thoughts on this issue do mail me.
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H is for...H is mainly for plants, two of which - hemlock and hellebore - are poisonous.
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H is for...... orders of insects. Two instances of hymenoptera are given in the next line of the script.
At this point in the film we are shown a white table in bright sunlight on which are spread books, jars and, pinned to a board, insect specimens . As a child Greenaway collected insects, his greatest curiosity being reserved for water-insects, containable in aquaria, comparativey easy to catch with a net, easy to feed and easy to observe through a glass. 'And when they died - at an early age I would never kill them, only later did I learn the killing techniques - they were pinned out in a napththalene-smelling showcase and scrupulousy labelled after the difficult labours of identification. I still have a modest collection.'
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Hiatus The opportunity to introduce a break or gap in to the inventory is missed.
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The carrion crow is a widespread and sometimes common bird.The carrion crow is widespread but rarely very numerous. It can be found in open countryside of all types with suitable trees for nesting, and sometimes in urban areas and even city centres. Its call is a deep, harsh 'caw' or 'corr'. Its plumage is black except for grey back, breast and belly.
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loud, dramatic songThe wren's song is musical, extended and astonishingly loud for a bird of 10cm. Its call is a scolding 'churr'. The wren is a widespread and often common bird, although numbers plummet during severe winters.
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Hedgesparrows and treesparrows
Housesparrows are indeed abundant. They are invariably associated with humans, particulary around farms, but also in towns and cities. The treesparrow is also widespread although local. Its calls include a short, metallic 'chip' and 'chop', and a repeated 'chit-tchup'. Its distinctive, liquid flight-call 'tek-tek' is difficult to describe, but diagnostic once learnt. By contrast, the hedgesparrow's call is a clear 'chirrup'. Its song is rather monotonous, consisting of a series of chirruping notes.
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haplography
Q. Chambers English Dictionary defines 'haplography' as 'the inadvertent writing once of what should have been written twice'. Is this the most useless word in the English language?
A. As a calligraphy teacher, I find the word haplography useful. When concentrating on producing good letter forms it is easy to make mistakes such as writing 'rember' instead of 'remember'. Its opposite is dittography: the writing twice of what should have been written once, such as 'critics' becoming 'crititics'. There is also the homoeoteluton, in which, when copying, the eye returns to the same word but in a different place - either omitting the words in between or repeating words already written.
The Guardian, Wednesday April 23 1997, p.17
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