The Book of Illusions Read online

  More often than not, Hector finds himself at the bottom of the social ladder. He is married in only two of his films (Hearth and Home and Mr. Nobody), and except for the private detective he plays in The Snoop and his role as traveling magician in Cowpokes, he is a working stiff toiling for others in humble, low-salaried jobs. A waiter in The Jockey Club, a chauffeur in Country Weekend, a door-to-door salesman in Jumping Jacks, a dance instructor in Tango Tangle, a bank employee in The Teller’s Tale, Hector is usually presented as a young man just starting out in life. His prospects are far from encouraging, but he never gives the impression of being a loser. He carries himself with too much pride for that, and to watch him go about his business with the sure-handed competence of one who trusts in his own abilities, you understand that he’s a person destined for success. Accordingly, most of Hector’s films end in one of two ways: either he gets the girl or he performs an act of heroism that captures the attention of his boss. And if the boss is too thick-headed to notice (the wealthy and powerful are mostly portrayed as fools), the girl will see what has happened, and that will be reward enough. Whenever there is a choice between love and money, love always has the last word. Working as a waiter in The Jockey Club, for example, Hector manages to nab a jewel thief while serving several tables of drunken guests at a banquet in honor of champion aviatrix Wanda McNoon. With his left hand, he knocks out the thief with a champagne bottle; with his right, he simultaneously serves up dessert to the table, and because the cork flies out of the bottle and the headwaiter is sprayed with a liter’s worth of Veuve Clicquot, Hector loses his job. But no matter. The spirited Wanda is an eyewitness to Hector’s exploit. She slips him her telephone number, and in the last scene they climb into her plane together and take off for the clouds.

  Unpredictable in his behavior, full of contradictory impulses and desires, Hector’s character is too complexly delineated for us to feel altogether comfortable in his presence. He is not a type or familiar stock figure, and for every one of his actions that makes sense to us there is another one that confounds us and throws us off balance. He displays all the striving ambitiousness of a hardworking immigrant, a man bent on overcoming the odds and winning a place for himself in the American jungle, and yet one glimpse of a beautiful woman is enough to knock him off course, to scatter his carefully laid plans to the winds. Hector has the same personality in every film, but there is no fixed hierarchy to his preferences, no way of knowing what fancy will strike him next. He is both a populist and an aristocrat, a sensualist and a closet romantic, a man of precise, even punctilious manners who never hesitates to make the grand gesture. He will give his last dime to a beggar on the street, but he will not be motivated by pity or compassion so much as by the poetry of the act itself. No matter how hard he works, no matter how diligently he performs the menial and often absurd tasks that are assigned to him, Hector conveys a sense of detachment, as if he were somehow mocking himself and congratulating himself at the same time. He seems to live in a state of ironical bemusement, at once engaged in the world and observing it from a great distance. In what is perhaps his funniest film, The Prop Man, he turns these opposing points of view into a unified principle of mayhem. It was the ninth short of the series, and in it Hector plays the stage manager of a small, down-at-the-heels theater troupe. The company pulls into the town of Wishbone Falls for a three-day run of Beggars Can’t Be Choosers, a bedroom farce by noted French dramatist Jean-Pierre Saint Jean de la Pierre. When they open the truck to unload the props and carry them into the theater, they discover that the props are missing. What to do? The play can’t go on without them. There is an entire living room to furnish, not to speak of replacing several important accessories: a gun, a diamond necklace, and a roasted pig. The curtain is supposed to go up at eight o’clock the next evening, and unless the entire set can be built from scratch, the company will be out of business. The director of the troupe, a pompous blowhard with an ascot wrapped around his neck and a monocle in his left eye, peers into the back of the empty truck and faints dead away. The matter is in Hector’s hands. After a few brief but incisive comments from his mustache, he calmly weighs the situation, smooths out the front of his immaculate white suit, and marches off to work. For the next nine and a half minutes, the film becomes an illustration of Proudhon’s well-known anarchist dictum: all property is theft. In a series of short, frenetic episodes, Hector rushes around town and steals the props. We see him intercepting a furniture delivery to a department store warehouse and walking off with tables, chairs, and lamps—which he packs into his own truck and promptly drives to the theater. He pilfers silverware, drinking glasses, and a full set of china from a hotel kitchen. He bluffs his way into the back room of a butcher shop with a false order form from a local restaurant and trudges out with a pig’s carcass slung over his shoulder. That evening, at a private reception for the actors which is attended by the town’s most prominent citizens, he manages to remove the sheriff’s pistol from its holster. A little while later, he skillfully undoes the latch of a necklace worn by a bulbous, middle-aged woman as she swoons under the seductive power of Hector’s charms. He is never more unctuous than in this scene. Contemptible in his simulations, loathsome in the hypocrisy of his ardor, he also comes across as a heroic outlaw, an idealist willing to sacrifice himself for the good of his cause. We recoil from his tactics, but at the same time we pray for him to pull off the theft. The show must go on, and if Hector fails to pocket the jewels, there won’t be any show. To complicate the intrigue still further, Hector has just caught sight of the town belle (who happens to be the sheriff’s daughter), and even as he continues his amorous assault on the aging battle-axe, he begins making furtive eyes at the young beauty. Fortunately, Hector and his victim are standing behind a velvet curtain. It hangs halfway across an open doorway that separates the entrance hall from the drawing room, and because Hector is positioned on one side of the woman and not the other, he can look into the drawing room by leaning his head slightly to the left. But the woman remains hidden from view, and even though Hector can see the girl and the girl can see Hector, she has no idea that the woman is there. This allows Hector to pursue both of his objectives at once—the false seduction and the true seduction—and because he plays one against the other in a clever mix of cuts and camera angles, each element makes the other one funnier than it would have been on its own. That is the essence of Hector’s style. One joke is never enough for him. As soon as a situation has been established, another piece of business must be added to it, and then a third, and possibly even a fourth. Hector’s gags unfold like musical compositions, a confluence of contrasting lines and voices, and the more the voices interact with one another, the more precarious and unstable the world becomes. In The Prop Man, Hector tickles the neck of the woman behind the curtain, plays peekaboo with the girl in the other room, and finally snags the necklace when a passing waiter slips on the hem of the woman’s gown and spills a trayful of drinks down her back—which gives Hector just enough time to undo the clasp. He has achieved what he has set out to do—but only by accident, rescued once again by the mutinous unpredictability of matter.

  The curtain goes up the following evening, and the performance is a rousing success. The butcher, the department store owner, the sheriff, and the fat woman are all in the audience, however, and even as the actors are taking their bows and blowing kisses to the enthusiastic crowd, a constable is clamping handcuffs on Hector’s wrists and carting him off to jail. But Hector is happy, and he shows not one shred of remorse. He has saved the day, and not even the threat of losing his freedom can diminish his triumph. To anyone familiar with the difficulties Hector encountered while making his films, it is impossible not to read The Prop Man as a parable of his life under contract to Seymour Hunt and the struggles of working for Kaleidoscope Pictures. When every card in the deck is stacked against you, the only way to win a hand is to break the rules. You beg, borrow, and steal, as the old adage goes, and if you happen to get caught i
n the act, at least you’ve gone down fighting the good fight.

  This joyful disregard of consequences takes a darker turn in Hector’s eleventh film, Mr. Nobody. Time was running out by then, and he must have known that once the contract was fulfilled, his career would be over. Sound was coming. It was an inevitable fact of life, a certainty that would destroy everything that had come before it, and the art that Hector had worked so hard to master would no longer exist. Even if he could reconfigure his ideas to accommodate the new form, it wouldn’t do him any good. Hector spoke with a heavy Spanish accent, and the moment he opened his mouth on-screen, American audiences would reject him. In Mr. Nobody, he allows himself to indulge in a certain bitterness. The future was grim, and the present was clouded by Hunt’s growing financial problems. With each passing month, the damage had spread through every aspect of Kaleidoscope’s operations. Budgets were cut, salaries went unpaid, and the high interest charges on short-term loans left Hunt in constant need of ready cash. He borrowed from his distributors against future box-office revenues, and when he reneged on several of these deals, theaters began refusing to show his films. Hector was doing his best work at this point, but the sad fact was that fewer and fewer people were able to see it.

  Mr. Nobody is a response to this mounting frustration. The villain of the story is called C. Lester Chase, and once you’ve figured out the origins of this character’s odd and artificial name, it becomes hard not to see him as a metaphorical stand-in for Hunt. Translate hunt into French, and the result is chasse; drop the second s from chasse, and you wind up with chase. When you further consider that Seymour can be read as see more and that Lester can be abbreviated as Les, which turns C. Lester into C. Les—or see less—then the evidence becomes fairly compelling. Chase is the most malevolent character in any of Hector’s films. He is out to destroy Hector and rob him of his identity, and he puts his plan into action not by firing a bullet into Hector’s back or by plunging a knife into his heart, but by tricking him into swallowing a magic potion that makes him invisible. In effect, this is just what Hunt did to Hector’s career in the movies. He put him up on-screen, and then he made it all but impossible for anyone to see him. Hector doesn’t vanish in Mr. Nobody, but once he drinks the drink, no one can see him anymore. He is still there before our eyes, but the other characters in the film are blind to his presence. He jumps up and down, he flaps his arms, he takes off his clothes on a crowded street corner, but no one notices. When he shouts in people’s faces, his voice goes unheard. He is a specter made of flesh and blood, a man who is no longer a man. He still lives in the world, and yet the world has no room for him anymore. He has been murdered, but no one has had the courtesy or the thoughtfulness to kill him. He has simply been erased.

  It is the first and only time that Hector presents himself as a rich man. In Mr. Nobody, he has everything a person could possibly want: a beautiful wife, two young children, and an enormous house with a full staff of servants. In the opening scene, Hector is eating breakfast with his family. There are some bright slapstick bits that revolve around the buttering of toast and a wasp that lands in a pot of jam, but the narrative purpose of the scene is to present us with a picture of happiness. We are being set up for the losses that are about to occur, and without this glimpse of Hector’s private life (perfect marriage, perfect kids, domestic harmony in its most rhapsodic form), the evil business that lies ahead would not have the same impact. As it is, we are devastated by what happens to Hector. He kisses his wife good-bye, and the moment he turns away from her and leaves the house, he plunges headfirst into a nightmare.

  Hector is the founder and president of a thriving soft-drink concern, the Fizzy Pop Beverage Corporation. Chase is his vice president and counselor, his supposed best friend. But Chase has accumulated heavy gambling debts and is being harassed by loan sharks to pay up what he owes or else. As Hector arrives at the office in the morning and greets his staff, Chase is in another room talking to a pair of rough-looking men. Don’t worry, he says. You’ll have your money by the end of the week. I’ll be in control of the company by then, and the stock is worth millions. The thugs agree to give him a little more time. But this is your last chance, they tell him. Any more delays, and you’ll be swimming with the fishes at the bottom of the river. The men stomp off. Chase wipes the sweat from his forehead and lets out a prolonged sigh. Then he removes a letter from the top drawer of his desk. He looks it over for a moment and appears to be immensely satisfied. With a wicked smirk, he folds it up and slips it into his inside breast pocket. Wheels are obviously turning, but we have no idea where they will take us.

  Cut to Hector’s office. Chase enters carrying something that resembles a large thermos bottle and asks Hector if he wants to taste the new flavor. What’s it called? Hector asks. Jazzmatazz, Chase answers, and Hector nods his approval, impressed by the catchy ring to the word. Suspecting nothing, Hector allows Chase to pour him a hefty sample of the new concoction. As Hector takes hold of the glass, Chase looks on with a glint in his overwatchful eye, waiting for the poisonous brew to do its work. In a medium close-up, Hector lifts the glass to his mouth and takes a small, tentative sip. His nose wrinkles in disapproval; his eyes open wide; his mustache shimmies. The tone is entirely comic, and yet as Chase urges him on and Hector lifts the glass to his mouth for a second go at it, the sinister implications of Jazzmatazz become more and more apparent. Hector swallows down another portion of the drink. He smacks his lips, smiles up at Chase, and then shakes his head, as if to suggest that the flavor isn’t quite right. Ignoring his boss’s criticism, Chase looks down at his watch, spreads out the fingers of his right hand, and begins counting off the seconds from one to five. Hector is baffled. Before he can say anything, however, Chase arrives at the fifth and last second, and just like that, without any warning, Hector pitches forward in his chair and bangs his head against the top of his desk. We assume that the drink has knocked him out, that he is temporarily unconscious, but as Chase stands there watching him with blank and pitiless eyes, Hector begins to disappear. His arms go first, slowly fading from the screen and vanishing, and then his torso, and finally his head. One part of him follows another, and in the end his entire body has dissolved into nothingness. Chase walks out of the room and shuts the door behind him. Pausing in the hallway to savor his triumph, he leans his back against the door and smiles. A title card reads: So long, Hector. It was nice knowing you.

  Chase walks off. Once he has left the frame, the camera holds on the door for a second or two, and then, very slowly, starts pushing in on the keyhole. It is a lovely shot, full of mystery and anticipation, and as the opening grows larger and larger, taking up more and more of the screen, we are able to look through into Hector’s office. An instant later, we are inside the office itself, and because we expect to find it empty, we are not at all prepared for what the camera reveals to us. We see Hector slumped over his desk. He is still unconscious, but he is visible again, and as we try to absorb this sudden and miraculous turnaround, we can come to only one conclusion. The effects of the drink must have worn off. We have just watched Hector disappear, and if we are able to see him now, it can only mean that the drink was less powerful than we thought.

  Hector begins to wake up. We feel comforted by this sign of life, back on safe ground. We assume that order has returned to the universe and that Hector will now set about to exact his revenge on Chase and expose him as a scoundrel. For the next twenty-odd seconds, he goes through one of his crispest, most pungent funny-man routines. Like someone trying to fight off a bad hangover, he stands up from his chair, all woozy and disoriented, and begins to stagger about the room. We laugh at this. We believe what our eyes are telling us, and because we are confident that Hector is back to normal, we can be amused by this spectacle of buckling knees and dizzy-headed collapse. But then Hector walks over to the mirror that is hanging on the wall, and everything turns again. He wants to look at himself. He wants to straighten his hair and readjust his tie, but
when he peers into the oval of smooth, shining glass, his face isn’t there. He has no reflection. He touches himself to make sure that he’s real, to confirm the tangibility of his body, but when he looks into the mirror again, he still can’t see himself. Hector is perplexed, but he doesn’t panic. Maybe there’s something wrong with the mirror.

  He goes out into the hall. A secretary is walking by, carrying a bundle of papers in her arms. Hector smiles at her and gives a friendly wave, but she appears not to notice. Hector shrugs. Just then, two young clerks approach from the opposite direction. Hector makes a face at them. He growls. He sticks out his tongue. One of the clerks points to the door of Hector’s office. Has the boss come in yet? he asks. I don’t know, the other one answers. I haven’t seen him. When he speaks these words, of course, Hector is standing directly in front of him, no more than six inches from his face.