{"id":1451,"date":"2007-02-10T18:21:21","date_gmt":"2007-02-10T18:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=1451"},"modified":"2008-07-15T19:21:32","modified_gmt":"2008-07-15T18:21:32","slug":"perfume-the-art-of-scent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2007\/02\/10\/perfume-the-art-of-scent\/","title":{"rendered":"Perfume: the art of scent"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"perfume1.jpg\"<\/p>\n

I’ve yet to see Tom Tykwer’s film<\/a> of Patrick S\u00fcskind’s novel, Perfume\u2014The Story of a Murderer<\/em><\/a>, and remain reluctant to do so; it’s a rule in cinema that good books make bad films and vice versa. Perfume<\/em> is a good book and a favourite of mine which makes the prospect of film adaptation even more worrying. (As an aside, Tykwer dispels the persistent rumour<\/a> that Stanley Kubrick dismissed Perfume<\/em> as an unfilmable novel.)<\/p>\n

Reservations apart, I’ve been listening to the tremendous soundtrack all week after a recommendation from a friend (hi Philip!). The music is credited to Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek and the director, and features the near unprecedented involvement of conductor Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, an orchestra that rarely stoops to the level of the film soundtrack. This prompted speculation about the distinct challenge S\u00fcskind’s book presents to a designer: how best to represent the entwined strands of Grenouille’s career as a perfumier<\/em> and a murderer of young women?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"watteau.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

S\u00fcskind’s novel was published in 1985 and I was fortunate to find the German first edition from Diogenes Verlag in a charity shop for the grand sum of 89p (no, I don’t want to sell it). The cover shows a detail from a painting by Antoine Watteau (1684\u20131721), Nymphe and Satyr or Jupiter and Atiope<\/em> (1714), and establishes the sleeping woman motif that’s followed the story ever since. The first edition also includes details on the boards from Michel Etienne Turgot’s stunning Plan de Paris<\/em><\/a> of 1739.<\/p>\n

\"perfume2.jpg\"<\/p>\n

The Watteau design was carried over onto foreign translations of the book,
\nincluding the original Penguin publications.<\/p>\n

\"perfume3.jpg\"<\/p>\n

More recent Penguin editions have tried the abstract approach (but that’s smoke, surely?) followed by a close-up of the face of Laure\u2014the auburn-haired, green eyed girl who obsesses Grenouille later in the book\u2014as she sniffs the letters in the title. This seems to confuse matters since the story is concerned with Grenouille’s preternatural sense of smell, not that of the other characters.<\/p>\n

\"perfume4.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Given the theme, it’s understandable that the nose should be a focus and on that score at least the cover of the Random House paperback is very successful. A simple yet striking design, with elegant typography (Bickham Script for the title), and a nice detail of what looks like one of the Seine bridges (Pont Neuf?) as a tiny vignette.<\/p>\n

\"perfume5.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Ordinarily I’d say that the Random House cover is superior because American book jackets are usually better-designed than their European counterparts. The Washington Square Press edition (above, left) shows that this isn’t always the case, resurrecting the sleeping woman concept in a nasty-looking posterized treatment. Little better is the European film poster which is equally vague and poorly-rendered. The UK poster only managed to show Grenouille’s face (with prominent nose) hovering over a woman’s midriff.<\/p>\n

\"opium.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Nothing to do with book or film but a far better picture than the two latter examples is the controversial Yves Saint-Laurent Opium ad artwork from 2000. In an odd conjunction with the book, model Sophie Dahl was given red hair and green eyes and (in the horizontal version) becomes another recumbent female. I thought this was a wonderful image at the time, unusual in being used in both vertical (billboard) and horizontal (magazine spread) formats. Unfortunately a small minority of the British public disagreed and complaints<\/a> caused it to be withdrawn from circulation as a poster.<\/p>\n

\"perfume6.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And so to the US cinema poster and another great design. This image could have been created before the age of Photoshop but might not have worked so effectively as a painting. The highlighted strand of the girl’s hair is especially subtle for a contemporary film poster at a time when Hollywood graphics have devolved into an endless parade of giant heads floating against coloured backgrounds. Whatever the merits of Perfume<\/em> as a film, the poster and the soundtrack prove welcome exceptions to current trends.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The book covers archive<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Metropolis posters<\/a>
\n\u2022 Film noir posters<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve yet to see Tom Tykwer’s film of Patrick S\u00fcskind’s novel, Perfume\u2014The Story of a Murderer, and remain reluctant to do so; it’s a rule in cinema that good books make bad films and vice versa. Perfume is a good book and a favourite of mine which makes the prospect of film adaptation even more … Continue reading “Perfume: the art of scent”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,42,4,7,25,3,44],"tags":[6294,1734,3413,3040],"class_list":["post-1451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-design","category-film","category-kubrick","category-music","category-painting","tag-johnny-klimek","tag-patrick-suskind","tag-perfume","tag-stanley-kubrick"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-np","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}