Following up on a previous blog (here) analysing the opening two pages of chapter one ‘The Southerner’, here’s the script:
Label which states ‘Paris – Eglise Saint-Mael’. External view of church and entrance porch. Same church as original sequence 4. Bright sunshine (to contrast with weather when we return to church for funeral). Entrance set in small square. Man, who turns out to be the Southerner, sitting on bench reading a newspaper (Mercure de France). Face obscured by newspaper. A couple of worshippers making their way in.
Priest in pulpit delivering sermon.
Priest: During these forty days our Lord felt no hunger…
Foreground, wife, husband and two teenage daughters sitting in pew (family Comtois). One of the Southerner’s men (who we see again in attack on C) in background standing by entrance.
Priest: … to him communion with heaven was instead of meat and drink.
Southerner’s man standing behind Southerner who is still sitting on the bench reading his paper (and whose face we still can’t see).
Man: He’s near the front with his wife and daughters.
Southerner folding newspaper in half, revealing his face.
Southerner: You get to the boat shed.
Southerner: Take Eudo and Roul.
Perspective from over the shoulder of one the choristers as the church congregation are starting to file out. Wife, husband (holding a cane and, it transpires later, a smallish dog on a leash) and daughters visible at end of row about to file out into the aisle. Daughter’s turning to each other and smiling and laughing.
Entrance to church. Priest talking to a couple of worshippers. Wife, husband and teenage daughters moving past and into the square. Father with cane and canine. Daughters teasing their father.
Emilie (older): Father – you were sleeping during the sermon.
Comtois: Nonsense. I was just closing my eyes so I could concentrate.
Sophie (younger): You were snoring.
Perspective from dog’s head turned and looking up at the laughing faces of the family looking down at him.
Comtois: That wasn’t me. That was Louis.
(9) Close-up of Southerner
Southerner: Monsieur Comtois?
(10)Foreground, perspective from behind heads and shoulders of wife and daughters, the head of one of the daughter’s turned to her mother. In middle-ground Southerner walking away with Comtois and dog.
Emilie: Who’s that man?
Front view of mother with arms around shoulders of each of the girls.
Mother: I’ve never seen him before.
Mother: He said he was an associate of your father’s employer, Monsieur Paris-Duverney.
Close-up of Louise
Sophie: I didn’t like him.
Foreground, perspective high looking down – part of a large boat shed beside river. All a bit deserted and ominous looking. Comtois, dog and Southerner at a little distance away moving towards the shed, on a track running parallel with the river.
Southerner: The uniforms are stored in there for the moment.
Comtois: A consignment for the King’s Guard you say?
Southerner: Not fit for beggars.
Looking down upon the two of them (plus dog) as if from the roof of the boat shed. The Southerner is about to open the door.
Perspective as though from Comtois entering the door. A simple flat-bottomed sailing boat is moored in the shed and a couple of rowing boats. The Southerner is inside and we see three other men, his henchmen, sitting on crates and boxes near tarpaulin which appears be covering the consignment they’ve been talking about.
Southerner: They’re under there.
Southerner: Take a look.
Comtois and dog over by the tarpaulin waiting to be shown the goods. One of the men in front of Comtois lifting the tarpaulin, maybe revealing some crates. The Southerner by the side and the two other men standing behind Comtois.
‘Casanova in Paris: The Shadows of the King’ is freely available here.
27 long form articles on Casanova’s life and times are freely available here.
#eighteenthcentury #graphicnovel #storytelling #script
