‘WALTER’

- A SECRET LIFE

What can drive a respectable man, a Hugh Grant, say, to a prostitute, when he is happily married to the loveliest woman in the world?  The answer to this question has taken on a new slant with the recent unearthing of 4200 pages of amazing true-life memoirs - the erotic adventures of an upper-class Victorian.

This picture will detail the secret life of ‘Walter’, the English Casanova, the Victorian gentleman who committed his extraordinary amorous exploits at the height of Empire.  Walter’s story  peels back the smooth, flowery surface of the sunlit Victorian lawn to reveal the dark secret soil beneath. 

‘WALTER’ - A SECRET LIFE      by Richard Deakin   an outline 

The picture will detail the secret life of ‘Walter’, the English Casanova, the Victorian gentleman who committed his extraordinary amorous exploits at the height of Empire.  His true story - as revealed in his newly unearthed mmemoirs -  peels back the smooth, flowery surface of the sunlit Victorian lawn to reveal the dark soil underneath. 

THE STORY

A canal in Amsterdam in 1888.  In the twilight of his life Walter, an old English gentleman, is travelling on a canal boat through the seedy backstreets.  His breath steaming in the cold air, the old man stands in the prow of the boat as it pushes into the secrets of the fog hanging above the water. 

The old man arrives at a downmarket publisher’s office, and goes in.  Amid scenes of printing and publication, the dominant image here is the breaking-up of the printing plates Walter orders, as he takes delivery of six copies of his book of memoirs, for his enjoyment only. 

Naively Walter thinks, having supervised the destruction of the plates, that it is the end of the matter as he leaves with his precious volumes; but the printer’s assistant has been made curious by the insistence of the English gentleman on the destruction of the plates -  and has run off an extra copy which he begins to read even as the old man leaves.  Close on the first page, the old man’s VOICE OVER as his story begins:

And we dissolve back to his earliest teenage erotic memories: of spying on silk clad ladies relieving themselves at Hampton Court with his his more experienced Cousin Fred.  Walter’s career plans are typical for a younger son from an upper class background: he is destined for the army.  But encouraged by his cousin Fred, Walter develops an early taste for philandering which he never seems to grow out of, and, receiving a small competence, does not join the army as planned, but resolves instead on a life of pleasure: an erotic Peter Pan who does not want to grow up and pursue a career.  He lives, instead, in expectation of a major inheritance; however, his elderly rich uncle gets to hear of a scandal involving ‘Walter’ and disinherits him. 

To recover his fortunes, Walter marries for money - a serious mistake, for married life with his waspish first wife proves intolerable.  The pattern is set for Walter’s first marriage, a loveless Victorian marriage...  Though he tries to remain faithful, he sees himself as driven back to the ladies of the night simply to escape his unloving wife: it is even a form of revenge on her.  Amidst hundreds of sexual encounters, he has two significant relationships: one with a married woman of his own class, Mrs. Y., who has a marriage as unhappy as Walter’s, and one with an “actress”, Sarah, involved in “poses plastiques.”  His conscience is clear, because he hates his first wife so: if she had not revolted and repulsed him, he thinks, he would have no need of prostitutes....

His first wife dying (Walter: Hurrah!), he comes into more money, and resolves to spend it on pleasure.  For a while he enjoys his freedom, indulging in elaborate erotic researches, both in England and on the continent, and even in the USA; he has now a respectable sort of job in the Foreign Office which takes him far afield on diplomatic duties.  His curiosity about all matters sexual is inexhaustible, and he is resolved to try everything he has ever heard of - our cue for some extraordinary set pieces.

However, on the respectable side of his life, he now falls in love for the first time, and marries again, this time “an angel” with whom he is and remains completely in love.  No longer able to excuse himself on the grounds of having an unpleasant wife, he tries desperately for two years to remain faithful to his “angel.” 

It is the crisis of his life.  After torturing himself for a long period with a denial unnatural to him, Walter, in agony,  must face the truth about himself.  In a sort of Last Temptation, we will see the loving ceremony and Victorian order of his family home undercut by his keen awareness of the teeming chaos of the streetlife outside the house, in an age when one in four women, having to choose between vice or starvation, spent part of their lives in prostitution.  Despite the apparent perfection of his married life, he is addicted to the variety of loose women and, hating himself for it, one day succumbs to the charms of an old flame encountered by chance in the street.  His secret life - of massive sexual variety - begins again, much against his will. 

However, no retribution overtakes him after this unjustified resumption of his huge promiscuity; simply, Walter fades into a respectable old age in the bosom of his family, who of course will never learn of his secret life.  As the narrative swings full circle, the old man with the amazing secret books returns home from his trip to Amsterdam and locks the volumes away in his bureau, his Victorian box of secrets. 

Later he poses for a family photograph, one of those enormous Victorian affairs where the people seem to have the inhuman dignity of statues.  We close on the image of the photograph, and finally on the eyes of the respectable-seeming old man whose secret life we are privy to, the flesh and blood secrets which belie the conventional aura of the photograph and the age: a life we have looked at from the other, secret, side.

THE FILM STYLE

Walter’s story will call for a unique look of its own.  Thus large parts of the film will be in the visual style of late Victorian handpainted daguerrotypes, with their heightened colour painted across the photographic image. 

The key to ‘Walter’: A Secret Life is concealment.  Concealment and revelation in the form of the heavy London smog which clears fleetingly to reveal the seedy underside of Victorian society.  Concealment and revelation, especially, in the form of the wealth of photographic material of the time, whose surfaces and emulsions have faded and decayed with age. The insights which Walter’s story gives us into his era  are glimpses through this patina of mist and time, and will be filmed accordingly.

The visual style will be highly atmospheric, evoking the texture of life in a bygone era more by mood and suggestion than by the more conventional (usually inaccurate) means of filling the frame with ‘period detail’. Much of the film will have a look strongly reminiscent of aged and faded Victorian photography, with colour tints and other subtle post production techniques to enhance the nature of the images.

The main narrative will be punctuated by ‘ chapter headings’ in the manner of poses plastiques,  the erotic tableaux vivant entertainments of the time - a bit Las Vegas,  these, elaborate scenes composed as if to illustrate a historical painting, using actors clothed in white silk so skintight as to suggest nudity.  These brief inserts, so Victorian in their mixture of prudishness and sex, will be shot in more realistic richer colours.  The picture, telling the tale of Walter, his marriages, and the sexual chaos of the street outside, establishes a different look in colour and texture for each part of the story.