Its Pinky!! (before The Weight)

Barbe Bleue Mauritius Quarello

Barbe Bleue by Charles Perrault, illustrated by Maurice Quarello, Milan Presse, Classiques Collection Albums, April 15, 2010

Behind every freedom longed

c 'lurks a beast.

Alda Merini ⁽¹⁾

In these few words of the great Italian poet, who died just over a year ago, it captures the essence of the drama of Blue Beard: The last moment of pathos experienced young wife, imprisoned in a reality that falls on him with all his weight.

Blue Beard is well-known text, the story of a man who probably would today call "serial killer" and a female victim, first of all, its naivete, the thirst for social satisfaction, curiosity, and then the man quell'inquietante blue beard which all fear.

What really makes a difference in this book, published by the prestigious French publisher Milan Presse are illustrations of Maurice Quarello .

Mauritius is a masterful illustrator, with extraordinary interpretive skills and an enviable painting technique. In its representations is chameleon-like, you know give voice to each story in a unique way, drifting from the story, and adapt the technical needs narrative: we saw him go from painting full of Babau Search House of Toni Mannaro and of Le Voyage de la Femme Elephant the virtual absence of color de Tree Anne when his delicate and poetic narrative takes place almost at the tip feet, ending with the comic book of Effets Secondaires , just released for the Rouergue.

In this book we Maurizio suggests all his love for cinema. If I were asked to give a definition of this book, I would say that is a roll of film which reveals the atmosphere of the movie or the last Ivory Pride and Prejudice Wright, a work in which everything is moving, even immobility.

Each image represents a moment caught and crystallized in a frame, which also seems to go well beyond the space of the page. Each table, even those more apparently silent, tells of a growing pathos, culminating in the defeat of the terrible Blue Beard

The narrative begins with an emblematic image: Blue Beard looks pensively out the window, wrapped in light filtering timid between the rain clouds, an omen of impending disaster. We see him watch his victim, as if in ambush, in the distance, we take the unawareness of her in her last moments of innocent girl, she still does not know the fate that awaits him. We watch them, newlyweds, the coach who will lead them to their new life. Then the empty hallway of a long twilight which is a prelude to a fearful mystery. Finally, after an indefinite time, we see the friends who take advantage of their feared her husband to sneak in a private cause for envy and curiosity and his young wife to let go, prey to his own curiosity, and discovering the gruesome secret disguised behind the blue of the beard husband. The key

bloody evidence of the sin of the young woman and the only witness of the frightening discovery, looms as a silent denunciation of female weakness before the ban. The husband comes, cloaked in darkness.

From this time the events happen quickly and dramatically faster, and fully reflect the dynamism of the boards: Blue Beard discovers the wrongdoing, accuses his wife and sentenced to die, like the previous wives. The narrative images, which until then had been following and descriptive than the text seems to veer abruptly stopped introducing disturbing image that contribute to substantially increase the dramatic tension. The changes in perspective, frequent and rapid, gives the story intensity buoyant.

After the pronouncement of the death sentence illustrator again amazes us, transporting us out of the secret of Blue Beard, completely changing scene: a suspension of time equal to the soaring of a bird in flight, there is the sister of the bride looks out the window of his room, if there was no text to reveal the reason for this scene would miss only the quiet spring and the clear sky. It is the central image of the narrative, the turning point that allows us to take a first breath giving us hope, an image that, for the grace and light to the intensity of the moment described, makes me think of poetry Keats.

But that is not a moment, because we are immediately trapped in a vortex of fearful events that lead us towards the climax of the story.

Quarello uses cinematic techniques with an enviable mastery, the most easily tamed his job was that of director and illustrator. And reverse field, the zoom, the still picture (strange to use these definitions for a roll shows, but it is so), it seems that the picture is not going to stop with the border of the page, it took almost sucked into the vortex of events. And that's exactly what happens.

His painting draws heavily Hopper and the atmosphere of romance, from the color palette chosen, the density of smooth strokes, from the play of light and shadow, the subjects portrayed. Admirable shots unexpected and always surprising.

Once again a masterpiece not to be missed. If you love Maurice

Quarello to stay around, soon there will be other news.



⁽¹⁾ Aphorisms and Magic , Alda Merini, with art by Alberto Casiraghi, Rizzoli Editore, November 1999.


Barbe Bleue by Charles Perrault, illustrated by Maurice Quarello, Classiques Collection Albums, © 2010 Éditions Milan. The images have been published with the permission of the publisher, their reproduction is prohibited.