Froog posted the other day on great movie songs, taking inspiration from the American Film Institute’s (AFI’s) “100 Years – 100 Songs” list of 2004. He pointed out some strange omissions (even considering the raw list of four hundred nominees from which the hundred were selected).

I’m not much surprised that no songs from the soundtrack of 1991’s Henry & June made either list. (It was probably considered a non-American and maybe even “non-fictional” film, violating some of the criteria listed at the foot of this page.) A pity. No matter what you thought of the film’s NC-17 rating — the first ever! — or of its caliber as a film, the music which accompanied everything onscreen was (I thought) a model of how to match musical sensibility to a particular film’s time, place, and “feel.”

Nowhere does this match seem truer than in the recording of Josephine Baker’s “J’Ai Deux Amours” (“I Have Two Loves”) which closed the film.

It made a canny signature song for Baker in general, and (sixty years later) for Henry & June in particular. The title — in English, “I Have Two Loves” — cuts in several directions at once. The “two loves” (per the song’s lyrics) are not human loves but geographic and cultural ones: “my country and Paris.” Baker herself was a black American who utterly bloomed in pre-World War II France, especially Paris. Still, says Ethan Mordden’s The Guest List:

Baker’s two loves were not, as one might think, America and Paris. The number was introduced at the Casino de Paris, in 1930, in a scene laid on the African shore, where Adrien Lamy played a French colonist who wants to take native girl Baker back to France. Composer Vincent Scotto and lyricists Géo Koger and the Casino’s producer, Henry Varna, wrote this number for Baker as a woman torn between Paris and Africa. Further, to the French, “mon pays” means “my province” as much as “my country.” Thus, Baker’s two loves never included America.

But even without the full lyrics, “things” are happening with the title alone:

• The film (based on Anaïs Nin’s book of the same name) is about Nin’s relationships with American author Henry Miller and his wife, June: Anaïs to Henry, Henry to June, and Anaïs to June (all vice-versa, of course).
• Baker was (fairly famously) bisexual; for her to declare in song I have two loves was virtually an open wink at this reputation.

Yet I fell in love with this song — this performance of it — way before I knew any of that. I’m not especially one way or the other about it until about two minutes into its three-plus-minute length. But suddenly, Baker’s trilling voice is joined by a man’s (Adrien Lamy, mentioned above, and pictured at left), and for most of the rest of the song he assumes responsibility for the lyrics. Baker “merely” accompanies him, in a wordlessly vocalized run of counterpoint and harmony which twines sinuously — like some exotic Beaux-Arts species of vine — around and within the pauses of Lamy’s voice. It’s really, for me, among the most memorable ninety seconds of music I know — especially given that I understand no French myself!

Here are Josephine Baker and Adrien Lamy, singing of their two loves:

Lyrics:

J’Ai Deux Amours
(by Vincent Scotto and Geo Koger; performance by Josephine Baker and Adrien Lamy)

On dit qu’au delà des mers
Là-bas sous le ciel clair
Il existe une cité
Au séjour enchanté
Et sous les grands arbres noirs
Chaque soir
Vers elle s’en va tout mon espoir

J’ai deux amours
Mon pays et Paris
Par eux toujours
Mon cœur est ravi
Ma savane est belle
Mais à quoi bon le nier
Ce qui m’ensorcelle
C’est Paris, Paris tout entier
Le voir un jour
C’est mon rêve joli
J’ai deux amours
Mon pays et Paris

Quand sur la rive parfois
Au lointain j’aperçois
Un paquebot qui s’en va
Vers lui je tends les bras
Et le cœur battant d’émoi
A mi-voix
Doucement je dis “emporte-moi!”

J’ai deux amours…

Translation (approximate, of course :) — corrections more than welcome!):

I Have Two Loves

It is said that above the seas,
Over there under the clear sky,
Exists a city, where the stay is enchanted,
And under the big black trees,
Every evening,
Towards it tend all my hopes.

I have two loves
My country and Paris.
By them always
Is my heart ravished.
My savannah* is beautiful,
But why deny that
what puts a spell on me is Paris,
Paris in its entirety.

Seeing it one day
Is my pretty dream.
I have two loves,
My country and Paris.

(Repeat)

My savannah is beautiful,
But why deny that
what puts a spell on me is Paris,
Paris in its entirety.
Seeing it one day
Is my pretty dream.
I have two loves,
My country and Paris.

When at the distant shore
I sometimes see a ship depart
To him I extend my arms
And heart beating with excitement,
Whisper softly, I say, “Take me!”

I have two loves…

_____________________________
* “My savannah“? Yeah. I think this probably refers to the home of the African “native girl” described by Mordden’s interpretation. Generalized, if so, you can probably just read this phrase as something like “my home” or “the place I came from.” (In Madeleine Peyroux’s cover of the song, My savannah becomes Manhattan.)