FilmLeonie Cooper sits in on an event that finds the perfect aroma for a film. So how would Brokeback Mountain smell?It's a rainy Tuesday night, and I'm in a basement club in London wafting a perfume-impregnated cardboard stick under my nose. It smells good. I can detect a delicate floral note. But then I pick up the distinct aroma of cigarettes.
The perfume is Jasmin et Cigarettes, a tobacco-infused scent made by Etat Libre d'Orange. This French company's range of unconventional scents includes Like This, composed of pumpkin, yellow mandarin and neroli; it was inspired by Tilda Swinton, apparently. Another goes by the unenticing name of Fat Electrician. Jasmin et Cigarettes, I'm told, should conjure up images of a 1930s starlet skulking around a film set.
This is Scratch and Sniff, a series of events aimed at enhancing our understanding of the arts through smell. Each month, a group of around 40 people gather to sniff perfume while watching film clips, or listen to talks about geography and history. This event is called Scent of the Movies and involves sampling unusual scents like Jasmin et Cigarettes, and then matching them to film clips – the idea being to make us think of what a film might smell like.
James Craven, a perfume expert, gives my thoughts about Jasmin et Cigarettes a nudge: "Like Garbo, Dietrich or Harlow in a satin gown," he says. I find myself starting to imagine that sultry 30s starlet Joan Crawford. Suitably stimulated, we watch Marlene Dietrich, dressed for the cabaret, in the 1930 film The Blue Angel. "What does this scene smell like?" asks Lizzie Ostrom, co-founder, with Craven, of Scratch and Sniff. "Sweat!" one man shouts. Other more pleasant suggestions include powder, patchouli and hairspray.
This isn't the first time fragrance has been used to intensify an artistic experience. Walt Disney wanted to spray auditoriums with jasmine and incense during screenings of the 1940 film Fantasia. Then there are the famous failed attempts to introduce smell to TV and cinema audiences in the 1950s, such as AromaRama and Smell-O-Vision. The film-maker John Waters lampooned these in his 1981 film Polyester. Before the film started, cinemagoers were given a scratch-and-sniff card featuring such delicious odours as pizza and farts.
Scratch and Sniff's trial event, in February, proved a sell-out. It viewed the history of 20th-century fashion through perfume: Diorissimo, a synthesised lily-of-the-valley fragrance, was used to conjure up images of the suffocated American housewife, while the decadence and hedonism of the 1970s were epitomised by Opium.
At Scent of the Movies, the audience is mainly made up of groups of women and couples on dates. Animated chatter erupts when we're asked to guess which of the perfumes we have sniffed would best go with films like Brokeback Mountain, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Double Indemnity.
I find being able to smell these movies – or, rather, to imagine a scent for each scene – opens up a new level of enjoyment. The thought of an entire film accompanied, scene by scene, by hundreds of scents is an enticing prospect, but it's hardly practical. I did enjoy the scent for Brokeback Mountain, though. It was called Lonestar Memories – and it smelt of campfires.
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