One day, Marguerite Duras grew tired of loneliness. About that distance she put between herself and others to reinvent her life in her novels. “I understood that I was a lonely person with my writing, alone, far away from everything. It lasted ten years perhaps, I don’t know anymore.” (write, Gallimard, 1993). After her breakup with the journalist and writer Gérard Jarlot in 1963, there were still lovers here and there, at large tables in her house in Yvelines, in Neauphle-le-Château, at weekends. But Marguerite, in front of her typewriter, is tired of looking at the duck pond and the garden. Or at her bottle.
“She always said she wanted to make films to meet people”, Caroline Champetier, director of photography and director who has filmed with Duras several times, rightly observes. The underlying reason behind this, however, is quite different: the writer cannot bear to lose control of her work and see others take over her imagination. Margaret Durasa book by the Milanese art publisher Mazzotta, co-published in 1992 with the Cinémathèque française, concludes: “I found the films that were made from my novels unbearable” (…)The most incredible betrayal was that ofA barrier against the Pacific by René Clément. (…) For me, I never came back from that idiocy. So I made movies. So. »
This first experience in the seventh art, in 1958, allowed him to buy his country house, but the more the years passed, the more he disliked this great Italian-American production, with Anthony Perkins and Silvana Mangano. A barrier against the Pacific However, it attracts more than 2 million viewers in France and 5 million in Italy. the expressthe writer wonders if the director “I understood the meaning of the novel.” She, however, never loses her business sense: Gallimard reissued the book at her request, eight years after its publication, with the film poster.
However, she starts again with The Sailor of Gibraltara 1952 novel adapted by British filmmaker Tony Richardson, released in 1967. Despite the presence of Jeanne Moreau, Vanessa Redgrave and Orson Welles (whom Duras hates), the film fails to reach its audience. This is the last time the novelist has sold the rights to one of her books for a film whose adaptation she did not write or which she did not direct herself. With one notable exception, in 1992: the lover, By Jean-Jacques Annaud.
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