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Roberto Rossellini, Jacques Rivette, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, André Téchiné, Chantal Akerman: list – non-exhaustive – filmmakers including Jean was the Gruault writer says alone the importance of this man for French cinema of the second half of the XX th century. Also a playwright, novelist, actor of theater and opera librettist, Jean Gruault, who died Tuesday, June 9 at the age of 90 years, liked to quote Audiberti to differentiate the “writing” of the “writer”. For him, he said, “the playwright – and, a fortiori, the scenario – can not be a writer, since it is not concerned exclusively language, since it has to tell a story, state intentions “. Nevertheless: Gruault was a great writer. Without it, movies like Jules and Jim , The Carabinieri , Suzanne Simonin , Religious Diderot , The Two English Girls , My Uncle of America , many others, would not have the same flavor.
He was born on August 3, 1924 in Fontenay-sous-Bois. We tracked him down in the late 1940s, alongside the leaders of Film Societies of the Latin Quarter and Studio Parnassus. There are just some moviegoers in which soon hear about: Maurice Scherer (later Eric Rohmer), but also Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut, Suzanne Schiffman, Andre Labarthe, Douchet Jean Claude de Givray … Later, we even say that the New Wave was born somewhere between the cinemas of the fifth arrondissement.
Scenario for Rivette in 1958
An adventure Cahiers du cinema , Jean Gruault prefers to play at the theater, for example in The bluebottle , Marcel Ayme or The Landlady by Jacques Audiberti.
First scenario, master stroke in 1958 with Paris belongs to us , Jacques Rivette. Then everything goes very fast. On the recommendation of Truffaut, Gruault became assistant to Roberto Rossellini, with whom he will work on Vanina Vanini . Five years later, in 1966, he coécrira for the father of Italian neo-realism of the scenario The Taking of power by Louis XIV.
1962 was the year of Jules and Jim . Seven years earlier, as he recounts in Pleasure of eyes (Small library of Cahiers du Cinema), Francois Truffaut had a real “thunderbolt” reading the novel by Henri-Pierre Roché. To help adapt to the cinema one evening, Truffaut was picked Gruault just outside the theater where he played in a room Audiberti.
Long collaboration with Truffaut
François Truffaut at work (Editions Les Cahiers du Cinema), Carole Le Berre well describes how these two worked together: “Inaugurating a method of together they will repeat later, Truffaut gave him an annotated copy where he highlighted or crossed out passages that please him. Gruault writes a first attempt to adapt, long enough, Truffaut which uses as starting point to revise, reduce, invent some more visual shortcuts, find out where it wants to go … “ Soon, glue and scissors force we will have more versions of the script
This is the beginning of a long collaboration between the two men. The Wild Child first, then, again according to Henri-Pierre Roché, The Two English Girls, The Story of Adele H. and The Green Room . About Two English , February 27, 1968, Truffaut sent a letter to Gruault: “Dear John, Lucette will hand you the books of Henri-Pierre Roché. I hope they will fascinate you as much as me. Yet I ask you to maintain absolute secrecy about this reading must remain absolutely confidential … “
With Godard, Gruault not worked on The Carabinieri (1963) .
While in full disgrace in Italy, Rossellini had wanted to mount an anti-war piece Benjamino Joppolo, I Carabinieri . Scandal. Fiasco. Yet Gruault Rossellini asked kindly, to micro, summarize this piece for Jean-Luc Godard who would suit the movie. These twenty minutes of recording apply to Rossellini to be credited in the credits as co-writer alongside Gruault and Godard …
Unable to evoke Gruault screenwriter career without mentioning his work on Suzanne Simonin, Religious Diderot by Jacques Rivette (1967). Censorship scandal – Godard deals Malraux “Minister of Kultur” -. And successful
Three scenarios for Alain Resnais
also impossible not to mention the three scenarios Gruault wrote for Alain Resnais: My Uncle of America , Life is a novel , Love to death. As John Ford, Alain Resnais composed a detailed biography of his characters. “Gruault , he told loved writing these biographies. More role was smaller, the biography stretched. When you attributed to me these biographies can be attributed to me the fact of having requested, but that’s Gruault goes the charm everything he writes. “
The charm, the tongue, the taste for telling stories. One could devote pages and pages to all films which Gruault wrote the screenplay. We could also tell he had all projects, particularly with Truffaut, who did not see the day. La Belle Epoque but Marguerite and Julien
Searching through the archives of World , can be traced to a play he had written, War peasants . Ascent Théâtre Gérard-Philipe in Saint-Denis in 1967, inspired by Michael Kolhhaas , Heinrich von Kleist, she describes the adventure of a horse dealer who, to do justice, is trained to become the leader of a band of peasants. “There is no said to the World Jean Gruault, ” good “ and ” bad guys “: there are men who act according to a number of criteria related to a certain age” .
He who spent three years in the seminary of Angers wrote other pieces, including A baby Jesus and Crucifixion in a Turkish boudoir (mounted in 1987 at the Petit Odéon in Paris). Often he amused himself extract replicas of his pieces to place them in the films on which he worked. We find these “imports” in Life is a novel or in Love to death. in Paris belongs to us there this replica has shaped allusion to Brassillach, extracted from Crucifixion “The best way for a young writer to get known is to be shot …”
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