In the end, the film is a kind of mechanical process that is exactly the opposite of the one whereby a bad filmmaker who adapts a book keeps the events, the facts, the physical acts, and leaves out everything which would seem, on the contrary, to belong to the writing itself. The directions for the characters are very brief in the book, but a number of acts and gestures in the book are omitted from the film. Q: I was struck by an interesting contrast between film and book. When I found Stein, the scenario wasn’t any good at all any more, and we threw the whole thing out that same day. Still, as a story it was obviously classical. Q: Did the scenario come before the writing of the book?Ī: “The Chaise Longue,” yes. There was a good scenario, called “The Chaise Longue,” which we tried to film but it came out of a certain kind of psychology, maybe a searching one, but psychology nonetheless and Stein wasn’t in it … I know the film better than the book I wrote the book very quickly. But, you know, it’s a book I hardly know at all.
There are ten ways to read Destroy, She Said that’s what I wanted. Q: In any case, you had theater in mind somehow…Ī: Yes, yes, Claude Régy was to stage it, but I made the film first, I couldn’t help it … I believe it necessary to create things that are more and more timesaving, that can be read quickly, that give the reader a more important role. Q: When you wrote these stage directions, was the idea of a film lingering in your mind? Or was it simply because you could only write in this form?Ī: I had no idea of a film, but I did have the idea of a book … of a book that could be either read or acted or filmed or, I always add, simply thrown away.
MARGUERITE DURAS THE WAR PLOT FREE
And there are directions that are mindful of screen plays: “sunshine,” “seventh day,” “heat,” “intense light,” “twilight”-do you see what I mean? I would like the material that is to be read to be as free as possible of style. I don’t think there are any sentences in it. Destroy, She Said is a fragmented book from the novelistic point of view. This corresponds to…Īnswer: To the desire that I always have to tear what has gone before to pieces.
Question: It seems you want more and more to give successive forms to each of the things-let’s not use the word “stories”-that you write… for instance, The Square, which had several versions, or La Musica, which also had several forms, or L’Amante anglaise.
The interview, conducted by Jacques Rivette and Jean Narboni, was originally published in the Evergreen Review, and can be found in From the Third Eye: The Evergreen Review Film Reader, out from Seven Stories next week. In honor of her work, please find below a 1970 interview with Duras, touching on her view of cinema, May '68, and much else. Subtle, strange, canny, provocative, her work in both media lasts till this day. An astonishingly prolific novelist, she was also an accomplished director of films. Marguerite Duras died on March 3, 1996, almost twenty-two years ago to the day.
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