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Jean Cocteau and the Occupation of France Ruth Elizabeth Newns Austin UCL M.Phil

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Jean Cocteau and the Occupation of France Ruth Elizabeth Newns Austin UCL M.Phil Jean Cocteau and the Occupation of France Ruth Elizabeth Newns Austin UCL M.Phil 1 I, Ruth Elizabeth Newns Austin, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Signature: 2 Abstract The work of Jean Cocteau continues to be of interest and has been the subject of many studies, with anniversaries relating to the poet’s life and work continuing to prompt new exhibitions of his work and assessments of his work. The fact that the interest in Cocteau so often extends beyond the work itself is a starting point for this study of the poet’s work during the period of the German Occupation of France, 1940-1944, and this will also be explored in this project. The project is divided into three sections which consider ‘l’affaire Breker’, Cocteau’s work for the cinema and his theatre productions of the period. I have worked through the newspaper archives at both the British Library’s collection in Colindale and that of Leeds University, the only two archives in Britain which between them offer a complete collection of the journal Comoedia as well as a number of other newspapers from the period, such as Je suis partout and La Gerbe. I have also read much of Cocteau’s work in parallel with the Journal intime he kept from 1942-1945, which was published posthumously. By examining the article on Breker, Cocteau’s involvement with cinema and the theatre during the Occupation, a view emerges of an artist grappling, not always successfully, with the particular challenges of the wartime context. While on the one hand his efforts to minimize the threat the war posed to the creative endeavour can certainly be criticized as a politically contestable choice of action, I would argue that it is important also to recognize the belief Cocteau strongly held that art was even more vitally important during war than at other times, and indeed that art was in itself a mode of resistance to the destructiveness inherently associated with war. 3 Table of Contents Jean Cocteau during the German Occupation of France. .............................................................. 5 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 5 A brief survey of assessments of Cocteau in biographical writing ........................................... 6 Jean Cocteau and l’affaire Breker ........................................................................................... 12 Jean Cocteau and Cinema of the Occupation .......................................................................... 12 Jean Cocteau and theatre of the Occupation ........................................................................... 13 Chapter 1 ..................................................................................................................................... 16 Jean Cocteau and l’affaire Breker ............................................................................................... 16 Jean Cocteau as journalist ....................................................................................................... 17 Comoedia and newspaper publication during the Occupation ................................................ 18 Comoedia and Arno Breker .................................................................................................... 20 Arno Breker ............................................................................................................................ 21 The Arno Breker exhibition .................................................................................................... 25 The Breker exhibition ............................................................................................................. 31 The ‘Salut à Breker’ ................................................................................................................ 36 Reading the ‘Salut à Breker’ ................................................................................................... 38 Breker in Cocteau’s Journal, 1942-1945 ................................................................................. 46 Chapter 2 ..................................................................................................................................... 55 Jean Cocteau and the Cinema of the Occupation ........................................................................ 55 Cocteau’s film projects during the Occupation ....................................................................... 55 Cinema of the Occupation ...................................................................................................... 59 L’Eternel retour ...................................................................................................................... 67 Les Dames du bois de Boulogne ............................................................................................. 94 La Belle et la bête ................................................................................................................. 103 Chapter 3 .................................................................................................................................. 124 Cocteau and the Theatre of the Occupation .............................................................................. 124 The Theatre in Paris during the Occupation ......................................................................... 126 La Machine à écrire .............................................................................................................. 131 Renaud et Armide .................................................................................................................. 143 Les Parents terribles ............................................................................................................. 149 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 154 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 163 Films Cited ................................................................................................................................ 169 4 Jean Cocteau during the German Occupation of France. Introduction The work of Jean Cocteau continues to be of interest and has been the subject of many studies, with anniversaries relating to the poet’s life and work continuing to prompt new exhibitions of his work and assessments of his work. The fact that the interest in Cocteau so often extends beyond the work itself is a starting point for this study of the poet’s work during the period of the German Occupation of France, 1940-1944, and this will also be explored in this project. Cocteau did not choose silence following the defeat of the French but continued to work. As such, he became embroiled in the controversy which for some was met by anyone who continued to produce work during the Occupation. As one critic has put it, ‘to publish legally is to acquiesce in an imposed ideological and political situation, and hence to lend it respectability, in however indirect a way’ (Pickering 1998, p.163). Or according to another: ‘Quels que fussent les sophismes, dont ils déguisaient leurs actes, le fait d’écrire un article, même anodin, dans un journal qui n’était qu’une feuille de propagande hitlérienne, de jouer dans un théâtre qui n’était autorisé à rouvrir que dans la mesure où cela servait les desseins des nazis, de tourner un film, de se comporter, en bref, comme si la guerre n’avait pas eu lieu, comme si la Patrie n’était pas en deuil, comme si l’ordre nouveau n’était pas en rigueur, constituait une manière indirecte de servir les intérêts allemands’ (Halimi 1976, p.29). Cocteau’s pre-emptive response to such a stance is reflected in his Journal where he writes that ‘La France, sous l’occupation allemande, avait le droit et le devoir de se montrer insolente, de manger, de briller, de braver l’oppresseur, de dire: “Tu m’enlèves 5 tout et il me reste tout”’ (Cocteau 1989, p.557). As Burrin writes, this argument of Cocteau’s was also circulated after the Liberation, the idea that ‘chaque film tourné, chaque livre publié, chaque pièce jouée avait été un défi jeté par la culture française à la face des destructeurs de toute culture’ (Burrin 1995, p.329). Opinions about the merits of the two different approaches remain divided to this day. A brief survey of assessments of Cocteau in biographical writing The reader can turn to Cocteau himself for an understanding of the way in which his work was judged in tandem with his life, ‘Nos compatriotes jugent l’œuvre à travers l’homme. Ne voyant de l’homme qu’une image fausse, ils jugent faux’ (Cocteau 2003 [1947], p.30). It is of note that this statement was included in an essay in Cocteau’s La Difficulté d’être, a collection of essays published in 1947, not long after the Occupation. As we will see, Cocteau attracted criticism from two opposing quarters. Many of the far-right newspaper critics chose to focus on Cocteau and his reputation as one of the “degenerates” of the Third Republic, an opinion they held before the Occupation and which they had were much freer to express in the Collaborationist press, rather than the work they purported to be writing about, while others reproached him his dealings with the Germans. Let
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