First Encounters: French Literature and the Cinematograph Author(S): Roland-François Lack Source: Film History, Vol

First Encounters: French Literature and the Cinematograph Author(s): Roland-François Lack Source: Film History, Vol. 20, No. 2, Moving Picture Fiction (2008), pp. 133-143 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25165468 . Accessed: 08/08/2013 06:16

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This content downloaded from 86.186.242.240 on Thu, 8 Aug 2013 06:16:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Film History, Volume 20, pp. 133-143,2008. Copyright ? John Libbey Publishing ISSN: 0892-2160. Printed inUnited States of America

First encounters:

French literature and the

cinematograph

Roland-Fran?ois Lack

/ c/e/y my contemporaries to give the date of Colette, who wrote film criticism and film scripts but, their first encounter with the cinema beyond describing a character's face in 1903 as (Jean-Paul Sartre) having 'a cinematographic mobility', rarely men tioned the cinema inher several modern-day fictions Drawing on roughly forty years of French writing of the period up to 1914.4 The period initiated the for examples, from the invention of the cine vogue for romans-fleuve, vast novel-cycles of con matograph to the publication of the first history temporary life, so it is a further disappointment that of cinema in France, my aim in this essay is no one inRolland's Jean-Christophe (1904-1912) or to consider how literature represented going to the Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (1913-1927) cinema while this was still a new experience, how the finds the time to go to the movies. This did eventually raw material of this experience was processed into happen inLa belle saison, an early volume of Martin art. An alternative titlewould be The Cinema Scene du Gard's cycle Les Thibault (1922-1937), where a as Motif inFrench Literary Fiction'. Importantwork on full programme o? actualit?s, Helen Holmes-style ad this topic for the first part of my period has already ventures and documentary images of 'Unknown Af been done by Stephen Bottomore in an invaluable rica' provides a backdrop to erotic fumblings in the essay to which Iam much indebted.1 audience.5 I have taken as a starting point Bottomore's The principal characters of these lengthy nar remark to the effect that few famous authors contrib ratives are males who reach adulthood before the uted to the genre of fictions about cinema in the early invention of cinema, and their authors seem to con period. It is certainly true that few French contribu sider that their heroes have leftbehind such childish tions match the quality of Kipling's 'MrsBathurst', the things. Historians may find evidence of this early best ifnot the first in the genre. Bottomore discusses assumption that cinema was only for children and fine art-stories by Apollinaire ('Un beau film', 1907) women in the source of my epigraph, Sartre's auto and Giraudoux ('Au cin?ma', 1908), but that these biographical Les mots, published 1964 but a locus are the best French literature has to offer is disap classicus of literature's first encounters with film. The pointing, especially given how many of France's lit relevant pages are rich indetail for the film historian erary artists of the period up to 1914 acknowledged to footnote, such as the specific dates of films men the existence of the cinematograph; they drew on it tioned (Zigomar, 1911; Fantomas, 1913; Les for similes, or commented on it discursively, but Myst?res de New York, 1914; Les Exploits de Maciste declined to tell stories about it.2 We might have expected more, for example, from Jules Verne (who died in 1905) than a brief Lack is a Senior Lecturer at Univer reference to the kinetograph in 1895; after all, H.G. Roland-Fran?ois sity College London, where he teaches French litera Wells would soon, inWhen the Wakes Sleeper (1899), ture and film. He is currently writing a book on Cinema demonstrate how central the cinematographic appa and Place. to ratus could be to visions of the future.3 Or from Correspondence [email protected]_

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Fig. 1. Maurice Bard?che evoke the origins of cinema Jean-Paul Sartre, through parallels with literature: Lesmots (Paris: Gallimard-Folio, Everyone probably knows, nevertheless, that 1983 [1964]). the origins of the film liemuch further back, and that movies date from the era of President Faure and President Cleveland and of Bour get's first novels. They date, in fact, from a time when the boy Proust used to admire Mme Swann in the Bois de Boulogne, and woo Gil berte in the Champs Elys?es. A Jewish army captain was arrested and tried then, but no body foresaw that a year or two later the name of Dreyfus would convulse the whole French nation. The bicycle was still a velocipede. The automobile had just appeared, but older peo ple insisted that itwould never be as much use as the horse. Boldini was the fashionable painter. Itwas at such a moment that the film appeared.7

In fact, in the year cinema was born, Paul Bourget was onto his twelfth novel, and Tenfant Proust' was a grown man who had already published his first texts, but these literary associations help Brasillach and Bard?che present this story of origin as a kind of Proustian cinema, a succession of im ages laid out before the eyes of memory.

- Brasillach, born 1909, devoted a large section i.e.Cabina, 1913), and the specific cinemas visited of Comme le temps passe to the origins of cinema, (the Panth?on, the Kin?rama, the Gaumont Palace). depicting the activities of a film-production company This historian may also discuss issues around dat in the early 1900s, evidently informed by Brasillach's a peculiar of belatedness that ing, through figure work as a film historian: marks the passage. Sartre, famously, reads the age of the cinema against his own: Matricante went to see M?li?s with Ren?, and even visited the hangar inMontreuil where the We had the same mental age. Iwas seven master illusionist prepared most of his trues. years old and \ could read. He, the cinema, He came back filled with enthusiasm, for he was twelve, and couldn't speak. People said had seen nothing at Charles Path?'s, where he he was just starting out, that he had progress had been taken by his compatriot Zecca, to to make; I thought would we would grow up match the ingeniousness, the acrobatic skill of together.6 this inspired, laughing, proud littleman, who Since he was born in 1905, we calculate that spent his days in his workshop, as inventive Sartre dates the birth of the cinema as 1900, at least with his fingers as with his wit, and who took five years after the event. as much pleasure in organising f?eries for The problem is not historical accuracy: itsuits children as he did large-scale comedies, Sartre's literary purpose to make cinema a child of staged actualit?s and little melodramas. In the twentieth century, and in film history we have front of the astonished Ren? he opened trap become used to the rhetoric of false memory, espe doors, suspended himself in the air, spat out cially when the past thing remembered is Tenfance fire, waggled his wizard's beard, produced a de l'art'. In the firstHistoire du Cin?ma, from 1935, dozen women inwhite swimsuits from a giant the novelist Robert Brasillach and literary critic rose, and had singing on the screen, thanks to

a phonograph, the grey silhouette of Paulus. ognised her three mortal enemies, in league against Ren? went home entirely won over by Matri her on the magic screen'.12 cante's plans, and ready to swear that the Where other novelists in the thirties deign to cinematograph would conquer the world.8 name or evoke specific films, the details are not so to be derived from historiographie or An habitu? in the 1920s of art-house cinemas likely cinephilic competence. InMort ? cr?dit (1936), C?line feeds on like the Studio des Ursulines and the Vieux Colombier childhood memories of afternoons at M?li?s's related inhis memoir Notre Brasil (as avant-guerre), Th??tre Robert-Houdin: lach's historical knowledge was founded on his cinephilia, which fed directly into the cinema scenes My dog went with us everywhere, even to the he included inother novels. Cinema, at the Robert Houdin, for the Thurs day matin?e. Grandmother paid for that too. His literary contemporaries narrated cinema We'd stay for three shows ina row. Itwas the going as a generic experience, often tedious, some same price, all seats a franc, a hundred per times sordid: 'the cinema was never any help to her: cent silence, no speech, no music, no titles, in that semi-darkness boredom overcame her irre just the whirring of the mill. It'llcome back, we sistibly' (Mauriac); 'the film would be stupid, their tire of everything except sleeping and day neighbour would smoke and spit between his knees dreaming. The Voyage to theMoon will be back or else Lucien would be disagreeable' (Sartre); 'the ... Istill know itby heart.13 cinema is the sewer of the twentieth century: when ever there's something base going on between two C?line was eight when he could first have seen people, they end up in a movie theatre' (Monther M?li?s's Voyage dans la lune. lant).9 Ina volume of his 'RealWorld' tetralogy, even Drieu la Rochelle has the hero in R?veuse Aragon, a genuine cinema enthusiast, succumbs to bourgeoisie (1937) see an early Lumi?re pro this fashion: gramme:

Aur?lien had to get to his feet to let someone Nearby, in front of the Grand Caf?, difficult else past. The new arrival was an over-per explanations were required regarding the cine fumed woman, who sat down beside him. He matograph, on show there for the first time. He realised immediately what the game was. was drawn to itthough at first disappointed by When he left the cinema, thoroughly disgusted the banal scenes on that trembling screen, with himself, he was overwhelmed by despair, such as a train entering a station, which he had mingled with a vague sense of guilt. The whole had to contemplate for too long, one evening thing was senseless, quite pointless. He in the depths of the caf?.14 loathed the animal inhimself.10 Though the details of the locale on the boule He then goes to get blind drunk ina bar. This vard des Capucines are more likely to have come is the second cinema Aur?lien visits in the episode: from Brasillach and Bard?che's book than from in the first, one of the films he sees seems to be Tod Drieu's childhood memories (he was only three in Browning's Drifting (1923), a trace of Aragon's 1896), this and the passage from C?line have, like cinephilia, if not Aur?lien's ('he doesn't know any Sartre's reminiscences, the authority of witness. But thing about films').11 the child in front of a Lumi?re or M?li?s vue is not yet For Brasillach's characters cinema-going is | the writer who will transform film into fiction. never tedious or sordid. His cinema scenes are al The initialpremise of my research was to dis ways marked by enthusiasm and by precision in the cover the firstwriter to encounter the cinematograph details. InLe Marchand d'oiseaux (1936) his heroine, and make fiction from it.My earnest, if chauvinist, who is traumatised by the German language, chil hope was that the meeting occurred between dren playing marbles and avant-garde cinema, at Frenchmen, but that hope had soon to be aban tends a screening of one of Richter's Filmstudie: The doned. 'Revenge', the story Gorky published in 1896 day one of her friends dragged her to the Vieux after seeing a Lumi?re programme in Nizhny Colombier where a German director was presenting Novgorod, is the first great encounter of the cinema a film of pure cinema consisting simply of rolling and literature. It is, from a socio-historical point of crystal balls, she fainted in ten seconds, having rec view, the equal of the cinema scene inFrank Norris's

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1899 novel McTeague, no less a 'contemporaneous ries but in the intervening historiography of Brasillach account of the reception of the cinematic image' and Bard?che. As I have said, the aptness of the containing 'richmaterial for understanding the hori film's title serves the story's artistry, but in passing ! zon of expectations in which films originally ap does a disservice to any historiographical claim we peared'.15 And from a literarypoint of view, Gorky's might make for the story: there is no contemporary story performs the kind of reflexive figurations that evidence concerning the presence of M?li?s's Es make literature's reference to cinema worth our at camotage d'une dame on the programme at the tention in the first place. 'Revenge' does not quite Bazar cinematograph, and no film historians have have the sophistication of Kipling's 'Mrs Bathurst', suggested as much since. The operator at the Bazar but it is an excellent beginning.16 specifies that he had put together for the occasion a Particularly remarkable is the speed with which film, in colour, called 'La Mi-Car?me ? Paris'.18 Mo Gorky transformed his experience of the cinema rand make no use of this evidence: he may on other tograph intoart. Between his witnessing the Lumi?re occasions be a historian, in his book 1900 notably, show and publishing his story, just two weeks but in his story 'LeBazar de laCharit?' he is only an I passed. By contrast, inMay 1897 Paul Morand wit artist, arranging his materials for effect. nessed a major moment in the cinematograph's While wouldI not inevery instance contest the public history, the Bazar de laCharit? fire, inwhich historiographical value of literature's cinema scenes, more than a hundred of France's finest aristocrats in the French context the privileging of artistic effect died inhorrific and shameful circumstances. Morand over accurate documentation does seem to be a would produce from this a fine art-story with the national characteristic. It needn't have been so: I cinematograph at its centre, not merely as the attrib have already manifested my unhappiness that a uted cause of the blaze but also, through the identi Russian preempted the French. The cinematograph, fication of the principal filmon the programme, as the being French, should have entered French literature source of an intertextual figuration, a trope through likea train steaming intoa station. Naturalism, an art which the story signals itsown artistry. The film iden based on documentation and still, in 1895, a domi tified is M?li?s's L'Escamotage d'une Dame au nant literarymode, should have been an ideal recep Th??tre RobertHoudin; briefly, the story concerns the tor for such newness entering the world, but neither complications arising from the temporary disappear Zola nor his French epigones rushed to present the ance ('escamotage') of a 'dame' who, rather than phenomenon in their fictions. Zola is the biggest dying as presumed in the blaze, had spent that disappointment, having still five vast novels to pub afternoon with her lover. lish between 1896 and his death in 1902, inat least One contrast Iwish to establish with Gorky is two of which scenes at the cinema might feasibly thatMorand 's story was written almost fiftyyears after have figured: Paris (1898), a contemporary social the witnessed event.17 Yes, as he points out in a fresco, and Travail (1901), a future-set vision of post Morand was a child in 1897 was industrialism. We can assume Zola knew of the cin footnote, only (he | nine), but his note is there to insist, ? la Sartre, on a ema, be it through cinematographic representations link between his infancy and that of the cinema as of his involvement in the Dreyfus Affair,19 or simply art. Morand and the cinema would indeed grow up through his photographic practice, as a reader of the together: his writing would provide the cinema with specialist photography journals inwhich the cinema - stories see Jean Epstein's La Glace ? trois faces tograph was discussed, and as a regular purchaser (1927) and Daniel Schmid'sH?cate (1982) -and the of the Lumi?re company's photographic plates. (He cinema would reciprocate. expresses, in his notes, enthusiasm for their new A stronger contrast between Gorky's 'Re 'yellow label' plates.20) venge' and Morand's 'Bazar' is the matter of histori Rather like that of Lumi?re's famous locomo cal accuracy: the immediacy of the 1896 story allows tive, now thought to have arrived at La Ciotat two - it to identify correctly elements of the Lumi?re pro years later than scheduled itwas after all an out gramme that its characters could have seen (in par dated model relegated from the inter-city express - ticular the D?jeuner de b?b?), even if the responses lines to serve on slower local services the arrival of then recounted are fictional elaborations. Morand, on the cinema in French literature was belated.21 the other hand, writing in the 1940s, finds the title of Preempted in Russia by Gorky and in the US by M?li?s's film not, ? la C?line, inhis childhood memo Norris (both Naturalist authors, and both of whose

This content downloaded from 86.186.242.240 on Thu, 8 Aug 2013 06:16:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions First encounters: French literature and the cinematograph FILM HISTORYVol. 20 Issue 2 (2008) 137 cinema scenes figure in literary terms the impact of three years at least before attendance at such a show this new and competing mode of Naturalist repre was possible. sentation), the Zola-school of French literature finally A simple solution is to blame the chamber goes to the cinema in 1900, inOctave Mirbeau's Le maid's memory for the solecism, but her insistence Journal d'une femme de chambre: on precise commemoration makes that unlikely. More is to treat the scene as of an After dinner we strolled for a while on the satisfying part aesthetic construct, where the vis-?-vis of what hap boulevards, then he took me to a cinema pens on screen and what in the auditorium show. Iwas a bit weak after happens tograph drinking serves as mise-en-ab?me of motifs out of which the too much Saumur wine. In the dark of the hall, novel is composed. The cinema is presented as a as on the luminous screen the French army mirror that fails to reflect reality, figuring not sordid paraded to the applause of the crowd, he sex but the army as symbol and idea. On the screen grabbed me by thewaist and planted a kiss on 'the French army paraded', as visualisation of a motif my neck which almost undid my hair. whose last expression is the name of the caf? that 'You're fantastic', he whispered. 'God, you the heroine ends up with her anti smell running virulently good!' husband: 'A l'Arm?e He walked me to hotel As soon as we Dreyfusard fran?aise'. my [...]. A historian of the French cinema scene could were inmy room, and Ihad bolted the door, give substantial context to the sex-motif inMirbeau. he came at me and threw me, skirts in the air, I have mentioned the at onto the bed. already sexually charged mosphere of the scene inMartin du Gard's La belle When all's said, we can be pretty sordid at saison (1923). That atmosphere intensifies in the times. Poor us! thirties and forties, reaching a climax of sorts in a This episode ends with the scandalous Natu cinema scene from Morand's H?cate et ses chiens ralism of brute sex, after its beginning had supplied (1954), a cocktail flavoured with Africanist exoticism the missing link between Naturalist and cinema and troubled sexuality, ending with the female pro tographic representation that Ihave been seeking. tagonist's vocalised orgasm in front of a film showing There is rich sociological matter in the details of the children at play. This is the only description of public scene: the conditions of viewing, the programme, the orgasm at the cinema I have yet found in French responses to it. Of course, as art, the scene is not literature: the norm is a more private affair, as in the 'evidence' for the sociologist, unless it is confirmed first pages of Roger Nimier's Les Ep?es (1948), one by better evidence (inwhich case the better evidence of the most striking opening scenes in twentieth-cen suffices), but at least we can ask the sociological tury fiction, where an adolescent boy admires then context to illustrate the art.What kind of cinema show masturbates over a magazine picture of Marlene isMirbeau describing? When and where might ithave Dietrich. taken place? The counterpart to sex in the Mirbeau scene is With these questions answered, we might es the military motif.23 InMaurice Le Normand's 'Devant tablish that Mirbeau's text isof its time. But its time is le cin?matographe' (1900) and Fran?ois de Nion's also a function of art, is a thing represented, and 'Lecin?matographe' (1903), Stephen Bottomore has Mirbeau scholars know that the chronology of this identified and discussed indetail two contemporary novel is askew. The problem is, briefly, whether the stories with cinema scenes where soldiers are de chambermaid's diary begins inSeptember 1897 and ployed on the screen, soliciting an animated re finishes in July 1898, or inSeptember '98 and July sponse from the audience. Both cinema scenes '99. In either case, there are contradictory references represent the Boer War, sharing with Mirbeau's novel - to dated events: 'in conclusion', says a recent editor, which for all its chronological ambiguity is deter 'the time of the novel is fictive'.22 This conclusion is mined historically by the still-ongoing Dreyfus affair - all the more necessary in considering the cinema an intensity derived from contemporary events. scene. The narrator describes this encounter as fol Nion was the less obscure of the two authors (pro lowing immediately an event that, as she writes, ducing artistic fiction and theatre for a further twenty occurred on 6 October, five years before. Given the years, including Jacqueline et Colette (1919), a novel possible time frames, then, the visit to the cinema with two substantial cinema scenes), but neither has tograph takes place either in 1892 or 1893, two or occupied much space in the history of French litera

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Fig. 2. Jeanand Cinema does not feature in this narrative, J?r?me Tharaud, though the new medium's onomastic icon ispresent. Dingley l'illustre On the ship over, Dingley is in conversation with a ?crivain(Paris: French photographer for L'Illustration, who com Flammarion, when it is that the war soon 1942), a revision plains, suggested might of the 1906 be over, that he'll be leftwith 'fifty dozen unused edition. Lumi?re plates'.26 The interest, for our purposes, lies in the Tharauds' 1906 transformation of their seventy-page novella into the full-scale novel with which they won that year's Prix Goncourt. The expanded version follows the plot of the first, more or less, with addi tions (and some subtractions: the reference to the Lumi?re plates is removed). But the denoument is entirely different. Dingley is inLondon, disillusioned, and suffering from ennui. Around four o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, he goes to a music hall:

The show was coming to a close. On a cine matograph screen stretched across the front of the stage, likea huge trap to catch images, paraded the portraits of generals command ing in the South. All, whether victors or van ture. Nonetheless, both stories achieve a degree of quished, were greeted by the crowd with the artistic reflexivity through the deployment of the cin same fervour, because all were equally re ema-recognition motif.24 They develop this against a - spectable representatives of British Strength social background familiar in Paris cinemas of the a banal spectacle that he had seen a hundred time, the French collective to public's opposition times. British imperialism inSouth Africa. Inhis literarycol umn from the year 1900, the novelist Jean Lorrain Suddenly, a tent appeared on the screen; be documents this attitude more precisely: 'Half past neath this tent a moving shadow. Dingley rec nine, to the Folies Berg?res, to hiss at Queen Victoria ognised Lucas du To?t. reviewing her troops on the Transvaal and applaud The Boer was holding in his closed hand the the parading Boers on the cinematograph'.25 pipe that he, Dingley, had seen alit; the same Fiction made many contributions to this pre mud was on his boots and, over his shoulders, vailing mood, but none was so powerful as the the coat inwhich he had for so long watched Tharaud brothers' Dingley l'illustre ?crivain (1902), a him sleep. This trembling ghost was replaced* novella critical of British imperialism generally, and in by the young man, just as he had seen him one particular of British policy inSouth Africa. The epony night, by the lightof a lantern, in the dynamited mous is a portrait of protagonist barely disguised farm that had been his. And, for a few minutes, Kipling. Briefly, the famous writer plans a novel de the novelist was livingso intensely on the starry picting a useless low-life transformed into a hero by Veld that he was blinded by the brightness of the exigencies of war. To research his novel Dingley the screen, where everything had suddenly embarks on a troopship sailing for South Africa, disappeared, like a man who awakes with a where circumstances find him captured by a Boer start and sees, through his window, the full Du who treats him well and releases him. leader, To?t, moon. Dingley returns to England disillusioned and unable to finish his novel. The story ends with the great Once more the screen was populated. A non novelist asking his Indian nanny to tell him fairy tales, descript region dotted with a dune grass-like as escape from the political realities of the present. vegetation; in the distance, the Drackenberg

* That is, in Dingley's consciousness the screen image was replaced by his memory of Du Toit.

mountains; du To?t and his driver Corn?lis with a greater sense of pride the egotism of his leaning against a sand embankment in front of country'. a squad of soldiers... The same silence in this The portrait of Kipling inboth versions isdamn desert as in this expectant room, where no ing and even cruel, given the pivotal role played in sound was heard save the whirring of the pro the narrative by the death of Dingley's son. But the jector and where no light shone save the rays valorisation of text over image, of the 'well-con of the magic lantern. structed tale' over the 'mechanical toy', is not simply irony at Kipling's expense. As the closing scene ina Suddenly, the simulacrum of a salvo of gunfire sustained relativisation of writing throughout the text, snapped in the wings; the two men fell on their the cinema episode qualifies but does not resolve the faces; the room blazed with frenetic lights; issue. The is first in the hurrahs and refrains filled the music hall opposition developed on-ship jingo discussion with the who a and in the fracas the orchestra unleashed in photo-journalist, praises fellow photographer, killed inaction, 'a real hero of fury the famous tune: Journalism and the Image'. Dingley comments sar Forward, soldiers of the Queen castically on the heroism of this photographer, less For England and for the Empire worthy a hero for being a mulatto. The criticism of We shall be masters of the world Dingley's imperialist prejudices and the fact that the photographer debating with Dingley is French serve The novelist realised that, by its enthusiasm, to valorise the image as expressive vocation. Where the crowd was manifesting approval for his the writer has been struggling to find the means to own patriotic ingratitude towards the rebellious make sense of his own, fictional hero, and must Afrikaaner. embark on a ship for South Africa to do so, the The novelist is confirmed in his faith that in photographer's work has immediate meaning and stinctively British popular patriotism is right, and as impact, even if itmay cost him his life.28This scene sured that he will be able to harness it in his writing: complements the cinema scene, with immediacy of inception and reception set against studied expres He would inspire in these people the simple, sion and enduring effect. Inboth cases the attitude strong, brutal emotion they had just felt on of Dingley mediates how we weigh the values distrib seeing shot, on that screen, a kind of hero: but uted in each. with another power, because the lifeof a cine The cinema scene in the Tharaud's novel isan matograph is precarious and poor, and for a aid to how we read the ironies of literature. Inpassing, long time yet a well-constructed tale will reign it appears to offer evidence of film's reception, ma over this mechanical toy, with all the old accu terials towards a sociology of early cinema. We might mulated energy of words.27 learn several things from it:how the silent image was This is as striking a mise-en-sc?ne of cinema given dramatic force through sound effects (the snap as the kinetoscope, cinematograph and kinetograph from the wings when the condemned man is shot); episodes inNorris, Mirbeau and Kipling. It is particu how an audience might take a screen image as a cue larly forceful as mise-en-ab?me, setting image for a performance of its own; how the intellectual against text, the immediate impression that cinema classes saw popular entertainments as a cure for makes against the permanence of writing. The de ennui. In fact none of this can be known from the scription of the film itself foregrounds literature's evidence of the text; none of it need be observed greater sensitivity to the ghostly demarcations of detail, a fair representation of the English cinema-go cinema. The crowd simply cheers at the death of the ing public circa 1902. Every element could be pure enemy, but Dingley iswatching also the death of a invention, legitimised by the distance of setting and - ghost he already knows from the newspapers that readership (London and Paris), and by the distance - De To?t is dead but also the coming to ghostly life built into ironising fiction. of the past, through memory: 'd?j? fant?me ...'. What we do have evidence of, possibly, is the The addition of a cinema scene radically alters horizon of expectation inwhich cinema-fiction ap - the narrative. Dingley ismoved to finish his novel of peared and was received by other f ictionalisers that Imperialism, and the 1906 text ends on a note of bitter is ifwe may conjecture that the Tharauds' 1906 affirmation: 'never had the illustrious writer exalted revision of the 1902 novella through the addition of a

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enees to the cinema in post-war French fiction are associated with reference to the war (see novels by Henri Barbusse, Roland Dorgel?s and Ren? Ben jamin, as well as the aforementioned war-set novel by Nion, Jacqueline et Colette). Concurrently, cinephilic artists in prose were beginning to bring their characters to the cinema for reasons other than that itwas a part of the realworld around them. Aragon's Anicet (1920), though com posed at the Front, carefully avoids any reference to itsmilitary context, but itdoes have a very complex scene at the cinema (and 'Pol', a character based on Charlie Chaplin).30 Sitting in front of the screen, the protagonist Baptiste presents an enthusiastic de fence of Pearl White, the ideal modern spectacle, anti-psychological and invigorating. His friend count - ers with contempt 'Don't talk to me about the - cinema, ithas nothing to offer us' and the cinema cinema scene was a the enthusiast is then deflated what he sees on Fig. 3. prompted by reading of fully by Charles-Ferdinand cinema scenes in 'Mrs Bathurst', published 1904. the screen, as he witnesses the wedding of the Ramuz as an The reversal of affect, having Kipling suffer through woman he loves. This parody of the cinema-recog extra in - Rapt, recognition on the screen as his character Vickery nition motif is not a realism the figures on the screen Dimitri did, is redoubled in irony by the apotheosis of self genuinely do smile at and gesture towards the spec Kirsanoff's1933 - confidence that the novelist's cinema-going brings tators in the cinema but a specular affirmation of adaptationof his novelLa him to. This may only be a reader effect: there is no cinema's power. The cinema image makes this spec - des external evidence that the Tharauds knew Kipling's tator psychologically confused 'he didn't know ifhe s?paration - races. story, and all we have for sure is two sophisticated was in front of a screen or a mirror' and reduces literaryworks joined by a common motif. him to a literarystereotype. What the cinema offers, The intertextual complexity produced by the we deduce, is a rich intertextuality. vis-?-vis of 'Mrs Bathurst' and Dingley is chiefly a Insimilar vein, Jules Supervielle has the pro literary affair; the cinema in both is positioned, tagonists of his L'Homme de la pampa (1923) firstly through a mise-en-ab?me, as naively realist, as no confuse what they see at a railway station with cine match for the artifice of fiction. If there had been a matic fiction, mistaking one official for a Red Indian cinema scene inZola, the cinema would no doubt and another for a Mexican revolutionary, then at the have been positioned the same way. Nor would it cinema that evening see on the screen the next have been any different at the other end of the episode in the story. A posse of Americans are chas spectrum, with Proust, who knew of the cinema ing the Mexicans, but rather than follow them off tograph from reading about it in Bergson but who screen they burst into the auditorium, horses and all, probably never saw a film. IfProust's narrator had crushing seats and spectators and rushing out onto walked intoa cinema, he would probably have come the boulevard. They reappear on the screen via a out of it like Dingley, bemoaning the poverty and secret door, to the great pleasure of the protagonists, precariousness of the cinematograph, and affirming who stay in the cinema tillmidnight listening to the the 'old accumulated energy of words'. In the last pianola.31 volume of A la recherche, his narrator rejects the Whether or not they represent the cinema, in cinema as a model for literature on entering the real their composition these works by Aragon and Super space of intertextualmise-en-ab?me, a library.29 vielle can be seen as cinematic, by which is under As Proust was writing his extraordinary fiction stood fragmentary and anti-psychological.32 In 1924 and ignoring the cinema, the cinema was already the Swiss author C.-F. Ramuz published an overtly claiming a place in the ordinary world of ordinary psychological novel that represents the cinema and novelists, not least through the place ithad claimed is, in its composition, overtly cinematic. L'amour du in the lives of soldiers in the Great War. Many refer monde, described in the filmmagazine Cin?a as 'un

roman sur lecin?ma', is the story of a first encounter, was the stable; itwas here and, at the same I describing the coming to a small Swiss town of the time, itwas the stable; it's where we are, with cinematograph and the transformation it effects in out us having to move; and it's the stable, the the lives of all. Complex figurations identify the cin manger, the straw, real straw, with a real cow ema with sexual awakening, with the discovery of the and a real donkey; while between them is He world, and with the second coming of Christ. Con who is born, who is born this evening once structed around cinema-scenes, cinema-derived more, for us. fantasies and, at one point, the narration of events We no longer dared to look. through poetic mimicry of a film script ('shot 147: And even less when we saw Him close-up. The kiss. The darkness, from the edges of so, no?, the cross, when we saw him forced the screen, slowly reaches the centre'),33 it is hard to carrying by the to that terrible the do justice here to this most beautiful of cinema fic whip carry weight up path tions: to Calvary. was car Mme Reymondin tried to keep looking; He They crossed the rapids on rope bridges, - being whipped, she could no longer look; but rying parcels of tied up rubber on their heads. tryas we might, the image stayed inyour head, There were school-type wooden benches the still shone, above eyes that we kept - light where we sat; the world came flooding to shut. wards us in the night, as when, in the depths They left the hall; they carried on seeing.34 of an underground mine, you break open a Inan otherwise fine historical work on the com pocket of water with a pick axe. ing of the cinema to Geneva, this passage is used to A barrier gave way; the separation that that illustratewhat the experience of discovering the cin there had been between the world and you ema might have been like.35This is surely wrong: the ceased to exist. raw material of the cinema experience is so artfully that The entire space came through the hole: we processed by Ramuz, throughout the novel, can didn't need to move and go towards it, be nothing of what remains legitimately be drawn cause itwas the space that came towards you. on by the historian. A of Ramuz's artfulness is the novel's And, through this same hole came times past, sign Anicet had its histori things that had passed became present; so atemporality. Aragon's rejected to that time, like space, was denied. cal moment by not relating its experiences the just finished war, but there is almost nothing inL'Amour We saw all the races of animals; we saw flat du monde to situate it anywhere in time. The only flowers on as big as the tables on a ponds, specific markers of period are, indeed, the films that caf? terrace. the townspeople discover, though these films are We saw the crocodile, lying in profile on the generally generic: exotic romance, Christ story, Wild sand by river, holding his mouth wide open West adventure, travelogue, nature film, record of and a littlebird go in. aviation feats. Only the clear reference to the Babylon - episode of Intolerance gives us a date, 1916, though Itwas taken from in front of you, then you saw they could of course be watching the film any time which is a that two, Babylon city disappeared thereafter.36 three thousand years ago, with its towers, its Chronology inRamuz isoften imprecise: it isa its temples, its gods, its kings, its gates, part of what makes his art cinematic, as an art of the its soldiers, its courtesans; disap priests, present. Griffith's history-bound Intolerance is then a become sand in the sand, flattened in peared, wonderfully ironic intertext for a novel about coming the more deserted than the desert; -well plain, to love the world expansively, inspace rather than in are on on there, once again, soldiers guard up time. And Intolerance works as an intertextwhether the walls that have to throw a shadow begun or not it ever really played in the kinds of space far before likea chain of mountains. them, Ramuz describes. And the week before Christmas, the poster The first encounter with cinema that Ramuz announced the Life of Jesus; and so, now, it represents is, like every other instance I have dis

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cussed here, one more assimilation by literature of means. This essay has been a discussion o? a literary the world around it.Such assimilation is not in itself process. Its complement would be a discussion of cinematic, of course, and that cinema also assimi literature as a motif inFrench cinema, but that might lates the world around itdoesn't make cinema liter take more than just an essay. ary, because it does that by entirely cinematic

Notes

1. Stephen Bottomore, '"Devant le Cin?matographe": also discusses image transmission by the the Cinema in French Fiction 1896-1914', KINtop, 't?l?phote', an anticipation of television that ismen 13 (2005), 92-110. Iam also indebted to J?r?me tioned also in Camille Flammarion's science-fiction Prieur's anthology Le Spectateur nocturne: les ?cri La Fin du monde (Paris: Flammarion, 1894). See also vains au cin?ma (Paris: Cahiers du cin?ma, 1993), Octave Uzanne's future-vision 'La Fin des livres', F.-J. Albersmeier's study Die Herausforderung des from the Contes pour un bibliophile (Paris: Quantin, films an die franz?sische Literatur (Heidelberg: C. 1894), discussing the kinetograph and the projection Winter, 1985) and Richard Abel's essay American of images into private homes. Film and the French Literary Avant-Garde 4. Colette, Claudine s'en va [1903], in Oeuvres com (1914-1924)', Contemporary Literature, 17:1 (1976), pl?tes (Paris: Le Fleuron, 1949), 294. 84-109. 5. Roger Martin du Gard, La belle saison (1923), in Les 2. The list of writers acknow literary who, pre-1914, Thibault, 1 (Paris: Le Livre de poche, 1962), 447-457. ledge inwriting the existence of the cinema is quite 6. Jean-Paul Sartre, Les mots (Paris: Gallimard-Folio, extensive: Paul Adam (St?phanie), Guillaume Apol 1983; first published 1964), 104. My translation: all linaire ('Un beau film'), Maurice Barr?s (Mes Cahiers), translations from the French hereinafter are mine, Ren? Bazin (Gingolphel'abandonn?), Emile Bergerat unless otherwise specified. (Les Contes de Caliban), Tristan Bernard (Les Phares Soubigou), Henri Bernstein (Samson), L?on Bloy 7. Maurice Bard?che and Robert Brasillach, The History (Journal), Henri Bordeaux (La vie au th??tre), Paul of Motion Pictures, translated by IrisBarry (New York: Bourget (Pages de critique et de doctrine), Jules W.W. Norton and The Museum of Modern Art, 1938), Clar?tie (La Vie ? Paris), Colette (Claudine s'en va, 3. La Vagabonde), Georges Courteline (Les Linottes), 8. Robert Brasillach, Comme le temps passe (Paris: Le Maurice Donnay {Les Eclaireuses), Georges Fey Livre de poche, 1969; first published 1937), 116. The deau (Le Circuit), Anatole France (Sur la Pierre details here echo those given in the Histoire du blanche, Barbebleue, Monsieur Jean Gi Bergerat), cin?ma. raudoux (Au cin?ma'), Remy de Gourmont (Le Livre des Masques, Epilogues), Louis H?mon (Maria 9. Fran?ois Mauriac, La Fin de la nuit (Paris: Grasset, Chapdelaine), Alfred Jarry (Le Surm?le), Henri 1935), 13; Jean-Paul Sartre, La Naus?e (Paris: Gal Lavedan (La vie courante), Paul L?autaud (Journal), \ limard, 1938), 72; Henri de Montherlant, Piti? pour 44. Daniel Lesueur (L'Honneur d'une femme), Jean Lor les femmes (Paris: Grasset, 1936), rain (Poussi?res de Paris, Fards et poisons), 10. Louis Aragon, Aur?lien, translated by Eithne Wilkins St?phane Mallarm? ('R?ponse ? une enqu?te sur le (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1947; first roman illustr? par la photographie'), Roger Martin du published in French 1944), 381. Gard (Jean Barois), Octave Mirbeau (Le Journal 11. 237. d'une femme de chambre, L'Epid?mie, La 628E8), Aragon, Aur?lien, Marcel Pr?vost Lettres ? (Fr?d?rique, Fran?oise), 12. Robert Brasillach, Le Marchand d'oiseaux (Paris: Le Marcel Proust l'ombre des filles en (A jeunes fleurs), Livre de poche, 1974; first published 1936), 29-30. Jules Renard Jehan Rictus (Journal), ('Conseils'), In Les Sept Couleurs (1939), Patrice excitedly rec Romain Rolland Jules Romains (Les Amies), ('La ommends Cavalcanti's En rade, Du Font's Vari?t?, foule au Roussel cin?matographe'), Raymond (Im Von Stroheim's Greed and Sjostrom's Phantom Car les Tharaud l'illustre presssions d'Afrique), (Dingley riage in the same terms Brasillach would use to Andr? Theuriet oncle Marcelle ?crivain), (Mon Flo), express his own enthusiasm for these films, in both d'une en Pierre Tinayre (Notes voyageuse Turquie), Notre avant guerre and the Histoire du cin?ma. He Jean Toulet tendres Mon amie (Les m?nages, Nane), does, however, distinguish his character's views E.-M. Morts ... This list is not Vogu? (Les qui parlent) from his own where Patrice praises James Cruze's complete. Beggar on Horseback (1925), a film Brasillach thought 'puerile'. 3. Jules Verne, L'Ile ? h?lices (Paris: Hachette, 1916; first published 1895), 57. Verne is referring to 13. L.-F. C?line, Mort ? cr?dit (Paris: Le Livre de poche, Edison's apparatus for recording movement, but 1964; first published 1936), 54.

14. Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, R?veuse bourgeoisie (Paris: serves as a period marker, dating the scene around Gallimard, 1960; first published 1937), 111. 1910. Les Thibault, 452. 24. Nion's has a woman on the screen 15. Tom Gunning's characterisation of the cinema scene story recognise her brother executed other Boer inMcTeague. See '"Primitive Cinema" -A Frame up being among pris oners a under the command of her or The Trick's on Us', Cinema Journal 28:2 (1989), by firing squad 3. own husband, who is sitting beside her in the cinema. Nion returns to this situation, less sensationally, in 16. To my knowledge no English translation of Gorky's the First World War-set Jacqueline et Colette, when story exists, but it is cited and discussed in Yuri a woman recognises on the screen a French officer Tsivian's Early Cinema in Russia and its Cultural as he passes in front of the camera that has been Reception (London: Routledge, 1994), 36-37. A filming German prisoners of war. She faints, which French translation is in Maxim in Gorky, 'Veng?', informs those around her that she loves this man: Contes et nouvelles (1895-1896) (Paris: Editeurs Jacqueline et Colette (Paris: Flammarion, 1919), 143. Fran?ais R?unis [1949-1979], [1896]). 25. Jean Lorrain, Poussi?res de Paris (Paris: P. Ollendorf, 17. Paul 'Le Bazar de laCharit?' inA/a Morand, [1944], 1902), 210. fleur d'oranger (Vevey: les Cl?s d'or, 1946). There is 26. J?r?me et Jean Tharaud, Dingley l'illustre ?crivain a superb contemporary text on the fire by a great (Paris: Editions des Cahiers, 1902), 32. cinematograph-enthusiast, Remy de Gourmont's 27. et 'Le b?cher' [June 1897], but he only mentions the J?r?me Jean Tharaud, Dingley l'illustre ?crivain cinematograph in passing, and with black irony: 'the (Paris: Editions d'art Edouard Pellatan, 1906), 150-51. most welcome invention of the century, as the pro and as none now can doubt' after spectuses say [i.e. 28. InNion's 'LeCin?matographe' the Hero of the Image the holocaust of aristocrats]. See Epilogues is the film camera-man. 1895-1898 (Paris: Mercure de France, 1922), 125. 29. Marcel Proust, Le Temps retrouv?, inA la recherche 18. Jules Huret, La catastrophe du Bazar de la Charit? du temps perdu, 20 (Paris: Gallimard, 1960; first (Paris: F. Juven 1897), 155. published 1927), 883.

19. At least two contemporary films represent Zola him 30. Louis Aragon, Anicet ou le panorama (Paris: Le Livre self, both produced by the British Mutoscope and de poche, 1969; first published 1920), 117-125. company: The Zola-Rochefort Duel Biograph (1898) 31. Jules Supervielle, L'Homme del? Pampa (Paris: NRF, and Amann the Great Impersonator (1899). 1923), 153-155.

20. Emile Zola, 'Notes sur la photographie', pr?sent?e 32. Richard Abel discusses the use of cinematic form in par Alain Buissine, Les Cahiers Naturalistes, 66 Anicet in his essay American Film and the French (1992), 328. Literary Avant-Garde', 91.

21. Martin Loiperdinger argues that of the three Lumi?re 33. Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, L'Amour du monde, in films showing a train entering La Ciotat station, the Oeuvres compl?tes, 10 (Lausanne: Editions Rencon one universally referred to as L'arriv?e d'un train, tre), 338. no. 653, was not shot until the summer of catalogue 34. L'Amour du monde, 277-278. 1897. See 'Lumi?re's Arrival of a Train: Cinema's 35. Consuelo Frauenfelder, Le Temps du mouvement: Founding Myth', The Moving Image, 4:1 (2004), 103. le cin?ma des attractions ? Gen?ve For the identification of the locomotive in this film I (1896-1917) Presses d'Histoire xi. am indebted to Roland Arzul and Jean-Louis Mar (Geneva: Suisse, 2005), quis. 36. Working from notes by Ramuz that mention Pearl White with enthusiasm, the editor of the recent 22. No?l Arnaud, introduction to Le Journal d'une femme Pl?iade edition of his novels suggests that the inspi de chambre (Paris: Folio, 1984), 23. ration for one of the character's fantasies might be 23. It is there also in the Martin du Gard episode, since a PearlWhite film from 1921 called A VirginParadise on one specified item the programme is newsreel of (an earlier title for the novel was 'Paradise Lost'). See the the French President Fallieres observing military Doris Jakubec (ed.), Ramuz, Romans, 2 (Paris: NRF manoeuvres and meeting the aviator Latham. This Pl?iade, 2005, 1569. iAbstract: First encounters! French literature and the cinematograph, by Roland-Fran?ois Lack This discusses French fiction about the to the of the first paper early cinematograph, prior publication [ ihistory of cinema inFrench, specifically examining the figurative force of reference to the new medium in l I literature.;

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