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Proust and Cinema, Or Luchino Visconti's Search

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Proust and Cinema, Or Luchino Visconti's Search Proust and Cinema, or Luchino Visconti's Search By Chesney, Duncan McColl PUBLICATION:Post Script VOLUME/ISSUE:Vol. 23, No. 2 PUBLICATION DATE: Spring 2004 PAGES: 48-55 Il est absurde de s'indigner des degradations subies par les chefs-d'oeuvre litteraires a l'ecran, du moins au nom de la litterature. Car, si approximatives que soient les adaptations, elles ne peuvent faire tort a l'original aupres de la minorite qui le connait et l' apprecie; quant aux ignorants, de deux choses l'une: ou bien ils se contenteront du film, qui en vaut certainement un autre, ou bien ils auront envie de connaitre le module, et c'est autant de gagne pour la litterature. Andre Bazin, "Pour un cinema impur" (1) Andre Bazin's early insight in defense of film adaptation ought to have spared us a great deal of the critical chatter of which the discussion around Raoul Ruiz's Le temps retrouve (1999) is only the most recent example. It is this very debate, however, that has occupied Proustians and cinephiles alike every time the audacious idea of adapting Proust has surfaced in the film world. A novel and a film belong to two different and equally complex semiotic systems, each with its own semi-autonomous history as well as its own sociological and economic motivations. Whence, then, the unease at the idea of adaptation of literary classics, especially at a point when film has definitively overtaken the novel as the quintessential mode of cultural expression, reproduction and self-critique? For those who still hold on to the Modernist legitimacy and dignity of the novel Bazin's frank remark seems to speak the awkward truth, even in a stream-lined age of monster media conglomerates whose literary classic film tie-ins serve, like the films themselves, as much to line the coffers of the media moguls as to keep alive the great cultural inheritance of earlier epochs of art. But perhaps it is not that simple. The main caveat of the critics is that the great Modernist texts--whose import lies at least as much in their technical achievements within the closed, formal systems of their rapidly obsolescing genres as in their reflection of extra-textual deformations in modern society--simply do not allow for straight-forward adaptation the way that nineteenth-century realist novels do. Works by Jane Austen and Giovanni Verga certainly can endure on screen, but Ulysses, Mrs. Dalloway, A la recherche du temps perdu cannot possibly survive the transcription, except at the cost of their essential difference from those earlier forms. There is much more that is false than true in this line of thinking, which in essence reduces either to a mistrust or misunderstanding of film itself, or to an uncritical, idolatrous attachment to certain novels (and often a facile understanding of novelistic form and of semiotics, as if a novel by Jane Austen were somehow uncomplicatedly adaptable--as if the aesthetic, 'ontological,' and semiotic leap weren't just as great as for Proust). How much clearer this becomes when the source for adaptation is not just a modernist masterpiece, but a veritable lieu de memoire, a culturally sustaining myth. Proust's novel is not sacred in France either for its content or for its form. It is irritatingly difficult to read for most people, who, for that matter, never suffer so much from it, since most never even try. It is superficially about jealousy, obsession, perversion, solipsism, homosexuality, masturbation, sadomasochism, vanity, contempt, and monomania. More 'profoundly' it is indeed about love, art, redemption, memory, and so forth--certainly the qualities highlighted in the reader's guides and bac preparation manuals--but in its status as a cultural icon, both a Mona Lisa and a Nabucco, it is concerned with the endurance and triumph of French culture, despite a persistent feudal order and the exploitation it entails, despite anti-semitism and the Dreyfus affair (serving as well to mend a later period of anti-semitism), despite the collective trauma of the first world war (and the adaptation to the technology that made it so barbarous). It is about having a Shakespeare, with all the prestige and legitimacy that accrues to a culture, to a nation, which could produce such a writer (even if the nation produces the writer negatively, as one of its greatest critics). I believe this 'ideological' baggage is at the heart of the concern with Proust adaptation as much as the tired old concerns with the technical possibility as such. This is not to suggest that it is obvious how Proust's enormously long, subjectively complicated text should be adapted to the language and commercial constraints of film. It means we have to be very careful in our understanding of Proust's novel--technically, ideologically--as we elevate it as the paragon against which we will judge its adaptations and derivations. This also means knowing more about the filmmakers and scripts, history and ideology involved in the on- going drama of filming Proust. In what follows I will attempt a brief overview of the history of this drama and a reading of the screenplays and films that have resulted. In 1962, the French film producer Nicole Stephane acquired the rights from Marcel Proust's niece, Suzy Mante-Proust, to make a film version of A la recherche du temps perdu. After some years and deliberation, Luchino Visconti was decided upon as an appropriate director for the project--a choice that might seem rather necessary to anyone familiar with the two artists' work. Visconti was filming La caduta degli dei (The Damned, 1969) at the time, so the script was begun by a Franco-Italian team including Enzo Siciliano. This proved to be unacceptable material for Visconti, so in collaboration with his long-time co-author Suso Cecchi d'Amico, (2) Visconti began his own treatment of the novel. In the meantime Visconti made Morte a Venezia (Death in Venice, 1971), and it seems that the bulk of the initial writing and adaptation for the Recherche screenplay was undertaken by Cecchi d'Amico. However, by late 1970 Visconti was able to devote his time to the Proust project. He and Cecchi d'Amico finished the script, and with his long-time art director Mario Garbuglia (Rocco e suoi fratelli and Il Gattopardo) and costume designer Piero Tosi (Senso, Il Gattopardo), he made extensive visits to Paris and to Proust country (mainly Normandy) to begin planning the film. (3) The cast slated for the film was to include Alain Delon as the Narrator, Marlon Brando as Charlus, Helmut Berger as Morel, and Silvana Mangano as the Duchesse de Guermantes. A young and relatively unknown actress was envisioned for Albertine, possibly Charlotte Rampling, while Simone Signoret was a possibility for Francoise, as was either Edwige Feuillere or Annie Girardot for Madame Verdurin. It was even rumored that Greta Garbo would come out of retirement for the role of the Queen of Naples! With such a cast, and the same team that was responsible for II Gattopardo (The Leopard), Rocco, Le Notti Bianche, and, minus Garbuglia, Senso (and that would go on to realize Gruppo di Famiglia in un interno (Conversation Piece) and l'Innocente), we can imagine that the film would have been quite a Viscontian tour de force. Unfortunately, the project was postponed in 1971 when Stephane proved short of cash for the increasingly ambitious film (approaching 4 hours in projected length). Visconti, perhaps sensing acutely his own mortality after Morte a Venezia, could not be stalled, and in 1972 began work on Ludwig (1974), apparently postponing his commitment to Proust. This move was interpreted quite differently by Stephane, who considered Visconti in breach of contract. She then approached director Joseph Losey, who in collaboration with Harold Pinter, agreed to take on, again from scratch, the Proust project. Stephane had been impressed by the Losey and Pinter effort on The Go-Between (1971), and hoped they could realize the project at less expense and with more single-minded commitment. Stephane's move naturally made Visconti furious. As a life-long reader of Proust, Visconti had determined to realize the project, though admitting to Cecchi d'Amico that "this will be my last film." Illness during and subsequent to the filming of Ludwig kept Visconti from pursuing the issue. Though he would go on to make two more films, he died before he could ever get back to Proust. Losey and Pinter, with the collaboration of translator and critic Barbara Bray, also took a trip to Paris, Illiers, and Cabourg, and by the beginning of 1973 the screenplay was completed. However, at a length of some 5-1/2 hours and a projected cost of 22 million dollars, the film proved difficult to sell, and once again Stephane was forced to abandon the project. (4) Stephane's Proust project was never to be realized in its full scope, but she did eventually produce a film of part of the novel, Volker Schlondorff's Swann in Love (1984). Written by Peter Brook, Jean-Claude Carriere, and Marie-Helene Estienne, the film serves mainly to indicate, negatively, what might have been if time, money, and health had allowed either of the more ambitious Proust projects to come to life on screen. I want presently to look more closely at the two Proust screenplays, keeping in mind the Schlondorff film and various other cinematic treatments of Proust, in order to explore the continued cultural importance of la Recherche. In his defense of 'impure' cinema, Bazin speculates on why filmmakers would resort to adaptation in an era when they no longer need to rely on 'great' literary works to give legitimacy to their nascent art form.
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