Her films are brilliant. Not for everyone, perhaps. BUT If you get a chance, and want a tonal sense of her work, check out her 1978 short film Les Mains Négatives
I’ve got a translation if you need it in English.
A box set would be perfect. Détruire, dit-elle (Destroy She Said) is one of her finest moments, I believe, sparse and non-linear.
Robert,
You can get Nathalie Granger here:
http://www.facets.org/asticat
Thanks Matt Parks, I’m ordering Nathalie Granger tomorrow. I’ve read most of her novels and she has been somewhat of an obsession.
I once did an extremely comprehensive search for any film-related Margeurite Duras online. I came up with practically nothing. I did find a small clip of ‘Détruire, dit-elle’ which has since been swallowed up by my long-ago crashed computer. BUT: filmmaker Asa Mader made a short film of her short novel ‘La maladie de la mort’, (The Malady of Death) which was shown at the Venice Film Festival in 2003. You can view a trailer online at youtube.
‘La maladie de la mort’ is about human apocalyptic desire. The story is of a man who pays a woman to lie, “naked in a bed, in a room facing a black ocean.” He spends many nights in the room, next to her but keeping his distance. After time he breaks down crying and she tells him it’s because he does not love. Little by little she takes control, but without seeming to want to. One day she leaves.
There is a wonderful academic text about this Duras’ writing by Leslie Hill that can also be found online. Hill writes that the "violence of the sea raging below suggests that the inescapable impasse of relations between the sexes will always be overwhelmed by the unrelenting, oceanic fury of desire itself.’
Hill goes on to say, ‘When asked by the man to explain what [the woman] means by ’la maladie de la mort,’ she replies that the malady is deadly in two important respects: ‘In that whoever is suffering from it does not know that he is carrying it, death, that is. And also in that he would be dead with no previous life to die to, with no knowledge at all of dying to any life.’ (MM, 24)’
One more very important point Hill makes is that, although ‘[La Malady de la mort] evokes ignorance and sterility, death in Duras resists being enclosed in any simple binary paradigm. It is not the crude opposite of life; it is arguably more like an indeterminate state of existence that precedes life or death in the usual sense, and is inherent in both living and dying as the precondition and final destination of both. Moreover, though it names sexual difference, death in Duras’ text does not belong simply on the side of the male body, for the man sees it, too, displayed on the woman, while in turn it is the woman who repeatedly uses the figure of death to describe the jealous intensity of her desire.’
Just before the end of the book the female character asks the male character, ‘Do you not know, have you never known the wish to be on the brink of killing a lover, keeping him for yourself, yourself alone, taking him, stealing him, in the face of all laws and systems of morality?’ (MM, 45).
Finally, Hill writes ‘To be filled, as is this woman, with murderous desires like these, to be sensitive, as she is, to all the symptoms of death indelibly written on her partner’s body, is not to be opposed to the malady of death, but to be profoundly and irrevocably contaminated by it. To this extent, the only malady that death evokes in Duras’ text is none other than the malady of desire itself.’
Lots of quotes from Leslie Hill, but I find them to be particularly relevant. The imagery in Asa Mader’s film is equally powerful. I’ve in fact never seen the entire short film, only the online trailer, but it has always served as a great inspiration since I saw it a couple of years ago, as has the book itself.
Like T, I would also recommend ‘Détruire, dit-elle,’ (at least as a novel as I’ve not been able to track down the film while in the US) as well as ‘Les Mains négatives.’ One of my favorite films of all time.
I’d love India Song to get a decent release!
Jenny
‘La maladie de la mort’ — I MUST SEE THIS FILM. thank you.
+
Just before the end of the book the female character asks the male character, ‘Do you not know, have you never known the wish to be on the brink of killing a lover, keeping him for yourself, yourself alone, taking him, stealing him, in the face of all laws and systems of morality?’ (MM, 45).
this perhaps is one of the keys to a strangely forgotten and heavily locked door… there’s only one argument in Freud’s body of work that remains for me unanswered, and it is this >
in the principle of desire, masculine and feminine, male and female, appear as polarized opposites, incomplete in and of themselves. pure desire is always for the other, that which we are not. the melting point between these elements is the moment of completion, where you cease to become one singular, isolated idea of conscious self, and transcend to a new space, a space where there are no walls between, and the black ocean crashes through, flooding everything. we leave dry land (and in a final analysis, to digress briefly, I think this is the meaning of Maya Deren’s work), and find ourselves in the deep swim of ubiquity.
> but in the Freudian principle, this completion is the end of desire. And the end of desire is death, death of self, death of ego.
My reading of those lines from Duras point to me this very thing > the fight to remain indivisible in the face of a desire, a desire for an end, for completion. the ego, in fear of extinction, would rather kill the other than surrender to its call. An internal fight to stay alive, to resist transcendence, because let’s face it > terrifying, the great unknown, where nothing remains of primal self but the body, no longer just ‘a vehicle for moving through space and time’, but a channel for other, more immanent energies.
( NB / in case anyone’s interested, there’s a very interesting Notebook project on the 21st century and the body…. begins here )
Good question and I have found very little. It would be nice. What is particularly interesting about La maladie de la mort for cinephiles is the ending, wherein Duras talks about translating the text into a production…pretty good stuff.
“And the end of desire is death, death of self, death of ego.”
actually that should probably read, “…the end of desire is death, death of id…”
The complexities, subtleties, and tragedies that lie beneath the surface of longing and desire are a constant in all of Duras’ work. I am not familiar with her own films, but the film made from her book The Lover – L’Amant’ – contains all the same complicated tangents of desire discussed so eloquently above. It tells the largely autobiographical tale of the highly charged erotic relationship between an adolescent western girl and an older Asian man set in French colonial Vietnam. The book itself gives a more complete treatment of the theme of obsessive desire and how the two lovers are doomed, but spurred on, by all the conventions they are breaking. Her screenplay for Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour is also, of course, dealing with the same broader issues of desire and memory.
T.252.AM
yes, i am with you, the principle of ‘pure desire is always for the other, that which we are not.’ and i love the lines you’ve written: ‘the melting point between these elements is the moment of completion, where you cease to become one singular, isolated idea of conscious self, and transcend to a new space, a space where there are no walls between, and the black ocean crashes through, flooding everything.’ beautiful. re: ‘the end of desire is death, death of id’ – i completely agree that transcendence is terrifying, but necessary.
Matthew – thank you for reminding me about that bit at the end of ‘La maladie de la mort,’ where Margeurite Duras speaks of how she would make the book into a film. Duras is particularly brilliant, i think, at integrating ideas of literature and cinema. i recently watched a short clip of Duras being interviewed on youtube: she says, ’when people ask me why i would like film to change, i say ’imagine if film is the same in 50 years."
Bob – i really like your observation that "the complexities, subtleties and tragedies that lie beneath the surface of longing and desire are a constant in all of Duras’ work.’ i agree. i have both read and seen ’L’Amant,’ i personally prefer the book to the film as it, as you point out, ‘gives a more complete treatment of the theme of obsessive desire and how the two lovers are doomed, but spurred on, by all the conventions they are breaking.’ personally, i think that Duras’ intention in ’L’Amant’ was to discuss the exploration of taboos rather than the breaking of conventions. one could argue that there is no distinction, but i would disagree. the semi-fictional autobiography that is ’L’Amant’ explores Duras’ own first sexual encounter, at the age of 15, with an older man from a very different cultural background. the story is meant to depict the longing of a budding and youthful female sexuality, the beauty in the idea of an isolated young woman searching for herself. but ’l’Amant’ is also an expose of what happens when power, money, classism, racism and social divide are written on the bodies of two lovers. the lovers in ’l’Amant’ are doomed in one sense, because their affair ultimately breaks down (immediately due to the fact that the Chinese man’s father disapproves of the relationship and threatens to cut him off financially), but in another sense ‘love’ itself in the book is not doomed because the young girl ultimately comes closer to discovering her truer self. but the idea of exploring taboos is one that is associated with a particularly youthful form of sexual exploration, i think, one that, rather than transcending cultural difference, power structures, social and economic structures, ultimately succumbs to them. Duras’ adult honesty in portraying her own youthful sexual explorations becomes, when seen in this light, particularly courageous and honest, i believe.
i think that in addition to portraying ideas of longing and desire in much of her work, Duras also speaks at great length about fidelity. the novel ‘Dix heures et demie du soir en été’ comes to mind. fidelity is another topic that would be interesting to discuss. :)
re: Fidelity – Regina Spektor has a beautiful song and music video that one could watch
here.
Jenny: Thanks for your, as always, insighful observations. I think your analysis of Duras ’L’Amant’ is very apt. Perhaps the very distance from this episode and Duras’ own advancing age allowed her to achieve insights that would have been impossible were she reflecting on the affair just a few years after it happened. I need to explore the fidelity theme in her writing. Loved the video clip, too.
You might find an old thread where I was trying to come to grips with the broader issues of portrayal of female characters of interest. It was called: ARE THERE STRONG & REALISTIC FEMALE CHARACTERS OUT THERE AND WHAT ARE FEMALE FILMMAKERS DOING TO ADVANCE THE FEMINIST CAUSE? Yes, a rather awkward title perhaps, with a somewhat superficial analysis on my own part, but if it interests you, you could comment. It is here:
Jenny great music vid. thanks for the link.
re: my previous post – in quoting Duras from interview: ‘when people ask me why i would like film to change, i say ’imagine if film is the same in 50 years,’ – ‘film’ should read ‘cinema.’
Bob: thanks for responding. i seem to remember having read somewhere that M. Duras was in fact hoping that when L’Amant came out the public would be able to embrace it while considering other things she had written. and it should also be remembered that it is a semi-fictional autobiography. also – there is an interview with her online called ‘Apostrophes’ in which she speaks about the fear she had for her book ‘La Maladie de la mort’ when it was first published. she expresses that this fear stemmed from her own worry that it wasn’t what people were expecting from her at the time. the interview is in French, perhaps i’ll attempt a translation sometime. and i should probably watch the film version of ’L’Amant’ again as it’s been a while since i’ve seen it.
i will definitely read your thread :) one thing that comes to mind when looking at the title, i think sometimes people can have aversion to the word ‘feminist’ because of the typical immediate associations it provokes, but the thread itself sounds very interesting. thank you so much for posting a link.
T.252.AM : i was happy to post the link for the music vid.
re: music videos: can they be considered an aspect of film itself, esp. in their current phase of evolution? (the Regina Spektor video strikes me as relevant to film)
i’m sure this has already been discussed, likely in GARAGE and perhaps elsewhere, but was curious what people thought. maybe someone can direct me to a thread?
A lot of contemporary directors got their start in music video — Fincher, Gondry, McGuigan, Jonze. I actually don’t think we’ve had a thread on music videos as art yet.
thank you Justin – i’m going to check out some of those directors’ music videos, and perhaps start a thread on music videos as art/cinema in the near future :)
So India Song came out in September from an obscure label. Has anyone picked it up? Is the picture quality acceptable? Anybody know?
waiting for trucks to come to dvd saw india song
poor transfer
Hi all. Great question, and great thread of comments. I saw many of Duras’ films in a retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art (NYC) in the mid(?) 90s. The two Aurelia Steiner films and Cesaree are absolutely riveting. Each comprises simple visuals with sounds and voiceover. Benoît Jacob éditions — http://www.benoitjacob-editions.fr/ — and I bought two of them when I was last in Paris. There are no English subtitles for the film I most wanted (Aurelia Steiner, Melbourne), and I don’t speak French, but I love them all regardless. The quality on the DVDs is quite good (better, anyway, than the prints I saw years ago at MoMA)….
they are showing a lot of her films this month at Anthology Film Archives
“The quality on the DVDs is quite good (better, anyway, than the prints I saw years ago at MoMA)….”
@David Z
You’re talking about India Song?
@Mike Spence
No, the short films on the CÉSARÉE disk. Haven’t seen the India Song DVD.
@Columbiatch
Thanks, I hadn’t seen that schedule yet.
@Columbiatch
Thanks, I hadn’t seen that schedule yet.
Yesterday I saw India Song for the first time, it was incredible. I want to say it reminds me of Marienbad though they’re certainly different. However, what Resnais had done with editing and cinematography I feel Duras was doing with the soundtrack. In Marienbad the narrative, so far as the dialogue is concerned, seems to follow a ‘consistent’ path the setting constantly shifts from once place to another and intrudes upon the ‘conversation’ between X and A. Whereas in India Song the visual narrative appears consistent, but as others have mentioned before, the soundtrack creates a simultaneous aural narrative that, at times, is parralel and/or intersects that of the visual one. Though perhaps going further than Marienbad’s visuals in it’s variety of dialogue and sound effects that manage to conjure an atmosphere of inertia, loss, and decay in colonial India on the outskirts of Paris.
I’m quite eager to see more of her work and will try to see Nathalie Granger soon. On another note, I was looking at this earlier and am curious if it’s supposed to be a screenplay or if it’s an original novel that the film was based off of.
Josh, I believe the original work was The Vice Consul, a novel published in 1965. (Which for me is pretty much my favourite Duras novel, a wonderful piece of writing.) Then in 1973 she did a play called India Song, based on the novel. The link you provided I think is the text of the play. Finally in 1975 she completed the film version of the play, also entitled India Song!
I agree it’s an extraordinary film, one of my all time favourites. I’ve also been thinking about comparisons with Marienbad lately, not least because of Delphine Seyrig’s luminous performances in both films. For me I think India Song is the stronger film, leaving less of a sense of being first and foremost a technical tour de force, and being more driven by a need to find a uniquely cinematic translation of the drama at the heart of all three versions. And as you indicate the sound track is remarkable, like nothing I’ve ever heard in the cinema, just spellbinding!
I might add Duras seems to have gone on to make several further films in which she pushes the disconnect between image, sound and text even further. Unfortunately it’s virtually impossible to find English language versions of most of these, but I did once manage to see Agatha et les Lectures Illimitees (1981) and adored it , finding it mysterious, opaque, and finally, as the narrative reaches a conclusion, quite overwhelming.
You’re right. I happened to find out a little while after my post that the book on Amazon is the play [and honestly, I never would’ve guessed it originated as one.] This confusion probably isn’t surprising since, I believe, Duras was known for working and re-working characters and plots in various novels, plays and films. At any rate, the play looks very interesting as do several of her books. Hopefully I’ll have the chance to read one in the near future.
Yes, Seyrig’s performance makes the Marienbad comparison almost inevitable, doesn’t it? I admire both films equally myself, though I think I would agree that Marienbad does come across as ‘grander’ and more ‘labyrinthine?’ [esp. due to the CinemaScope photography,] a puzzle to be solved while IS feels more confined and it’s effect is like being witness to/participating in a conversation.
Agatha is one of the Duras’ I’m most interested in seeing, along with Le Camion and Le Navire Night. Hopefully, I can find them one way or another. If her other films are anything like this I imagine her becoming one of my very favorite filmmakers.
“India Song”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laUM85wOcPA
Robert Sanders
Will Criterion ever release any of Maruerite Duras’s Films? I’ve been unable to find any of her own movies. Are they as good as I hope for? Worthy of Criterion’s attention, a box set maybe?