Alain Robbe-Grillet
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"Mes fantasmes sado-érotiques, je n'en ai nullement honte, je les mets en scène: la vie fantasmatique est ce que l'être humain doit revendiquer le plus hautement". --Alain Robbe-Grillet "In this respect [ Alain Robbe-Grillet ] is very much in line with such European contemporaries as Pier Paolo Pasolini in his “trilogy of life,” Walerian Borowczyk in La Marge, or Miklos Jancsô in Private Vices and Public Virtues."--The Films of Alain Robbe-Grillet (1981) by Roy Armes |
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Alain Robbe-Grillet (18 August 1922 – 18 February 2008), was a French writer and filmmaker; main exponent of the nouveau roman, best-known for his screenplay for the film Last Year at Marienbad, an extended meditation on the unreliable narrator.
He was married to Catherine Robbe-Grillet.
He frequently made use of sadomasochist imagery.
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Biography
Born in Brest, Finistère, France into a family of engineers and scientists. He was trained as an agricultural engineer and finished his studies at the National Institute of Agronomy in 1944. Later, he worked as an agronomist in Martinique. Either at university or while in Martinique, he studied the diseases of banana trees. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004.
Style and content
Along with Maurice Blanchot and other French writers he is sometimes referred to as "French Structuralists" due to the critiques of their works by the famous structuralist Roland Barthes.
His writing has been described as "realist" or "phenomenological" (in the Heideggerian sense) or "a theory of pure surface." Methodical, geometric, and often repetitive descriptions of objects replace the psychology and interiority of the character. Instead one slowly pieces together the story and the emotional experience of jealousy in the repetition of descriptions, the attention to odd details, and the breaks in repetitions. Ironically, this method resembles the experience of psychoanalysis in which the deeper unconscious meanings are contained in the flow and disruptions of free associations. Timelines and plots are fractured and the resulting novel resembles the literary equivalent of a cubist painting.
Robbe-Grillet has also written screenplays, notably for Alain Resnais' 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad, a critical success considered to be one of the finest French films of the 1960s. It was followed by a number of films directed by Robbe-Grillet himself: Trans-Europe-Express (1966), L'homme qui ment (The Man who Lies) (1968), L'Eden et après (Eden and Afterwards) (1970), Glissements progressifs du plaisir (The Slow Slidings of Pleasure) (1974), Le jeu avec le feu (Playing with Fire) (1975), and La belle captive (The Beautiful Captive) (1986).
Bibliography
Novels
- Un régicide (1949)
- Les Gommes (1953)
- Le Voyeur (1955)
- La Jalousie (1957)
- Dans le labyrinthe (1959)
- La Maison de rendez-vous (1965)
- Projet pour une révolution à New-York (1970)
- Topologie d'une cité fantôme (1976)
- Souvenirs du Triangle d'Or (1978)
- Djinn (1981)
- La reprise (2001)
- Un roman sentimental (2007)
Short story collection
Essays
- Pour un Nouveau Roman (1963)
- Le temple aux miroirs (1977), with Irina Ionesco
- Le voyageur, essais et entretiens (2001)
"Romanesques"
- Le Miroir qui revient (1985)
- Angélique ou l'enchantement (1988)
- Les derniers jours de Corinthe (1994)
"Cine-novels"
- L'Année dernière à Marienbad (1961)
- L'Immortelle (1963)
- Glissements progressifs du plaisir (1974)
- C'est Gradiva qui vous appelle (2002)
Filmography
- L'immortelle (1963)
- Trans-Europ-Express (1966)
- L'homme qui ment / Muž, ktorý luže (1968)
- L'Eden et après / Eden a potom (1970)
- N. a pris les dés... (1971)
- Glissements progressifs du plaisir (1974), starring Anicée Alvina, Olga Georges-Picot, Michel Lonsdale, Jean Martin; editor Bob Wade; producer Roger Boublil
- Le jeu avec le feu / Playing with Fire (1975)
- La belle captive (1983)
- The Blue Villa (1995), starring: Fred Ward, Arielle Dombasle
- C'est Gradiva qui vous appelle (2006), starring: James Wilby, Arielle Dombasle, Dany Verissimo
See also
Further reading
- Immoral Tales: European Sex and Horror Movies 1956-1984 (1994) by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs dedicates a chapter to his films.
- The Erotic Dream Machine: Interviews with Alain Robbe-Grillet on His Films (1995) by Anthony N Fragola, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Roch Charles Smith