Proust at the Movies

Film established itself as an artistic form of expression at the same time that Proust started work on his masterpiece, "A la recherche du temps perdu". If Proust apparently took little interest in what he described as a poor avatar of reductive, mimetic representation, the resonances between his own radical reworking of writing styles and the novelistic forms, and cinema as the art of time are undeniable. "Proust at the Movies" is the first study in English to consider these rich interconnections. Its introductory chapter charts the missed encounter between Proust and the cinema and addresses the problems inherent in adapting his novel to the screen. The following chapters examine the various cinematic responses to "A la recherche du temps perdu" attempted to date: Luchino Visconti and Jospeh Losey's failed attempts at adapting the whole of the novel in the 1970s, Volker Schlondorff's "Un Amour de Swann" (1984), Raoul Ruiz's "Le Temps retrouve" (1999), Chantal Akerman's "La Prisonniere in La Captive" (2000), and Fabio Carpi's "Quartetto Basileus" (1982) and "Le Intermittenze del cuore" (2004). The last chapter tracks the echoes of Proust's writing in the work of various directors, from Orson Wells to Frederico Fellini, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais and Jean-Luc Godard, amongst others. The approach is multidisciplinary, combining literary criticism with film theory and elements of philosophy of art. Special attention is given to the modernist legacy in literature and film with its distinctive aesthetic and narrative features. An outline of the history and recent evolution of contemporary art cinema thus emerges: a cinema where the themes at the heart of Proust's work - memory, time, perception - are ceaselessly explored.