Emile Zola and the Movies the Translation

Emile Zola and the Movies

The translation of any work of literature into another medium, even one apparently so closely aligned with the written word as film, is always a chancy proposition. While literature and film focus themselves on the same targets within the minds of their audiences; that of completing an organic connection between the conception and the reception of an idea, the very natures of the two disciplines demand different things of the person who is reading or watching the material. As exciting and enveloping as the best film experience may be, it is still, in its essence a passive experience; every action is already determined, "painted," and set in celluloid by the filmmaker. On the other hand, literature demands much more of its audience. Even when a writer devotes paragraphs to descriptions of various characters or activities, the reader still plays an integral part in the final realization of every story. To describe every detail and nuance of a scene lasting a minute on-screen would require perhaps a dozen printed pages, and how many people would read 2000-page novels?

This does not mean that one form is inherently superior to the other, however. Talented directors, script writers, and actors can work together to produce an effort that transcends its written origins. A simple, pulp-styled, unproduced play like "Everybody Comes to Rick's" evolves into one of the most beloved motion pictures of all time as Casablanca, while a wordy, mannered, very long novel called The Poseidon Adventure is stripped to its basic structure with such skill that it revitalizes an entire genre of movies and remains extremely popular 30 years following its release.

Of course, examples of failed adaptations are too numerous for the purposes of this paper; Dune, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and Parnell, are just a few films which should have been much better than they proved to be. While the happy exceptions like The Godfather and Gone With the Wind seem to be all too rare.

The works of French author Emile Zola possess virtually every quality necessary to powerful filmmaking, and they have been adapted to the screen with varying degrees of success for more than 60 years. Three novels in particular represented, in their time, bold steps forward in the realistic depiction of human desire, frailty, and suffering in Western literature, and have been filmed over the decades by a trio of important French directors.

The adaptations are: La Bete Humain (a.k.a., The Beast In Man, published in 1890, filmed in 1938, directed by Jean Renoir); Therese Raquin (published in 1867, filmed in 1953, directed by Marcel Carne); and Germinal (published in 1885, filmed in 1993, directed by Claude Berri).

The essential question to be addressed by this exercise has to do with the suffering, both physical and psychic, of Zola's primary characters and how it was transferred to the screen by these directors. Since so much of the essence of Zola's work is revealed through the suffering of its actors, this would seem to be an essential element in the successful adaptation from the page to the screen. A close examination of each novel, side by side with its film, produces several surprises... not all of them to be found solely on the screen.

Discussion

Emile Zola's life was, in many ways, as dramatic as anything that he ever committed to paper. Zola was born in Paris, France in 1840, the son of an Italian laborer. When he was only seven, his father passed away, leaving the family in dire financial condition, a state which was to last for several years. Despite their poverty, Zola's mother was focused upon making sure that young Emil would become a lawyer which meant that was the direction in which his studies took him, in spite of the fact that he personally was more interested in journalism.

When Zola failed to pass the bar, he turned his attention fully towards journalism and writing in all of its forms. A friend to many of the artists in the Impressionistic field, he was determined to become a successful writer. Stories told of young Emile of that time claim that he was so desperately poor that he survived by trapping and eating the sparrows and pigeons that would light on the windowsills of his apartment.

Zola's dedication paid off, however, and he began to earn both living wages and something of a reputation as a reporter. Fiction also appealed to him, and he published several minor novels and short stories while developing a personal style (in the steps of Flaubert and Stendhal) that would be come known as "naturalism." Briefly defined, naturalism rejected the often florid and nearly always idealized romanticism of writing of that period in favor of a realistic view of life. Zola replaced capricious miracles, coincidences, and guaranteed justice with an adherence to scientific accuracy and the understanding that bad things could (and did) happen to everyone, not just those who "deserved" them.

As his style evolved, so did his conviction that wealth and privilege produced undue burdens on those people not blessed with either quality. But perhaps surprisingly, Zola never took the final steps to fully embrace socialism or anarchy.

His depictions of the lives of the "upper classes" often seemed to revel in the degeneracy and alcoholism to be found among them. These privileged men and women might have had the means to more completely indulge their passions, but those passions and their consequences were not dissimilar to those of the working class.

Zola's first major novel, Therese Raquin, appeared in 1867 and caused a sensation with its unflinching look at the raw lust of its participants and the almost ghoulish settings it described ("love among the corpses"). His reputation was made, and he forged ahead with a great zeal. A series of novels detailing the decay over generations of a wealthy family due to heredity, disease, and environment (Les Rougon -Macquart) ran a full 20 volumes between 1871 and 1893, with La Bete Humaine as its 17th entry. His fame spread beyond France, and he became a strong influence on a number of other emerging and intense writers such as August Strindberg and Theodore Dreiser.

In addition to his novels, Zola continued as a journalist, as well as an outspoken critic of such formerly untouchable targets as the Catholic Church. "J'accuse" may be the most famous single piece that he produced in his entire career. A thundering defense of the wrongly accused Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who had been imprisoned on Devil's island following his conviction for treason, the article helped to flame the outrage of the Left in France and certainly added to the growing backlash that had arisen due to Zola's many unpopular public stances. The writer was even sentenced to a short jail term following the 1898 publication of the work. (Dreyfus was eventually exonerated and pardoned, when the "evidence" which had been presented against him proved to have been falsified.)

Zola's reputation in his homeland continued to suffer even as he came to be regarded as a major literary figure throughout much of the rest of the world. Also in 1898, he was prosecuted for libel which convinced him to flee France for the relative safety of England. His time abroad was short, however. In 1902, Zola was found dead of asphyxiation in his bed. Officially, the death was regarded as accidental, but rumors (quite possibly true) endure even today, stating that Zola's virulent enemies reached across the Channel to murder the man in his sleep by closing off the top of the chimney located in his room.

To the modern eye, Zola is often more celebrated for the dramatic changes he brought to the craft of writing rather the writing itself. Indeed, there is some basis to this, as his characters are often little more than automatons reacting and reciting according to his preplanned strategies (Zola was a stickler for detail, researching the settings of his work with the thoroughness of a surgeon preparing for an operation). But the depth of human emotion that he brought to the best of his material succeeded in dragging an unwilling audience out of the cottony placidness of most of the literature of the time by opening the hearts of real men and women and allowing the full spectrum of emotions to shine outward.

Jean Renoir

Like Zola, Jean Renoir is a towering figure in his field. The son of famed painter, Auguste Renoir, he was born in Paris in 1894. His childhood was, in many ways, idyllic and was filled with creativity, privilege, and love. He modeled for his father on several occasions and had decided upon a career in the arts (specifically ceramics), when World War I interrupted. Again, Renoir's life was crowded with different experiences, as he saw action with the cavalry, the infantry (almost losing a leg when wounded), and as a pilot. Renoir's father passed away in 1919, and only weeks afterwards, Jean married the elder man's last model, the beautiful Andree Heuchling (later to become known as actress Catherine Hessling). It was then that his love of the developing motion picture industry led him into directing.

Renoir maintained a profound respect for life and nature. His affection for "the common man" did not blind him to the foibles of the individual, however, and a number of bonafide minor classics emerged from Renoir's efforts in the years prior to World War II, among them Bondu Saved From Drowning (1932), Toni (1935), The Lower Depths (1936), The Rules of the Game (1939, a commercial failure now viewed as Renoir's masterpiece), and The Grand Illusion (1937, perhaps his most widely-acclaimed work).

During and following the Second World War, Renoir's output is generally seen as dropping away from the peak years of the Thirties, but he still turned out such respected and entertaining films as French Cancan (1955) and (1951, you either love it or hate it). Renoir was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1975 and was inducted as an officer of the French Legion of Honor in 1977. He died after a long, full life in 1979, universally praised and frequently cited as France's greatest director.

In 1938, Renoir scripted and directed a film version of Zola's La Bete Humaine / The Beast in Man. Humaine had been published in 1890, and was one of the author's last groundbreaking works. With Jacques Lantier, Zola introduced a main character who almost ventured into the territory pioneered by Stevenson's Doctor Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. Lantier, a railway engineer, is at heart an ordinary sort, but he suffers from one of the primary themes of the series (0f which this novel is a part): mental degeneracy. Lantier is subject to moments of insane and uncontrollable rage, during which he is compelled to assault and murder, most often women. When the railway worker sees the station master and his beautiful young wife disposing of a man who had made "improper advances" to the woman, what first seems to be an opportunity for blackmail is transformed by a number of factors (not the least of them sexual obsession) into a triangular confrontation worthy of a later James M. Cain novel. When Lantier becomes involved with the young woman, her husband becomes the unwelcome third wheel in the relationship.

In a pleasant development, Renoir's version of the story delivers more than might have been expected. Simone Simon is beautiful and undeniably enticing as the stationmaster's wife, but it is Jean Gabin, perhaps the quintessential French leading man, who carries the film beyond Zola's original boundaries. His Lantier is a man at war with himself. At his center, he wants what most men take for granted; the chance to live a normal life filled with normal joys and problems, but due to his fatal flaw, the "Hyde" side of his personality (often defined as an epileptic condition by modern reviewers, he understands that he is never more than a moment away from destroying even the most sacred portions of his existence. He doesn't actually need the "inherited tragedy" of Zola's explanation. He is really any man who has looked within himself to find an awful capacity for violence and the realization that his best efforts will not be sufficient to keep that violence trapped in its own black pit forever. It is as much a part of his emotional makeup as love or tenderness.

Gabin, a much underrated performer, doesn't need histrionics to convey this terrible truth to the viewer. A change of expression, a small glint of chaos in his eye, these things remind Lantier - and the viewer - that nothing will turn out right in the end. As much as he would give to change his fate, he knows that eventually the Darkness will well up from inside him and drag him into itself. Gabin's performance is riveting, and credit must go to Renoir for his direction of it. The undercurrent of suffering and hopelessness is not only translated from Zola's novel to the screen, it is also cleverly magnified.

Marcel Carne

At first glance, moody, dark Marcel Carne would seem to be an ideal craftsman for interpreting Emile Zola on screen. Born in Paris in 1909, he worked several jobs, including apprenticing to his cabinetmaker father and selling insurance, while studying film in night school. By 21, he was working as an assistant cameraman with Georges Perinal and then with the delightful Rene Clair as assistant director. He began a very productive association with poet/screenwriter Jacques Prevert after making his debut as a feature director in 1936. Over the next decade, the two produced some of France's most renowned works of cinema, including the uncharacteristically light-hearted Bizarre, Bizarre (1937), Port of Shadows (1938), and Daybreak (1939).

Carne was typically fatalistic and dark in his style. It was said of him that he would rather construct an entire city in-studio than step outside to film a cloud passing below the moon, but this devotion to complete artificiality (designed in large part by Alexandre Trauner) worked very well in the moody "poetic realism" style of the immediate pre-War years. Carne became highly successful and widely regarded during this time.

Even the invasion of the Nazi hordes couldn't keep Carne from producing two well-received films: The Devil's Envoys (1942), and a work which still shows up on many lists of the all-time best motion pictures, Les Infants Du Parades / Children Of Paradise (1945). The latter was named the greatest French film of the century in a poll of 600 French directors, critics, and motion picture workers during the mid-1990's.

Carne's popularity dropped precipitously following this acknowledge classic, however. Unlike his contemporaries in France and abroad who were liberating their cameras from studios, Carne largely refused to change with the times. He continued to work rather steadily, but without Prevert and Trauner, the glory days were over. By the time of his death in 1996, Carne had been forgotten by many film fans and dismissed as something of a "one-hit wonder"(Children Of Paradise) by many critics. Actually, he was quite good at what he was most attracted to, even if a lack of versatility denied him the status that many had once predicted.

In 1953, Carne filmed a version of Zola's first really important novel, Therese Raquin (known as The Adulteress in the United States). The tale of orphaned Therese who is forced into an early marriage with her sickly cousin Camille, only to face desperation in all areas of her life until meeting the virile Laurent was a revelation to the reading public in the mid-1860's.

Sexual tensions which had been predominately male-focused (as well as addressed only metaphorically) until that point exploded into the mainstream, and descriptions of injury, death, decay, and disease which had been relegated to historical accounts of warfare and the Inquisition were suddenly fodder for "recreational" reading. Once the doomed Camille is supposedly out of the way, Therese Raquin mutates into something of a ghost story, with the guilty couple literally haunted by their actions. Was there in fact a ghost, or is this an early example of what has come to be known as psychological horror? That's up to the reader to decide, but what is real within the parameters of the novel is the suffering through frustration in its first half and through the knowledge of their sin in the second portion.

Carne's version of the story proved to be an odd duck. Simone Signore as Therese, Raf Vallone, as Laurent, and Jacques Duby as Camille all appear to neatly fit their respective parts, but the tone of the work never rings true. The movie seems to be Carne's attempt to shoot his own film noir entry (a genre' some critics feel that the director's own earlier works helped to bring to the screen). Even at her darkest, the Therese of the novel inspired some measure of sympathy; the reader could understand why she felt the way that she did, and Laurent was in some ways as much a prisoner of his life as she of hers. Their suffering was something that the reading audience could identify with in their own experience, if to a much lesser degree (hopefully).

The people who populate the 1953 film version seem to be as much annoyed by their circumstances as trapped within them. It would hardly be a shock to hear a vintage Barbara Stanwyck voice-over punctuated by short, gun-short observations from Bogart as the actors go through their paces in the French movie. The understanding of the motives remains, but the space separating the performer from the viewer is wider and colder. You really never care what happens to Simone and the men in her life, so, at least in this way, Zola's characters, who were intended to be little more than types observed from a distance by the author, seem more real than the very real people we see before us. Therese Raquin was really about a decade too late to make a real impact in its final presentation.

Claude Berri

The most recently filmed version of a Zola novel is Germinal, shot in 1993 and directed by Claude Berri. With a budget of 30 million dollars, it was the most expensive motion picture in the history of French film until that time, and while Berri was largely successful in "putting the money on the screen," as the term goes, the result received very mixed reactions both domestically and in the foreign market.

Claude Berri was born Claude Langmann in Paris on July 1, 1934. His name was changed and he was lodged with Gentile friends during the Second World War in order to disguise his Jewish heritage. During his late teens, Berri began acting in small parts in various French productions and continued to do fairly regular, if not outstanding, work throughout the Fifties and into the Sixties. His attention turned more to directing and producing at this point, and his first solo direction effort, La Poulet, won the Oscar for Best Live Short Film in 1965. Drastically cutting back on is acting, Berri soon hit his stride as a comedic director specializing in rather standard sex farces, but he continued to try new genres. In 1986, he made a great impact on the international scene with a pair of predominantly serious films, Jean

De Florette and its sequel, Manon De Sources/Manon Of The Spring. Both remain popular throughout much of the Western world even today.

Continuing to focus more on serious topics, Berri directed the elaborate version of Germinal in 1993, though the critical and financial responses to the huge motion picture proved largely disappointing. By the end of the decade, Berri had turned his attention back to his first successes with another sexual comedy, La Debonde.

Germinal was one of Zola's most intentionally political works. Taking place in the mining communities of the north of France in the 1860's, the novel's goals were evident from the first pages to the end, as it detailed the grueling, dangerous, and spirit-deadening lives that every member of every mining family was forced to endure. While the rich and powerful come in for their fair share of abuse in the story, it is not an anti-company piece in the strictest sense. Gangs of miners would bid to work specific veins of ore at this time, as there was no central "company" with whom the mine owners would deal, and the more ore these gangs produced, the more money they made. Safety was left up to the gangs, as well, as members within the groups specialized in reinforcing the tunnels with the cheapest timber and rock so as not to cut too deeply into the profits. In this way, labor was always at war with itself rather than with the usual overriding corporation.

While men dug out the ore, women and children worked at their sides loading the product and conveying it to the surface in primitive cars. Entire families would spend the majority of their usually foreshortened lives below ground, laboring for barely-subsistence level wages. Even animals were exploited to the greatest possible degree in these operations. The so-called "pit ponies" pulled the heavy cars loaded with ore, and often these small horses were born in the tunnels, worked for as long as they proved useful in them, and then buried in them without once seeing the light of day.