In interviews, she brandished her intellect as she did her cigarettes, pricking silences with the same serpentine pronouncements that characterised her prose: “To write is to say nothing” “Woman is a proletariat” “One is on the left or one is not on the left.” Duras was on the left, ensconced among Paris’s post-war intelligentsia. With the fame that followed the Prix Goncourt, which she won for her novel L’Amant in 1984, “Duras” (itself a pen-name) became a character: her voice a serious, velvety growl her oval face half-swallowed by a turtleneck her conversation circling endlessly around her favourite topic – herself. ĭuras was captivating on the television too. It was via the television that she formed percipient opinions on just about everything: the Berlin Wall, Ethiopia, what life might be like in the year 2000 (“man will be literally drowning in information”). Laure Adler writes that as soon as the broadcast finished, Duras “would go over it with her friends over the phone as though she’d been in direct communication with the world’s heads of state”. During bouts of depression, which were frequent and often came after a bad review, Duras would burrow herself away at her apartment in Paris or at her country house in Yvelines, drinking litres of wine, refusing visitors and watching the eight-o’-clock news every day. “Watching is like sleeping upright,” she wrote in her essay “The Men of Tomorrow” from 1985. Though she loathed it, she watched it religiously, especially as she teetered at the edge of old age and stopped going out. We have a Patreon for regular supporters, or you can make a one-off donation here.įor Marguerite Duras, the television was always cette foutue télévision (“that bloody television”). We receive no funding so please consider donating to us so we can keep this project available to all.
This programme is free but distribution, subtitling, writer and translation fees aren't. This film is accompanied by an essay by Alice Blackhurst. The second part of the programme features the two-part Les lieux de Marguerite Duras ( The Places of Marguerite Duras), a documentary interview made by journalist Michelle Porte and shown on French television in May 1976. Marguerite Duras appeared in eight episodes over the history of the program.
The program consisted of a series of short sequences presented by actresses or singers who had been reeled in as broadcasters for a day, including France Gall, Françoise Hardy, Jane Birkin and Romy Schneider. The program, broadcast once a month on Sunday evenings, was aimed at women, but also sometimes dealt with questions of “male interest”. “Watching is like sleeping upright,” she wrote in her essay “The Men of Tomorrow” from 1985."Īccompanied by an essay by Lili Owen Rowlands, the first part of 'Marguerite Duras on Television' presents six of Duras's interviews from Dim Dam Dom: a French television program intended for female audiences, produced by Daisy de Galard and Manette Bertin with Michel Polac, Marc Gilbert, Jean-Pierre Bastid and Peter Knapp from Ma– at the same time as the second French television channel, on which it was broadcast – until March 1973. "For Marguerite Duras, the television was always cette foutue télévision (“that bloody television”).