| 102 Boulevard Haussmann | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Alan Bennett |
| Directed by | Udayan Prasad |
| Starring | |
| Music by | The Delme String Quartet |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language | English |
| Production | |
| Producer | Innes Lloyd |
| Cinematography | John Hooper |
| Editor | Ken Pearce |
| Running time | 74 minutes |
| Release | |
| Original network | BBC |
| Original release | 17 February 1991 |
102 Boulevard Haussmann is a 1991 British biographical drama film written by Alan Bennett and directed by Udayan Prasad. It is based on the life of French novelist Marcel Proust in 1916, during his residency at 102 Boulevard Haussmann in Paris, France. The film stars Alan Bates, Janet McTeer, Jonathan Coy, Paul Rhys and Celia Imrie. It aired on BBC on 17 February 1991. Prasad won a Golden Gate Award in Best of Category: Television Feature from the San Francisco International Film Festival, and the drama was also nominated for a British Academy Television Award for Best Single Drama.
Set in 1916 during World War I, Marcel Proust lives a nocturnal, closeted life in Paris, obsessed by his writing and looked after by his devoted housekeeper Céleste Albaret. Proust has sequestered himself to a bed in his sound proofed bedroom, where he is writing his latest work. On a rare visit to a concert, he becomes fascinated by the music of a string quartet, which includes a young viola player, Amable Massis, a war veteran who he befriends. He invites the musicians to play a private performance for him in his apartment, where they perform César Franck's Quartet in D. Proust invites the young Massis back to his apartment on numerous occasions to play for him, but Massis is unaware of the true nature of Proust's feelings towards him. [1]
Director Udayan Prasad said the relationship between Proust and Céleste is portrayed in the film "like an old married couple", and the idea is that Céleste created the reclusive environment which enabled Proust to work. Prasad also revealed that the "script has its own reality", and we didn't pretend for the drama to be a "documentary about what Proust did in that short period of time". Writer Alan Bennett made the point in the script about wanting to "show people who are artistically engaged in the process of creativity as being barely human". Prasad described Alan Bates as engaging in a "sinister charm," that created a "Proust who is both dislocated from the outside world and in control of his own". [2]
Elaine Paterson wrote in Time Out that the film is "absorbing and affecting. Its underlying musing on the nature of genius may be a meander up an intellectual cul-de-sac, but the cul-de-sac is beautifully shot, set in a space and time entirely of its own, and governed by two extraordinary characters". [2] TV critic Kevin Thomas said writer Alan Bennett "tells of an incident in Proust's life that allows us to see the Proust-Celeste relationship from a different - and disturbing - angle". Thomas also questioned the motives of Celeste and Proust's physician (Philip McGough), after Proust begins courting the young viola player. Thomas wonders, "are they interested merely in protecting Proust's health? Or do they feel that Proust, as a homosexual, somehow has to be protected from himself? In any event, their actions are outrageous, and all the more so for not actually sparing Proust any pain". [3]
John J. O'Connor, said that Alan Bennett created an "extraordinarily complex universe, exploring with painstaking detail shifting relationships and subtle controls, esthetic theory and sexual obsessions, indeed life and art". He also praised Alan Bates as capturing "the underlying strength of the writer", and "lending enormous support is the music, performed by the Delmé String Quartet". [4] Sheila Whitaker of the San Francisco Film Society wrote that Alan Bennett "created a sympathetic and understated script", that is "dense with inflection and nuance rather than action, and the performances of Alan Bates as Proust and Janet McTeer as Celeste match Bennett's achievement". Director Udayan Prasad won a Golden Gate Award from the Film Festival. [5]
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu which was published in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927. He is considered by critics and writers to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century.
Alan Bennett is an English playwright, author, actor and screenwriter. Over his entertainment career he has received numerous awards and honours including two BAFTA Awards, four Laurence Olivier Awards, and two Tony Awards. He also earned an Academy Award nomination for his film The Madness of King George (1994). In 2005 he received the Society of London Theatre Special Award.
Celia Diana Savile Imrie is an English actress and author. She is best known for her film roles, including the Bridget Jones film series, Calendar Girls (2003), Nanny McPhee (2005), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015), The English dub of The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales... (2017), Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018), Malevolent (2018) and for the FX TV series Better Things (2016-2022).
Janet McTeer is an English actress. She began her career training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before earning acclaim for playing diverse roles on stage and screen in both period pieces and modern dramas. She has received numerous accolades including a Tony Award, a Olivier Award, a Golden Globe Award and nominations for two Academy Award and Primetime Emmy Award. In 2008 she was appointed as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her services to drama.
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Boulevard Haussmann, 2.53 kilometres (1.57 mi) long from the 8th to the 9th arrondissement, is one of the wide tree-lined boulevards created in Paris by Napoleon III, under the direction of his Prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann.
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Time Regained is a 1999 French drama film directed by the Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz. It is an adaptation of the 1927 final volume of the seven-volume series In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. The plot is about the anonymous narrator of In Search of Lost Time who reflects on his past experiences while lying on his deathbed.
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Céleste Albaret was a country woman who moved to Paris in 1913 when she married the taxi driver Odilon Albaret; she is best known for being the writer and essayist Marcel Proust's housekeeper and secretary. Lonely and bored in the capital, and at her husband's suggestion, Albaret began to run errands for Proust, who was her husband's most regular client. Before very long she became his secretary and housekeeper. During the final decade of Proust's life, when his health declined and he became progressively more withdrawn, even while working with continuing intensity on his writing, she became his nurse and "the writer’s most trusted conduit to the world beyond his reclusive, cork-lined bedroom".
