| Isidore Lechat | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | Business is business (1903) |
| Created by | Octave Mirbeau |
| In-universe information | |
| Nickname | Lechat-Tigre |
| Species | Human |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Businessman |
| Spouse | Mme Lechat |
| Children | Xavier and Germaine |
| Nationality | French |
Isidore Lechat is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the play Les affaires sont les affaires ( Business is business ) (1903) by French writer Octave Mirbeau.
Isidore Lechat, nicknamed "Lechat-Tigre", is a ruthless businessman, a predator without any scruples. Rather than specializing in just one branch of trade, industry or finance, he has invested in everything, for instance into the press, modern agriculture and electricity. Due to his extortion, he becomes rich and powerful in the French society of the French Third Republic. Because of the newspaper that he created and his 50 million francs, he seems untouchable and above the law, which is made only for the poor. Lechat enjoys impunity from both the government and the Catholic Church. For the playwright, Isidore Lechat is the product of an era of economic upheaval and global expansion of capitalism and the first phase of economic imperialism.
However, Octave Mirbeau recognizes that this predator, who sows misery everywhere around him, is an "idealist" in his own way and that his projects are potentially progressive, because they contribute to the development of productive forces. The old aristocracy, embodied in the play by the old Marquis de Porcellet, is only a class parasite.
Cynical and vulgar, Isidore Lechat is a nouveau riche who hides his extraordinary capacity to rob his victims behind the silver tongue of a bon vivant and disarms them. Nevertheless, he is totally blind in his private life; he does not realize that his wife is lost and unhappy, his beloved son Xavier is a slacker, his daughter Germaine is disgusted and is having love affair right in front of him. He also does not notice that Germaine prepares to flee his golden chains, rejecting Lechat's dreams of a good marriage.
Furthermore, the libido dominandi of Lechat is powerless over love and death: his son dies in an automobile accident, and her daughter goes away with her lover, Lucien Garraud. In addition, his formerly submissive wife becomes no longer afraid of him and judges him severely. Defeated, oppressed and humiliated, Lechat finds the strength to recover his self-control in order to seal a profitable deal, crushing the two swindlers who wanted to take advantage of his grief and fool him: business is business...
In spite of the disgust inspired by his cynicism and vulgarity, Isidore Lechat can also rouse a kind of admiration for his energy and his clearness in business, and even inspire pity when he loses his daughter, his son and his submissive wife in a single day.
Octave Henri Marie Mirbeau was a French novelist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, journalist and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, whilst still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde with highly transgressive novels that explored violence, abuse and psychological detachment. His work has been translated into 30 languages.
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The Diary of a Chambermaid is a 1900 decadent novel by Octave Mirbeau, published during the Dreyfus Affair. First published in serialized form in L’Écho de Paris from 1891 to 1892, Mirbeau’s novel was reworked and polished before appearing in the Dreyfusard journal La Revue Blanche in 1900.
Diary of a Chambermaid is a 1964 drama film directed by Spanish-born filmmaker Luis Buñuel and starring Jeanne Moreau as a Parisian chambermaid who uses her body and wiles to navigate the perversion, corruption, and violence she encounters at the provincial estate where she goes to work. Though highly satirical and reflective of his typical anti-bourgeois sentiments, it is one of Buñuel's more realistic films, and generally avoids the outlandish surrealist imagery and far-fetched plot twists found in many of his other works. The film was the first screenwriting collaboration between Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière, who extensively reworked the 1900 novel of the same name by Octave Mirbeau. Buñuel and Carrière would go on to collaborate on Belle de Jour (1967), The Milky Way (1969), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), The Phantom of Liberty (1974) and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977).
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Le Calvaire (Calvary) is a novel written by the French journalist, novelist and playwright Octave Mirbeau, and published by Ollendorff in 1886.
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Home, also translated as Charity, is a French three-act comedy by the novelist and playwright Octave Mirbeau, written in collaboration with Thadée Natanson. It was performed in December 1908 on the stage of the Comédie-Française, in Paris.
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L'Amour de la femme vénale is the French title of a brief essay by French writer Octave Mirbeau on prostitution. Originally published in Bulgarian in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, in 1922 as Любовта на продажната жена. It was translated into French by Alexandre Lévy,, the essay was published in 1994 by Éditions Indigo and Côté Femmes and was accompanied an introduction by Pierre Michel, a professor specialising the writer Octave Mirbeau, and a preface by historian Alain Corbin. The essay was translated into English and Italian in 2005 by Bérangère de Grandpré.
Jean Roule is the main fictional character in Octave Mirbeau’s proletarian tragedy, Les Mauvais Bergers (1897). During the first performance, Lucien Guitry played the role of Jean Roule.
Combats littéraires is the title of a 2006 collection of 187 articles and prefaces written by the French writer Octave Mirbeau, between 1876 and 1916, on literature, journalism, and publishing over the course of his long career as an influential journalist. Although Mirbeau collaborated with numerous daily newspapers, he was never officially assigned the work of literary reviewer. Of these articles, some 60 were published between 1925 and 1926 under the title Les Écrivains, and these are available on Wikisource.
Blanche Adeline Pierson was a French actress most notably known for her portrayal of Marguerite Gautier in "The Lady of the Camellias".
Business Is Business is a 1942 French drama film directed by Jean Dréville and starring Charles Vanel, Aimé Clariond and Jacques Baumer. It was shot at the Studios Francois 1er in Paris. The film's sets were designed by the art director René Renoux.