 First edition cover | |
| Author | Gilbert Adair |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Heinemann |
Publication date | 1988 |
| ISBN | 978-0-434-04578-5 |
The Holy Innocents (1988) is a novel by Scottish writer Gilbert Adair. [1] [2] It is about three young cinephiles: two French siblings and an American stranger who enters their world. Its themes were inspired by Jean Cocteau's 1929 novel Les Enfants Terribles (The Holy Terrors) [3] and by the 1950 film of the same name directed by Jean-Pierre Melville.
The Holy Innocents is the story of three young cinephiles, Matthew, an American studying in Paris, and the French twins Guillaume and Danielle. Set in the tumultuous months of 1968, it is a story of obsession and youth. The initial obsession is cinematic. Matthew is studying film, the twins are fascinated by the cinema, and they become close because of their shared interest. Spending their evenings at Paris' grand Cinémathèque they live only for the cinema. When French Culture Minister André Malraux fires Cinémathèque director Langlois, a prelude to the May uprising, the Cinémathèque is closed. A nation is thrown into confusion, but the three youngsters hardly notice: their small world has been ruined, and they do not know what to do. Matthew manages to establish a relationship with the twins beyond the confines of the Cinémathèque—though it is initially still cinematically centered. Invited for dinner at their house he is invited to spend the night, which he does. There he discovers that Danielle and Guillaume's relationship goes beyond the usual sibling intimacy—and finds he is not as troubled by this as he would have expected. Attracted to both of them he moves in with them, their father—a famous poet—and stepmother conveniently setting off for an extended stay in the country.
The youngsters live in their own little world, not bothering to go to school any more, playing cinematic trivia games (raising the stakes all the while), reveling in their youth. They live the lives of innocents, cut off from society and civilization. They do not wash their clothes, they steal their food, they don't care about the world around them. They have sex as partners (in all permutations) and all together.
They are finally thrust back into society in May 1968, only to find the siege on the streets as Paris has risen up around them. [4]
The book has been printed in hardcover and paperback only once. The Holy Innocents was revised [5] in conjunction with the development of the film, however, and this new version has been published under the title The Dreamers.
A French-British-Italian co-produced film adaptation, The Dreamers, of the novel was made in 2003, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and starring Louis Garrel, Eva Green, and Michael Pitt.
François Roland Truffaut was a French filmmaker, actor and critic, widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. As a young man, he came under the tutelage of film critic Andre Bazin, who hired him to write for his Cahiers du Cinéma. It was there that he became an exponent of the auteur theory, which said the director is the true author of the film. The 400 Blows (1959), starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as Truffaut's alter-ego Antoine Doinel, was a defining film of the New Wave. Truffaut supplied the story for another milestone of the movement, Breathless (1960), directed by his Cahiers colleague Jean-Luc Godard.
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, film director, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost avant-garde artists of the 20th-century and hugely influential on the surrealist and Dadaist movements, among others. The National Observer suggested that, "of the artistic generation whose daring gave birth to Twentieth Century Art, Cocteau came closest to being a Renaissance man."
The Children's Crusade was a failed popular crusade by European Christians to establish a second Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Holy Land in the early 13th century. Some sources have narrowed the date to 1212. Although it is called the Children's Crusade, it never received the papal approval from Pope Innocent III to be an actual crusade. The traditional narrative is likely conflated from a mix of historical and mythical events, including the preaching of visions by a French boy and a German boy, an intention to peacefully convert Muslims in the Holy Land to Christianity, bands of children marching to Italy, and children being sold into slavery in Tunis. The crusaders of the real events on which the story is based left areas of Germany, led by Nicholas of Cologne, and Northern France, led by Stephen of Cloyes.
Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux was a French journalist and author of detective fiction.
May 68 refers to a period of civil unrest that occurred throughout France from May to June 1968. Beginning in May 1968, a period of civil unrest occurred throughout France, lasting seven weeks and punctuated by demonstrations, general strikes, and the occupation of universities and factories. At the height of events the economy of France came to a halt. The protests reached a point that made political leaders fear civil war or revolution; the national government briefly ceased to function after President Charles de Gaulle secretly fled France to West Germany on the 29th. The protests are sometimes linked to similar movements around the same time worldwide that inspired a generation of protest art in the form of songs, imaginative graffiti, posters, and slogans.
Henri Langlois was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema. His film screenings in Paris in the 1950s are often credited with providing the ideas that led to the development of the auteur theory.
A Trip to the Moon is a 1902 French science-fiction adventure trick film written, directed and produced by Georges Méliès. Inspired by Jules Verne's 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon and its 1870 sequel Around the Moon, the film follows a group of astronomers who travel to the Moon in a cannon-propelled capsule, explore the Moon's surface, escape from an underground group of Selenites, and return to Earth with a captive Selenite. Méliès leads an ensemble cast of French theatrical performers as the main character Professor Barbenfouillis.
The Dreamers is a 2003 erotic romantic drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci from a screenplay by Gilbert Adair, based on Adair's 1988 novel The Holy Innocents. An international co-production by companies from France, Italy and the United Kingdom, the film tells the story of an American university student in Paris who, after meeting a peculiar brother and sister who are fellow film enthusiasts, becomes entangled in an erotic triangle. It is set against the backdrop of the 1968 Paris student riots. The film makes several references to various movies of classical and French New Wave cinema, incorporating clips from films that are often imitated by the actors in particular scenes.
The Cinémathèque française, founded in 1936, is a French non-profit film organization that holds one of the largest archives of film documents and film-related objects in the world. Based in Paris's 12th arrondissement, the archive offers daily screenings of films from around the world. It is the second oldest cinematheque in France, after the one in Saint-Étienne, which was founded in 1922.
Les Enfants Terribles is a 1929 novel by Jean Cocteau, published by Editions Bernard Grasset. It concerns two siblings, Elisabeth and Paul, who isolate themselves from the world as they grow up, an isolation which is shattered by the stresses of their adolescence. It was first translated into English by Samuel Putnam in 1930 and published by Brewer & Warren. A later English translation by Rosamond Lehmann was published in the U.S. by New Directions (ISBN 0811200213) in 1955, and in Canada by Mclelland & Stewart in 1966, with the title translated as The Holy Terrors. The book is illustrated by the author's own drawings.
Gilbert Adair was a Scottish novelist, poet, film critic, and journalist. He was critically most famous for the "fiendish" translation of Georges Perec's postmodern novel A Void, in which the letter e is not used, but was more widely known for the films adapted from his novels, including Love and Death on Long Island (1997) and The Dreamers (2003).
The Holy Innocents may refer to:
The Young Girls of Rochefort is a 1967 French musical comedy film written and directed by Jacques Demy. The ensemble cast is headlined by real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac, and features George Chakiris, Michel Piccoli, Jacques Perrin, Grover Dale and Geneviève Thénier, along with Gene Kelly and Danielle Darrieux.
The Innocents or Innocents may refer to:
Les Enfants terribles is a 1950 French film directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, with a screenplay adapted by Jean Cocteau from his 1929 novel of the same name about the tangled relationship of a close brother and sister.
Cinephilia is the term used to refer to a passionate interest in films, film theory, and film criticism. The term is a portmanteau of the words cinema and philia, one of the four ancient Greek words for love. A person with a passionate interest in cinema is called a cinephile, cinemaphile, filmophile, or, informally, a film buff. To a cinephile, a film is often not just a source of entertainment as they see films from a more critical point of view.
La Ville dont le prince est un enfant is a 1997 made-for-television film adapted from a 1951 play by French dramatist Henry de Montherlant of the same title.
A Terrible Night is an 1896 French silent comic trick film by Georges Méliès, who is also the actor in the film. It was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 26 in its catalogues, where it is listed with the descriptive subtitle scène comique.
Le désordre et la nuit is a 1958 French crime film directed by Gilles Grangier and starring Jean Gabin and Danielle Darrieux. The screenplay is based on the novel Le Désordre et la Nuit by Jacques Robert. The film was released in the United States as Night Affair.
Jean-Loup Passek was a French film critic. He was the director of cinematic collections at the Centre Georges Pompidou, and the author of several books about cinema.