Author | Marguerite Duras |
---|---|
Original title | Un barrage contre le Pacifique |
Language | French |
Publisher | Éditions Gallimard (French) Pellegrini & Cudahy (US) |
Publication date | 1950 |
Publication place | France |
Published in English | 1952 |
Pages | 315 |
The Sea Wall (French : Un barrage contre le Pacifique) is a 1950 novel by the French writer Marguerite Duras. It was adapted for film in 1958 as This Angry Age and in 2008 as The Sea Wall . [1] Inspired largely by her own adolescence in French Indochina, Duras wrote this novel in 1950, just after divorcing her first husband and remarrying. [2]
In the south of French Indochina, in 1931, a widow is living with her two children, Joseph and Suzanne (19/20 and 16/17 years old). Their isolated and uncultivable concession is located in the marsh plain of Ram (Prey-Nop, Sihanoukville Province). Their living conditions are deplorable: they are often forced to eat wading birds, the mother had saved for 15 years to be awarded the concession, which is uncultivable, with her crops being destroyed each year by inundations from the sea (despite the dam-building of the family). The mother, disillusioned after seeing her dams destroyed by the invincible Pacific (in fact the China Sea) and harassed by a corrupt administration, begins to sink into madness. [2]
The story opens with the death of their old horse, bought a few days earlier. This death leads to a visit to the city of Ram, where they meet Monsieur Jo, a young and wealthy planter. He wears a huge diamond on his finger, and, in spite of the ugliness of his face, the mother forms the wish that he marry her daughter. Monsieur Jo, fascinated by Suzanne, comes each day to the bungalow. The mother monitors their interviews to prevent physical contact, leaving marriage as the sole solution for the satisfaction of his desire. [2]
Monsieur Jo gets caught up in the game, trying to buy Suzanne by offering her cosmetics, a dress to see her naked, he offers her a phonograph. Faced with an ultimatum of the mother, he offers Suzanne a diamond. This gift marks the end of Monsieur Jo's relationship with the family, who later discovers that the ring is not as valuable as they thought because of a flaw. This discovery is the despair of the mother who wants to sell the diamond for its supposed value. [2]
Finally, Joseph, Suzanne's brother, meets a young woman who agrees to buy the diamond for more than it is worth but then returns it. The condition of the mother worsens. Increasingly weaker, she finally agrees to resell the diamond at its true value. Joseph ends up leaving the house with the young woman, and Suzanne is about to leave too when the mother dies. Joseph returns one last time and, with the servants, the children bury the mother on the concession. To take revenge on the administration, Joseph entrusts his guns to the locals so that, following the wish of the mother, they can kill the cadastral employees responsible for their troubles. Suzanne, meanwhile, has lost her virginity to a planter neighbor's son, whom she does not plan to marry, and goes off on her own. [2]
This novel offers the story of Indochinese disillusion and is autobiographical in inspiration. [2]
Joseph
Suzanne
(The name of Suzanne refers to the Bible and the episode of "Susanna and the Elders" or "Suzanne in the bath", which here is replayed as Monsieur Jo asking to see Suzanne naked in the shower.)
The mother
Monsieur Jo
Carmen
Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu, known as Marguerite Duras, was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film Hiroshima mon amour (1959) earned her a nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards.
Suzanne Valadon was a French painter who was born Marie-Clémentine Valadon at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. She was also the mother of painter Maurice Utrillo.
The Lover is an autobiographical novel by Marguerite Duras, published in 1984 by Les Éditions de Minuit. It has been translated into 43 languages and was awarded the 1984 Prix Goncourt. It was adapted to film in 1992 as The Lover.
Marie Trintignant was a French film and stage actress. She appeared in over 30 movies during her 36-year career. Her family was deeply involved in France's film industry, as her father was an actor and her mother was a director, producer, and screenwriter.
René Clément was a French film director and screenwriter. He is known for directing the films The Battle of the Rails (1946), Forbidden Games (1952), Gervaise (1956), Purple Noon (1960), and Is Paris Burning (1966). He received numerous accolades including five prizes at the Cannes Film Festival and the Honorary César in 1984.
Claude Cahun was a French surrealist photographer, sculptor, and writer.
La Religieuse is an 18th-century French novel by Denis Diderot. Completed in about 1780, it was first published by Friedrich Melchior Grimm in 1792 in his Correspondance littéraire in Saxony, and subsequently in 1796 in France.
Lucien Bodard was a French reporter and writer on events in Asia.
Françoise-Marguerite de Sévigné, comtesse de Grignan, was a French aristocrat, remembered for the letters that her mother, Madame de Sévigné, wrote to her.
A Self-Made Hero is a 1996 French film directed by Jacques Audiard. It is based on the novel by Jean-François Deniau.
Marie-Suzanne Giroust, known as Madame Roslin, was a French painter, miniaturist, and pastellist, known for her portraits. She was a member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. Only a small number of her works have been identified.
The Sea Wall is a 2008 film by Cambodian director Rithy Panh in a French/Cambodian/Belgian co-production. The film opened on 7 January 2009 in France. It was adapted from the 1950 novel The Sea Wall by Marguerite Duras. The novel had previously been adapted as This Angry Age by René Clément in 1958.
Yvan Le Bolloc'h is a French television and radio host and actor.
This Angry Age is a 1957 Italian-American drama film directed by René Clément, produced by Dino De Laurentiis, and starring Anthony Perkins and Silvana Mangano. It is an adaptation of Marguerite Duras' 1950 novel The Sea Wall. The original novel was adapted again in 2008 by Rithy Panh as The Sea Wall, starring Isabelle Huppert.
Jacques Daniel-Norman (real name Joseph Jacques Compère was a French film director and screenwriter.
Suzanne Césaire, born in Martinique, an overseas department of France, was a French writer, teacher, scholar, anti-colonial and feminist activist, and Surrealist. Her husband until 1963 was the poet and politician Aimé Césaire.
Jean-Marie Serreau was a 20th-century French actor, theatre director and a former student of Charles Dullin.
Marguerite Grépon was a French journalist and writer. She founded the literary magazine Ariane in 1953.
Herma Briffault, born Herma Hoyt (1898–1981) was an American ghostwriter and translator of French and Spanish literature.
Portrait of Dora Maar is a 1937 oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso. It depicts Dora Maar,, the painter's lover, seated on a chair. It is part of the collection of the Musée Picasso, in Paris, where it is considered to be one of Picasso's masterpieces.