After Monte-Cristo, this other classic of French literature is going to be adapted

With the success of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, French literature is becoming bankable again. The proof is that this other classic of French literature will soon be adapted at the cinema.

The successes of French literature

The diptych of The Three Musketeers with François Civil and the recent The Count of Monte Cristo with Pierre Niney, have proven that the great classics of French literature can become huge popular successes. It must be said that The Count of Monte Cristo has absolutely exploded the box office. Released on June 28, the film is still showing. Written and directed by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre De La Patellière (also screenwriters of The Three Musketeers), The Count of Monte Cristo has attracted more than 7 million spectators in French theaters.  

The success is such that Pathé, which produces both The Count of Monte-Cristo and The Three Musketeers, would be ready to launch a « Dumas Cinematic Universe ». Twenty years later and Le Vicomte de Bragelonne would be in the studio's boxes. The firm would also like to develop its literary universe on the small screen with possibly series with international titles like Milady Origins.

A New Daredevil Project

Joann Sfar, French actor, screenwriter and director, would be in the process of adapting a new iconic novel, but controversial, of French literature. Indeed, according to AFP, the man behind Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque) (2010) and Le Chat du Rabbin (2011) wants to start directing Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline's first novel, Journey to the End of the Nightwas published in 1932.The story tells the story of Ferdinand Bardamu, a young man who joins the army during the First World War. After leaving the army, traumatized by what he saw, he embarks on a series of journeys. He leaves to discover colonial Africa, then America where he decides to work in a factory in Detroit, before returning to France and becoming a doctor in a poor neighborhood in the Parisian suburbs.

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The novel has been translated into 37 languagesand is famous for its dark, pessimistic, desperate tone, and for its critical view of the society of the time. The story is told in the first person. A stylistic effect quite unique at the time.

Co-author of the screenplay, Thomas Bidegain who has already worked with Joann Sfar on A Prophet (but also on Eiffel, The Sisters Brothers or the recent Emilia Perez), spoke to Le Monde about the difficulties of such an adaptation:

It's a gamble. What's very complicated is the structure of the novel, its language, its main character but also Céline's ghost.

Indeed, Louis-Ferdinand Céline was a very virulent anti-Semite. In the 1930s and 1940s, Céline published several deeply anti-Semitic and hateful pamphlets, in which he expressed racist and nationalist ideas. Bagatelles pour un massacre (1937), L'École des cadavres (1938) or Les Beaux Draps (1941) are considered propaganda and violently extremist texts. These pamphlets are virulent attacks on the Jews, whom he accuses of manipulating society and provoking wars. Céline develops conspiracy theories, repeating anti-Semitic stereotypes already widely spread at the time.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline also supported the Vichy governmentduring World War II, and even expressed sympathy for Nazism. After the war, because of his political and social ideas, Louis-Ferdinand Céline was considered an intellectual collaborator of the Nazi regime. At the end of the Second World War, Louis-Ferdinand Céline fled France to seek refuge in Denmark. France sentenced him in absentia in 1950 to a year of national indignity, but was later granted an amnesty in 1951.

The debate surrounding Louis-Ferdinand Céline remains very lively and very current today. The eternal question of “should we separate the Man from the Artist?” applies perfectly to Louis-Ferdinand Céline. A genius author, his immoral political commitments are obviously thought-provoking. Hence Thomas Bidegain's concern.

In any case, the ghost of Louis-Ferdinand Céline does not seem to worry Joann Sfar. The latter, of Jewish faith, will therefore embark on the film adaptation of Journey to the End of the Night. A risky and difficult bet in the face of the author's very complex pen, so difficult to appropriate.