Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

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director’s theatre

This term is used to describe director-domi-

nated theatre, a phenomenon particularly

prominent in France in the postwar period.

During the twentieth century, the role of the

director in French theatre has achieved ex-

tremely high status. Although during the last

century and even at the beginning of this one,

the theatre director, or in those days the ‘pro-

ducer’, was considered to be little more than

an orchestrator of actors and scenes, the situa-

tion today is very different, with directors

wielding considerable creative input as well as

financial power, especially in the public thea-

tre. The role of director today has been influ-

enced by several traditions. Prewar theatre in

France saw the rise of Copeau and the Cartel

directors (including Dullin, Jouvet, Pitoëff and

Dasté), who believed in the importance of the

director as an interpreter of the author’s text,

helping the actors to develop their role as part

of the production. Copeau and others wielded

additional influence thanks to the theatre

schools they ran. The second influence to af-

fect the role of the director in France is that of

the more avant-garde, revolutionary approach

which began with Artaud and his Theatre of

Cruelty. In his wake, theatre came to rely less

on text and more on a complex web of sign

systems based on the visual and the active as

much as the aural. French theatre and its di-

rectors began to experiment with non-text-

based theatre, and the boundaries to which

theatre could be pushed. As a result, text was

no longer the only source of theatrical crea-

tion: the directors became central to the co-

ordination of experimentation with stage,

movement and visual imagery, and added their

own artistic input. The arrival of Brecht on

the French theatre scene after the war was also

an important influence. Planchon was espe-

cially noted for his interest in experimenting

with Brechtian theatre.

While directors such as Brook and Barrault

could be said to be influenced by both the

Copeauesque and Artaudian traditions,

Planchon and Vilar, two of the best-known post-

war directors, are certainly more influenced by

Copeau and the Cartel, as well as by Brecht.

Meanwhile, Ariane Mnouchkine at the Théâtre

du Soleil and Patrice Chéreau could be said to

fall more into the Brechtian and Artaudian

schools of direction. Thus it is difficult to de-

scribe today’s directors as descendants of any

single tradition: it would be more accurate to

say that postwar directors have drawn on all of

them in varying proportions, while experiment-

ing with the boundaries of theatre and impos-

ing their own creative style. While directors

continue to be extremely influential in French

theatre, it is difficult to class them into any kind

of school or movement: each has his/her own

strong, and individual, voice.

Director’s theatre in France reached its peak

in the 1960s and 1970s. During the 1950s, the

great decentralization movement had meant

that Centres Dramatiques Nationaux had be-

gun to be established around the country. Each

was run by a director, usually the theatre’s ar-

tistic director, who became administratively

responsible too, thus wielding considerable

power over how money was spent and on

which productions. By the 1960s and 1970s,

directors had gained such power that they were

in almost total charge of most of France’s thea-

tres. Artistically, they were in a position to

choose how to spend subsidies: often this

meant working on texts upon which they could

impose their own creative stamp and tread new

ground, which frequently led to non-theatri-

cal texts being used. Vitez, for example, is

famed for his adaptations of non-dramatic

texts such as Aragon’s Les Cloches de Bâle

(staged as Catherine). It was not uncommon,

for example, for directors to cut, alter or reor-

ganize the author’s text to suit their own crea-

tive purpose, or to choose a repertoire which

deliberately reflected their own creative inter-

ests. Even in the 1990s, the tradition persists

that one refers to ‘Planchon’s’ rather than to

‘Molière’s’ Tartuffe, crediting directors with the

major creative input in much the same way as

they are treated in the cinema.

The 1970s also saw the emergence of the

collective creation movement, in which the

playwright was rendered entirely redundant,

director’s theatre

159

as theatre companies began devising their own

creations from research and improvisation. In

this case, the director theoretically held no

more power than any other member of the

company; in practice, it would be fair to say,

directors such as Mnouchkine still had con-

siderable input into productions. The 1980s,

however, saw the return to text as a source of

theatre, with directors such as Planchon, Vitez,

Mnouchkine and Chéreau continuing to domi-

nate the theatrical scene until the end of the

decade (and beyond in the case of Mnouchkine

and Chéreau). Directors continue to wield con-

siderable power financially in public theatre

and creatively, although the re-emerging im-

portance of text-led theatre has led to renewed

recognition of partnership with authors (for

example, Mnouchkine and Cixous, Chéreau

and Koltès, or Minyana and Cantarella). While

the director today continues to occupy an im-

portant position in the theatre world, the rela-

tionship between director and author is shift-

ing back towards a creative partnership, in

which the text retains its own voice.

ANNIE SPARKS

Further reading

Bradby, D. and Williams, D. (1988) Directors’

Theatre, London: Macmillan (see Chapters

1, 3, 4 and 6 especially).

Whitton, D. (1987) Stage Directors in Mod-

ern France, Manchester: Manchester Uni-

versity Press (essential reading).

dirigisme

The concept of dirigisme denotes the type of

state intervention in economic life which de-

veloped in France in the postwar period and

which dominated French economic thinking

until the 1980s. Dirigiste policies have been

carried out by Left and Right alike. This is

because dirigisme does not necessarily imply

a critique of the capitalist system or a socio-

economic ideology which rejects the market.

Rather, dirigiste policies are based on the no-

tion that the state is in a better position than

market forces to secure the long-term health

of the French capitalist economy, particularly

in terms of investment.

JAN WINDEBANK

See also: economy; nationalization and priva-

tization

Further reading

Fenton, F. (1992) L’État et le capitalisme au

XXe siècle, Paris: PUF (a concise account

of the rise and relative decline of French

dirigisme).

Kuisel, R. (1981) Capitalism and the State in

Modern France, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press (a discussion of the tradi-

tional relationship between state and mar-

ket in France)

documentaries

The documentary tradition in France has had

a chequered career. The first documentaries

date back to 1895 and the Lumière brothers’

travelogues and scenes from daily life. During

the silent period, many film-makers came into

feature films via the training ground of docu-

mentaries; however, the soaring cost of pro-

duction during the 1930s, with the advent of

sound technology and the impact of the De-

pression, brought this training process to a vir-

tual halt until the late 1940s. Arguably the

heydays of the French documentary are the

1950s and 1960s, even though important con-

tributions to its development were still being

made during the 1970s and 1980s. The 1970s

in particular must be singled out because the

documentary shifted from occupying a puta-

tively objective position to adopting an investi-

gative and often strongly politicized one. Pres-

ently the impact of the French documentary

documentaries

160

tradition is most strongly felt, on an interna-

tional level, in African nations and, on a more

parochial level, in regional film collectives es-

tablished post-1980 in a governmental effort

at decentralization.

In terms of the documentary’s history in the

sound era, the revival of the genre after its

slump in the 1930s was due to the effects of the

Occupation (1940–4). Audiences, disgruntled

at the abolition of the double-feature pro-

gramme, obliged the (then) organizing body for

the film industry, the Comité d’Organisation

des Industries Cinématographiques (COIC), to

find a way of providing value for money. COIC

identified the documentary as one inexpensive

source of entertainment and directed state fund-

ing to finance documentaries and shorts that

were ostensibly non-propagandistic. This in-

vestment provided a system of apprenticeship

for the next generation of film-makers (e.g.

Jacques Cousteau, Jacques Becker, Jean

Rouch). It also instigated a training tradition

that culminated (in the late 1950s) on the one

hand in the feature cinema known as the

Nouvelle Vague (New Wave), and on the other

in the documentary cinema known first as

cinéma direct and later as cinéma vérité. Both

types of cinema were famous for their location

shooting, hand-held camera work, grainy, real-

ist filming, and—where the documentary is

concerned—on-site sound recording.

Cinéma vérité was the first identifiable docu-

mentary movement in French cinema and one

that sought to obtain the closest possible rela-

tionship to objective realism. It was, then, the

first movement to address questions of repre-

sentation even though, earlier, individual film-

makers had also investigated the role and ideo-

logical function of documentary and its rela-

tionship to history (e.g. the fairly isolated ex-

amples of Vigo and Renoir in the 1930s, Resnais

in the 1940s and early 1950s). Cinéma vérité

was strongly influenced by the visual codes of

live TV and the principles of ethnography

(thanks mostly to Rouch’s work), and it is this

movement that has been quite widespread in

its influence on African documentary traditions.

Post-May 1968, the radicalizing effect on

the documentary of the various debates on the

Left around the politics of representation

(whose history, what is truth, who is the speak-

ing voice, and so on) and also the effects of

the democratization of the camera (low-cost

video and lightweight cameras) meant that

different voices were being heard and differ-

ent issues put up on screen: women’s voices,

those of blacks and beurs, questions of repro-

ductive rights, racism and integration. Con-

temporary history was no longer the safe my-

thology of heroes. Now, the complexities of

the Occupation and its effects on the French

population were given a full airing: for exam-

ple, Marcel Ophuls’s The Sorrow and the Pity

(Le Chagrin et la pitié) of 1971. This docu-

mentary tradition is the one that has fed into

the regional documentary cinema of France.

SUSAN HAYWARD

See also: beur cinema; cinema; women directors

Further reading

CinémAction (1995) 76, special issue on the

French documentary (a review of its his-

tory and major trends).

Doillon, Jacques

b. 1944, Paris

Director

A film-maker distinctive in his rigorous use of

close-ups and framing, often suggesting in-

tense social and emotional isolation. Like

André Téchiné he may be looked upon as ‘a

poet of the alternative family’ (to quote Jill

Forbes)—a judgement borne out by La Pirate

of 1984, an agonized bisexual love triangle,

and La Vie de famille of the following year,

recounting the fraught journey to Spain of a

man and his daughter, in which understand-

ing comes about only when the two address

each other through video recordings.

KEITH READER

Doillon, Jacques

161

See also: theatre

Douai, Jacques

b. 1920, Douai

Singer, real name Gaston Tranchant

Often perceived as the standard-bearer of tra-

ditional and contemporary French folk-songs,

Jacques Douai projects an image in the trou-

badour tradition, promoting in particular the

poetic dimension of popular song. Along with

his wife, Thérèse Palau (the leader of a dance

group known as La Frairie), he toured France,

Canada and America in order to reach an in-

creasingly wide public, particularly in the

1960s and 1970s.

IAN PICKUP

Further reading

Doubrovsky, S., Lecarme, J. and Lejeune, P.

(eds) (1993) Autofictions et cie, Paris:

Cahiers RITM (collection of essays on

autofiction).

Doubrovsky, Serge

162

Doutreligne, Louise

b. 1948, Roubaix

Playwright

The writer of prizewinning texts for theatre,

radio and film during the 1980s and 1990s,

Doutreligne’s theatre works include Femme à

la porte cochère (Woman at the Carriage En-

trance) and Les Jardins de France (France’s

Gardens).

ANNIE SPARKS

See also: theatre

Du Bouchet, André

b. 1924

Poet, translator and critic

He spent his early years in the United States

(Amherst College, Harvard University). In

France he worked on the review L’Éphémère

and translated Shakespeare, Hölderlin, G.M.

Hopkins, Pasternak and Paul Celan. There are

also essays on painting and poetry and a study

of the work of Giacometti. The poetry is

sparse and tightly constructed, avoiding ab-

stractions and making considerable use of ty-

pographical spacing, mindful of the blank ar-

eas of the page, the ultimate model being

Mallarmé’s A Throw of the Dice (Un Coup

de des). It is as if Du Bouchet were making a

clean slate of things. The major collections are

Dans la chaleur vacante (In the Vacant Heat)

from 1961, Ou le soleil (Or the Sun) in 1968,

Laisses (Leashes) and L’Incohérence from

1975 and 1979, Rapides (1980) and Axiales

(1992).

WALTER A.STRAUSS

See also: theatre

Further reading

Wilkinson, R. (1989) Le Théâtre de Roland

Dubillard: essai d’analyse sémiotique,

Berne: Peter Lang (critical analysis).

Dubuffet, Jean

b. 1901, Le Havre;

d. 1985, Paris

Artist

Jean-Philippe-Arthur Dubuffet was a full-time

painter from 1942, and in 1949 he published

the essay ‘Art Brut Preferred to the Civilized

Arts’. He acquired a collection of art brut of

children, the insane or the untrained and na-

ive, unadulterated by culture, and founded the

Compagnie de l’Art Brut (1948–51) with

André Breton. Highly influenced by the Surre-

alists, he attempted to capture the essence of

freedom of expression, but was accused of

imitating outsider’s art. Crude, scatological

images, roughly worked and scratched in thick

paint, of the female body, cows, the surface of

the earth (for example, Blood and Fire, Body

of Women from 1950), were seen as powerful

figurative images of matter, texture and

Doutreligne, Louise

163

colour. From 1967 he worked in polystyrene,

as in Cabinet lologique.

VALERIE SWALES

Further reading

Rigby, B. (1991) Popular Culture in Modern

France, London and New York: Routledge.

Dupin, Jacques

b. 1927, Privas, Ardèche

Poet and critic

Dupin, Jacques

164

Jacques Dupin is associated with the review

L’Éphémère (like Du Bouchet). He has been

in close and regular contact with painters and

painting and has written books on Miró and

Giacometti. He moves along poetic paths simi-

lar to Yves Bonnefoy: unaffected by Surreal-

ism and classically oriented, with strong af-

finities to Mallarmé, tending also toward

hermeticism in his poetry. There is also a no-

table impact of Char’s poetry on Dupin. His

collections are Gravir (Climbing) from 1963

and L’Embrasure (1969)—the poems are

highly concentrated and concise, frequently

difficult to access, yet characterized by great

verbal richness and strong energy, often in the

form of anguish. He occupies an important

place among the poets who came into promi-

nence after World War II and who represent,

by and large, a return to a new dispensation

in the history of French classicism.

WALTER A.STRAUSS

Further reading

Andréa, Y. (1983) MD, Paris: Éditions de

Minuit (a moving and compelling account

of the background to Duras’s writing of La

Maladie de la mort, including her hospitali-

zation during treatment for detoxification).

Cohen, S.D. (1993) Women and Discourse in

the Fiction of Marguerite Duras: Love, Leg-

ends, Language, London: Macmillan (a

finely argued feminist reading of Duras’s

work).

Hill, L. (1993) Marguerite Duras: Apocalyp-

tic Desires, London: Routledge (an excel-

lent introduction to the complexities of

Duras’s work).

Kristeva, J. (1987) ‘The Pain of Sorrow in the

Modern World: The Works of Marguerite

Duras’, PMLA 102, 2 (the most powerful

argument yet made that Duras’s literary

work is one of irremediable pain sympto-

matic of the postwar period).

Lacan, J. (1987) ‘Homage to Marguerite

Duras’, trans. Peter Connor, in Duras on

Duras, San Francisco: City Lights Books.

Marini, M. (1977) Territoires du féminin: avec

Marguerite Duras, Paris: Éditions de

Minuit (a pioneering psychoanalytical

reading of Duras’s longer novels).

Vircondelet, A. (1996) Marguerite Duras:

vérités et légendes, Paris: Éditions du Chêne

(most up-to-date and detailed biography of

Duras, lavishly illustrated).

Duras, Marguerite

167

Williams, J.S. (1997) The Erotics of Passage:

Pleasure, Politics, and Form in the Later

Work of Marguerite Duras, Liverpool: Liv-

erpool University Press (a study of all aspects

of Duras’s work post-1977, including her

cinematic practice of montage, her engage-

ment with gay writing and culture, and her

collaborative project with Andréa).

Durif, Eugène

b. 1950, Lyon

Poet and playwright

Durif is the author of arts and literary reviews,

adaptations, poems and plays. His Conversa-

tion sur la montagne (Conversation on the

Mountainside) and Le Petit Bois (The Little

Wood), put on at the Théâtre National

Populaire in 1991, both feature the long mono-

logues that characterize his work. His works

are regularly performed by the Théâtre Ouvert.

ANNIE SPARKS

See also: theatre

Duteil, Yves

b. 1949, Paris

Singer-songwriter

A popular singer-songwriter, who had his first

hit in 1974 with le Petit Pont de bois (The

Little Wooden Bridge), followed by others

such as Tarentelle (Tarantella), Prendre un

enfant par la main (To Take a Child by the

Hand) and La Langue de chez nous (The Lan-

guage of Our Country), which won the poetry

prize of the Academic Française. An interest-

ing lyricist whose songs sometimes verge on

the oversentimental.

IAN PICKUP