Universal russianness, or Gorky’s the Lower depths interpreted by Zamyatin interpreted by Renoir

Journal Title: Studia Litterarum - Year 2018, Vol 3, Issue 1

Abstract

This paper discusses a 1936 French film The Lower Depths based on the famous Maxim Gorky’s play and directed by Jean Renoir. The script was initially written by Evgeny Zamyatin and Jacques Companeez and then rewritten by Charles Spaak and Renoir. The first part of the paper is dedicated to the problematic reception of this film that was due to its blurred Russian-French outlook and to its seeming infidelity to Gorky’s work. Further, the essay sheds light on the intricacy of the 1936 circumstances surrounding the film production. It also discusses the role that the Albatros production society whose technical crew was composed mostly of the Russian émigré specialists played in the making of the film. Such a crew, together with the fact that the original play and its screen adaptation were written by two émigré writers, endowed the film with “universal Russianness” of a sort. The last part of the paper attempts to clarify the complicated issue of the scenario by comparing its several script versions with the final version. The paper raises new questions concerning respective roles played by different authors of the adaptation in the production of The Lower Depths.

Authors and Affiliations

L. Heller

Keywords

Related Articles

The Image of Nestor Makhno in the Pages of Alexey N. Tostoy’s Trilogy The Road to Calvary: Documents and Materials

This article examines documentary sources of the image of Nestor Ivanovich Makhno in Alexey N. Tolstoy’s trilogy The Road to Calvary; it bears on the materials that are both published (Tolstoy’s notebooks) and hitherto...

THE STRUCTURE OF THE FANTÔMAS NOVEL SERIES BY PIERRE SOUVESTRE AND MARCEL ALLAIN AND THE PROBLEM OF SERIALITY IN POPULAR LITERATURE

The essay examines the structure of a 32-volume series of Fantômas novels created by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain; it traces the origins and development of the serial genre and generic novelties related to serial...

DISCUSSION ON THE TYPES OF LITERARY TRANSLATION IN THE SOVIET TRANSLATION STUDIES

The article discusses the theory and history of literary translation in the Soviet Union, namely, the dispute between Moscow and St. Petersburg schools of translation. The main focus is on the chapter from an unfinishe...

“I WILL RETURN / COME BACK TO YOU UNRECOGNIZED”: THE FATE OF POETRY OF MOTHER MARIA IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA AND IN FRANCE

The article examines the history of the reception of mother Maria’s poetry in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, in France and in Great Britain. It analyses how her image and “hypostasis” became mythologized in Russian and...

LERMONTOV ROMANTICISM AND JENA SCHOOL. Part 2

This article examines the understudied subjects of Lermontov life and work: his stay at the Moscow noble boarding school and his direct engagement in Cepheus, a literary annual run by the literary circle of Raich, wher...

Download PDF file
  • EP ID EP26213
  • DOI 10.22455/2500-4247-2018-3-1-196-211
  • Views 270
  • Downloads 11

How To Cite

L. Heller (2018). Universal russianness, or Gorky’s the Lower depths interpreted by Zamyatin interpreted by Renoir. Studia Litterarum, 3(1), -. https://europub.co.uk/articles/-A-26213