French Literature Reviews - 2026
É. Brami, Voyage au bout de l'écriture. Céline au cinéma
Other Literary Studies
Émile Brami,
Voyage au bout de l'écriture. Céline au cinéma
Écriture éditions, 2020
EAN: 9782359053135 — ePub ISBN: 9782359053166 — October 2020
Ever since its publication in 1932, Journey to the End of the Night has continually fired the imaginations of producers, screenwriters, and directors. Yet Céline’s masterpiece has never been brought to the screen, whereas In Search of Lost Time has been adapted several times. How is this to be explained?
While Céline rivaled the language of film, dabbled in the art of screenwriting, loved being on movie sets, and even worked as an extra, there is no shortage of aborted adaptation projects for Journey, starting with that of Abel Gance, for which preliminary script sketches still survive.
Subsequently, several major directors would consider tackling it: Julien Duvivier, Claude Autant-Lara, Claude Berri, André Téchiné, Louis Malle, Michel Audiard, as well as Maurice Pialat and even Sergio Leone, who reportedly drew inspiration from it for Once Upon a Time in America.
Closer to our own time, François Dupeyron spent nine months working on the project, before Yann Moix in turn dreamed of a Journey starring Mathieu Kassovitz and Louis Garrel… Yet the years pass, and tackling this intimidating work becomes increasingly difficult. Only one person has successfully converted these words into images: the comic book artist Tardi.
Drawing on numerous iconographic documents, Émile Brami recounts the impossible marriage between Céline and the Seventh Art.
One can read in Acta Fabula, as part of a critical dossier dedicated to adaptation theories, a review of this work :
"Voyage au bout de l'écran", by Laure Cordonier…
A writer, bookseller, and gallery owner, Émile Brami is the author of twelve novels (including Histoire de la poupée, Art brut, En collaboration), an essay (Céline, Hergé et l’affaire Haddock), and a biography (Céline, je ne suis pas assez méchant pour me donner en exemple), all published by Écriture.
The history of literary adaptation often highlights a tension between the written word and the visual medium. While many canonical French works have transitioned to the screen, Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s 1932 novel, Journey to the End of the Night, has not been adapted for cinema. Émile Brami’s Voyage au bout de l'écriture. Céline au cinéma documents the history of aborted adaptation projects involving filmmakers such as Abel Gance, Julien Duvivier, Claude Autant-Lara, Claude Berri, André Téchiné, Louis Malle, Michel Audiard, Maurice Pialat, and Sergio Leone.
The book notes that the comic book artist Tardi has successfully converted the novel into images. Drawing on iconographic documents, the text recounts the relationship between Céline and the Seventh Art, noting the author's own interest in film and his work as an extra. Readers interested in the intersection of twentieth-century French literature and film history may find this investigation of artistic adaptation relevant.