Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh (; French: [ʒɑ̃ anuj]; 23 June 1910 – 3 October 1987) was a French dramatist and screenwriter whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1944 production of Sophocles's Antigone, which, though performed without objection by censors, was nevertheless seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's Vichy government. His plays are less experimental than those of his contemporaries, having clearly organized plot and eloquent dialogue. One of France's most prolific writers after World War II, much of Anouilh's work deals with themes of maintaining integrity in a world of moral compromise.
Contents
Life and career
Early life
Anouilh was born in Cérisole, a small village on the outskirts of Bordeaux, France, and had Basque ancestry. His father, François Anouilh, was a tailor, and Anouilh maintained that he inherited from him a pride in conscientious craftmanship. He may owe his artistic bent to his mother, Marie-Magdeleine, a violinist who supplemented the family's meager income by playing summer seasons in the casino orchestra in the nearby seaside resort of Arcachon. Marie-Magdeleine worked the night shifts in the music-hall orchestras and sometimes accompanied stage presentations, affording Anouilh ample opportunity to absorb the dramatic performances from backstage. He often attended rehearsals and solicited the resident authors to let him read scripts until bedtime. He first tried his hand at playwriting here at the age of 12, though his earliest works do not survive.
In 1918 the family moved to Paris where the young Anouilh received his secondary education at the Lycée Chaptal. Jean-Louis Barrault, later a major French director, was a pupil there at the same time and recalls Anouilh as an intense, rather dandified figure who hardly noticed a boy some two years younger than himself. He earned acceptance into the law school at the Sorbonne, but, unable to support himself financially, he left after just 18 months to seek work as a copywriter at the advertising agency Publicité Damour. He liked the work and spoke more than once with wry approval of the lessons in the classical virtues of brevity and precision of language he learned while he drafted advertising copy.
Anouilh's financial troubles continued after he was called up to military service in 1929. Supported by only his meager conscription salary, Anouilh married the actress Monelle Valentin in 1931. Though Valentin starred in many of his plays, Anouilh's daughter Caroline (from his second marriage), says the marriage was not a happy one. Anouilh's youngest daughter Colombe even says there was never an official marriage between Anouilh and Valentin. She allegedly had multiple extramarital affairs, which caused Anouilh much pain and suffering. The infidelity weighed heavily on the dramatist as a result of the uncertainty about his own parentage. According to Caroline, Anouilh had learned that his mother had had a lover at the theatre in Arcachon who was actually his biological father. In spite of this, Anouilh and Valentin had a daughter, Catherine, in 1934 who followed the pair into theatre work at an early age. Anouilh's growing family placed further strain on his already limited finances. Determined to break into writing full time, he began to write comic scenes for the cinema to supplement their income.
Theatre work
At the age of 25 Anouilh found work as a secretary to the French actor and director Louis Jouvet at the Comédie des Champs-Elysées. Though Anouilh's boss had happily lent him some of the set furniture left over from the production of Jean Giraudoux's play Siegfried to furnish his modest home, the director was not interested in encouraging his assistant's attempts at playwriting. Jouvet had risen to fame in the early 1930s through his collaborations with the playwright Giraudoux, and together the two worked to shift focus from the authorial voice of the director (which had dominated the French stage since the early twentieth century) back to the playwright and his text.
Giraudoux was an inspiration to Anouilh, and with the encouragement of the acclaimed playwright he began writing again in 1929. Before the end of the year he made his theatrical debut with Humulus le muet, a collaborative project with Jean Aurenche. It was followed by his first solo projects, L'Hermine (The Ermine) in 1932 and Mandarine in 1933, both produced by Aurélien Lugné-Poe, an innovative actor and stage manager who was then head of the Théâtre de l'Œuvre. Ruled by the philosophy, "the word creates the decor," Lugné-Poe let Anouilh's lyrical prose shine in front of a backdrop of simple compositions of line and color that created a unity of style and mood.
The plays were not great successes, closing after 37 and 13 performances, respectively, but Anouilh persevered, following up with a string of productions, most notably Y'avait un prisonnier (1935). These works, most in collaboration with the experimental Russian director Georges Pitoëff, were considered promising despite their lack of commercial profits, and the duo continued to work together until they had their first major success in 1937 with Le voyageur sans bagage (Traveller Without Luggage). In subsequent years there was rarely a season in Paris that did not prominently feature a new Anouilh play, and many of these were also being exported to England and America. After 1938, however, much of Anouilh's later work was directed by the prominent Paris scenic designer André Barsacq, who had taken over as director of the Théâtre de l'Atelier after Charles Dullin's retirement in 1940. Barsacq was a champion for Anouilh, and their affiliation was a major factor in the playwright's continued success after the war.
Playwright
In the 1940s, Anouilh turned from contemporary tales to more mythical, classic, and historic subjects. With protagonists who asserted their independence from the fated past, themes during this period are more closely related to the existential concerns of such writers as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. The most famous play of this group is Antigone, which "established Anouilh as a leading dramatist, not only because of the power with which he drew the classic confrontation between the uncompromising Antigone and the politically expedient Creon, but also because French theatre-goers under the occupation read the play as a contemporary political parable." His post-war plays dealt with similar concerns and included Roméo et Jeannette, Médée (Medea), and Anouilh's Joan of Arc story L'Alouette (The Lark), which, in its distinct optimism, rivalled the commercial success of Antigone.
Anouilh himself grouped his plays of this period on the basis of their dominant tone, publishing his later works in collected volumes to reflect what he felt "represented the phases of his evolution and loosely resembled the distinction between comedy and tragedy." Pièces noires or "Black plays" were tragedies or realistic dramas and included Antigone, Jézabel, and La Sauvage (The Restless Heart). This category typically featured "young, idealistic, and uncompromising protagonists [who] are able to maintain their integrity only by choosing death." By contrast, Anouilh's pièces roses or "pink plays" were comedies where fantasy dominated with an atmosphere similar to that of fairy tales. In these plays such as Le Bal des voleurs (Carnival of Thieves), Le Rendez-vous de Senlis (Dinner with the Family) and Léocadia (Time Remembered), the focus is on "the burden of the environment and especially of the past on a protagonist seeking a happier, freer existence."
Most of Anouilh's plays of the late 1940s and into the 1950s become darker and distinctly cruel and, in contrast with his earlier works, begin to feature middle-aged characters who must view life more practically than Anouilh's former idealistic youths. The playwright divided the works of this period into pièces brillantes ("brilliant plays") and pièces grinçantes ("grating plays"). The first group includes works such as L'Invitation au château (Ring Round the Moon) and Colombe, and are typified by aristocratic settings and witty banter. The grating plays like La Valse des toréadors (Waltz of the Toreadors) and Le Réactionnaire amoureux (The Fighting Cock) are more bitterly funny, trading clever word play for a darker tone of disillusionment.
Political controversy
Anouilh remained staunchly apolitical for most of his life and career. He served in the military during at least two periods, having been drafted into the French Army in 1931 and 1939. He was a prisoner of war for a short time when the Germans conquered France and willingly lived and worked in Paris during the subsequent German occupation. Because he refused to take sides during France's collaboration with the Axis Alliance, some critics have branded him as a potential Nazi sympathiser. This controversy escalated as a result of Anouilh's public clashes with the leader of the Free French Forces (and later president of the Fifth Republic), General Charles de Gaulle. In the mid-1940s, Anouilh and several other intellectuals signed a petition for clemency to save the writer Robert Brasillach, who was condemned to death for being a Nazi collaborator. Brasillach was executed by firing squad in February 1945, despite the outcry from Anouilh and his peers that the new government had no right to persecute individuals for "intellectual crimes" in the absence of military or political action. Nevertheless, Anouilh refused to comment on his political views, writing in a letter to the Belgian critic Hubert Gignoux in 1946, "I do not have a biography and I am very happy about it. The rest of my life, as long as God wills it, will remain my personal business, and I will withhold the details of it."
Anouilh's plays provide the most important clues about his political point of view, though their reputation for ambiguity further complicates the matter. For instance, Antigone provides an allegorical representation of the debate between the idealistic members of the French Resistance and the pragmatism of the collaborationists. Though many have read the play as having a strong anti-Nazi sentiment, the fact that the Vichy Regime allowed the piece to be performed without censure testifies to the fact that it was potentially seen as supportive of the occupation in its time. Though the playwright romanticizes Antigone's sense of honor and duty to what is morally right, in this case resisting the Nazi forces, it can also be said that Anouilh, like Sophocles before him, makes a convincing argument for Creon's method of leadership.
Awards and recognition
In 1970 his work was recognized with the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. In 2012, the Nobel Records were opened after 50 years and it was revealed that Anouilh was among a shortlist of authors considered for the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, along with John Steinbeck (winner), Robert Graves, Lawrence Durrell and Karen Blixen. According to a report in The Guardian, "It is not clear why Anouilh was passed over, but the French poet Saint-John Perse had taken the Nobel in 1960, meaning that France was well represented on the roster of winners, and Svenska Dagbladet reveals that Jean-Paul Sartre, who won the prize in 1964, was starting to be seriously considered as a candidate."
In 1980, Anouilh was the first recipient of the Grand Prix du Théâtre de l'Académie française established that year.
Critical discussion
By the end of his career, Anouilh's reputation outstripped those of some of his contemporaries despite his repertoire remaining mostly confined to theatre and film. Most French dramatists of the 1930s and 1940s, including Anouilh's most significant contemporary influence, Giraudoux, not only wrote for the stage but also composed poetry, novels, or essays. Nevertheless, he remained prolific, consistently producing and publishing performance works for more than fifty years.
Anouilh's early works were "naturalistic studies of a sordid and corrupt world." Many of these plays present the reader with the striking and inescapable dichotomy between pragmatism and a sort of transcendent idealism. There is little to no "middle ground of ambiguity" that exists where this conflict asserts itself. This is evidenced in Le Voyageur Sans Bagage. The main character Gaston, a World War I veteran who suffers from amnesia, cannot remember the moral depravity of his youth (he slept with his brother's wife and severely injured his best friend). This checkered past is invariably at odds with the near-angelic behavior that he now exhibits, and recognition of this truth forces him to leave his former identity behind, unable to reconcile the two sides of himself. In denouncing his past, Gaston reclasses his freedom as an illusion, but one of his own making. He befriends a young English boy and shows him his identifying scar; this gesture allows the boy to describe Gaston to the authorities, thereby claiming him as kin. With a new life and a new family, Gaston has a fresh start. David I. Grossvogel, describes this situation as the "restoration of a childhood paradise lost," attributing Le Voyageur Sans Bagage as the beginning of Anouilh's search to justify the unhappiness of his youth. Theatre historian Marvin Carlson agrees, noting that this play epitomizes the "complex tonality and deft dramatic technique" that remained throughout his work, though, he asserts, it was only as the playwright matured that his "dark view of the human condition [reached] its final expression."
Anouilh disagreed with these somber readings of his best works, however, arguing that, like all great French literature, his plays had found ways to laugh at misfortune. "Thanks to Molière," Anouilh said, "the true French theatre is the only one that is not gloomy, in which we laugh like men at war with our misery and our horror. This humor is one of France's messages to the world."
Disclosing his thoughts on French theatre and his personal perspective as a playwright, he said that the perception of his work was often misguided:
Works
Original theatre productions: Paris
L'Hermine. Théâtre de l'Œuvre: 26 April 1932. Directed by Paulette Pax. With Pierre Fresnay, Paulette Pax, Marie Reinhardt.
Mandarine. Théâtre de l'Athénée: 17 January 1933. Directed by Gérard Batbedat. With Paul Lalloz, Milly Mathis, Madeleine Ozeray.
Y'avait un prisonnier. Théâtre des Ambassadeurs: 21 March 1935. Presented by Marie Bell. With Aimé Clariond, Marguerite Pierry, André Alerme.
Le Voyageur sans bagage. Théâtre des Mathurins: 16 February 1937. Directed by Georges Pitoëff. With Georges Pitoëff, Marthe Mellot, Louis Salou, Madeleine Milhaud.
La Sauvage. Théâtre des Mathurins: 10 January 1938. Directed by Georges Pitoëff. With Ludmilla Pitoëff, Georges Pitoëff, Louis Salou, Madeleine Milhaud.
Le Bal de voleurs. Théâtre des Arts: 17 September 1938. Directed by André Barsacq. With Pierre Palau, Madeleine Geoffroy.
Léocadia. Théâtre de la Michodière: 28 November 1940. Directed by André Barsacq. With Pierre Fresnay, Yvonne Printemps, Marguerite Deval.
Le Rendez-vous de Senlis. Théâtre de l'Atelier: 30 January 1941. Directed by André Barsacq. With Michel Vitold, Denise Bosc, Jean Dasté, Madeleine Geoffroy, Georges Rollin, Monelle Valentin.
Eurydice. Théâtre de l'Atelier: 18 December 1941. Directed by André Barsacq. With Alain Cuny, Monelle Valentin, Jean Dasté, Auguste Boverio.
Antigone. Théâtre de l'Atelier: 4 February 1944. Directed by André Barsacq. With Monelle Valentin, Jean Davy, Auguste Boverio, André Le Gall.
Selected theatre productions: UK
Identity Unknown (Le Voyageur sans bagage). Duke of York's Theatre, London: 5 December 1937. Presented by the London International Theatre Club. With Bernard Lee, Mary Merrall, Alan Napier, Catherine Lacey.
Antigone. New Theatre, London: 10 February 1949. Directed by Laurence Olivier. With Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, George Relph, Terence Morgan.
Fading Mansion (Roméo et Jeanette). Duchess Theatre, London: 31 August 1949. Directed by Anthony Bushell. With Siobhan McKenna, George Relph, Michael Gough.
Ring Round the Moon (L'Invitation au château). Globe Theatre, London: 26 January 1950. Directed by Peter Brook. With Paul Scofield, Claire Bloom, Margaret Rutherford, Cecil Trouncer, Mona Washbourne.
Point of Departure (Eurydice). Duke of York's Theatre, London: 26 December 1950. Directed by Peter Ashmore. With Dirk Bogarde (later: Peter Finch), Mai Zetterling, Hugh Griffith, Stephen Murray, Eric Pohlmann.
Ardèle. Vaudeville Theatre, London: 30 August 1951. Directed by Anthony Pelissier. With George Relph, Ronald Squire, Isabel Jeans, Nicholas Phipps, Veronica Hurst.
Colombe. New Theatre, London: 13 December 1951. Directed by Peter Brook. With Yvonne Arnaud, Joyce Redman, Michael Gough, John Stratton.
Thieves' Carnival. Arts Theatre, London: 2 January 1952. Directed by Roy Rich. With John Laurie, Harold Lang, Robin Bailey, Maxine Audley.
Time Remembered (Léocadia). Lyric Hammersmith, London: 2 December 1954. Directed by William Chappell. With Mary Ure, Paul Scofield, Margaret Rutherford.
The Lark. Lyric Hammersmith, London: 11 May 1955. Directed by Peter Brook. With Dorothy Tutin, Richard Johnson, Donald Pleasence, Leo McKern.
Selected theatre productions: USA
Antigone. Cort Theatre, New York City: 18 February 1946. Directed by Guthrie McClintic. With Katharine Cornell, Cedric Hardwicke.
Cry of the Peacock (Ardèle ou la Marguerite). Mansfield Theatre, New York City: 11 April 1950. Directed by Martin Ritt. With Raymond Lovell, Oscar Karlweis, Marta Linden.
Ring Round the Moon (L'Invitation au château). Martin Beck Theatre, New York City: 23 November 1950. Directed by Gilbert Miller. With Denholm Elliott, Stella Andrew, Lucile Watson, Oscar Karlweis, Brenda Forbes.
Legend of Lovers (Eurydice). Plymouth Theatre, New York City: 26 December 1951. Directed by Peter Ashmore. With Richard Burton, Dorothy McGuire, Hugh Griffith, Noel Willman.
Mademoiselle Colombe. Longacre Theatre, New York City: 6 January 1954. Directed by Harold Clurman. With Edna Best, Julie Harris, Eli Wallach.
Thieves' Carnival. Cherry Lane Theatre, New York City (off-Broadway): 1 June 1955. Directed by Warren Enters. With William LeMassena, Stuart Vaughan, Tom Bosley, Frances Sternhagen.
The Lark. Longacre Theatre, New York City: 17 November 1955. Directed by Joseph Anthony. With Julie Harris, Theodore Bikel, Boris Karloff, Christopher Plummer, Joseph Wiseman, Paul Roebling.
The Waltz of the Toreadors. Coronet Theatre, New York City: 17 January 1957. Directed by Harold Clurman. With Ralph Richardson (later: Melvyn Douglas), Mildred Natwick.
Time Remembered (Léocadia). Morosco Theatre, New York City: 12 November 1957. Directed by Albert Marre. With Richard Burton, Susan Strasberg, Helen Hayes.
The Fighting Cock (L'Hurluberlu ou le Réactionnaire amoureux). ANTA Playhouse, New York City: 8 December 1959. Directed by Peter Brook. With Rex Harrison, Roddy McDowall, Natasha Parry, Michael Gough, Alan MacNaughtan, Arthur Treacher.
Selected film credits
Les Dégourdis de la onzième by Jean Anouilh et al. 1936.
Vous n'avez rien à déclarer? by Jean Anouilh et al. 1937.
La Citadelle du silence by Jean Anouilh et al. Impérial Film, 1937.
Les Otages by Jean Anouilh et al. Nero-Film AG, 1938.
Calvacade d'amour by Jean Anouilh and Jean Aurenche. Pressburger Films, 1940.
Marie-Martine by Jean Anouilh (uncredited) and Jacques Viot. Eclair-Journal, 1943.
Le Voyageur sans bagage by Jean Anouilh and Jean Aurenche, based on Anouilh's play. Also directed by Anouilh. Eclair-Journal, 1944.
Monsieur Vincent by Jean Anouilh, Jean Bernard-Luc and Maurice Cloche. EDIC/Union Générale Cinématographique, 1947.
Anna Karenina by Jean Anouilh, Guy Morgan and Julien Duvivier. London Film Productions, 1948.
White Paws by Jean Anouilh and Jean Bernard-Luc. Majestic Films, 1949.
Caroline chérie by Jean Anouilh and Cécil Saint-Laurent. Cinéphonic/ Gaumont, 1950.
Two Pennies Worth of Violets by Monelle Valentin and (uncredited) Jean Anouilh. Also directed by Anouilh. Gaumont, 1951.
Le Rideau rouge by Jean Anouilh and André Barsacq. Gaumont, 1952.
Monsoon. Screenplay by Forest Judd, David Robinson and Leonardo Bercovici, based on the Anouilh play Roméo et Jeannette. CFG Productions/Film Group Judd, 1952.
Selected television productions
Catch as Catch Can (aka) 'The Rehearsal', or 'Le Balcon' ('The Balcony'), Wednesday Play, 1964 (30th. Sept.). Kenneth Williams as Napoleon.
The Lark, translated from L'Alouette. BBC Saturday-Night Theatre, 1956.
Le Jeune Homme et le Lion. 1976.
Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut. Hungarian TV/ Télécip, 1978.
La Belle vie. 1979.
Le Diable amoureux by Jean Anouilh et al. Bayerischer Rundfunk/France2/ Radiotelevisão Portuguesa/Telmondis/Westdeutscher Rundfunk, 1991.
Published plays
Y'avait un prisonnier (Paris: L'Illustration, 1935).
Le Voyageur sans bagage (Paris: L'Illustration, 1937); translated by John Whiting as Traveler without Luggage (London: Methuen, 1959).
Les Bal des voleurs (Paris: Fayard, 1938).
Antigone (Paris: Didier, 1942); translated by Lewis Galantière as Antigone (New York: Random House, 1946).
Pièces roses (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1942) – comprises Le Bal des voleurs, Le Rendez-vous de Senlis, and Léocadia; Le Bal des voleurs translated by Lucienne Hill as Thieves' Carnival (London: Methuen, 1952); Le Rendez-vous de Senlis translated by Edwin O. Marsh as Dinner with the Family (London: Methuen, 1958); Léocadia translated by Patricia Moyes as Time Remembered (London: S. French, 1954).
Pièces noires (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1942) – comprises L'Hermine, La Sauvage, Le Voyageur sans bagage, and Eurydice; L'Hermine translated by Miriam John as The Ermine, in Jean Anouilh ... Plays, volume 1 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1958); La Sauvage translated by Hill as Restless Heart (London: Methuen, 1957); Eurydice translated by Kitty Black as Point of Departure (London: S. French, 1951); republished as Legend of Lovers (New York: Coward-McCann, 1952).
Nouvelles pièces noires (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1946) – comprises Jézabel, Antigone, Roméo et Jeannette, and Médée; Roméo et Jeannette translated by John as Romeo and Jeannette, in Jean Anouilh ... Plays, volume 1 (New York : Hill & Wang, 1958); "Médée" translated in The Modern Theatre, volume 5, edited by Eric Bentley (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1957).
Pièces brillantes (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1951) – comprises L'Invitation au château, Colombe, La Répétition, ou L'Amour puni, and Cécile, ou L'Ecole des pères;
L'Invitation au château translated by Christopher Fry as Ring round the Moon (London: Methuen, 1950); Colombe translated by Louis Kronenberger as Mademoiselle Colombe (New York: Coward-McCann, 1954).
English language anthologies
Jean Anouilh ... Plays, translated by Lewis Galantière et al., 3 volumes (New York: Hill & Wang, 1958–1967).
Collected Plays, 2 volumes translated by Lucienne Hill et al. (London: Methuen, 1966, 1967).
Five Plays by Jean Anouilh, introduction by Ned Chaillet translated by Timberlake Wertenbaker et al., (London: Methuen, 1987).
Anouilh Plays: Two, introduction by Ned Chaillet translated by Jeremy Sams et al., (London: Methuen, 1997).
Theory and criticism
En marge du théâtre, edited by Efrin Knight, (Paris: La Table Ronde, 2000).
Le Dossier Molière, with Léon Thoorens et al., (Verviers: Gerard, 1964).
Translations by Anouilh
William Shakespeare, Trois comédies: Comme il vous plaira, La Nuit des rois, Le Conte d'hiver, [Three Comedies: As You like It, Twelfth Night, and The Winter's Tale] translated by Anouilh and Claude Vincent (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1952).
Graham Greene, L'Amant complaisant, translated by Anouilh and Nicole Anouilh (Paris: Laffont, 1962).
Oscar Wilde, Il est important d'être aimé, [The Importance of Being Earnest] translated by Anouilh and Nicole Anouilh (Paris: Papiers, 1985).
Other publications
Michel-Marie Poulain, by Anouilh, Pierre Imbourg, and André Warnod, preface by Michel Mourre (Paris: Braun, 1953).
Le Loup, ballet scenario by Anouilh and Georges Neveux, music by Henri Dutilleux (Paris: Ricordi, 1953).