Abstract
Irène Némirovsky’s novel Suite française is an emblematic case study in the evolving dynamics of creation and reception, and the way in which processes of circulation are shaped and complicated by temporal factors, changing contexts, and shifting cultural and political horizons. In this paper, I concentrate on the 2015 film adaptation, Suite Française, directed by Saul Dibb. Drawing on concepts from narrative theory and cultural memory studies, I analyze the film’s switch from the novel’s polyphonic arrangement to a monologic first-person narrative voice that invites viewers to empathize and identify with its protagonist. I argue that the film Suite Française replaces the novel’s complex and ethically nuanced perspective with a repetitive post-Holocaust story that is unable to challenge the viewers’ biases and assumptions and is therefore incapable of creating a space for reparative reading.
Némirovsky, whose fiction had been completely neglected in post-war France, is an astonishing case of a literary rediscovery.
(Angela Kershaw: Before Auschwitz. Irène Némirovsky and the Cultural Landscape of Interwar France, London 2010, 2)
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Notes
- 1.
Susan Rubin Suleiman shows that the story of the suitcase and the manuscript has been somewhat exaggerated for dramatic effect, for Némirovsky’s daughters knew of the novel’s existence since the mid-1950s. Susan Rubin Suleiman: The Afterlife of Irène Némirovsky’s Suite française, in: Sara R. Horowitz, Amira Bojadzija-Dan, Julia Creet (eds.): Shadows in the City of Light. Paris in Postwar French Jewish Writing, Albany, N. Y. 2021, 221–241, here: 224–227.
- 2.
Marianne Hirsch: The Generation of Postmemory. Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust, New York 2012, 63. Two of the book’s chapters were written collaboratively with Leo Spitzer.
- 3.
Pierre Bourdieu: The Social Conditions of the International Circulation of Ideas, in: Richard Shusterman (ed.): Bourdieu. A Critical Reader [1989], Hoboken, N. J. 1999, 222.
- 4.
Throughout the article, I will refer to Némirovsky’s novel with the title Suite française, and to the film with the title Suite Française. Unlike English, French does not capitalize nouns in titles.
- 5.
Hirsch, Generation of Postmemory (note 2), 21.
- 6.
This is also true for other novels by Némirovsky. Already in her lifetime, Némirovsky saw her David Golder (1929) and Le Bal (1931) adapted for the stage (by Fernand Nozière) and the screen (by Julien Duvivier and Wilhelm Thiele, respectively). Moreover, Némirovsky herself was an admirer of the seventh art; she wrote four screenplays and several short stories in cinematic style, and occasionally reviewed plays and films.
- 7.
Olivier Philipponnat: »Un ordre différent, plus puissant et plus beau.« Irène Némirovsky et le modèle symphonique, in: Roman 20–50 54 (2012), 75–86, here: 84.
- 8.
Emmanuelle Bougerol, who plays the role of the Angelliers’ maid, Marthe, a character given added weight to great effect in the theater adaptation, was nominated for the 2020 Molière Prize for an actress in a supporting role. Cédric Revollon and Gaétan Borg alternated in the same role.
- 9.
Several performances in 2020 and 2020/2021 season were cancelled due to restrictions related to the Covid-19 pandemic.
- 10.
I refer to these circuits as rhizomatic insofar as, throughout the process of circulation, several adaptations may emerge without impeding the circulation of the original work, with further ›offshoots‹ develo** from both the original as well as previous offshoots (as adaptations inspired by adaptations). Visually, this multigenerative process reminds me of the continuously growing horizontal stem of a rhizome and its variously entangled lateral shoots.
- 11.
Stefanie Gänger: Circulation. Reflections on Circularity, Entity and Liquidity in the Language of Global History, in: Journal of Global History 12 (2017), 303–318, here: 310.
- 12.
Hans Robert Jauss: Towards and Aesthetic of Reception, trans. by Timothy Bahti, Minneapolis, Minn. 1982.
- 13.
Linda Hutcheon: A Theory of Adaptation, London 2006, 21–22.
- 14.
See Bourdieu (note 3), 220–228.
- 15.
Hutcheon (note 13), 6. Interestingly, Cinzia Bigliosi remarks that Julien Duvivier’s 1931 adaptation of Némirovsky’s novel David Golder (1929) was mostly criticized for its excessive closeness. According to Bigliosi, it had been Némirovsky’s expressed wish that the film remain faithful to her novel. Cinzia Bigliosi: Irène Némirovsky e la tentazione del grande schermo, in: Itinera 17 (2019), 108–114, here: 112.
- 16.
See Hirsch, Generation of Postmemory (note 2). Thank you to Samira Saramo for first prompting me to think about ›connecting‹ instead of ›comparing‹.
- 17.
Hutcheon (note 13), 6. See also Sarah Cardwell: Adaptation Revisited. Television and the Classic Novel, Manchester 2002, 9.
- 18.
Martina Stemberger: Classic Cinema. Transmediating La Princesse de Clèves, in: Romance Studies 35/4 (2017), 209–225, here: 213.
- 19.
Hutcheon (note 13), 8, 18.
- 20.
Ibid., 16.
- 21.
Ibid., 7.
- 22.
The fictional Bussy was inspired by Issy-l’Évêque, a village near the demarcation line where Némirovsky spent the last three years of her life.
- 23.
Susan Rubin Suleiman: The Némirovsky Question. The Life, Death, and Legacy of a Jewish Writer in Twentieth-Century France, New Haven, Conn. 2016, 282.
- 24.
Ibid., 282.
- 25.
Gérard Genette: Palimpsestes. La littérature au second degré, Paris 1982.
- 26.
See Eric Conan, Henry Rousso: Vichy, un passé qui ne passe pas, Paris 1994.
- 27.
On Suite française’s polyphonic quality and the presence of multiple points of view, see Yves Baudelle: »L’assiette à bouillie de bonne-maman« et »le râtelier de rechange de papa«. Ironie et comique dans Suite française, in: Roman 20–50 54 (2012), 109–124; Nathan Bracher: After the Fall. War and Occupation in Irène Némirovsky’s Suite française, Washington, D. C. 2010; and Marta-Laura Cenedese: Irène Némirovsky’s Russian Influences. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov, London 2021.
- 28.
Irène Némirovsky: Suite française, Paris 2004, 535.
- 29.
Bracher (note 27). See also Cenedese (note 27).
- 30.
Hutcheon (note 13), 8.
- 31.
See ibid., 149.
- 32.
David Carroll: Excavating the Past. Suite française and the German Occupation of France, in: Yale French Studies 121 (2012), 69–98, here: 74.
- 33.
Ibid., 72.
- 34.
The film also changes the temporal coordinates of the novel: while the images of the bombing of Paris and the exodus are dated 3 June 1940, as is the case for the beginning of »Storm in June«, Suite française’s first part, a discrepancy with the novel opens up when the film closes in on life in Bussy. The film sets its story »one week later«, that is, beginning on 10 June 1940, whereas Némirovsky set »Dolce« in the spring of 1941. This change collides with historical accuracy, in particular in relation to the film’s addition of a Jewish storyline and the occupying regiment’s redeployment to the Eastern Front, which, from a logical point of view, could only have occurred after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941.
- 35.
Némirovsky (note 28), 33.
- 36.
Ibid., 307.
- 37.
Saul Dibb (dir.): Suite Française, United Kingdom/France/Belgium 2015, 01:50–02:15.
- 38.
Olivier Corpet, Garrett White: Woman of Letters. Irène Némirovsky and Suite française, New York 2010, 146.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
Ibid., 156.
- 41.
Némirovsky (note 28), 535. This excerpt is dated 1 July 1942, so only a couple of weeks before Némirovsky’s arrest by the gendarmerie.
- 42.
Suzanne Keen: A Theory of Narrative Empathy, in: Narrative 14/3 (2006), 207–236, here: 220.
- 43.
Ibid., 213.
- 44.
For details, see the publications listed in note 27.
- 45.
Marianne Hirsch: Connective Histories in Vulnerable Times, in: PMLA 129/3 (2014), 330–348, here: 339 [emphasis added].
- 46.
Némirovsky (note 28), 527.
- 47.
Ibid., 531.
- 48.
Suleiman, Némirovsky Question (note 23), 43.
- 49.
Lisa Lowe: The Intimacies of Four Continents, in: Anna Laura Stoler (ed.): Haunted by Empire. Geographies of Intimacy in North American History, Durham, N. C. 2006, 208.
- 50.
Bourdieu (note 3), 221.
- 51.
Hirsch, Generation of Postmemory (note 2), 61.
- 52.
Ibid., 63.
- 53.
I use the verb »foregrounding« in the sense given by Mary-Catherine Harrison, who defines it as a »narrative focus on a particular character« which »helps orient readers’ empathy towards protagonists while providing the necessary informational cues about a character’s cognitive and affective states«. Mary-Catherine Harrison: How Narrative Relationships Overcome Empathic Bias. Elizabeth Gaskell’s Empathy Across Social Difference, in: Poetics Today 32/2 (2011), 255–288, here: 258.
- 54.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick: Touching Feeling. Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity, Durham, N. C. 2003, 146 [emphasis added].
- 55.
Ibid., 147.
- 56.
Andrea Liss: Trespassing through Shadows. Memory, Photography, and the Holocaust, Minneapolis, Minn. 1998, 86.
- 57.
Sedgwick (note 54), 147.
- 58.
Alison Landsberg: Prosthetic Memory. The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture, New York 2004, 225.
- 59.
Ibid., 225.
- 60.
Suite Française (note 37), 01:40:00–01:40:45 [emphasis added].
- 61.
Suzanne Keen: Narrative Form, London 2015, 38.
- 62.
Suite Française (note 37), 01:08:05–01:08:15.
- 63.
The Wikipedia page of Suite Française describes the film as »a war romantic drama film«. Wikipedia: Suite Française; cited from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suite_Fran%C3%A7aise_(film) [accessed 09 Feb. 2021].
- 64.
Patrick Lienhardt, Olivier Philipponnat: La Vie d’Irène Némirovsky, Paris 2009, 453.
- 65.
Bigliosi (note 15), 114.
- 66.
Peter Bradshaw: Suite Française Review. Michelle Williams Sleepwalks Through Wartime, in: The Guardian (12 Mar. 2015); cited from: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/12/suite-franaise-michelle-williams-founders-in-saccharine-version-nemirovsky-bestseller [accessed 26 Feb. 2022]; Emma Dibdin: Suite Française Review. Michelle Williams Stars in a Rote War Romance, in: Digital Spy (13 Mar. 2015); cited from: https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a635071/suite-francaise-review-michelle-williams-stars-in-a-rote-war-romance/ [accessed 26 Feb. 2021]; Anna Smith: Suite Française, in: Empire (17 Nov. 2014); cited from: https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/suite-francaise-review/ [accessed 26 Feb. 2021].
- 67.
Patrick Colm Hogan: The Epilogue of Suffering. Heroism, Empathy, Ethics, in: SubStance 30/1&2 (2001), 119–143, here: 119.
- 68.
Sara Ahmed: The Cultural Politics of Emotions, London 2004, 8.
- 69.
Suleiman, Némirovsky Question (note 23), 282.
- 70.
Michel Epstein was Némirovsky’s husband.
- 71.
Michael Rothberg: Trauma Theory, Implicated Subjects, and the Question of Israel-Palestine, in: Profession MLA (2014), unpaginated [original emphasis]. See also Michael Rothberg: The Implicated Subject. Beyond Victims and Perpetrators, Stanford, Calif. 2019.
- 72.
Suite Française (note 37), 55:37–55:40.
- 73.
Ibid., 14:35–14:38.
- 74.
Carroll (note 32), 72.
- 75.
According to Michael André Bernstein, backshadowing is »a kind of retroactive foreshadowing in which the shared knowledge of the outcome of a series of events by narrator and listener is used to judge the participants in those events as though they too should have known what was to come«. Michael André Bernstein: Foregone Conclusions. Against Apocalyptic History, Oakland, Calif. 1994, 16 [original emphasis].
- 76.
Carroll (note 32), 73.
- 77.
Walter Benjamin: Illuminations, London 1999, 248.
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Cenedese, ML. (2023). Reimagining Irène Némirovsky’s Suite française. Circulation, Postmemory, and Reparative Reading. In: Gamper, M., Müller-Tamm, J., Wachter, D., Wrobel, J. (eds) Der Wert der literarischen Zirkulation / The Value of Literary Circulation. Globalisierte Literaturen. Theorie und Geschichte transnationaler Buchkultur / Globalized Literatures. Theory and History of Transnational Book Culture, vol 3. J.B. Metzler, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65544-3_8
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