Bray, PM; (2010) The "Debris of Experience": The Cinema of Marcel Proust and Raoul Ruiz. Romanic Review , 101 (3) pp. 469-484.

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Abstract

As the last and most theoretical volume of Marcel Proust's novel A la recherche du temps perdu, Le Temps retrouve would appear to be a very unlikely source of inspiration for a major motion picture. In almost every possible way it resists an adaptation into another artistic medium, particularly since it narrates the discovery of a literary vocation. Le Temps retrouve, more than any other volume, presupposes a familiarity with the plots and characters of all six preceding volumes of Proust's novel and so a cinematic adaption either must trust that the film spectator already knows Proust's work or must incorporate elements from the whole novel into its portrayal of the last volume. Le Temps retrouve contains practically no plot on which to base a dramatic representation, unlike other sections of the novel, such as Un Amour de Swann and La Prisonniere, that have both been more or less successfully adapted into film. Most importantly however, it is in this volume where Proust, or his narrator, aggressively denounces cinema as incapable of portraying the true nature of time. Raoul Ruiz's film adaptation of Le Temps retrouve, in grappling with perhaps the least adaptable of texts, pushes the boundaries of the cinematic form in order to conceive new ways of creating images of time that would rival those of Proust's literary inventions.

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