Jean-Louis Bory
Encyclopedia
Jean-Louis Bory was a French writer, journalist and film critic.
.
The son of a pharmacist and a teacher, he came from a family of teachers. With an atheist father and a non-practicing mother, religion played a minor role in his development. It was rather the Popular Front
that formed his character. A brilliant student at Étampes
, he entered the Lycée Henri-IV.
Just when he was ready to enter the École Normale Supérieure
in 1939, he was called up for military service. Returning to the Latin Quarter
in October 1942, he passed his agrégation des lettres
examinations in July 1945. Two months later, Flammarion
published his first novel, My Village in German Time, which won the Prix Goncourt
with the support of Colette
. Its sales of 500,000 copies represented an exceptional success, even as he was assigned a position in Haguenau
in the province of Bas-Rhin
. The money enabled him to buy from the Countess Cally, his aunt, the property his grandparents has acquired in 1880 in Méréville. It was known as "Villa des Iris", and he renamed it "La Calife" or "The Caliph". His second book (Dear Agle, 1947) proved less successful. In 1948 he was assigned to the Paris region and was able to collaborate at the La Gazette des Lettres with Robert Kanters, Paul Guth
and François Mauriac
.
Politically, he was of that generation disappointed that there was no development from "resistance movement to revolution." He was even solicited by Aragon
to join the CPF
. But he preferred to limit his membership to quasi-communist groups like the pacifist Mouvement de la Paix
, the National Writers Association, and the France-USSR Association. Appointed to the Lycée Voltaire in 1950, he made his debut as a journalism in 1952 in Samedi Soir. But in 1955, he chose to follow his friend Francis Erval to L'Express, which was the mouthpiece of Pierre Mendès France, to whose politics he was increasingly attracted.
Moreover, in 1956, he broke with the Communists
on Soviet intervention in Hungary against which he signed a petition with Edgar Morin
, Gilles Martinet, Jean-Marie Domenach
, and Georges Suffert. He also resigned from the Honorary Committee of the Association France-USSR. This did not prevent him from promoting its third-world anti-colonialist positions. Thus, in 1960, when his editor Rene Julliard proposed he sign the Manifesto of the 121
, he did not hesitate and found himself suspended from the professorship he had held at the Lycée Henri-IV since 1957. He was reinstated after a few months, but this event marked a rupture in his relationship with the teaching profession for which he had always had the utmost respect. His students gave him a great deal of satisfaction, and it was not uncommon to hear the cry of joy "Mom, I've got Bory", as Michel Cournot
remembered according to an article published after Bory's death in the Nouvel Observateur.
In 1957, he joined the editorial board of the Cahiers des saisons, where he published short literary texts. In 1961, he replaced François Truffaut
as a film critic for the weekly Arts. The following year, he gave up teaching and his work at La Gazette des Lettres to devote himself to journalism and literature. His attempt to relaunch his literary career with L’Odeur de l'herbe (Julliard, 1962) was not a success. But joining the broadcasts of the program Le Masque et la Plume in 1964 provided him with an audience that contributed to his success as a citic. At the end 1964, out of loyalty to François Erval, he ceased his collaboration with L'Express.
In January 1965, Guy Dumur offered him the opportunity to continue his literary criticism in Nouvel Observateur. There he rehabilitated Louis-Ferdinand Céline
before making friends with Paul Morand
and Jacques Chardonne
. And the group he gathered in Méréville in 1964/1965François Nourissier
, Hervé Bazin
, Jean d'Ormesson
, Georges Suffert, Louis Pauwels
marked a turn to the right. His friendship spectrum was very broad but did not restrict his work load. Starting in November 1966 he replaced Michel Cournot
as film critic at Nouvel Observateur.
He ended his work for Arts he effectively became its film critic without actually working there. Famous for the jousting between him and Georges Charensol, and Aubria Michel (alias of Pierre Vallières
) at Masque et la plume, he defended the cinema of the Third World, especially African and Arab. He also appeared as the most influential art critic of the Latin Quarter's "Art et Essais" circuit. But his enthusiasm peaked in May 1968 when he was among leaders who stopped the Cannes Film Festival, where he was board member one year earlier. This did not prevent him from being a member of the Selection Committee from 1970 to 1973 nor from playing a major role at the festival of La Rochelle. He visited the offices of Nouvel Observateur only to drop off his articles.
He did not inject himself into the paper's decisions that he finds politically questionable. He phoned John Daniel regularly to comment on an editorial. He argued on behalf of the Palestinian cause that he thought was not defended as it should be. He spoke up for films that were avant-garde or shocking or devoted to questioning society, its institutions and traditional values. Aside from explicitly political films that he supported irrespective of artistic considerations, he defended films he valued not so much for their subject matter as for their subversion of traditional film language.
Godard
, Robbe-Grillet
, Resnais
, Pasolini
, Duras
and the Taviani brothers
were filmmakers who are close to his heart. Defender of an "alternative" culture, he was often aggressive towards films of the "Boulevard", made for mere entertainment or wide distribution, those that did not challenge the taboos of morality and social life or our habits of seeing and thinking. His contempt for the films of Michel Audiard
, Bourvil
and Louis de Funès
, which he considered bourgeois, matched his view of films like those of Henri Verneuil
exalting, according to Bory, bourgeois values, money and ambitionor those of Claude Lelouch, featuring characters socially "arrived" and thus legitimating them.
But if this freedom allowed him to devote his "chronicle of a film that will be seen neither by the author nor by [him]", it justified his very stingy wages. He considered the pledge Safer latter. As management was sorry to see him systematically ignore the big budget movies and those popular with the general public, it exerted a gentle pressure by creating a less militant competitor. But he is not really worried in 1972 and refuses to respond to the warm invitation of François Nourissier
to work for Point. Instead, he brought Michel Grisolia to help prepare small notes.
The 1970s were marked by his fight for homosexuals. This is reflected in his autobiographical works, The Skin of zebras in 1969 and All Born of Woman in 1976, but especially in My Half of Orange in (1973), a public success with sales of 50,000 copies in which he publicly announced his homosexuality. He appeared in the local gay association Arcadia, making his first conference. He then argued in his division leftism, FHAR, one of whose members, Hocquenghem, became Bory's co-author of How do you call us already?. He ended at the Homosexual Liberation Group
, always opposing those traditional constraints that weight most heavily on the working class and the marginalised.
Parallel to this fight, he published several essays on the popular novel, such as Eugene Sue, dandy and Socialist in 1973, and a historical essay The Revolution of July or the Three Glorious Days, in 1972. But his main success at this point in his career was Feet, which appeared in 1976 and sold over 100,000 copies. In this fantasy novel, he challenged some of the intelligentsia such as Simone de Beauvoir
and Michel Foucault
. Falling into a deep depression in August 1977, he re-emerged during a remission period that lasted from October 1978 to February 1979 and offered him the opportunity to publish an amusing portrait of Cambaceres in 1978. He committed suicide in Méréville during the night of 11 June 1979.
Life
Jean-Louis Bory was born on 25 June 1919 in Méréville, EssonneMéréville, Essonne
Méréville is a commune in the Essonne department in Île-de-France in northern France. It contains the Château de Méréville, with its famous 1786 landscape park.Inhabitants of Méréville are known as Mérévillois.-Geography:...
.
The son of a pharmacist and a teacher, he came from a family of teachers. With an atheist father and a non-practicing mother, religion played a minor role in his development. It was rather the Popular Front
Popular Front (France)
The Popular Front was an alliance of left-wing movements, including the French Communist Party , the French Section of the Workers' International and the Radical and Socialist Party, during the interwar period...
that formed his character. A brilliant student at Étampes
Étampes
Étampes is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southwest from the center of Paris . Étampes is a sub-prefecture of the Essonne department....
, he entered the Lycée Henri-IV.
Just when he was ready to enter the École Normale Supérieure
École Normale Supérieure
The École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...
in 1939, he was called up for military service. Returning to the Latin Quarter
Latin Quarter
Latin Quarter is a part of the 5th arrondissement in Paris.Latin Quarter may also refer to:* Latin Quarter , a British pop/rock band* Latin Quarter , a 1945 British film*Latin Quarter, Aarhus, part of Midtbyen, Aarhus C, Denmark...
in October 1942, he passed his agrégation des lettres
Agrégation des Lettres Classiques
The Agrégation des Lettres Classiques like its peer, the Agrégation de Grammaire, is a higher level French competitive examination held in theory to recruit senior secondary school teachers , who count as state civil servants. The number of posts offered varies slightly from year to year...
examinations in July 1945. Two months later, Flammarion
Groupe Flammarion
Groupe Flammarion is the fourth largest publishing group in France, comprising many units, including its namesake, founded in 1876 by Ernest Flammarion, as well as units in distribution, sales, printing and bookshops . Flammarion became part of the Italian media conglomerate RCS MediaGroup in 2000...
published his first novel, My Village in German Time, which won the Prix Goncourt
Prix Goncourt
The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...
with the support of Colette
Colette
Colette was the surname of the French novelist and performer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette . She is best known for her novel Gigi, upon which Lerner and Loewe based the stage and film musical comedies of the same title.-Early life and marriage:Colette was born to retired military officer Jules-Joseph...
. Its sales of 500,000 copies represented an exceptional success, even as he was assigned a position in Haguenau
Haguenau
-Economy:The town has a well balanced economy. Centuries of troubled history in the buffer lands between France and Germany have bequeathed to Haguenau a rich historical and cultural heritage which supports a lively tourist trade. There is also a thriving light manufacturing sector centred on the...
in the province of Bas-Rhin
Bas-Rhin
Bas-Rhin is a department of France. The name means "Lower Rhine". It is the more populous and densely populated of the two departments of the Alsace region, with 1,079,013 inhabitants in 2006.- History :...
. The money enabled him to buy from the Countess Cally, his aunt, the property his grandparents has acquired in 1880 in Méréville. It was known as "Villa des Iris", and he renamed it "La Calife" or "The Caliph". His second book (Dear Agle, 1947) proved less successful. In 1948 he was assigned to the Paris region and was able to collaborate at the La Gazette des Lettres with Robert Kanters, Paul Guth
Paul Guth
Paul Guth was a French humorist, journalist and writer, and the President of the Académie des provinces françaises....
and François Mauriac
François Mauriac
François Mauriac was a French author; member of the Académie française ; laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature . He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur .-Biography:...
.
Politically, he was of that generation disappointed that there was no development from "resistance movement to revolution." He was even solicited by Aragon
Aragon
Aragon is a modern autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. Located in northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces : Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel. Its capital is Zaragoza...
to join the CPF
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a large membership, behind only that of the Union for a Popular Movement , and considerable influence in French...
. But he preferred to limit his membership to quasi-communist groups like the pacifist Mouvement de la Paix
Mouvement de la Paix
The Mouvement de la Paix is an organisation which promotes a culture of peace initiated by the United Nations. The movement was created in the aftermath of the Second World War by the large resistance movements, particularly those associated with communists, Christians and free-thinkers, and was...
, the National Writers Association, and the France-USSR Association. Appointed to the Lycée Voltaire in 1950, he made his debut as a journalism in 1952 in Samedi Soir. But in 1955, he chose to follow his friend Francis Erval to L'Express, which was the mouthpiece of Pierre Mendès France, to whose politics he was increasingly attracted.
Moreover, in 1956, he broke with the Communists
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a large membership, behind only that of the Union for a Popular Movement , and considerable influence in French...
on Soviet intervention in Hungary against which he signed a petition with Edgar Morin
Edgar Morin
Edgar Morin is a French philosopher and sociologist born Edgar Nahoum in Paris on July 8, 1921. He is of Judeo-Spanish origin. He is known for the transdisciplinarity of his works.- Biography :...
, Gilles Martinet, Jean-Marie Domenach
Jean-Marie Domenach
Jean-Marie Domenach was a French writer and intellectual. He was noted as a left-wing and Catholic thinker.He took over in 1957 the editorship of Esprit, the literary and political journal of personalism founded in 1945 by Emmanuel Mounier and continued from 1950 to 1957 by Albert Béguin...
, and Georges Suffert. He also resigned from the Honorary Committee of the Association France-USSR. This did not prevent him from promoting its third-world anti-colonialist positions. Thus, in 1960, when his editor Rene Julliard proposed he sign the Manifesto of the 121
Manifesto of the 121
The Manifesto of the 121 was an open letter signed by 121 intellectuals and published on 6 September 1960 in the magazine Vérité-Liberté. It called on the French government, then headed by the Gaullist Michel Debré, and public opinion to recognise the Algerian War as a legitimate struggle for...
, he did not hesitate and found himself suspended from the professorship he had held at the Lycée Henri-IV since 1957. He was reinstated after a few months, but this event marked a rupture in his relationship with the teaching profession for which he had always had the utmost respect. His students gave him a great deal of satisfaction, and it was not uncommon to hear the cry of joy "Mom, I've got Bory", as Michel Cournot
Michel Cournot
Michel Cournot was a French journalist, screenwriter and film director. His only film as a director, Les Gauloises bleues, was due to be entered at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, but the festival was cancelled because to the events of May 1968 in France.-External links:...
remembered according to an article published after Bory's death in the Nouvel Observateur.
In 1957, he joined the editorial board of the Cahiers des saisons, where he published short literary texts. In 1961, he replaced François Truffaut
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
as a film critic for the weekly Arts. The following year, he gave up teaching and his work at La Gazette des Lettres to devote himself to journalism and literature. His attempt to relaunch his literary career with L’Odeur de l'herbe (Julliard, 1962) was not a success. But joining the broadcasts of the program Le Masque et la Plume in 1964 provided him with an audience that contributed to his success as a citic. At the end 1964, out of loyalty to François Erval, he ceased his collaboration with L'Express.
In January 1965, Guy Dumur offered him the opportunity to continue his literary criticism in Nouvel Observateur. There he rehabilitated Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Louis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of French writer and physician Louis-Ferdinand Destouches . Céline was chosen after his grandmother's first name. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both French and...
before making friends with Paul Morand
Paul Morand
Paul Morand was a French diplomat, novelist, playwright and poet, considered an early Modernist.He was a graduate of the Paris Institute of Political Studies...
and Jacques Chardonne
Jacques Chardonne
Jacques Chardonne is the pseudonym of French writer Jacques Boutelleau...
. And the group he gathered in Méréville in 1964/1965François Nourissier
François Nourissier
François Nourissier was a French journalist and writer.Nourissier was the secretary-general of Éditions Denoël , editor of the review La Parisienne , and an adviser with the Éditions Grasset Paris publishing house .In 1970, he won the Prix Femina for his book La crève...
, Hervé Bazin
Hervé Bazin
Hervé Bazin was a French writer, whose best-known novels covered semi-autobiographical topics of teenage rebellion and dysfunctional families.- Biography :...
, Jean d'Ormesson
Jean d'Ormesson
Count Jean Lefèvre d'Ormesson is a French novelist whose work mostly consists of partially or totally autobiographic novels.- Life :...
, Georges Suffert, Louis Pauwels
Louis Pauwels
Louis Pauwels was a French journalist and writer.- Biography :Louis Pauwels was a teacher at Athis-Mons from 1939 to 1945 , Louis Pauwels wrote in many monthly literary French magazines as early as 1946 until the...
marked a turn to the right. His friendship spectrum was very broad but did not restrict his work load. Starting in November 1966 he replaced Michel Cournot
Michel Cournot
Michel Cournot was a French journalist, screenwriter and film director. His only film as a director, Les Gauloises bleues, was due to be entered at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, but the festival was cancelled because to the events of May 1968 in France.-External links:...
as film critic at Nouvel Observateur.
He ended his work for Arts he effectively became its film critic without actually working there. Famous for the jousting between him and Georges Charensol, and Aubria Michel (alias of Pierre Vallières
Pierre Vallières
Pierre Vallières , was a Québécois journalist, and writer. He was considered an intellectual leader of the Front de libération du Québec ....
) at Masque et la plume, he defended the cinema of the Third World, especially African and Arab. He also appeared as the most influential art critic of the Latin Quarter's "Art et Essais" circuit. But his enthusiasm peaked in May 1968 when he was among leaders who stopped the Cannes Film Festival, where he was board member one year earlier. This did not prevent him from being a member of the Selection Committee from 1970 to 1973 nor from playing a major role at the festival of La Rochelle. He visited the offices of Nouvel Observateur only to drop off his articles.
He did not inject himself into the paper's decisions that he finds politically questionable. He phoned John Daniel regularly to comment on an editorial. He argued on behalf of the Palestinian cause that he thought was not defended as it should be. He spoke up for films that were avant-garde or shocking or devoted to questioning society, its institutions and traditional values. Aside from explicitly political films that he supported irrespective of artistic considerations, he defended films he valued not so much for their subject matter as for their subversion of traditional film language.
Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
, Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet , was a French writer and filmmaker. He was, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon, one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman trend. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice...
, Resnais
Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
, Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure...
, Duras
Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Donnadieu, better known as Marguerite Duras was a French writer and film director.-Background:...
and the Taviani brothers
Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
Paolo and Vittorio Taviani are noted Italian film directors and screenwriters...
were filmmakers who are close to his heart. Defender of an "alternative" culture, he was often aggressive towards films of the "Boulevard", made for mere entertainment or wide distribution, those that did not challenge the taboos of morality and social life or our habits of seeing and thinking. His contempt for the films of Michel Audiard
Michel Audiard
Pierre Michel Audiard was a French dialogue writer, screenwriter and film director. He is the father of French film director Jacques Audiard.- 1940 - 1950 :*1949 :** Mission à Tanger of André Hunebelle...
, Bourvil
Bourvil
André Bourvil, born André Robert Raimbourg was a French actor and singer best known for his roles in comedy, most notably in his collaboration with Louis de Funès in La Grande Vadrouille .-Biography:His father was killed in the First World War before Bourvil was born...
and Louis de Funès
Louis de Funès
Louis Germain David de Funès de Galarza was a very popular French actor who is one of the giants of French comedy alongside André Bourvil and Fernandel...
, which he considered bourgeois, matched his view of films like those of Henri Verneuil
Henri Verneuil
Henri Verneuil was a French-Armenian playwright and filmmaker, who enjoyed a successful career in France.-Biography:...
exalting, according to Bory, bourgeois values, money and ambitionor those of Claude Lelouch, featuring characters socially "arrived" and thus legitimating them.
But if this freedom allowed him to devote his "chronicle of a film that will be seen neither by the author nor by [him]", it justified his very stingy wages. He considered the pledge Safer latter. As management was sorry to see him systematically ignore the big budget movies and those popular with the general public, it exerted a gentle pressure by creating a less militant competitor. But he is not really worried in 1972 and refuses to respond to the warm invitation of François Nourissier
François Nourissier
François Nourissier was a French journalist and writer.Nourissier was the secretary-general of Éditions Denoël , editor of the review La Parisienne , and an adviser with the Éditions Grasset Paris publishing house .In 1970, he won the Prix Femina for his book La crève...
to work for Point. Instead, he brought Michel Grisolia to help prepare small notes.
The 1970s were marked by his fight for homosexuals. This is reflected in his autobiographical works, The Skin of zebras in 1969 and All Born of Woman in 1976, but especially in My Half of Orange in (1973), a public success with sales of 50,000 copies in which he publicly announced his homosexuality. He appeared in the local gay association Arcadia, making his first conference. He then argued in his division leftism, FHAR, one of whose members, Hocquenghem, became Bory's co-author of How do you call us already?. He ended at the Homosexual Liberation Group
Front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire
The front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire was a loose Parisian movement founded in 1971, resulting from a rapprochement between lesbian feminists and gay activists. If the movement could be considered to have leaders, they were Guy Hocquenghem and Françoise d'Eaubonne, while other members...
, always opposing those traditional constraints that weight most heavily on the working class and the marginalised.
Parallel to this fight, he published several essays on the popular novel, such as Eugene Sue, dandy and Socialist in 1973, and a historical essay The Revolution of July or the Three Glorious Days, in 1972. But his main success at this point in his career was Feet, which appeared in 1976 and sold over 100,000 copies. In this fantasy novel, he challenged some of the intelligentsia such as Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...
and Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
. Falling into a deep depression in August 1977, he re-emerged during a remission period that lasted from October 1978 to February 1979 and offered him the opportunity to publish an amusing portrait of Cambaceres in 1978. He committed suicide in Méréville during the night of 11 June 1979.
Works
- Mon village à l'heure allemande, Flammarion, 1945.
- Fragile ou le panier d'œufs, Flammarion, 1950.
- Pour Balzac et quelques autres, éditions Julliard, 1960.
- Eugène Sue, dandy et socialiste, Hachette, 1962.
- L'Odeur de l'herbe, Julliard, 1962.
- La Peau des zèbres, Gallimard, 1969.
- Cinéma I : Des yeux pour voir, 10/18, 1971.
- La Révolution de juillet, Gallimard, 1972.
- Cinéma II : La Nuit complice, 10/18, 1972.
- Cinéma III : Ombre vive, 10/18, 1973.
- Questions au cinéma (Editions Stock, 1973)
- Ma moitié d'orange (première publication en 1973 in Idéee fixe Julliard) republished « Classiques H&O poche », Béziers : H&O, 2005, 128 pages. (ISBN 2-84547-110-6)
- Cinéma IV : L'Ecran fertile, 10/18, 1974.
- Cinéma V : La Lumière écrit, 10/18, 1975.
- Tous nés d'une femme, Gallimard, 1976.
- Cinéma VI : L'Obstacle et la gerbe, 10/18, 1976.
- Cinéma VII : Rectangle multiple, 10/18, 1977.
- « Vivre à midi », in Comment nous appelez-vous déjà ? ou ces garçons que l'on dit homosexuels, with Guy Hocquenghem, Calmann-Lévy, 1977.
- Le Pied, Belfond, 1977.
- Un prix d'excellence, Gallimard, 1986.
Biographies
- Daniel Garcia, Jean-Louis Bory, 1919–1979, Flammarion, 1979 (réédition en 2009).
- Marie-Claude Jardin, Jean-Louis Bory, Belfond, 1991.