Marguerite Duras

Scénariste, Directeur, Acteur

4 avril 1914 — 3 mars 1996 (81 ans)
Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu (4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996), known as Marguerite Duras, was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film Hiroshima mon amour (1959) earned her a nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards.

Duras was born Marguerite Donnadieu on 4 April 1914, in Gia Định, Cochinchina, French Indochina (now Vietnam). Her parents, Marie (née Legrand, 1877–1956) and Henri Donnadieu (1872–1921), were teachers from France who likely had met at Gia Định High School. They both had previous marriages. Marguerite had two brothers: Pierre, the older, and the younger Paul.

Duras' father fell ill and he returned to France, where he died in 1921, when Duras was seven years old. Between 1922 and 1924, the family lived in France while her mother was on administrative leave. They then moved back to French Indochina when she was posted to Phnom Penh followed by Vĩnh Long and Sa Đéc. The family struggled financially, and her mother made a bad investment in an isolated property and area of rice farmland in Prey Nob, a story which was fictionalized in Un barrage contre le Pacifique (The Sea Wall).

In 1931, when she was 17, Duras and her family moved to France where she successfully passed the first part of the baccalaureate with the choice of Vietnamese as a foreign language, as she spoke it fluently. Duras returned to Saigon in late 1932 where her mother found a teaching post. There, Marguerite continued her education at the Lycée Chasseloup-Laubat and completed the second part of the baccalaureate, specializing in philosophy.

In autumn 1933, Duras moved to Paris, graduating with a degree in public law in 1936. At the same time, she took classes in mathematics. She continued her education, earning a diplôme d'études supérieures (DES) in public law and, later, in political economy. After finishing her studies in 1937, she found employment with the French government at the Ministry of the Colonies. In 1939, she married the writer Robert Antelme, whom she had met during her studies.

During World War II, from 1942 to 1944, Duras worked for the Vichy government in an office that allocated paper quotas to publishers and in the process operated a de facto book-censorship system. She then became an active member of the PCF (the French Communist Party) and a member of the French Resistance as a part of a small group that also included François Mitterrand, who later became President of France and remained a lifelong friend of hers. Duras' husband, Antelme, was deported to Buchenwald in 1944 for his involvement in the Resistance, and barely survived the experience (weighing on his release, according to Duras, just 38 kg, or 84 pounds). She nursed him back to health, but they divorced once he recovered.

In 1943, when publishing her first novel, she began to use the surname Duras, after the town that her father came from, Duras, Lot-et-Garonne.

In 1950, her mother returned to France from Indochina, wealthy from property investments and from the boarding school she had run. ...

Source: Article "Marguerite Duras" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA.

Films & Séries sur Plex

  • La Douleur
    La Douleur2017

Connue pour

  • Hiroshima mon amour
    Hiroshima mon amour1959
  • L'Amant
    L'Amant1992
  • India Song
    India Song1975
  • Mademoiselle
    Mademoiselle1966
  • Moderato cantabile
    Moderato cantabile1960
  • Baxter, Vera Baxter
    Baxter, Vera Baxter1977
  • La Douleur
    La Douleur2017
  • Une aussi longue absence
    Une aussi longue absence1961
  • Le Camion
    Le Camion1977
  • Le Navire Night
    Le Navire Night1979
  • Agatha et les lectures illimitées
    Agatha et les lectures illimitées1981
  • Les Mains négatives
    Les Mains négatives1978
  • Un barrage contre le Pacifique
    Un barrage contre le Pacifique2008
  • Suzanna Andler
    Suzanna Andler2021
  • Azuro
    Azuro2022
  • En rachâchant
    En rachâchant1982
  • La Voleuse
    La Voleuse1966
  • Cet amour-là
    Cet amour-là2001
  • Le marin de Gibraltar
    Le marin de Gibraltar1967
  • Des journées entières dans les arbres
    Des journées entières dans les arbres1977

Filmographie