Marguerite Duras – Un Barrage contre le Pacifique – du roman au cinéma en passant par le film
Un Barrage contre le Pacifique by Marguerite Duras - from Novel to Theatre Via Movie

Summary/Abstract: Un barrage contre le Pacifique (1950) is the first Marguerite Duras’s successful novel to have been made into a movie in 1958 and subsequently to have been put on stage in 2000 at Antoine Theatre in Paris. The analysis of formal mechanisms to be found in the writer’s work contains an issue which needs to be examined beyond the boundaries specific to literature or aesthetic discourse. The issue of reality, the complex masks/facets of image, the narrative, cinematographic and theatrical protocols offer one a plurality of meanings and a window towards new interpretations. As in the case of writer Nancy Huston, Marguerite Duras’s life is reflected in each of her works. The author tells the story of her mother gathering her forces to erect a dam against tides, trying to save the only thing left to her: a patch of land. Un barrage contre le Pacifique is one of the most touching novels displaying a tint of autobiography that Duras wrote: Indochina in the 20’s, described as a world of contrasts: bright and phantasmal, crude, viscous and sensual at the same time. The impossibility of stopping the force of „the tides of life” through a dam and the incapacity of erecting barriers against suffering are conveyed among and beyond the lines of this novel.

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