Proust at the movies

"Film established itself as an artistic form of expression at the same time that Proust started work on his masterpiece, A la recherche du temps perdu. If Proust apparently took little interest in what he described as a poor avatar of reductive, mimetic representation, the resonances between his own radical reworking of writing styles and the novelistic forms and cinema as the art of time are undeniable. Proust at the Movies is the first study in English to consider these rich interconnections. Its introductory chapter charts the missed encounter between Proust and the cinema and addresses the problems inherent in adapting his novel to the screen. The following chapters examine the various cinematic responses to A la recherche du temps perdu attempted to date. Luchino Visconti and Joseph Losey's failed attempts at adapting the whole of the novel in the 1970s, Volker Schlondorff's Un Amour de Swann (1984), Raoul Ruiz's Le Temps retroure (1999). Chantal Akerman's La Captire (2000), and Fabio Carpi's Quartetto Basileus (1982) and Le intermittenze del cuore (2003). The last chapter tracks the echoes of Proust's writing in the work of various directors, from Abel Gance to Jean-Luc Godard."--Jacket.