Alain Resnais’ Theatrical Cinema

Tadeusz Lubelski

Abstract

Alain Resnais was an avid theatregoer and it is no wonder that in Hiroshima, mon amour (1959) actors’ unnatural declamation stood out, and in the Last Year at Marienbad (1961) – the theatrical quotes. However, it is only since the mid 1980s that the poetics of the theatre in his films came to the fore. On the one hand, these were the adaptations of the plays of the English playwright Alan Ayckbourn – Smoking/No Smoking (1993) and Private Fears in Public Places (2006), on the other – straightforward performances on stage, omitting even the phase of the scenario: Melo (1986) by Henry Bernstein and Andre Barde and Maurice yvain’s operetta Not on the Lips (2003). The culmi- nation of this artistic search are the director’s last two films – You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet! (2012, based on a play by Jean Anouilh), and Life of Riley (Aimer, boire et chanter, 2013, based on a play by Ayckbourn) – that combine the above features and add new subject yet: the intermingling of theatre and life in the biography of the actors. Lubelski attempts to systematise the forms of presence of theatre in Resnais’ films and reflects on their relationship with the poetics of cinema.