Vol. 8 · No. 2 · 2002

Jean-Paul Sartre

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Abstract

Les Temps modernes is publishing here for the first time a film script written by Sartre during the winter of 1943-1944. We thank Daniel Accursi for generously passing it along and Michel Contat for preparing it for publication. Sartre's article entitled "A film for the post-war period," which appeared [unsigned] in L'Ecran français and was incorporated into the Lettres françaises [clandestine], no. 15, April 1944, clearly indicates the purpose of this project: "On screen-and only on screen-is there place for a panic-stricken, a furious or a serene crowd. The novelist can evoke the masses; if the dramatist wants to rep-resent them on stage, he must symbolize them by using half a dozen characters who assume the name and function of the chorus; only films show them. And it is to the masses themselves that they do so: to fifteen million or twenty million spectators. It is in this manner that film can speak about the crowd to the crowd. That is what the great pioneers of film, such as Griffith, Cecil B. de Mille and King Vidor understood so well. This does not mean that films cannot show love stories or conflicts between individuals. Far from it. But they must reinsert them into their social setting. The speed with which the camera can move from place to place also permits it to situate a story in the whole universe. The well-known rule of theatrical unity in French classical drama does not apply at all to film. One can even introduce several plots simultaneously, have them unfold in different settings and have their very diversity con-tribute to the creation of a complete social situation. The film's unity therefore emanates from its profound meaning, from the epoch it restores, and not from the concatenation of the circumstances that make up a minuscule and unique anecdote.