Literature and Popular Culture
The unusual story has continued to fascinate and inspire many writers.
- Alexandre Dumas, père, included a fictional account of the events in his novel The Two Dianas, as well as in his multi-volume Celebrated Crimes (1841).
- Janet Lewis' historical novel, The Wife of Martin Guerre (1941), is a fictional exploration of Bertrande and her motives for her actions.
- The 1982 film Le Retour de Martin Guerre (The Return of Martin Guerre), directed by Daniel Vigne and starring Gérard Depardieu and Nathalie Baye, was based on the historic accounts. The screenplay added a fictional ending, including an account of Bertrande's motives. Historian Davis (see above) served as consultant for the film.
- Sommersby (1993) was an American Hollywood adaptation of the story, starring Jodie Foster and Richard Gere. It set the events in the United States, during and after the American Civil War.
- The musical The House of Martin Guerre (1993) was based on the case and first produced in Toronto.
- The musical Martin Guerre (1996), by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, premiered in London at the Prince Edward Theatre. It set the story at time of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, during the French government's persecution of the Huguenots. Its ending deviated from the historical account.
- Wiedersehen mit einem Fremden (The Return of a Stranger), a 2010 German TV film, directed by Niki Stein, sets the account in a village in the Black Forest after World War II. The end differs from the historic events.
- Another musical titled Martin Guerre, written by Laura Harrington and Roger Ames, was premiered at the Hartford Stage, 1993, directed by Mark Lamos and starred Judy Kuhn. It won the Connecticut "Best Play" award that year, and had a sold out, extended run into 1994.
Read more about this topic: Martin Guerre
Famous quotes containing the words literature and, literature, popular and/or culture:
“The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but as I love literature and to some extent the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“One of the necessary qualifications of an efficient business man in these days of industrial literature seems to be the ability to write, in clear and idiomatic English, a 1,000-word story on how efficient he is and how he got that way.... It seems that the entire business world were devoting its working hours to the creation of a school of introspective literature.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“Vodka is our enemy, so let’s finish it off.”
—Russian saying popular in the Soviet period, trans. by Vladimir Ivanovich Shlyakov (1993)
“Culture is the suggestion, from certain best thoughts, that a man has a range of affinities through which he can modulate the violence of any master-tones that have a droning preponderance in his scale, and succor him against himself. Culture redresses this imbalance, puts him among equals and superiors, revives the delicious sense of sympathy, and warns him of the dangers of solitude and repulsion.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)