François Boyer was born on March 30, 1920 at Sézanne in the French Marne region (a part of Champagne-Ardenne). He died on March 24, 2003 at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the region of Yvelines, which is situated west of Paris.
He attended the “collège“ (high school) at Sézanne, then studied history at the University of Paris. After a very brief stint of working as a school teacher, he did an internship at the S.N.C.F. (“Société nationale des chemins de fer“, i.e. the “National society of French railways“), where his main tasks were to wave flags and distribute tickets. After two years, he decided to try something a little more exciting: having heard of the IDHEC, i.e. “Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques” or “Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies“ in Paris, he enrolled in 1943 as one of the Institute’s first students (1).
The IDHEC had been founded in the same year by Avantgarde filmmaker Marcel L’Herbier, and was active from 1943 to 1986. In 1988, it became part of La Fémis, the “École nationale supérieure des métiers de l’image et du son” or “National Institute for Professional Image and Sound”. From the beginning, the IDHEC was designed to not only serve as a school for the training of future filmmakers in the technical aspects of filmmaking, but also to promote film as an art form that would be taken as seriously as music, painting, or literature. Therefore, students also engaged with film theory and film art, and the institute encouraged experimentation, research, publications and conferences.
Between 1944 and 1988, 1,439 film professionals, both French and international, were trained there. Among them were famous directors such as Alain Resnais, Alain Boudet, Louis Malle, Volker Schlöndorff, Jacques Rozier, Yves Boisset, Mario Barroso, Dominique Cabrera and Patrick Rebeaud but also a great number of well-known film writers, sound and stage designers, producers, and other film-related professionals. The list of famous teachers of the IDHEC is also long, Louis Dacquin, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean Epstein being only a few examples.
In the early years of the Institute, the students had to complete one year of introductory training at the Parisian Lycée Voltaire, followed by two years during which they became familiar with all the different areas of film-making. François Boyer was among the first to graduate from the IDHEC in 1946, and later also taught at the IDHEC for a while. He trained to become an assistant director (“assistant-réalisateur”) but ended up not finding this area to be his main interest. In order to “convince the administrators of the IDHEC of the necessity to found a department of screenplay writing”, and to prove he was “capable of more” than he had been able to accomplish as an assistant director, Boyer wrote his first screenplay. It was titled “Croix de bois, croix de fer“ (“Wooden Crosses, Iron Crosses”).
According to Boyer himself, “everybody gave me compliments but nobody wanted it” (2). Nobody but René Clément, with whom Boyer regularly corresponded and who was one of its first readers. However, even Clément, a renowned director at the time, found that he could not sell it. Film producers were apparently convinced that “the public no longer wanted to hear about the war”, which is the main topic and setting of Boyer’s piece (3).
So, after finding the screenplay unsellable, Boyer turned it into a novel. In a later interview for the Gazette des scénaristes in 2000, Boyer further confessed that he wrote this novel to “impress a girl who admired Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men“ (4). This source of inspiration might help to explain some stylistic aspects of the prose that have received critical attention in the past, especially by film critic André Bazin (cf. XXX). In any case, Boyer was able to sell the novel to Parisian publisher Editions de Minuit, who published it in 1947 as Les Jeux inconnus.
At first, the novel was not a success in France – only 300 copies sold in the first four years. It was actually the English translation that was published in the United States in 1950 that became a best-seller: over 300,000 copies were sold there. However, Boyer himself did not earn a profit from the novel’s success in the US, having already sold the rights (5). Nevertheless, now that the novel had suddenly become a “hot property”, screenwriters Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost turned it back into a screenplay for Clément (6). Boyer assisted them in the process and is listed in the film credits.
Originally, Clément planned to turn the material into a short film. It was supposed to become the middle piece of a three-part series. However, its “lyricism and grace” impressed producer Robert Dorfmann (7), who recommended Clément expand it to full movie length. This movie, Jeux interdits, although turned down at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival, subsequently earned award after award: A Grand Prix indépendant Festival de Cannes in 1952 (an independent prize awarded by journalists), A Gold Lion at the Venice Biennale and even an Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Foreign Film, all in the same year. Also, the novel was re-published in France, now with the same title as the film. It ended up becoming a bestseller there as well, with 400,000 copies sold the following year alone (8).
Clément and his film subsequently received a lot of attention by journalists, critics, and researchers from many different fields. However, the original text by Boyer that served as the basis of its quality and success as a classic has been virtually ignored. This is only one reason why the text and its author deserve closer attention.
Sources:
1 cf. Sen Ma, “Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinématographique [sic.]: Fiche Filmographique Jeux Interdits“. In: Revue de presse film — Jeux interdits du 15/05/1952 au 17/01/1968. Archival Material (Jan 1, 1961). Retrieved via Cinémathèque Française Paris, http://www.cineressources.net/revues_presse/resultat_f/index.php?pk=47704¶m=F&textfield=jeux+interdits&rech_type=E&rech_mode=contient&pageF=1&pageP=1&type=FOR&pk_recherche=47704 [Accessed May 07, 2018], Online, n.p.
2 cf. Sen Ma, “Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinématographique [sic.]: Fiche Filmographique Jeux Interdits“. In: Revue de presse film — Jeux interdits du 15/05/1952 au 17/01/1968. Archival Material (Jan 1, 1961). Retrieved via Cinémathèque Française Paris, http://www.cineressources.net/revues_presse/resultat_f/index.php?pk=47704¶m=F&textfield=jeux+interdits&rech_type=E&rech_mode=contient&pageF=1&pageP=1&type=FOR&pk_recherche=47704 [Accessed May 07, 2018], Online, n.p.
3 Personal correspondence with Boyer expert Hélène Charpentier-Glavier, May 2018.
4 Le Pezennec, Marie-Anne and Annabelle Perrichon. “Eloge du soldat inconnu: Rencontre avec François Boyer“, in: La gazette des scénaristes (2000), 13, 64-73
5 cf. Le Pezennec, Marie-Anne and Annabelle Perrichon. “Eloge du soldat inconnu: Rencontre avec François Boyer“, in: La gazette des scénaristes (2000), 13, 64-73.
6 Matthews, Peter. “Forbidden Games: Death and the Maiden“, in: The Criterion Collection (Dec. 06, 2005), https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/408-forbidden-gamesdeath-and-the-maiden [Accessed November 18, 2019], Online, n.p.
7 Matthews, Peter. “Forbidden Games: Death and the Maiden“, in: The Criterion Collection (Dec. 06, 2005), https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/408-forbidden-gamesdeath-and-the-maiden [Accessed November 18, 2019], Online, n.p.
8 Sen Ma, “Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinématographique [sic.]: Fiche Filmographique Jeux Interdits“. In: Revue de presse film — Jeux interdits du 15/05/1952 au 17/01/1968. Archival Material (Jan 1, 1961). Retrieved via Cinémathèque Française Paris, http://www.cineressources.net/revues_presse/resultat_f/index.php?pk=47704¶m=F&textfield=jeux+interdits&rech_type=E&rech_mode=contient&pageF=1&pageP=1&type=FOR&pk_recherche=47704 [Accessed May 07, 2018], Online, n.p.