Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir

by Max Cacopardo, Director
First Run/Icarus Films, Brooklyn, NY, 1967
Video and DVD, 60 mins., b/w
Sales (Video-DVD), $390; rental (Video),$125
Distributor’s website: http://www.frif.com/.

Reviewed by Andrea Dahlberg

andrea.dahlberg@bakernet.com

Over the past few years we have seen some outstanding documentary portraits of intellectuals such as Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman's film of Jacques Derrida and Guttenplan's beautifully simple film of Edward Said. Regrettably, Max Cacopardo’s 1967 film of Sartre and de Beauvoir is nowhere near as good.

Claude Lanzmann and Madelaine Gobeil question Sartre and de Beauvoir by asking them to respond to some of the most facile criticisms ever made about them. De Beauvoir is asked if she has any right to comment on the position of women as she has never had children. She is predictably irritated with the question and, just as predictably, demolishes it in a few short sentences ("one does not have to be a crow to write about crows"). Both are asked if they are happy, fulfilled and have led important, successful lives. This line of questioning fails to produce much as Sartre and de Beauvoir are plainly not interested in the questions. Every now and again they rise above the "it is often said" line of questioning and so allow the viewer to glimpse the brilliant subjects that should have been allowed to reveal themselves in this film. In one of these moments Gobeil asks Sartre a confused question about his role presiding over a war crimes tribunal and also repeats some unattributed criticism that the tribunal is a waste of time anyway. Sartre identifies the two questions and provides a long reply analysing the assumptions behind them. His answer covers the roles of the intellectual and the citizen in society, the logic of imperialism, the role of international law and tribunals in dealing with war crimes, the nuclear threat, the international role of the United States and the Vietnam War. In the few moments in the film like this one sees the sort of film it could have been. With subjects as articulate, passionate and as engaged with contemporary issues as these there is really very little any film maker needed to do other than raise a subject and record the response.

When not inviting de Beauvoir and Sartre to respond to facile questions, the film uses voiceover to describe them and their daily routine. In contrast to the questioning, the voice-over is laudable and tells us that these are amongst the most important writers of their age. There is much talk of "les ecrivains" and how they follow a strict routine; working separately in the morning and meeting for lunch at a café, followed by another period of work together. The laudatory comments seem superfluous, and the descriptions of their ways of working would have been much better if they have described themselves.

Both de Beauvoir and Sartre were generous subjects who allowed their apartments and even bedrooms to be filmed (Sartre's reveals a single bed, neatly made, with a bedspread of crocheted squares like the ones my great-grandmother used to make); de Beauvoir takes Gobeil on a walking tour of Paris and points out places of significance to her and Sartre and Sartre's mother is interviewed about her "little Poulou". These little details of daily life are what is interesting in the film. Both de Beauvoir and Sartre are very well dressed. Sartre wears a tie and cufflinks; de Beauvoir is immaculate in matching coats, handbags and shoes.

The film is not well served by the sub-titles, which are sometimes clumsy and grammatically incorrect. Annoyingly, not all the speech is translated.

At the end of the film Lanzmann asks de Beauvoir and Sartre why they allowed themselves to be filmed. De Beauvoir explains that they have turned down many requests for interviews from French TV stations but collaborated with Gobeil and Lanzmann because they are friends, and the resulting record will be some kind of record or gift to their readers. This film will always be of interest because of its subjects and because there are relatively few films of them. This is the first time this film has been made available on video or DVD. One just wishes that a Guttenplan or a Kofman had been directing.