{"id":40439,"date":"2021-05-11T13:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-11T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/?p=40439"},"modified":"2025-12-13T22:30:33","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T21:30:33","slug":"billy-wilder-and-me-when-jonathan-coe-writes-on-the-camera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/en\/literature\/billy-wilder-and-me-when-jonathan-coe-writes-on-the-camera\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00abBilly Wilder and me\u00bb, when Jonathan Coe writes about the camera"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tuesday books - Lauriane Pipoz<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jonathan Coe's latest book is about cinema, nostalgia and youth. It takes us into the memories of a young Greek woman present on the tumultuous set of Fedora<\/em>, Billy Wilder's penultimate film. Somewhere between a novel and a biopic, Billy Wilder and me<\/em> stands out from the British author's other tales, proving that he still knows how to reinvent himself.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u00abMy daughter was right: young people don't notice their parents\u00bb feelings, don't even realize they have them most of the time. When it comes to their parents' emotions, they're blissful sociopaths.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In his latest novel, Jonathan Coe achieves the feat of linking themes and eras through a single character. Calista Frangopoulos, a Greek woman in her fifties living in America, has two daughters. As one of them leaves the nest, she suddenly thinks back to the trip she took to America when she was young. This adventure took her to the set of a Billy Wilder film in Corfu, then to Paris. But above all, this interlude introduced her to the cinema, which was to become a real passion: she was to become a film music composer.

Read also | <\/strong>Jonathan Coe, heartbroken by England in the 2010s<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Cinema as literary inspiration<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The theme of destiny is dear to the British author's heart. But what's most striking about this story is its mastery of mixing literary genres: sometimes it's a novel, sometimes a kind of biopic. Different facets of the director of Some like it hot<\/em> are presented in a non-linear fashion. They fall into place before us like a jigsaw puzzle, forming a coherent whole through the eyes and discussions drawn from the memories of Calista, an entirely fictional character.

Read also | <\/strong>Jonathan Coe: \u00abIt's fascinating how anything can become political in no time\u00bb<\/strong> <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the latter disappears in the book's strongest passage, a moment when the narrative turns into a screenplay. As we begin to glimpse the shadowy side of Billy Wilder, a part of his story - the most poignant, linked to Nazism - unfolds before our very eyes. Paradoxically, the face of the Hollywood director fades away to show us a man from an Austrian Jewish family destroyed by Nazism. Was the form of the script chosen to remind us that the filmmaker was shaped by his history and that the two are inseparable, or because literature is not so different from cinema?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parallels and abysses <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This formidably documented tale is made captivating not only by changes in tone, but also by leaps in time. Calista draws parallels between her daughter's life, her youth and the exchanges she would have had with Wilder, leading to reflections on parenthood and the passage of time. The latter is the theme of Fedora<\/em>, which reflects the director's own questioning. The numerous links and mise en abyme present throughout this book paint a magnificent picture of Hollywood cinema in the mid-twentieth century, carried by the figure of an aging filmmaker who knows he has fallen from grace. Initially outraged by changing public tastes, he may eventually come to accept this inevitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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