As a writer, Marguerite Duras's work is identified, along with that of such authors as Alain Robbe-Grillet and Jean Cayrol, with the tradition of the New Novel. Duras began working in film as a screenwriter, with an original script for Alain Resnais's first feature, Hiroshima mon amour. She subsequently wrote a number of film adaptations from her novels. She directed her first film, La Musica, in 1966.
Values change and time plays tricks on one's memory of how it really was. Back in the early 1930s, when talking pictures were gaining a foothold in this country and all foreign nations were exhibiting their product in America, it seemed as if there was nobody in films as charming, witty, and multi-talented as Sacha Guitry. His films, made in France, appeared at all the best art houses; he was a delightful actor, a director with a Lubitsch-like wit, and a writer of amusing sophisticated comedy. Seeing his films today in revival, however, they do not seem that funny.
