Is cinema more authoritative than literature ?

Films : Tsili (2014), based on the novel by Aharon Appelfeld ; Roses on Credit (2010), based on the novel by Elsa Triolet.

Literature doesn't need cinema. It doesn't impose a ready-made image that tries to flesh out a text. It's up to the reader to do that, in different ways. Cinema is more authoritarian. It gives a unique interpretation of a text. In theory, cinema is linear. You watch a film from beginning to end, in the order in which the sequences follow one another, whereas when you're reading a novel, you can always stop whenever you like. I always say to the writers I adapt : " I don't want to illustrate your text, because it deserves to exist on its own. I'm doing this adaptation to create a dialogue between two independent disciplines. Each has its own weapons. I'm interested in this process of interpretation : I'll remain faithful to the spirit of the project, but not necessarily to its letter. "

Tsili (2014), full-length film, based on the novel by Aharon Appelfeld

I chose to embody the story of Tsili, using three female protagonists : two actresses, Sarah Adler and Meshi Olinski, and one voice, that of Lea Koenig. As if there were huge gaps in this generation of young female Holocaust survivors. As if they were missing the years of pleasure and youth that will never be returned to them. The film was shot in Yiddish, the language of the European diaspora. I was inspired by what Aharon Appelfeld says to Philip Roth in Parlons travail :

" The reality of the Holocaust is beyond imagination. If I'd stuck to the facts, no one would have believed me. But from the moment I chose a girl a little older than I was at the time, I removed " the story of my life " from the stranglehold of memory, and ceded it to the laboratory of creation, of which memory is not the sole owner. "

Roses on Credit (2010)

After the war, Marjoline, a beautiful teenager, arrives in Paris. She becomes a manicurist in a beauty salon and marries Daniel, a horticultural researcher. As a wedding present, they receive a beautiful, modern apartment. Marjoline is at the height of happiness. To furnish it, she goes into debt, despite Daniel's opposition. Her obsessive desire to consume is about to jeopardize their happiness. Based on Elsa Triolet's novel, Roses à crédit, éditions Gallimard, collection Folio (^1st publication 1959).

" The film ruthlessly, yet sensitively, dissects the materialism of post-war middle-class France [...] Amos Gitai skilfully follows the sentimental twists and turns of this unhappy marriage, as debt and consumer credit gradually overwhelm the early romance. The reconstruction movement of the 1950s punctuates daily life, but also the ebb and flow of the love affair. "

Piers Handling, Toronto International Film Festival.