Gerard Reve on
Louis Ferdinand Céline
Louis Ferdinand Céline
Documentary, 1986,
47 minutes
47 minutes
Journey
to the
End of the
Night
Directed by erik lieshout
↓
↓
VOYAGE AU BOUT
DE LA NUIT
DE LA NUIT
In melancholic black and white, 25 year old filmmaker, Erik Lieshout, filmed Dutch writer Gerard Reve as he discussed Lous Ferdinand Céline and his novel Journey to the End of the Night. Lieshout followed Reve loosely tracing Céline’s biography visiting the various residences, clinics and haunts of his life in Paris. Throughout Reve reads his Dutch translations of Céline whilst adding commentary and connected thoughts.
The film is somber, poetic, and mordant. It is also quite touching as it is a genuine document of one writer addressing the work of a now dead influence; subsequently a feeling of mortality and artistic longing pervades. (Lieshout is to be lauded for his precocious steadiness.)The work of Gerard Reve and Lous Ferdinand Céline was fraught with controversy — Céline’s more so and rightly. My desire to translate the piece comes from a deep love of Reve. Céline’s work I have never actually read; I can appreciate and somewhat understand Reve’s admiration from a distance — but Céline’s clear and serious misanthropy does not interest me. To me Reve, here and in all his art, remains a significant and profound elegist of what is often called the human condition — particularly of the staid and provincial Dutch version.
This site is a translation and subtitling project by Folkert Gorter; it is unauthorized and not affiliated with Erik Lieshout or the nos. The motivation is to share and pay tribute, to both Reve and Lieshout.
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