Simone de Beauvoir 1959, 1975, Copyright 2008, Released 2012
Distributed by Icarus Films, 32 Court St., 21st Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201; 800-876-1710
Produced by ARTE France Développement. Archival footage from Radio-Canada and Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA)
Director n/a
DVD, color and b&w, 90 min.
College - General Adult
Feminism, French Literature, French Studies, Philosophy, Women’s Studies
Date Entered: 08/22/2012
Reviewed by Elizabeth A. Novara, Curator, Historical Manuscripts, University of Maryland, College ParkThis DVD includes two original television interviews with the prominent French writer and intellectual Simone de Beauvoir. The first interview with journalist Wilfrid Lemoine, in black and white, was filmed in 1959 by Radio-Canada, but never aired due to censorship by the Catholic Church in response to de Beauvoir’s then controversial feminist views on marriage. When de Beauvoir died in 1986, Radio-Canada attempted to air the program again but hockey playoffs cut the program short. The second interview, in color, entitled “Why I Am a Feminist” is hosted by Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber in 1975 on his television program, Questionnaire. While the both interviews are freely available via the Radio-Canada archives and INA websites, this DVD production makes the interviews accessible to English-language audiences with optional English subtitles. The subtitles provide an accurate, succinct translation of the often complex responses provided by de Beauvoir to her interviewers. Beyond the brief synopses provided on the back cover of the DVD case, the DVD does not deliver any contextual information on the bare bones disc menu. Additional history and context for these primary source interviews will need to be provided by an instructor or explored by viewers on their own.
During her lifetime Simone de Beauvoir was interviewed several times, including a few occasions with her long-time companion, lover, and fellow intellectual, Jean-Paul Sartre. This release showcases two of her earliest known solo interviews and acknowledges de Beauvoir’s individual accomplishments as a writer. In the interviews she discusses her views on existentialism, atheism, free love, sexism, and feminism. She also responds to questions regarding her published works: her autobiographical Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter; her 1954 novel The Mandarins; and the essential feminist classic and her most influential work The Second Sex. In the 1975 interview she also situates herself in the 1970s French feminist movement, notably her views on the Women’s Liberation Movement (MLF), abortion, and the impact that The Second Sex had on women’s lives over the past twenty-five years since the groundbreaking book was published.
Instructors of French literature and women’s studies will find this DVD particularly useful. De Beauvoir’s forceful and strong personality comes through in both interviews and gives life and new meaning to her philosophy, which most students will have only encountered on the page. With a newly unabridged translation of The Second Sex released in 2009, this accessible DVD remains relevant and will complement discussions of de Beauvoir’s significant works.