A Source of Vertigo : The novel " D'entre les morts "

"I am scared easily, here is a list of my adrenaline - production: 1: small children, 2: policemen, 3: high places, 4: that my next movie will not be as good as the last one. " Alfred Hitchcock

Here we have a link between Film and Literature.
This novel, written by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, was the inspiration for the film "Vertigo" by Alfred Hitchcock.

Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (Boileau-Narcejac)

Their lives

On the one hand, Pierre Boileau was born on April 28th 1906 in Paris. Although he had begun a commercial career, he also began writing tales and pieces of news that were published on magazines and newspapers. At that time, he did not use to write detective stories.
In 1932, he published his first short story in "Lecture pour tous" and two years later he published his first novel "La Pierre qui tremble". At that time he is an specialist in enigma.
After that, the War began and Pierre Boileau was made prisoner until 1942 when he was released due to problems of health.
When he arrived in Paris, he began publishing novels on "France Soir".
On the other hand, Thomas Narcejac was born on July 3rd 1908.
After studying at the university, he worked as a teacher of Philosophy and Letters. Simultaneously, he used to publish novels.
During those years Narcejac became deeply interested in detective novels and began his first detective novel "L'Assassin de minuit". After that, while working for Le Portulan, he wrote his second novel and essay "Esthétique du roman policier" where he analyses Boileau's work.

Their meeting and their work together

Thanks to "Esthétique du roman policier" the two writers met. At the beginning, they used to exchange ideas through letters but in 1950 they began working together. When writing novels both of the writers had a role: Frequently, Boileau provided the plot to the novel while Narcajac provided the psychology of the characters.
At the very beginning they wrote "L'ombre et la proie", which was, according to the writers, "only a model". Their second work "Celle qui n'etait plus" (1952) was not accepted by many Editorials, but in 1954 it was adapted by Henri-Georges Clouzot with the title of "Les Diaboliques" (The Devils) and surprisingly it became a resounding cinema success.
After this success, they publish many novels, which frequently were the inspiration for movies. For example : D'entre les morts became Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo or Sergio's Gobbi's Maldonne in 1968 and also the inspiration for TV programmes.
In this way, this couple worked together for almost forty years providing suspense to readers, film goers, etc.
The end of their career together finished with the death of Boileau in 1989. After Boileau's death,their last work was published "Le soleil dans la main" (1990) and Narcejac continued working on his own, but always signing Boileau-Narcejac until he died in 1998.

D'entre les morts

After the success of "The Devils", Alfred Hitchcock made sure that Paramount would buy the rights of the novel "D'entre les morts".

"D'entre les morts" is a crime novel, written in 1954. Although this novel was Hitchcock's inspiration for the film, he changed some elements of the novel, such as places and parts of the plot.
Originally, the story begins in France. Flavières, a former detective, gets in touch with an old friend who asks him to follow his wife Madeleine who has been behaving in a strange way for a certain amount of time. After keeping Madeleine under surveillance, Flavières falls in love with her, but she throws herself from a tower and he does not succeed at saving her from this fall. This traumatic experience makes Flavières leave Paris,for four years, just in the moment when the Germans were launching an offensive against France.When he goes back to France, France is free again and he remembers Madeleine obsessively. One day he sees a woman and he is convinced that this woman is Madeleine. He saw Madeleine dead, but , without paying attention to that fact, he starts a search of that woman.


Information taken from :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D'entre_les_morts http://www.livres-a-gogo.be/bio/biboilea.htm http://www.ratsdebiblio.net/boileaunarcejacsueurs.html http://www.polars.org/article77.html http://perso.orange.fr/calounet/biographies/boileaunarcejac_biographie.htm http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Diaboliques