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DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 3, No. 12 |
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No. 6 in Ron Miller's series comparing famous mystery novels with the classic films made from them |
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THOMPSON Meets TAVERNIER How Bertrand Tavernier made Jim Thompson's "Pop. 1280" into his "Coup de Torchon" |
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Those who haven't read the book nor seen the movie are encouraged to do so before reading this column because certain vital plot elements will be revealed. |
How a novel set in our South
became a famous French film
of TheColumnists.com
Since the French film critics invented the term film noir to describe the dark, pessimistic mystery movies coming out of Hollywood in the 1940s, it should be no surprise that French filmmakers always have doted on the works of our best noir novelists, such as James M. Cain, Cornell Woolrich and Jim Thompson.
But it still was quite a surprise to learn that Bertrand Tavernier's Oscar-nominated 1982 French film "Coup de Torchon" actually was based on Jim Thompson's 1964 pulp fiction novel "Pop. 1280," especially since Tavernier's film takes place in French Equatorial Africa in 1938 while Thompson's novel is deeply rooted in the racist atmosphere of the Jim Crow American South.
Yet if you first read Thompson's severely pessimistic and darkly comic novel, then see the Tavernier film, you realize that the two remote worlds are not so far apart after all--and the French and American sensibilities dovetail quite nicely.
Thompson's novel is about Nick Corey, the sheriff of Potts County--a nowhere place in the rural South long before the coming of civil rights. He's a handsome man, incredibly appealing to the seriously deprived women of the territory, even though he's generally regarded as only a step or two above moron in intellect, is lazy and cowardly and the toady of the high mucky-mucks of his desolate little township.
Nick is married to an abusive slattern named Myra, who keeps her half-wit adult brother around the house and lavishes all her affection on him--perhaps even more so than would be natural, even in the rural South. Nick doesn't mind his wife's coldness so much because he regularly visits Rose, the much abused wife of the town's most notorious wife-beating drunkard, and pleasures her no end. At the same time, though, Nick longs to renew his relationship with the lovely Amy, the woman he was engaged to marry before he got swept off his feet by Myra.
Now most of us surely would advise Nick to divorce Myra, throw Rose's husband in jail and introduce Rose to a divorce lawyer, then either marry Amy or Rose.
But Nick is anything but a man of action when we first meet him. He's so used to looking the other way when laws are broken that the town's two most prominent pimps routinely push him around without fear of reprisal. In fact, just about everybody pushes him around except the town's African-Americans, who consider him reasonably fair and not much of a threat.
The turning point in Nick's life comes when he takes the train over to the next county to see Ken Lacey, head lawman of a much bigger territory, to seek his advice about how to handle the pimps. Lacey, who has nothing but contempt for Nick, gives him a vivid demonstration of what to do: He and his deputy both kick Nick in the ass. His point: If somebody does something to you, do it back to him twice as hard.
In fact, Ken explains, he would blow the two pimps away and solve the problem pronto himself.
Nick muddles that one around in his mind a good deal on the way home. He's certainly aware he's the town's laughing stock because Myra constantly reminds him of it. And he knows he almost never forces his ideas of law and order on anyone. Instead, he usually says, "I won't say you're right, but I won't say you're wrong either" or some variation on that theme.
So, Nick decides it's time to wipe the slate clean. After all, he's up for election again soon and he might not be re-elected if he's still the town fool. So, he takes Ken's advice and starts by blowing the two pimps away.
Once Nick starts doing things like that, we discover he's a lot craftier guy than we ever thought he was. Next thing we know, he's arranging some nice payback schemes for Ken Lacey, Myra and her half-wit brother and a whole raft of people. And the nice thing is he's such a dissembling goof-off that nobody ever suspects he'd so any of the things he winds up doing.
Thompson's novel is wry, ironic and uncommonly funny, considering the stuff that goes on. Nick Corey is a character you might expect Erskine Caldwell and Raymond Chandler to have dreamed up together one evening over brandy with Alfred Hitchcock.
French filmmaker Bertrand
Tavernier ("The Clockmaker") read the novel in the
late 1960s and immediately loved it, but he couldn't figure out
how to translate the Jim Thompson milieu into the culture of
France. Then, after maybe five years, he was reading a book by
Celine about French colonial life--and suddenly hit upon his
inspiration for the film that became "Coup de Torchon"
("Clean Slate").
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with Isabelle Huppert in a sexy scene from 'Coup de Torchon.' |
If he set the story in French colonial Africa during the 1930s, he'd have the same cultural remoteness and racial tensions that Thompson found in the American South. Suddenly, the pieces fell together. He hired Jean Aurenche to write the screenplay because Aurenche knew French Africa quite well. Together they worked out the translation of all the major Thompson elements into French terms.
In the 1982 film, Nick Corey becomes Lucien Cordier. To play the part, Tavenier departed from Thompson's concept and cast one of France's best character actors, Philippe Noiret, who's overweight, balding and grubby-looking--far from the literary model. But Noiret can play the Thompson brand of fool perfectly because he has the light of shrewdness in his eye, which is perfect for the role.
The Tavernier-Aurenche script hews pretty closely to the book's outline, although the pending election for sheriff is eliminated and Amy, the ex-fiancee, becomes Anne, the new schoolteacher in town.
Lucien is still picked upon by everybody in town, starting with his wife--now called Huguette and played by Stephane Audran. Rose was played by Isabelle Huppert, then one of France's hottest young stars, and Ken Lacey--now called Marcel Chavasson--is perfectly cast as Guy Marchand.
In many ways, the territorial African setting works even better for the race issues of the story. The two pimps, for instance, spend much of their spare time taking target practice on the bloated corpses of blacks, which are being dumped into the river upstream by tribesmen who believe the water will "purify" the bodies during an epidemic of diptheria.
Tavernier says he did everything he could to reproduce Thompson's "dark perception of life," to preserve the bleak humor of the story and to retain the "strange, unpleasant violence" of the story while also showing its effects on people. Filmed entirely on location in Senegal, the film was shot with a Steadicam, which Tavernier decided helped create the "unbalanced" effect he wanted for the imagery.
The result is a very dark, but entertaining film that succeeds in rendering the Thompson story as well as it might have been if filmed in a Stateside environment--and perhaps even better.
The opening scene, for instance, is one that does not occur in the book: Lucien watches from cover as some black children try to build a fire during a solar eclipse on the African plain. Then he helps them get the fire going. In the final scene, Lucien is back watching the children again, but this time he takes his gun out and contemplates killing them before apparently realizing how pessimistic his outlook on life has become during the course of the film.
Thompson's point seems to be Tavernier's as well: Once you clean the slate and become a different person than you were, perhaps you'll gain the respect of everyone but yourself.
In this current series of columns, we've compared many great mystery novels with some of the great and not-so-great films made from them. This is a case where the least likely adaptation turns out to be a wonderfully positive one. Thompson's novel is one of the great American noir classics--and the film Tavernier made from it stands on its own as a classic film of the 1980s.
© 2002 by Ron Miller. The Ron Miller caricature is © 2001 by Jim Hummel. The "Pop. 1280" cover illustration is from the 1990 Vintage Crime/Black Lizard edition, $10. The "Coup de Torchon" cover illustration and photograph are from the Criterion Collection DVD.
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You can get reprint rights for as low as $25. To learn more, click here: REPRINTS |
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Ron Miller is the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," official companion book to the PBS "Mystery!" series. He also writes the "Case Book" column for the official PBS "Mystery!" website and is currently teaching a mystery course at Whatcom Community College in Bellingham, WA. In the fall, he'll teach another mystery course at West Washington University in Bellingham. |
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