Born Today August 5: Guy de Maupassant

1850-1893

French writer Guy de Maupassant was born Henri-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant on this day at a chateau in Tourville-sur-Arques near Dieppe in Normandy. His parents were the equivalent of "landed gentry" in France and he was their first born child (his parents had obtained the right to formally use the royal name designation "de" by formal decree).  Despite this, his parents marriage was a rocky one; his father was reasonably accused of violence toward his wife and she--shocking for the time--obtained a legal separation from him on those grounds.  She then took her two sons--then aged 11 and 5--to raise alone. So it is hardly surprising that his mother became his greatest influence. Add to this, that she was a lover of literature, which greatly piqued his interest in reading, especially English classics. At the age of 13, his was sent to a formal boarding school for a classical education. It is at this time that he began to write; his first efforts were in verse; though like Shelley before him, his writings eventually got him expelled from school--which was actually his aim, given that he clearly despised the place. He did manage to finish his education, just in time (so to speak) for his involvement in the newly broken out Franco-Prussian war which lasted from July of 1870 to late January of 1871. It was just long enough for him to enlist in and later gain employment in Paris with the Navy as an office clerk.  He continued to write and began writing fiction. Today he is remembered as a first rate short story author, but at that time, his ambition was to pen novels. He came to enjoy the home of French author Flaubert, who he had meet as a young man in school. Flaubert, not only greatly encouraged and promoted his literary efforts, he also introduced him to continental writers, who in turn influenced de Maupassant to write in the popular school of realism/naturalism (in writing, de Maupassant was much more of a realist).  It was at this time that he appears to have produced his first play.  In 1878, he was also offered the chance to apply writing skills in the form of editing in his job with a promotion to Public Instruction with side jobs in the newspaper industry.  In 1880 he began successfully publishing works, which continued through the early 1890's--during this time he used a number of pen names--owed to his government employment. Left to his own nature, he was a loner--a tendency that only increased with age. He also clearly was little suited for work in Paris in general and did not care for the indulgent atmosphere around artists of any sort in the city. Couple that with the fact that his health was growing increasingly worse due to having contracted syphilis at some point, his fear of death eventually over came his fear of public shame and ridicule (his brother suffered from the same and it is generally accepted today that the two were actually born with the condition).  On the 2 of January of 1892 he attempted to slit his own throat, but only did enough damage to require serious hospitlization. It did occasion his being committed to a private asylum. He died there a year and half later on the 6th of July at just the age of 42.  Today he is considered one of the greatest short story authors in history, having written over 300 of them. Though he is not widely known, he has still, none-the-less been called the "father of the modern short story."  In regards to film, it is almost an irony that this first film to made from his works was a dramatization of one of his novels. That film, a French production of Pathé Frères, was funnily enough a short entitled Pere Milon and was released in May of 1909.  That same year, American director D. W. Griffith got his mitts into one of de Mauppassant's novels and turned out The Son's Return for Biograph.  The Edison studio soon got in on the action with A Coward  (1909), adapted and directed by Edwin S. Porter. It would take until 1912 before one of his hundreds of short stories was adapted for the screen, that came with Essanay's Her Hour of Triumph.  Then came Vitagraph's At The Eleventh Hour (1912). Fox followed on in 1918 with The Bird of Prey.  The fact that all of these American studios were making films from his work so early in the making of narrative films is testament to how popular his writing was internationally at the turn of the century.  Denmark was the next country to bring out a Maupassant production with His Great Duty. Italy produced Gente onesta in 1912. While the Russians are thought to have produced the first feature length film from his work; Doch isterzannoy Pol'shi was released in 1915 and was adapted from de Maupassant's story "Mademoiselle Fifi."  Germany made Opfer der Liebe in 1923; and even China got in on the act (!) in 1926 with the rare Chinese silent Yichuan zhenzhu (A Pearl Necklace), it featured an interesting bi-lingual title card effect, first showing lines in Mandarin that then faded into English (and though taken from de Maupassant as an original source, screenwriter Hou Yao was said to have used the script from D.W. Griffith's The Necklace--thus making it a remake of that film). Japan came in relatively late to the game, making Onna no isshô in 1928.  The first major American production of his work, clocking in at nearly 2 hours, was also the first film of his work produced with sound.  The Woman Disputed featured Norma Talmadge in the lead and was a partial silent with music and sound effects by the Western Electric Sound System; the film was released in September of 1928.  Yvette, back in his native France, became the last silent film made from his work, like Woman Disputed it was also released in 1928.  Fittingly, the first full sound film to adapt his work for a screenplay (a novel) was also a French production in 1932: He.  For what ever reason, with coming of full talking pictures, interest in his work for films kind of fell off a cliff in the United States; while international productions were wide spread and frequent. It took until 1944 for a major American studio to bring out such a production when RKO released Mademoiselle Fifi--which was a story drawn from de Maupassant's experience in war; the film was clearly produced in part because of World War II and was directed by Robert Wise in only his second directorial outing after the Val Lewton production The Curse of the Cat People (1944).  Maupassant's work then made onto the the small screen relatively early in television history when the NBC series Your Show Time presented three episodes based on his short stories in it's one year on the air in 1949.  I do believe that my earliest exposure to his work (though I certainly didn't know it at the time) came in the viewing of the 1963 Reginald Le Borg directed horror film Diary of a Madman starring Vincent Price as a television re-run when I was just a kid. This was not the only horror film his work was adapted for in the 1960's.  In 1963 horror mastermind Mario Bava included a segment based on de Maupassant's work in his classic horror anthology Black Sabbath, "hosted" by horror icon Boris Karloff.  Also in 1963, the UK produced entire television series around his work simply entitled "Maupassant"; and France followed suit in 1964 with "Trieze contes de Maupassant".  As of this writing the most recent film produced from his work was a 2019 short: Le signe; and the most recent series usage is from the Argentinian for-the-web produced "Cineficción Radio"--episode Guy de Maupassant (the partially animated film Boule de suif has been complete for years, but shows no sign of being released).  In all more than 250 films or series episodes have been produced from his writing so far. He is buried in Paris' historic Montparnasse cemetery.

[Source: WikiMedia Commons]

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