"Huit heures à vivre" ["Eight hours to live"]: Unpublished film script, entirely autograph

S.l.n.d. [circa 1940]

12 pages in 13 sheets (210 x 270 mm) in black ink, numbered in graphite and in another hand; folds of mailing paper.

Unpublished film script, one of seven known drafts, of which only three are autographed.

Important manuscript, in which the author of The Little Prince creates gloomy characters on borrowed time in a down-and-dirty atmosphere - or rather, a bilge atmosphere - during a Rio-Lisbon crossing.

Like all young people of his generation, Saint-Exupéry was a film buff. His inclinations as a screenwriter were evident between 1931 and 1936, during which time he wrote seven screenplay projects and participated in the adaptation of some of his books for the cinema.

Only three of these are autographs, the other four only exist as corrected typescripts. Close to an earlier screenplay entitled Igor, it tells a story that is the antithesis of the novelistic universe of The Little Prince, a dark story populated by hoodlums and prostitutes that begins in the underworld of Rio and continues in the hold of a liner hit by a plague epidemic.

The ship finally reaches Lisbon with 1,500 emigrants on board, many of them sick; the five terrorists take advantage of the captain's disarray and panic to escape from the ship...

The author of The Little Prince develops a theme of violence here, creating gloomy characters on borrowed time in an atmosphere of the underworld - or rather of the bottom of the hold.

This scenario can be compared to a passage in Lettre à un otage. The collection begins precisely with the story of his crossing to the United States from Portugal in December 1940, where he describes the roulette and baccarat players, mostly departing refugees. Lauren Bacall and Humprey Bogart could have been summoned!

Cinema, like aviation, offers a different perspective on the world. From the 1920s onwards, he frequented Parisian cinemas for entertainment and was enthusiastic about The Pilgrim, which he recommended to his friend Charles Sallès: Charlie Chaplin portrayed his character, The Tramp, who had escaped from Sing Sing and was posing as a Protestant minister. He found the film remarkable, "comical and with such a fine sensitivity".

This form of expression seduced Saint Exupery and opened up new creative and lucrative perspectives.

The list of scripts and screenplays allows us to distinguish between scripts and screenplays - the former being much more interesting to study because, in their unfinished, sometimes almost illegible and incomplete form, they immediately convey Saint-Exupéry's original intentions.

In 1935, he wrote the screenplay for Anne-Marie, the story of a young woman engineer who dreams of learning to fly and gravitates towards a group of fellow pilots, all of whom are in love with her. Raymond Bernard directed the film the same year, with Annabella playing the title role, the archetypal modern and seductive woman, aviator and adventurer. This was the only original screenplay to be made into a film.

Night Flight, which had been released a year earlier but in which Saint-Exupery had had no part, had been a great success and persuaded him to adapt Southern Courier, which he had been thinking about since 1931.

His script was ready in 1936 - for which a young beginner, Françoise Giroud, assisted him - and was sent to the director Pierre Billon. Two producers were found: André Aron and his associate, the aviator Édouard Corniglion- Molinier, friend and adventure companion of Malraux. The film was shot at the end of 1936 in Mogador (now Essaouira), Morocco.

Saint-Exupéry was on the trip and followed every step of the way, supervising the flight plans on the Latécoère and dubbing the hero himself, played by Pierre-Richard Wilm, in the perilous scenes. The film was released in 1937.

For Anne-Marie and the adaptation of Courrier Sud, only corrected typescripts are known.

Seven other scripts are known, of which only three are autographs:

* an untitled script, which begins with : An untitled script, which begins: "A plane has gone astray". It seems to announce the next one:

* the unfinished draft of a film, inspired by the failed Paris-Saigon raid of 31 December 1935 which ended, after a forced landing in the middle of the desert, with a rescue by a tribe of nomads. The draft scenario was written in the form of a typed version of fifteen sheets, presented at the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry exhibition at the Archives Nationales in November 1984 (no. 448);

* four scripts which correspond to each other in content and theme:

- Igor, whose script was entrusted to Pierre Billon in the summer of 1940: .

- Sonia, whose writing is difficult to date. This synopsis is contained in a nine-page typed document given to Raymond Bernard, the director of Anne-Marie, in which we find the character of a Spanish dancer with the plague - present in Igor - who contaminates the ship : the plague is spreading, the quarantine is decided.

a
nd, autographed,

- Eight hours to live" - our manuscript.

- We may have to kill a lot to live...", which is a rewriting of the previous one. The plague-stricken adventurer comes from Africa this time and the plot has a different course and ending.

- The draft of a script for a film about the Resistance, untitled, written around 1941. The manuscript is autograph, consisting of 9 pages on paper. It describes a film about the Resistance, set in "occupied Europe" and featuring characters "threatened by Nazi terror".

These three are the only ones that are handwritten.

Eight Hours to Live:

The action takes place on a ship bound for Lisbon, where an explorer in love, suicidal and ill with the plague, her lover - also ill - and terrorists preparing an attack are gathered... The atmosphere is that of a Hollywood film noir - the actors could have been Lauren Bacall and Humprey Bogart - where these five terrorists must flee Brazil to reach Europe. Felicio, one of the terrorists, was arrested on land just before the ship's departure. His accomplices fear that he will talk: "From the conversation, we understand that it is urgent for them to get off at the next stop. They read the last radio: "Felicio was arrested as he was preparing to disappear. He refuses to give the names of those who organised the terrorist attack on 9 September but we hope that by tomorrow evening he will have spoken. [...] - There is no man whose silence we could not obtain. But you'd have to have him on hand. Wild laughter. [...] You have to disembark at ten minutes past midnight, even if you have to swim. [...] It's a matter of minutes. Felicio will speak".

They board a liner with a beautiful adventuress who is ill with the plague. One of the terrorists falls in love with the young woman, but also falls ill. But the epidemic must not be known: their escape would be compromised. The explorer, for her part, fears losing her lover and decides to commit suicide because she knows she is doomed.

"Suicide is a cowardice. Suicide by a woman is even violent. Is he responsible for this death? No, of course not! He is not responsible for anything. Suicide can only be understood... if... if, for example, he saves his companions. Then yes. Only if he defends a cause. Then it is not only excusable, but I would even say a duty. Isn't that right, gentlemen? - Of course it is. - But a suicide for a half-mad miss! This accident has upset him. He told me just now: "Besides, I loved that woman. I was crazy... "So it hit him? - You were all very unwise to let him out."

This scenario can be compared to a passage in Lettre à un otage. The collection begins precisely with a recollection of his crossing to the United States from Portugal in December 1940, where he describes the roulette and baccarat players, mostly departing refugees. "I found them on the liner, my refugees. This liner was also slightly anxious. This ship was transferring these rootless plants from one continent to another. [...] Just as Lisbon played at happiness, they played at believing that they would soon return. The city, which "displays a suspicious joy," appears to him as "a sort of clear and sad paradise. There was much talk of an imminent invasion, and Portugal clung to the illusion of its happiness. (OEuvres complètes, II, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2009, pp. 90-91).