A Vision of Proust: A Conversation with Suso Cecchi d’Amico

Abstract

In July 1995 I met with Suso Cecchi d’Amico in her home in Rome. The topic of our conversation – Proust on the screen – led us to review together the screenplays that never made it to the screen as well as the few films produced up to that point. Only later other films would be added to that short list. Obviously, the conversation centred on her screenplay for Visconti and on her main idea for that project: a linear balzacian Proust, focussed on the description of the end of an era and on the central volumes of the novel, and which hinged on the story of the two couples – Marcel and Albertine, Charlus and Morel – in preference to the first and last volume, where the reflection on Time and the literary vocation is more emphasised. This choice adds a genuinely divulgative value, and, in retrospect, seems to me closer to the experience of a serial rereading of the novel. Having presented a simpler Proust, who can engage everybody and be liked by most, is perhaps the real lesson of Suso Cecchi d’Amico.