L’adaptation du Rouge et le Noir par Claude Autant-Lara (1954) Procès, processus, procédés

This study makes use of documents from the Cinémathèque Suisse’s Claude Autant-Lara Collection to show how an adaptation bears witness to the conception that the cinematic world had of the novelist in the 1950s and its willingness to exploit the legacy of a literary work. In the opening sequence of the film, devoted to the trial of Julien, the hero makes himself the spokesman for the creators of the film and allows them to underscore the modern-day reverberations of Stendhal’s chronique.