Gilbert Adair - cinéphile, novelist, dreamer

I've just seen that Gilbert Adair, writer and cinéphile, died on Thursday 8th December at the age of 66, and am deeply saddened by the news. As the obituaries and articles now appearing all attest, Adair was a great, self-deprecating wit and will be sorely missed.

(Picture from The Independent)

When I was 17 I discovered The Dreamers, Adair's own 2003 adaptation of his 1988 novel The Holy Innocents, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. It's the semi-autobiographical story of Matthew (Michael Pitt), a young, naive American cinéphile in Paris, whose life is changed when he meets enigmatic twins Isabelle (Eva Green) and Théo (Louis Garrel) at the Cinémathèque Française, becoming involved in an incestuous love triangle, getting swept up in the student riots of May '68 and generally making life imitate the art he so admires. While the film has been frequently criticised for the  'immoral' behaviour it portrays, both titles - The Dreamers and The Holy Innocents - prove that for Adair at least these characters are not to be condemned but empathised with.

I was instantly hooked on The Dreamers, watching it again and again, as well as devouring the book (in French, as I'm a Francophile just like Adair). I soon had no need to watch it, as I knew the entire film by heart! The intoxicating mixture of Parisian glamour, the excitement of May '68 and above all the utmost importance of cinema for these characters seemed to sum up everything I wanted at the time. As a suburban adolescent with a U-rated life, I felt just like Matthew, living vicariously through films, wishing I could join them at the Cinémathèque. When I eventually lived in Paris, I had Matthew's words ringing in my ears: "Only the French, only the French would house a cinema inside a palace". I was saddened that the Cinémathèque was no longer in the Palais Chaillot, nor a functioning cinema (although the new building in Bercy is visually arresting and I did get to see the robot from Metropolis there). I longed to enjoy the world of the film, the world in which Adair got to share, the cult of the cinema that flourished in 1960s Paris, where cinéphiles gathered at the front of the screen to catch images before they were diluted and voraciously discussed them afterwards, a world a million miles away from the modern Cineplex.

Through The Dreamers I discovered May '68, and a whole world of French history and culture, so it will always have a special place in my heart. But I was so caught up in this world of films, art, social history and politics that I didn't think much more about Adair. It was only years later when studying Georges Perec at university that I discovered that Adair had, to universal awe and acclaim, translated Perec's La Disparition. This is no mean feat as both the original and Adair's translation, A Void, are about 300 pages written completely without the letter E. While the name Adair meant nothing to the rest of my classmates, I was taken back to The Dreamers and struck by just how multi-talented Adair really was.

But this is still just a tiny part of Adair's vast oeuvre. His love of films is expressed in his time as Chief Film Critic for The Independent and a large collection of film criticism books, including the widely acclaimed Flickers - 100 pictures from 100 years of cinema, accompanied by typically acerbic essays. He wrote many other novels, including pastiches of Agatha Christie, The Death of The Author playing on Barthes' famous quotation, and most notably Love and Death in Long Island, which was made into a film staring John Hurt and is currently being adapted to the stage. I regret not yet having read more of Adair's work and look forward to enjoying his celebrated self-deprecating wit. But right now I'm off to watch The Dreamers again.