Identity Games and Polemics Between the Arts: Marcel Proust and Claude Jutra

Take It All (1964) is a remarkable autofiction film in which the Quebec filmmaker Claude Jutra (1930–1986) responds to Proustian theories about the superiority of literature (a ‘pure art’) over cin- ema and other arts based on ‘direct imitation of reality’. The article first summarizes Proust’s scepti- cal attitude towards cinema, and then analyzes the way in which Jutra attempts to rehabilitate this art through autofictional procedures. Using Deleuze’s concept of the ‘time-image’ (l’image-temps), Ju- tra proves that cinema, like the Proustian novel, is capable of practicing polyphony, multiplying nar- rative identities, and finding surprising connections between details of events from different time zones. Despite their diverging views, it is possible to note numerous points of contact between the two authors. Both Proust and Jutra agree on a practice of autofiction (avant la lettre, of course) that turns the life of an individual into a kind of interpretive key to the universe and a means of opening the eyes of the reader/viewer.