Jean Gruault obituary

The French New Wave, which changed notions of how films could be made, gave birth to a group of young directors headed by Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, Alain Resnais and François Truffaut. Although they believed in Alexandre Astruc’s concept of the caméra-stylo – that film-makers should use the camera much as a writer uses a pen to create a personal vision – they still depended, for the most part, on screenwriters to help forge that vision. Among the writers most in demand, particularly by Truffaut and Resnais, was Jean Gruault, who has died aged 90.

Gruault arrived at the start of the New Wave when he co-wrote (with the directors) Rivette’s Paris Belongs to Us (Paris Nous Appartient, shot in 1958, but released in 1961) and Truffaut’s Jules and Jim (1961). He would go on to write four further screenplays for Truffaut.

Gruault, who was born in Fontenay-sous-Bois, an outer suburb of Paris, studied theology at a seminary, and joined the Communist party as a young adult. He became friends with Truffaut and Rivette in the mid-1950s when they were running cinéclubs on the left bank, just before they became critics on the film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. However, despite his interest in films, Gruault was more interested in the theatre, and was performing on stage in plays by Marcel Aymé and Jacques Audiberti at the time.

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But when Rivette approached Gruault to co-write Paris Belongs to Us, he was delighted, because it was about a group of young people coming together in a Paris deserted for the summer to stage a performance of Shakespeare’s Pericles. A lack of funds resulted in Rivette’s impressive debut feature taking more than two years to make, with Gruault having to visit the set in between stage shows and writing dialogue as the camera rolled.

At the same time, Gruault got a job as co-screenwriter and assistant director on Roberto Rossellini’s Vanina Vanini (The Betrayer, 1961), based on Stendhal’s short story, shot in Italy and set in 1823 Rome. He also had a small role as a castrato.

More rewarding was his first collaboration with Truffaut, on Jules and Jim. While remaining true to Henri-Pierre Roché’s first novel, an invigorating tale of friendship and love, Truffaut employed a vast range of cinematic devices to express the shifting moods of the characters and plot.

From the first, Gruault and Truffaut decided on a modus operandi: they would work at a distance from each other. Gruault would write a first draft and send it to Truffaut by messenger. Truffaut would mark it with ideas, cross out passages and underline those that pleased him and send it back to Gruault, who would integrate the suggestions into a second draft, and so on.

It was the same on Anne and Muriel (Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent, 1971), another adaptation from a Roché novel for which Gruault had to slim down the 500-page book into a workable screenplay. He continued to transform other texts into successful scripts for Truffaut, such as The Story of Adèle H (L’Histoire de Adèle H, 1975), based on the diaries of Victor Hugo’s daughter, and The Green Room (La Chambre Verte, 1978), an adaptation of two Henry James short stories. The Wild Child (L’Enfant Sauvage (1970), based on a true case history, had a screenplay that meticulously charted each fascinating step in the education by Dr Jean Itard (played by Truffaut) of a beast-like young boy, discovered in the woods in central France in 1798. According to Gruault, who hated what he called “everyday dialogue”, Truffaut’s films were “made for those people who love books”.

The working methods with Resnais were almost the antithesis of those with Truffaut. Resnais and Gruault would meet two or three times a week to exchange ideas. Resnais demanded that each character, even the smallest, should have a biography. Gruault would then record all the dialogue on to cassettes, playing all the roles himself.

The approach resulted in the original screenplays of My American Uncle (Mon Oncle d’Amérique, 1980), a semi-satire on modern French life, in which the lives of three characters are analysed in terms of animal behaviourist theories; Life Is a Bed of Roses (La Vie est un Roman, 1983), a comedy on intellectuals, a musical, and a children’s fantasy all rolled into one; and Love Unto Death (L’Amour à Mort, 1984), which dares to depict resurrection as a fact. Gruault’s screenplay for My American Uncle had the rare distinction for a non-English language film of being nominated for an Academy Award.

Gruault’s association with the New Wave auteurs also included The Soldiers (Les Carabiniers, 1963), Godard’s dispassionate anti-war, anti-imperialist statement, and Rivette’s The Nun (La Religieuse, 1965), which was initially banned in France on grounds of lesbianism and anti-clericalism, though it was closely based on an 18th-century classic novel by Diderot.

Gruault’s wife, Ginette Geslot, died in 2005. He is survived by their two children, Philippe, an archivist and iconographer, and Isabelle, an actor.