The Decadent Charm of the Bourgeoisie
The present study is focused on the topic of the realistic novel and of the realistic movie, understood both as an emanation and as a satire of the bourgeoisie. Using the definition of the bourgeois values from Pascal Bruckner’s famous study, The Perpetual Euphoria, the author shows the different types of characters generated by the narrative embodiments of the respective values. The author shows then that the two movies which obviously and radically overthrow the bourgeis conventions of the genre are Luis Buñuel’s Le charme discret de la burgeosie (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise), 1972, and Marco Ferreri’s, La Grande Bouffe (The Grande Blow-Out) (1973). The study shows how these two movies create a new type of hero, resulted from the synthesis of the bourgeois and the decadent values: the decadent bourgeois.
Keywords: history of the European novel, history of cinema, realism, bourgeois values, decadent values, Luis Buñuel, Marco Ferreri, synthesis of realism and decadentism
1. Dan Grigorescu / Sorin Alexandrescu, Romanul realist în secolul al XIX-lea, Editura Enciclopedică română, Bucureşti, 1971.
2. Pascal Bruckner, Euforia perpetuă, traducere Cristina şi Costin Popescu, Editura Trei, Bucureşti, 2000, pp. 117,118.
3. Nu este întâmplător că prenumele personajelor coincid cu cele ale principalilor actori, aceşti crai de Curtea-Veche.
4. Anthologie des préfaces de romans français du XIX-ème siècle, Paris, Julliard, 1964, p. 226. apud. Dan Grigorescu / Sorin Alexandrescu, Romanul realist în secolul al XIX-lea, Editura Enciclopedică română, Bucureşti, 1971.
