Pierre Boulle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pierre Boulle (20 February 1912 – 30 January 1994) was a French novelist largely known for his combination of psychology and adventure, most famously in The Bridge over the River Kwai (1952) and Planet of the Apes (1963).
Contents |
[edit] Biography
Born Pierre-François-Marie-Louis Boulle in Avignon, France. He was baptised and raised Roman Catholic. He studied and later became an engineer. From 1936 to 1939, he worked as a technician on British rubber plantations in Malaya. While there he fell in love with a French woman who was seperated from her husband. She later chose to return to her husband and at the outbreak of World War II, Boulle enlisted with the French army in French Indochina. After German troops occupied France, he joined the Free French Mission in Singapore.
Boulle served as a secret agent under the name Peter John Rule and helped the resistance movement in China, Burma, and French Indochina. In 1943, he was captured by the Vichy France loyalists on the Mekong River. While a prisoner, he was subjected to severe hardship and forced labour. He was made a chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur and decorated with the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance. He described his experiences in the war in the non-fiction My Own River Kwai (1967).
For a while after the war, Boulle returned to work in the rubber industry, but he later moved back to Paris and began to write. While in Paris he moved into his widowed sisters apartment. She had a daughter whom Pierre helped raise. Using his experiences in the war, he wrote Le Pont de la rivière Kwaï (1952; The Bridge on the River Kwai), which became a multi-million worldwide bestseller, winning the French "Prix Sainte-Beuve". The book was a semi-fictional story based on the real plight of Allied POWs forced to build a 415-km (258-mile) railway which became known as the "Death Railway" and passed over the bridge. 16,000 prisoners and 100,000 Asian conscripts died during construction of the line. His character of Lt-Col. Nicholson was not based on the real Allied senior officer at the Kwai bridges, Philip Toosey, but was reportedly an amalgam of his memories of collaborating French officers.
[edit] Films
David Lean made Boulle's story into a motion picture that won several 1957 Oscars, including the Best Picture, and Best Actor for Alec Guinness. Boulle himself won the award for Best Adapted Screenplay despite not having written the screenplay and not even speaking English. Boulle had been credited with the screenplay because the film's actual writers, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, had been blacklisted. The Motion Picture Academy added their names to the award in 1984.
In 1963, following several other reasonably successful novels, Pierre Boulle published his other famous novel, first published in France as La Planète des singes. In America the novel was published as Planet of the Apes. A classic science fiction piece in which Earth astronauts travel to a distant planet where apes rule and humans are mere animals. In 1968 this story was made into an Oscar-winning film, starring Charlton Heston, which inspired four sequels one television series and an animated series. A remake of the film was directed by Tim Burton in 2001.
[edit] Death
Pierre Boulle died in Paris, France on 30 January 1994. He had never married.
[edit] Novels
- Le sacrilège malais (1951)
- Le Pont de la rivière Kwaï (1952; The Bridge over the River Kwai)
- Le Bourreau (1954; US title The Executioner, UK title The Chinese Executioner) - philosophical tales in the manner of Voltaire inspired by legends from the Orient
- Not The Glory (1955)
- Saving Face (1956)
- E=MC2 (1957)
- Face of a Hero (1956)
- The Test (1957)
- Other Side of the Coin (1956)
- Walt Disney's Siam (1958)
- S.O.P.H.I.A. (1959)
- A Noble Profession (1960)
- For a Noble Cause (1961)
- La Planète des singes (1963; Planet of the Apes)
- Garden on the Moon (1964)
- The Photographer (1967)
- Les Oreilles de jungle (1972; Ears of the Jungle) - story of the Vietnam war told from the perspective of a North Vietnamese commander
- Les Vertus de'lenfer (1974; The Virtues of Hell)
- Le Bon Léviathan (1978; The Good Leviathan)
- Miroitements (1982; Mirrors of the Sun)
- La Baleine des Malouines (1983; US title: The Whale of the Victoria Cross; UK title: The Falklands Whale)
- Pour l'amour de l'art (1985; For the Love of Art)
- Le Professeur Mortimer (1988)
- A nous deux, Satan! (1992)
[edit] Collections
- Contes de l'absurde (1953; "Stories of the Absurd")
- Histoires charitables (1965)
- Quia absurdum (1966)
- Time Out of Mind: And Other Stories (1966)
- The Marvellous Palace: And Other Stories (1977)
