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Laughter in the Dark {1932} suggests a familiarity.
In the middle thirties a German actor whose name was Fritz
Kortner, a most famous and gifted artist of his day wanted to
make a film of Camera Obscura [Englished as Laughter
in the Dark]. I went to London to see him, nothing came of
it, but a few years later another firm, this one in Paris,
bought an option which ended in a blind alley too.
/ recall that nothing came of yet another option on
Laughter in the Dark when the producer engaged Roger Vadim,
circa I960-- Bardot as Margot?-- and of course the novel
finally reached the no-longer silver screen in 1969, under the
direction of Tony Richardson, adapted by Edward Bond, and
starring Nicol Wil-liamson and Anna Karma (interesting name,
that), the setting changed from old Berlin to Richardson's own
mod London. I assume that you saw the movie.
Yes, I did. That name is interesting. In the novel
there is a film in which my heroine is given a small part, and
I would like my readers to brood over my singular power of
prophecy, for the name of the leading lady (Dorianna Karenina)
in the picture invented by me in 1931 prefigured that of the
actress (Anna Karina) who was to play Margot forty years later
in the film Laughter in the Dark, which I viewed at a
private screening in Montreux.
Are other works headed for the screen?
Yes, King, Queen, Knave and Ada, though
neither is in production yet. Ada will be enormously
difficult to do: the problem of having a suggestion of fantasy,
continually, but never overdoing it. Bend Sinister was
done on West German television, an opera based on Invitation
to a Beheading was shown on Danish TV, and my play The