Monday 8 March 2010, 6.15pm, at Ciné lumière

The film is a rare if not London premiere of Julien Duvivier's adaption of Irène Némirovsky's controversial novel David Golder. Harry Baur gives a heart-stopping performance as the rich Jewish businessman who, after the suicide of a friend due to the 1929 economic crisis, goes to join his wife and daughter at their luxurious summer villa in Biarritz. Appalled by their greed and coldness, Golder suffers a heart attack and sees his family for what it is. Paule Andral is memorable as the venal and cruel Mrs Golder hoping against hope that her husband dies. He recovers but has lost his faith in money and is a broken man. Duvivier is the expert at bleak family tension and the hate that lies just beneath the surface.

Born in 1903 in Kiev, of Jewish origins, Irène Némirovsky emigrated to France in 1919, where she began her writing career and married Michel Epstein. David Golder, her second novel, published in 1929, was an immediate success.

In 1942 Irène Némirovsky was deported to Auschwitz where she died one month later.

Irène Némirovsky's literary talent has been rediscovered thanks to the recent publication of Suite française in 2004. Irène's daughters Denise and Elisabeth had saved the manuscript during the war and it remained unread for fifty years. Internationally acclaimed and winner of the prestigious Prix Renaudot posthumously, Suite française is considered Némirovsky's greatest work.

The screening of David Golder on 8 March will be followed by a Q&A with Denise Epstein, daughter of Irène Némirovsky, and Henrietta Foster, BBC Producer.

As part of Jewish Book Week, Denise Epstein will be in discussion with Olivier Philipponnat, Irène Némirovsky's biographer, and translator Sandra Smith on Sunday 7 March.
Visit: www.jewishbookweek.com for further details.


Venue:

Ciné lumière at the Institut français

17 Queensberry Place, London, SW7 2DT

T. 020 7073 1350

www.institut-francais.org.uk

Tickets: £7, conc. £5
In French with English subtitles