The satin Shoe

the satin Shoe is a very long Play of Paul Claudel. She is seldom played because of her duration and the effects which require the setting in scene. This part was carried to the cinema in 1985 by the Portuguese realizer Manoel de Oliveira.

She carries as subtitles “ the worst is not always sure ”.

Analyzes

Mystical drama, the Soulier of Satin reports the impossible love enters Dona Prouhèze and the captain Don Rodrigue. The action, which is spread out over ten years, occurs to the Renaissance, the time of the Conquistadors, and is cut out by the author in four days, according to the tradition of the century of gold. It reveals, of many characters, in various countries, dialoguing sometimes between the Earth and the Sky. By mixing the drama and the divine one, it is not free from irony, of comic and buffoonery, this in an atmosphere baroque. Semi-autobiographical, this part is a history of love dominated by the topics of the sin and the redemption.

Paul Claudel itself commented on: “ the scene of this drama is the world ”. On its part, he also wrote: “ the subject of the Shoe of satin , it is all in all that of the Chinese legend, the two stellar lovers who each year after long peregrinations are able to clash, without never being able to meet, on a side and other of the Milky Way ”.

The multiplicity of the places, the characters, the exceptional length of this part returned the setting in rare and difficult scene from there, in spite of its size and its interest. One will retain a representation (reduced) of Jean-Louis Barrault in 1943, his integral creation with the Théâtre of Orsay in 1980, that of Antoine Vitez with the Festival of Avignon in 1987, and that of Olivier Py with the Theater of the Town of Paris in 2004.

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