Armand Salacrou

Salacrou, Armand 

Born Aug. 9, 1899, in Rouen. French playwright. Member of the Académie des Goncourt (1949).

Salacrou’s first plays, Journey to the Earth (1925) and The Bridge of Europe (1927), are surreal. His later plays satirically depict swindlers and covert and overt scandals in bourgeois circles. In The World Is Round (1938), a historical drama about the waning of the Florentine Renaissance, Salacrou defends freedom of thought. The drama Nights of Anger (1946; Russian translation, 1959) is the first French play about the Resistance. Boulevard Durand (1960) is a tragic chronicle of a dockworkers’ strike in Le Havre. Salacrou has also written light comedies, for example, La Vie en rose (1931) and Poof (1950), as well as political satires, such as Atlas Hotel (1931) and Lenoir Archipelago (1947; Russian translation, 1960). A master of dramatic intrigue, Salacrou possesses a keen sense of theater

WORKS

Théâtre, vols. 1–8. Paris, 1942–66.
“Place Danton.” Nouvelle Revue française, March 1974, no. 255.

REFERENCES

Istoriia frantsuzskoi literatury, vol. 4. Moscow, 1963.
Mignon, P.-L. Salacrou. [Paris, 1960.]
Di Franco, F. Le Théâtre de Salacrou. Paris, 1970. (Includes a bibliography.)
Bébon, P. Salacrou. Paris [1971]. (Includes a bibliography.)
Stil, A. [A review.] L’Humanité, Apr. 25, 1974, p. 10.

V. M. GAEVSKII