2023-12-06 17:36:29
Between 1949 and 1972, more than 240 OSS novels were published by Jean and Josette Bruce. All feature the adventures of a CIA agent: Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, alias OSS 117, in a stereotypical world where the rules are defined in advance.
Unfortunately for him, James Bond is not the first spy to conquer hearts. Four years before his appearance, another spy held the upper hand: Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, alias OSS 117, an American secret agent of French origin. From its launch in 1949, it conquered French newsstands and libraries, before being exported throughout the world. With a total of 75 million copies sold, the OSS 117 saga is a real success. The books are translated into more than 17 languages.
From paper to screen
A charismatic and strong hero, action, suspense and erotic scenes, the foundations of spy literature are laid. Behind the character and the successful book series, we find the French author Jean Bruce (1921-1963). During his lifetime, he published more than 88 volumes of the adventures of OSS 117. His wife Josette, then his children François and Martine, took up the torch until 1992.
In 1957, OSS 117 hit the big screen with “OSS 117 n’est pas mort”, an adaptation rather faithful to the book by Jean Sacha, followed by a series of films produced by André Hunebelle between 1963 and 1968. Without forgetting the offbeat saga and parody with Jean Dujardin in the main role of the famous Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath.
Explosion in book sales, adaptation to the cinema, spy literature is a hit, how can we explain such success?
Favorable geopolitical context
When Jean Bruce published the first novel OSS 117 in 1949, World War II had only just ended. France and England were then colonial empires in decline. In addition, the geopolitical context of the Cold War created distrust on the part of the population towards the media. The character of the spy, until then associated with the enemy, then arouses interest. The cover of Jean Bruce’s book “OSS 117 and Force Noire”. [DR/Presses de la cité]
“However, the world of OSS 117 is not great psychology: it is a man who comes to save the free world with the strength of his fist,” explains Morgane Gay-Bianco, author of the essay. OSS 117 – Is the spy mate?’, at RTS. There is this desire to simplify the situation while at the beginning of the novels, a rather true geopolitical context is presented to us. Some analyzes are good, but the resolution of the plot is never political: a man saves the face of the Western world and returns home after seducing many women and killing many men.”
Station novels
At the time, the “OSS 117” novels, known as ‘station’ novels, were on newsstands, next to press reviews. Designed to catch the eye, the book covers are brightly colored and a woman is often depicted on them.
Easy to access, they can be read on the metro or train, during journeys between home and work. With a fairly basic story line: a charismatic spy in a simple and exotic world. Without forgetting the erotic scenes. In this area, the couple Jean and Josette Bruce remain suggestive and non-explicit in order not to offend their audience.
The evolution of morals
How has OSS 117, initially an agent of a colonialist and paternalist national narrative, crossed the ages? Struggles for civil rights, May 68, the Algerian war and the war in Vietnam are all events marking an evolution of morals. “The basic hypothesis of my thesis was to say that this cultural turning point of the 1960s had turned books upside down,” explains Morgane Gay-Bianco. “But this hypothesis turned out to be false.”
In OSS 117, social, racial and gender revolutions are ignored, the world in which Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath gravitates has no gray areas. To put it simply, the bad guys are always communists from the East, summarizes the historian in her essay. The imagination of OSS 117 does not evolve or evolve very little over the years, which explains a loss of steam at the end of the 1970s, at the same time as the appearance of TV series which reach an increasingly more numerous.
Comments collected by Ellen Ichters
Adaptation web: Myriam Semaani
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