Le Métro-maison et l’art de la transmédiation dans L’Ecume des jours : de Vian à Gondry

Set in a post-war Paris electrified by jazz culture, surrealism and existentialism, Boris Vian�s L�Ecume des jours is an inherently transmedial text. In the foreword to his 1947 novel, Vian describes L�Ecume not as a roman, but a �roman-jazz�, an experimental hybrid at the interface of literature and music. Michel Gondry�s eponymous film adaptation re-imagines the novel�s apartment, with its many corridors and large windows, as a m�tro-maison; a repurposed metro carriage suspended above the street between an opulent 19th-century residence and a modern brick tower. This chapter uses the bridging motif of the m�tro-maison to understand the evolution of L�Ecume des jours from Vian�s 1947 novel to Gondry�s 2013 film. Just as the m�tro-maison is suspended between buildings of different eras, the text itself is suspended between time periods, media and authors. The m�tro-maison incarnates not only the shift from novel to film, in which some parts are carried along and others are left behind. It also encapsulates the text�s hybridity and rebirth as it travels from the 1940s to the 2010s, revealing as it does its interactions between technology and tradition, innovation and nostalgia, new media and traditional craft.