Jean-Jacques Bernard

Who was Jean-Jacques Bernard?

Jean-Jacques Bernard was a French playwright and the chief representative of what became known as l’école du silence or, as some critics called it, the art of the unexpressed, in which the dialogue does not express the characters’ real attitudes. In Martine, perhaps the best example of his work, emotions are implied in gestures, facial expressions, fragments of speech and silence. He was active from 1912 to 1939.

Bernard was born in Enghien-les-Bains, Val-d'Oise, the son of the dramatist Tristan Bernard. As a Jew, he was interned for a period of months starting in December 1941 in Compiègne, at a camp where 50,000 Jews were deported to concentration camps. He died in Paris, aged 84.