Mitterrand Mourns Loss : Playwright Jean Anouilh; Gifted French Dramatist

Playwright Jean Anouilh, one of France’s most gifted and versatile dramatists, died in a Lausanne hospital after suffering a heart attack. He was 77.

Anouilh, who lived in Switzerland for many years, became ill Saturday and was taken to Vaudois University Hospital Center, where he died. He suffered a previous heart attack four years ago, said a family member, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

French President Francois Mitterrand mourned Anouilh’s death, saying in a message of condolences to the family, “It is a great writer who has disappeared, one whose works have marked the French theater.”

Anouilh, widely regarded as one of the century’s greatest playwrights, won acclaim for works that were technically deft but thoroughly human. They were sensitive and convincing statements about people and society.

Career Spanned 5 Decades

His career spanned more than five decades and his works were translated into 27 languages.

Among his best known works was “Antigone”--a modern-day version of the classical Greek tragedy that pitted the idealism and purity of youth, symbolized by Antigone, against the hard-nosed reality and pragmatism of King Creon.

Written in 1944 during the Nazi occupation, the play turned Anouilh into somewhat of a national hero. French audiences interpreted it as a Resistance play and applauded the playwright’s defiance of German authorities.

Anouilh was pleased, but genuinely surprised. He never saw himself as more than a modest Frenchman with a passion for drama, and made a point of avoiding politics. He never read newspapers.

Ravaged Nerves

He once said an artist’s nerves were sufficiently ravaged by the plays he writes without seeking to rattle them further by reading headlines.

Despite his serious philosophical preoccupations, Anouilh never lost sight of his role as an entertainer.

“I write plays as a chair maker makes chairs,” he once said. “Chairs are made to be sat on and plays are made to be played, to provide actors with work and the public with entertainment.”

Anouilh called all of his works “comedies,” though many produced more tears than laughter. He divided them into two categories: black comedies and rose comedies.

Of his plays, Anouilh’s favorite was “Poor Bitos” (1956), a biting comedy about a French Liberation politician trying to settle scores against his social betters when he takes office. Despite poor reviews, “Poor Bitos” played to full houses for more than two years.

A Tailor’s Son

Anouilh was born June 23, 1910, in Bordeaux, where he grew up. A tailor’s son, he was in his teens when he moved to Paris after graduating from high school.

He studied law briefly and then joined an advertising firm, an experience he would later say taught him “to be ingenious and exact. They were lessons that took the place of literary studies.”

Anouilh developed a passion for the theater while still a student.

His plays set moral men and women in an immoral world. His heroes and heroines rejected a society they believed was vulgar and corrupt and lived on society’s fringes.

Excessive Gloom

Early critics reproached Anouilh for what they called his excessive gloom.

His bleak outlook was also characterized in his later plays. “The Script” (1976), about a group of artists trying to make a movie on the eve of World War II, ended tragically--with exile for some, suicide for others.

Anouilh had a wide range of interests. He wrote the dialogue and scripts for movies, including “Monsieur Vincent” (1947) and “Deux Sous de Violettes” (Two Cents Worth of Violets) (1951). He translated and adapted Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” and three Shakespearean comedies.

He was a private, down-to-earth man who rarely gave interviews. He never hid his loathing for television, which he described as something between “the plague and cholera.”

Actors at the Palais Royal theater in Paris, where Anouilh’s 1958 play “Hurluberlu” is now being presented, said they were dedicating their Sunday afternoon performance to the playwright.

Anouilh is survived by his wife, one son and three daughters.