Did Samuel Beckett find the inspiration of Happy days in Un Carnet de bal, a film by Julien Duvivier?

Samuel Beckett wrote his main plays by using 'constituent' works which he amalgamates: this constitutes the framework; then, a series of references to secondary works bring nuances, within a framework already fixed.
Though these constituent works mainly come French literature, the research field is vast, and it is necessary to count on luck. That is what happened when I went to see the resumption of a film by Julien Duvivier dating back to 1938, Un Carnet de bal (a dance card) that got an award when it was presented to the Mostra of Venezia, in 1937.
To my knowledge, there was no possibility, from 1938 and 1960, to have available a film for seeing it again and again. However, Samuel Beckett seems to have had a thorough knowledge of Un Carnet de bal. At least, one can suppose that Samuel Beckett would have seen it on several occasions. That brings the question: why would have he been interested in this film?
It seems to me that 'memory' is the answer to that question.
At the beginning of the Thirties, Beckett published an essay devoted to Proust's La recherche where he treats of memory (1) 1. Samuel Beckett, Proust, Chatto and Windus, London, 1931. . And it just so happens that memory is the central theme of Duvivier's movie.
Christine de Guerande, a still young woman, who has just lost a rich old husband, finds by chance her 'dance card': the notebook where, at the time of her first ball - she was sixteen at the time - the names of her dancers are written down. Then, she fancies meeting those men again and leaves for a trip in search of them.
All failed in life. The first committed suicide when he knew Christine had married another man; the second turned into a crooked lawyer who, struck off from the Bar, had become the head of a band of thugs; a third one is now a monk ; another one has become a high mountain guide, disappointed by life in large cities; another is an abortionist doctor who, after the visit of Christine, kills his mistress and commits suicide, having become aware of his forfeiture; another one, who had had a great political ambition, had only become the mayor of his village and now marries his maid.
The meeting with the last man of the list reveals the truth. Now an hairdresser, he continues to frequent, in the same city, the same ballroom of which she preserves an ecstatic memory.
The hairdresser takes along Christine to the ball she knew nearly twenty years earlier. Same people, same decoration, nothing changed, he insists. And the idealized image crumbles, the lie of the memory appears. The ballroom is not luxurious as in her memory, the young women all are not dressed in muslin, the men are not all in tailcoat: Christine is confronted with the mediocrity of an unpretentious ball of a little town. Beside Christine, a sixteen year old young girl gazes the room with wondered eyes - as Christine did, she will lie to herself all her life.
It is no longer surprising that 'Un carnet de bal' attracted the attention of Proust's essayist. The writer was struck by a film that does not present the memory as a source of liberation, as the novelist of La Recherche did, but rather as an instrument of alienation. The heroine of the film unconsciously embellished a memory that prevented her from living. Confused by her romantic dream, she married an elderly man who gave her a luxurious life, but whose age should have been an obstacle for her. When he dies, she finds herself alone. Christine has missed out on her youth and her life. The most significant episode of the film is the skit featuring Christine and Pierre Verdier (performed by Marie Bell and Louis Jouvet). Indeed, in this skit, Christine makes herself recognized by sending Pierre Verdier a message that takes two verses from the poem 'Colloque sentimental' by French poet Paul Verlaine :

Dans le grand parc solitaire et glacé
Deux ombres ont tout à l'heure passé. (2) In the lonely and icy park,
Two shadows have just passed.
The title of the play is inspired by a verse from the poem: 'Ah! The beautiful days of unspeakable happiness.'

Pierre Verdier, a lawyer dismissed from the Bar, runs the nightclub and patronizes the activities of a gang of thugs. Pierre and Christine are reminiscing Verlaine's poem when the police come to arrest Pierre for a robbery that his band just committed. A replica of Louis Jouvet, which evokes their past flirt, expresses the essence of the film. They are not people who evolve, but worlds that change:

Pierre.- We were idiots. It was charming.
Christine.- We made plans.
Pierre.- Dreams species.
Christine.- You nicknamed me Clara d'Ellebeuse because of a verse by Francis Jammes.
Pierre.- And you nicknamed me 'Peter the Undecisive' because of my shyness.
Ah ... How pure we would be if we remembered more of our youth. By dint of living, we lose track and we take funny ways, Clara d'Ellebeuse. [Silence.]
Christine.- Peter the Undecisive. You were a singular boy.
Pierre.- Yes. Long ago. It was happening in another world. [Underlined by GP].

Beckett's play suggests a difference of perspective from the presentation of the character. While Christine de Guerande is thirty-five years old, Winnie is in her fifties and the play traces the last day that still links her to youth. At the end of the day, Winnie is an old woman.
For Winnie who now finds herself in hell, another world existed, in the old days... Formerly, she was this girl who, like Christine, knew the excitement of a first ball: 'My first ball!' She knew moments of unconsciousness and happiness, in the enclosed plot of Fougax and Barrineuf. Then the adult life came, the romance ended, Willie put in his hands a bag to do the shopping.
The episode in which Christine meets Alain Regnault (Harry Baur) also underlines the dichotomy between the present and a past that transforms living human beings into shadows.
Christine finds this man again, who was much older than she - she was sixteen while he was approaching his forties - and who was in love with her. This composer and performer of great fame had composed a piece for her: 'The sonata of a day of hope.' But while he played this piece, she had laughed and talked with a young man without paying attention to the music . The heart of the composer, who had put in his work all his love for the girl, broke. His love turned to the son he had had previously and who listened passionately to his father playing. Unfortunately, the child died soon after. Alain Regnault became a monk and devoted his life to the children of others. When Christine comes to find him, the past no longer exists. His son is no more for him than a shadow, like Christine:

Christine.- Did he die?
Alain Regnault.- Yes. A few weeks afterwards. A shade. Among others shades. And that of this young girl. So today, if she was not a shade, I could not tell you what she was for me.

To turn his own characters into 'shades' or 'spectra', as in Verlaine's poem and Duvivier's movie, Beckett used the philosophy of Berkeley. According to this author, death leads to another life which continues the present life exactly: the two characters, Winnie and Willie, died and relived in hell where they go through their last day again and again, eternally.(3) Cf. Gérard Piacentini, 'Le référent philosophique comme caractère du personnage dans le théâtre de Samuel Beckett', Revue d'Histoire du Théâtre, n°4,1990. Also on Calameo.

Another skit highlights the way in which Beckett transposes the data of the film. In the episode where Christine meets François Patusset (Raimu), the mayor of this village of Provence who marries his maid, Beckett inserted the dialogue of the film in its own berkeleyan mould. Berkeley questions the status of memory. He wonders how one can think of beings or actions that are unrelated to the actual situation of our senses(4) George Berkeley, Commonplace Book, n° 614. See Gerard Piacentini, 'Le référent philosophique...' p. 46, note 56. . In the movie, we have the following monologue:

François Patusset.- I do not need to see you nor to intend you to recognize you. I hold close the eyes like that, there, [He closes the eyes] and I hear you as I want currently. You tell me all the words which you never wanted to tell me with your true voice. Oh, it is impressing!

In Beckett's play:

Winnie.- [Gazing front, hat in hand, tone of fervent reminiscence] Charlie Hunter! [Pause.] I close my eyes - [(She takes off spectacles and does so, hat in one hand, spectacles in other. Willie turns page.] - and I am sitting again, in the back garden at Borough Green, under the horse-beech.[Pause. She opens eyes, put on spectacles, fiddles with the hat.] Oh the happy memories!

The analogies do not stop there. One can note that if Christine were loved by the musician Alain Regnault who dedicated a sonata to her, Willie before transforming itself into a boor, addressed Winnie very beautiful verses borrowed to Petrarch. Winnie evokes a poem by Petrarch where the poet is filled with melancholy at the idea that the hair of his beloved will become gray :

Golden you called it, that day, when the last guest was gone [hand up in gesture of raising a glass] To your golden. may it never. [voice breaks]. may it never...

The authoritarian and exclusive character of Winnie has precedents in the film. In a first sketch, Eric Irvin (Pierre Richard-Willm) whom she knew Parisian, has become a mountain guide. He leads a solitary life, but soothed, and all in all, happy. No sooner has she landed in his life than she wants him to devote exclusively to her. An avalanche requires that he go to the rescue of the victims, she tries to retain him. Having failed to keep him with her, she leaves the next day without seeing him again. She could not stand that he chose to rescue the mountaineers, which he felt was his duty.
A second skit, more dramatic, staging Thierry Raynal, (Pierre Blanchar), highlights a malice that also exists in Winnie. Christine finds Thierry Raynal, now an abortionist doctor, and who lives with his mistress Gaby. Christine arrives when he has just found a job as a doctor aboard a boat, which will allow him to escape the hell that has become his relationship with his mistress. Gaby is jealous of this woman whom she does not know and who belongs to her companion's past. Furious to know that he wants to get away from her, she humiliates him, triggering in him a crisis of madness.
In Beckett's play, Winnie's wickedness takes on a symbolic character. It's the blow that she gives to Willie with the umbrella, which makes his blood run. But Willie is kind and passive, which is emphasized by his way of making the utensil to his selfish and irascible wife. As for the authoritarian character of Winnie, it shows in the episode where she directs Willie:

Go back into your hole now, Willie, you've exposed yourself enough. [Pause.] Do as I say, Willie, don't lie sprawling there in the hellish sun, go back into your hole [Pause.] Go on now, Willie. Not the head first, I tell you. [Pause.] More to the right. [Pause.] the right, I said. [Pause. Irritated.] Keep your tail down, can't you [Pause.] Now. [Pause.] There!

Willie puts on his straw hat, which reflects his desire to leave Winnie, then withdraws it, a sign of his indecision: like Thierry Raynal, he is indecisive.
Suicide is a theme of the film that also exists in the play. The son of Mrs. Audié (Françoise Rosay) committed suicide with a revolver when he learned about Christine's marriage. In Happy Days, Winnie took out a revolver from her bag and put it prominently next to her:

[She turns back front, close eyes,throw out left arm, plunges hand in bag and brings out revolver. Disgusted.] You again! [She opens eyes, brings revolver front and contemplates it. She weighs it in her palm.] You'd think the weight of this thing would it bring down among the... the last rings. But no. It doesn't. Ever uppermost, like Browning. Not yet enough heavy to remain in the content with... the last cartridges ?(5) 5. These "last cartridges" are with double direction: references to the knick-knacks which the women use to make up and to a famous painting by Alphonse de Neuville about the war between France and Prussia in 1870. .

Willie also wanted to die:

Remember Brownie, Willie? [Pause.] Remember how you used to keep on at me to take it away from you? Take it away, Winnie, take it away before I put myself out of my misery. [Back front. Derisive.] Your misery!

In the play as in the film, the focus is on a revolver. The revolver is next to Winnie in a large part of the play, marking the temptation of suicide; in the film, Thierry Raynal murders his mistress with a revolver: we see him introducing the cartridges into the barrel. A last shot shows the weapon aimed at the spectators, but a fade to black obscures the scene of the murder and the suicide.
The two women are coquettish. The film emphasizes on Christine who reiterates her question to Eric Irvin: 'was I pretty?', a question that embarrasses the mountaineer who does not want to answer, as she is teasing him. It seems that Winnie also worries about her ability to seduce, but in fact she has still more coquettishness. Willie has no choice left. He cannot say 'no' :

Was I ever lovable once, Willie ? [Pause.] Was I ever lovable? [Pause.] Do not misunderstand my question, I am not asking you if you loved me, we know all about that, I am asking you if you found me lovable - at one stage.

In Duvivier's film, Christine dreams about the music of 'Gray Waltz', while in Beckett's play, Winnie listens to the famous 'The Merry Widow', a waltz too.
The play departs from the film in the last skit, when Christine returns to her Italian home. In the movie, after returning to the ball with the hairdresser (Fernandel), Christine begins to realize how wrong she was. The confrontation with the mediocre reality makes the dazzling memory appear like a lie. Nevertheless, her illusions refuse to die completely. When her friend Bremond announces that the only dancer she may have loved lived on the other side of the lake where she spent her life with her husband, she initially refuses to go see him, for fear of a new disappointment and to save a piece of dream. But Bremond insists and advises her to purge the past. She goes there and finds the son of her former dancer who announces that his father is dead, ruined by his generosity. A possibility of happiness existed, but she let it escape. She has to accept the reality.
What characterizes this recovered reality is its insignificance. To the son of the man she loved - she adopts him, he calls her 'his godmother' - as he dresses for his first ball, she tells him:

It's important a first ball.

Then, she adds:

It's almost as important as a first cigarette.

The film ends with the image of the cigarette being consumed in the ashtray, highlighting the insignificance of life.
In contrast, the end of Happy days shows a character unable to adapt to the mediocrity of life. Willie, who ended up giving up Winnie, returns. But the separation caused him an anthrax in the neck ... It is known that Beckett suffered from abscesses and cysts.
James Knowlson, his biographer, points out how difficult his relationship with Suzanne, who he was deceiving, was difficult and that the couple ended up more or less apart, Beckett nevertheless refusing to leave his wife, even though she would have liked him to go away...(6)
James Knowson, Damned to fame. The life of Samuel Beckett, Bloomsbury, London, 1997. On his difficult relationship with Suzanne see p. 600. In 1933, a cyst in Beckett's neck suppurates during months and he gets operated two times. p. 230. Beckett deviated from the movie that most likely inspired him to write an ending that is consistent with his own life experience.