It was a long time ago, but I’m pretty sure this card game was given to me by the French author Bernard Noel on one of his visits to Geneva. We were planning a film about him with Irene Lichtenstein, which finally didn’t work out. That would have been in the eighties, at the time these cards were finally published (1983).
The card game? Le Jeu de Marseille was created in the early 40’s by André Breton and a group of fellow Surrealists who were holed up in Marseille, fleeing from nazi-occupied France. The joker you will recognise: Ubu Roi, the hilarious character invented by Alfred Jarry.
I took the photo below of Bernard Noel when we were researching ideas and places for the film.
