Thursday 31 March 2022

33rd Alliance Française French Film Festival 2022 - Janice Tong's đŸŽ„ 3rd Filmic Postcard LA PANTHÈRE DES NEIGES /THE VELVET QUEEN (Marie Amigue & Vincent Munier, 2021)

The Queen, The Velvet Queen


This is a profound film that brings the wild heartland of nature towards you. Given the time and distance, its approach catches you off guard: the sounds, the sights, the sheer vastness of the landscapes and the incredible poetry of all its animals, the majestic and the whimsical, all come to rest within your beating heart. Here, in the darkened cinema, the film is no longer a documentary, as the observer and the observed becomes one; it enters you as a dream: where you encounter the stoic beauty of a wild yak, its tufted skirt around its legs silhouetted against a pre-dawn sky, standing still, it watches you as you watch Vincent Munier on his belly directly in front of it. The surprising but too elegant-to-be-comical bharal doe’s bunny hops, or the Pallas’ cats synchronic moves, like a mechanised version of its feline self. Munier’s meditation on nature is a lesson in waiting. As he teaches us the art of the blind, we learn the world. His eye is trained on beauty and wonderment, and not on the devastation he must surely have also observed. This self-taught artistic eye (“I’m not a photojournalist” he says), is perhaps his greatest gift to us; to really see a world in its nascent fragility, the dawn of a landscape without humans. We see in his youthful but lined features a patient teacher; who is determined but gentle in reminding us of the need to preserve what little left we have of the wild and this film (as do his photographs) speaks to the tangible balance of lives that dwell within its diminishing landscape.


Vincent Munier, Sylvain Tesson

 

Sylvain Tesson, nature writer, adventurer, poet from the Tesson family (father, Phillippe, an active audio-visual journalist who was once the editor-in-chief of Combat in the 60s and 70s amongst other newspaper publications; sisters StĂ©phanie is a director and playwright and DaphnĂ©, a journalist). Munier’s dialogue with Tesson, by way of their whispered conversations, but also their contemplation and observation, their pursuit, solitude and waiting calm; and most of all, their collective eye – captured so unobtrusively by Marie Amiguet – has shaped this film into an ode, or perhaps, an epic poem (50 versions of this film was made) in balanced search of the seen and the unseen. Tesson’s voiceover guides our own inner voice and colours our reading of the film with a philosophical frame, “Not everything in this world is meant for the eyes of humans,” Tesson says in the film. No, not everything – across a snow-covered slant of peaks and the prairies shimmering with a low winter sun, we know this is, in fact, a God’s eye view; and we are privileged to sit in this seat for a short while. 

 

There is so much to see – Tesson admits that as an adventurer, he “chased the horizon” – that we miss as we hurtle ourselves across the plains of existence, of toil and labour; or in our pursuit of the new and the better, all leaves us breathless for more of the same excess. This film asks us to pause, if but for a moment. And in this moment, I contemplate what might be lost, (and what we are continually losing) perhaps forever – and I would not want this world to fade...with its haunting and incomprehensible beauty. This world I imply is an ‘other’ world. A world without humans. Because, quite very simply, “the world reeks of us” – we are everywhere. 

Wild yak at dawn

 

The animals observe us from their distance; across time too; as though, in Tesson’s words, the wild yaks are “ancient totems, suspended in time. Pre-history wept, and each tear became a yak”. 

 

The empty promise of the wait, of the snowy queen, who may or may not present herself. The film tells its story well, because you would not know unless you read the press release that the snow leopard that chose to rendezvous with Sylvain was an ancient beast. Battered across the left muzzle and around its jaw; its fur less regal than the graceful camouflaged beast in the photographic stills (or perhaps they are filmic, but regardless, the mythical creature is captured in stillness within those frames). Sylvain’s panthĂšre speaks to us of its history and its trials within this landscape; and also of survival in a harsh land (regularly we see temperatures recorded at -25°C) and thus, its fragility; and finally its solitary existence.


Pallas cat

 

It was an ill-felt wake up when I headed out to the streets after the film; the loudness of the traffic and people’s voices, shuffling, pointing, consuming, everything felt amplified and greatly disturbed my meditation. I wanted little else than to look at a bird or a flower. 

 

This is as much Vincent Munier’s film as it is Marie Amiguet’s or Sylvain Tesson’s; also LĂ©o-Pol Jacquot’s too, who has been working with Munier for eight years (but always in front of computers). This nimble team of four adapted to their surroundings; spending two separate three week trips into the Tibetan wilderness. At one stage, I did become alarmed at Munier’s delight (though he didn’t think he was ‘animal’ enough), when he discovered the cave where they are about to take shelter for the night, was in fact a well-frequented den for bears, wolves and leopards. The film also showed a lovely encounter with the nomadic Tibetan family who welcomed the team to stay with them from time to time during the shoot, and thus breaking harsh Chinese laws that have been set against Tibetans– Munier himself had been subject to violent police arrests and treatments; but this film does not make a political statement. It is however, interesting to note that this film has a longer pre-history than that deemed by this shoot; Munier had been documenting the Tibetan wilderness since 2011; so the landscape would be at once familiar but also different with each visit, (this is how Munier likes to work – on a single subject, over a long period of time) and the audience gets the benefit of his 11 year-long sojourn and the materials he has collected in this time – such as exquisite but haunting the opening scene of the black and the white.  That was from an earlier trip and filmed only on an iPhone and a telescope. But I digress, Munier’s desire is to only be open to what approaches, to be present within the experiences that unfold; his communion is with the elegiac – where time and its violent grip on us disappears, and there, alone on the plain, there is only one moment that stretches out infinitely. 


Click to enlarge and spot the panther, The Velvet Queen

 

The small bird with orange plumage on its belly at the end of the film is a startling footnote – that a bird of such diminutive size has a majesty of its own; the signature of which is drawn, I believe by a White-capped Redstart – to read its marking (or tracks), its silhouette and then to identify it, is perhaps the first language of humans. And so, we realise, nature has always taught us, if only we would wait, watch, smell and listen. 

 

The Alliance Française French Film Festival is currently showing in SydneyMelbourneCanberra and Perth from now to the 6th April across a number of theatres. Hobart from 9th to 20th March, Brisbane from 16th March to 13th April, and a little later in Byron Bay, 30th March to 13th April, Victor Harbour 4th to 11th April and Adelaide from 24th March to 26th April.

Monday 28 March 2022

CINEMA REBORN 2022 - New titles announced WATERSIDE WORKERS FILM UNIT, RETURN HOME (Ray Argall) , TIGA (Lucinda Clutterbuck), MR. KLEIN (Joseph Losey) and MIRROR (Andrei Tarkovsky)

Alain Delon, Mr. Klein

Welcome to the second announcement of titles that will form part of the program for CINEMA REBORN 2022 screening at the Ritz Cinemas Randwick from 27 April to 1 May (+ some additional repeat screenings on 2 and 3 May).

Today we are pleased to announce the Australian component of our selection, two sessions that make us swell with some degree of pride in bringing them to you. The first, the films of the Sydney Waterside Workers Film Unit from the 50s, have been lovingly restored and digitized by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and they bring back a small but significant part of the Australian cinema’s complex history. We are pleased that again we have been able to collaborate with the NFSA to revive a key moment. You may remember that in 2018 we honoured Ian Dunlop, in 2019 Charles Chauvel and in 2021 Cecil Holmes. The NFSA’s crucial role in preserving and allowing access to our history continues to grow.

Our second Australian program is devoted to two films, a feature and a short, from 1990, restored by the film-makers themselves Ray Argall and Lucinda Clutterbuck. The program brings back the original 1990 presentation of the films when they formed a single program for their commercial release in Australian cinemas. Both went on to develop brilliant reputations in screenings around the world. Ray and Lucinda have now entrusted Cinema Reborn with the first screenings of the recent 4K restorations supervised by the film-makers.

Finally we are announcing two films by great film-makers of the seventies Joseph Losey  and Andrei Tarkovsky, both of them directors who fought against the systems of production in the countries of their birth and both of whom made masterpieces in the lands of their exile. The Australian premiere screenings of restorations of key films in each director's career represent Cinema Reborn landmarks.

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WATERSIDE WORKERS FEDERATION FILM UNIT (1953-58)

‘IN JUST FIVE YEARS, THEY PRODUCED…FILMS ON SUBJECTS THE GOVERNMENT FILM UNIT OR THE NEWSREEL PRODUCERS WOULD NEVER TACKLE’ – Lisa Milner, The Dictionary of Sydney

Wharfies Keith Gow and Jock Levy were both members of Sydney’s New Theatre along with Norma Disher. In 1953 they formed the Waterside Workers Federation Film Unit to counter what the union saw as misinformation and anti-worker propaganda in the mainstream press

The films they made included a campaign for a pension for wharfie veterans, the 1954 waterfront strike, workers’ rights, housing shortages and health and safety.

Using a customized Kombi van with rear projection as both a production vehicle and for distribution/exhibition, they showed their films at work sites, union and community halls and clubs, private homes and in the streets. 

 As films which passionately cared about their subjects, and as works of cinema, the Unit’s projects show a consistency of vision that no other documentary producers of the period were able to match.”

- Graham Shirley & Bryan Adams, Australian Cinema -  The First Eighty Years

Cinema Reborn will present four key films made the Unit . Each has been remastered from best quality original materials by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

Introduced by film-makers Norma Disher, Margot Nash and John Hughes

SCREENS WITH

FILM-WORK (1981)

A 43-minute documentary by John Hughes on the Waterside Workers Federation Film Unit (WWFFU), dissecting scenes from four of their films and examining their cultural and historical importance and the relationship between politics and history.

 [Hughes] recognized the WWF and Realist Film Units as mainstays of oppositional independent filmmaking in postwar Australia.”

-      John Cumming, Senses of Cinema

Film-Work has been restored by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

THIS PROGRAM SCREENS ONCE ONLY ON SATURDAY 30 APRIL AT 12.30 PM. 

To read Margot Nash’s superb set of Program Notes on the Cinema Reborn website CLICK HERE 

TO BOOK TICKETS TO THE AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE OF THESE NFSA SUPERVISED RESTORATIONS CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE RANDWICK RITZ WEBSITE.

 

Ben Mendelsohn, Return Home

RETURN HOME (1989)

“THE STORY OF ONE MAN’S COMING TO TERMS WITH HIS PAST AND THE RESPONSIBILITY AND REWARDS OF FAMILY LOVE” – SCOTT MURRAY

A divorced insurance broker in Melbourne returns home to Adelaide where his brother and wife are running a garage in a suburban shopping centre, struggling against American franchises and the loss of customer service.

Director and writer Ray Argall (also an accomplished cinematographer and editor), juxtaposes the mechanic’s struggle against this erosive economic ‘progress’ and shows how working families are threatened by this new consumerism. Superb perfomances by Dennis Coard, Frankie J Holden, Ben Mendelsohn and Mickie Camilleri.

Screens with Lucinda Clutterbuck’s award-winning 10-minute animation Tiga – the original support film for Return Home at its first commercial screening in 1990.

[Return Home’s] opening makes us immediately consider what we are looking at – images of people on suburban Adelaide beaches, playing cricket, being pulled over by police, fluffy dice, and, most substantively, driving and working on hotted-up cars – asking us to reassess conventional and expected ways of representing class, everydayness and popular culture…[an] almost Ozu-like opening sequence

-      Adrian Danks

WINNER BEST DIRECTOR AFI/AACTA AWARDS 1990. WINNER BEST FILM - FILM CRITICS CIRCLE OF AUSTRALIA AWARDS 1990

Introduced by the film-makers Ray Argall and Lucinda Clutterbuck at the 5.15 pm session on Saturday 30 April Also screens at 3.15 pm on Monday 2 May 

WATCH THE RESTORATION TRAILER https://vimeo.com/333675704

To read Scott Murray’s insight-filled Program Notes on the Cinema Reborn website CLICK HERE

TO BOOK TICKETS TO THE AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE SCREENINGS OF THE NEW 4K RESTORATION CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE RANDWICK RITZ WEBSITE.

 

Jeanne Moreau, Mr. Klein

MR. KLEIN (1976)

“THIS STORY OF BLURRED IDENTITIES AND CASUAL MORALITY IN GERMAN-OCCUPIED PARIS BENEFITS FROM WHAT MIGHT BE THE BEST PERFORMANCE OF ALAIN DELON’S LONG CAREER.” – LOS ANGELES TIMES

In Nazi-occupied Paris, an art dealer discovers his identity is being confused with another Mr Klein…and this one is Jewish. As he tries to prove who he is and as he searches for his doppelgĂ€nger, he begins to realize there is nothing accidental about this confusion.

Behind the mystery at the heart of Mr Kleinis the realization that the collaboration between the Nazis and the French in occupied France wasn’t just the unfortunate choices of misguided individuals, but the result of a systematic corruption within the French government.

A masterpiece of identity crisis – a mesmeric cat-and-mouse played out in dreadful, ever-lengthening shadows.”

-      Financial Times

WINNER BEST FILM, BEST DIRECTOR, BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN FRENCH CESAR AWARDS 1976. 

Introduced by John McDonald, Film Critic Australian Financial Review, Art Critic Sydney Morning Herald, Curator and Commentator at the 5.15 pm session on Sunday 1 May

WATCH THE TRAILEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkvEzNeiQLI

To read Mark Pierce’s informed Program Notes on the Cinema Reborn website CLICK HERE

TO BOOK TICKETS TO THE AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE OF THE NEW 4K RESTORATION CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE RANDWICK RITZ WEBSITE. 

SCREENS AT 11.15 AM ON THURSDAY 28THAPRIL AND 5.15PM ON SUNDAY 1 MAY


Mirror

MIRROR (1975)

“MIRROR DESERVES A BIG-SCREEN VIEWING, WITH ITS SMORGASBOARD OF MEMORIES IN DREAM, DRAMA AND NEWSREEL FROM THE LIFE OF A DYING POET” – THE TIMES (UK)

Chosen by a poll of film directors in 2012 as the ninth greatest film ever made, Andrei Tarkovsky’s unconventional and beautifully poetic film fuses drama, documentary and dreams to express the regrets and reminiscences of a dying man. 

Set in three time periods - the 1930s, 1940s and 1970s – the poet’s relationships with his mother, father, two wives, son and daughter are embedded in a subjective view of Russian history in the 20thCentury.

An extremely rare opportunity to see this wonderful work on the big screen and in a new 2K restoration.

My discovery of Tarkovsky…was like a miracle. Suddenly I found myself standing at the door of a room the keys of which had until then, never been given to me…Tarkovsky is for me the greatest.”

-      Ingmar Bergman 

Introduced by Alena Lodkina, film-maker, director of STRANGE COLOURS at the 8.15 pm session on Friday 29th April    

WATCH THE TRAILER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2U9TXmYJ94

To read Rod Bishop’s detailed and comprehensive Program Notes on the Cinema Reborn website CLICK HERE

TO BOOK TICKETS TO THE AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE SCREENINGS OF THE 2K RESTORATION CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE RANDWICK RITZ WEBSITE.

Screens at 8.15 pm on Friday 29 April and 10.30 am on Sunday 1 May

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Meanwhile dont forget to check out THE CINEMA REBORN FACEBOOK PAGE for news and if you are minded to make a tax deductible donation, large or small, to support the work of our all-volunteer group and bring more film classics back to the screen in Sydney click here for  THE AUSTRALIAN CULTURAL FUND

 ....and if you want to maximise your attendance think about joining THE RITZ ROYALTY CLUB and save on all admissions. Seniors get additional savings.

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The full Cinema Reborn 2022 Program is now listed on the Ritz website CLICK HERE More essays and Program Notes will be published on the Cinema Reborn website shortly and you will soon be able to download a copy of the full catalogue containing all the notes plus more.

 

Sunday 27 March 2022

On GILDA and getting around the Production Code - An excerpt from HOLLYWOOD'S MELODRAMATIC IMAGINATION: Film Noir, the Western and other Genres from the 1920s to the 1950s by Geoff Mayer




Editor's Note: This is an extract from the Chapter titled Film Noir, Virtue, the Abyss and Nothingness  which appears in Geoff Mayer's new book HOLLYWOOD'S MELODRAMATIC IMAGINATION: Film Noir, the Western and other Genres from the 1920s to the 1950s. The book is published by McFarland in the US and is available locally at a number of bookshops including the online service  BOOKTOPIA 


Thanks to Stephanie Nichols of McFarland and to Geoff Mayer for assistance in preparing it for publication here . The preface of the book was also published on this blog and you can find it IF YOU CLICK HERE

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Eight years before Human Desire (Fritz Lang, 1954) Glenn Ford co-starred in one of Columbia's  most successful films, Gilda. The key creative figure was Columbia writer/producer Virginia Van Upp. In January 1945 Van Upp achieved a rare distinction when she wasappointed executive producer at the studio, a difficult feat in the male dominated studio system at that time. She was second in command to the head of the studio, HarryCohn. Her role was to supervise the preparation and production of twelve to fourteen big-budgeted films each year. One of her first productions in her new position  was Gilda, based on E.A. Ellington's original story. Van Upp not only supervised various drafts of the screenplay, written by Jo Eisinger, Marion Parsonnet and, uncredited, Ben Hecht, she also wrote, uncredited, a substantial portion of the screenplayherself—including the film's upbeat epilogue. The first draft, submitted on 16  November1944,was rejected byJoseph Breen and the PCA on the grounds that it depicted illicit sex and adultery without any semblance of compensating moral values. 

A revised screenplay was submitted on August 24,1945. Again Breen rejected it. Nevertheless, filming began on September 4 and continued until December10, 1945. Revisions were resubmitted on      September and Breen approved the production,with a few quibbles on September 11. After filming was completed,  the PCA, without Breen,reviewed the film and it was granted          a seal of approval on February 25, 1946. Within the history of Hollywood censorship after the tightening of the Production Code system in mid-1934, the PCA’s decision to give Gilda  their seal of approval was a significant moment as the film represented direct challenge to Breen's dictum  that the appropriate moral values must permeate the entire narrative not just the epilogue.

The film begins with Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford), a drifter similar to Cain's opportunistic Frank Chambers in The Postman Always Rings Twice, in trouble in a waterfront gambling game in Buenos Aires. After winning money, he is confronted by a robber in a dark alley. He is rescued by a middle-aged man with his “little friend” a walking cane that abruptly transforms into an erect weapon with a phallic steel tip. Farrell's mysterious savior, middle-aged Ballin Mundson (George Macready), suggests the young man join him and Farrell is soon, in effect, in kept  relationship with his wealthy benefactor. Director Charles Vidor and cinematographer Rudolph MatĂ© employ low angle camera compositions and subtle editing, along with the not-so-subtle visual metaphor of Ballin's “cane," to convey the real nature  of Farrell's relationship with Ballin. Mundson even compares Farrell with his phallic cane:“Johnny,’ Mundson explains,“is almost as sharp as my other friend, but he will kill for me'’ Johnny replies, “That's what friends are for'’ Many years later Glenn Ford acknowledged that there was a concerted effort by the filmmakers to bypass Breen's opposition to any film he considered contained suggestions of “sexual perversion'’

 

The relationship between Mundson and Farrell is threatened when Mundson, while on a business trip, marries Gilda. The prospect of regularly seeing a woman who had an affair with him some time ago unsettles Johnny. His condition deteriorates when Mundson orders the young man to “look after” Gilda, a situation she exploits to the full as she teases her frustrated ex-lover with her supposed infidelities in Buenos Aires. Johnny's psychological disintegration is exposed in his narration. After watching Gilda with her husband he explains: “I wanted to hit her. I wanted to go back and see them together with me watching'’ Although Gilda enjoys Farrell's torment, she gradually realizes that her husband has his own peculiarities, especially when he tells her that “hate can be a very exciting emotion. Very exciting. Haven't you noticed that there's a heat in it that one can feel. Didn't you feel it tonight.... I did! It warmed me. Hate is the only thing that had ever warmed me.” In  this perverse scene, effectively played by George Macready, Mundson,dressed in a      flamboyant dressing gown over his formal costume, sits on the edge of their bed. Director Charles Vidor places Mundson, in shadow, deep in the foreground of the frame to show his domination of Gilda as his body divides her into two parts.

 

Mundson seemingly dies two-thirds into the film although a brief insert shows  him surviving a plane explosion after parachuting from the damaged craft. Mundson's “death” clears the way for Johnny to court and marry Gilda. However, she soon discovers that Johnny  is even bcrazier than Mundson.His marriage to her was ruse  to control and punish for her “adulterous affairs'’ On their wedding night she discovers a large photograph of Mundson in their room. Distressed, she tells Johnny that this “isn't decent'’ He throws the word “decent” back into her face as his narration reiterates his deep-seated psychosis:

She didn't know then what was happening to her.She didn't know then what she heard was the door closing on her own cage. She hadn't been faithful to him when he was alive but she was going to be faithful now that he was dead.

 

Obsessed with his debt to Mundson, Johnny systematically tortures Gilda by denying her any sexual contact with him, or other people. To achieve this he assigns Mundson's casino employees to watch her day and night. Distressed by Johnny's neglect,       she tells him: “You wouldn't think that one woman could marry two insane men in  one lifetime, would you?” Gilda tries to get away, fleeing to Montevideo where she  intends filing for divorce. In Montevideo she meets an attorney, Tom Langford (Don Douglas), who is seemingly infatuated with her. He tells Gilda to return to Buenos Aires and file for an annulment as her marriage was never consummated. Accepting    his advice, she returns to Buenos Aires, only to learn that Langford was working forJohnny. Gilda, in an attempt to humiliate Johnny, sings the torch song “Put the BlameonMarne,"while gyrating her hips and undertaking striptease (she only removes        her gloves) in front of excited patrons in the casino. When she invites two eager men in the audience to assist her, Johnny, who is watching her, erupts with rage. The film's “surface plot” involving former Nazi agents who seek a patent forTungsten is quickly resolved and one of the casino's employees, Uncle Pio (Steven Geray), stabs Mundson in the back with his own walking stick just as he is about to shoot Gilda and Farrell. In the epilogue Johnny and Gilda prepare to leave Buenos Aires for life together in the United States.


"She only removes her gloves", Rita Hayworth, Gilda

 

The film's final moments,withJohnny suddenly assuming some semblance of “normality,’ is poorly motivated. It is an extreme example of a melodramatic deus ex machina. It represents one of Hollywood's more obvious violations of Frances Marion's advice in her 1937 screenplay manual How to Write and Sell Film Stories that the characters “must be extricated in a logical and dramatic way that brings them happiness'’ While the film's brief epilogue endorses the prevailing ethical norms of the1940s, a “normal” heterosexual romance along with a celebration of marriage and domesticity, the episodic narrative for the great bulk of the film is devoid of any consistency with regard to its presentation of virtue - depending on whether Gilda's “transgressions” are to be believed. 

 

Each of the central characters, Gilda, Johnny and Mundson,take turns in extracting pleasure through acts of cruelty.The only semblanceof an explanation for this, and it is barely plausible,is that once the couple are able to extricate themselves from the “depravities” of an “alien” culture (Buenos Aires),they somehow will resume “normal” life back in the United States.

 

Van Upp's upbeat epilogue was, in effect, a cynical attempt to bolster the film's chances at the box office while also appeasing Breen and his objections concerning the film's depiction of “illicit sex and adultery without compensating moral values”.On the whole, however, the film cleverly bypassed Breen's prohibitions by following his advice to producers in the 1930s that “illicit acts” should always be rendered in an  oblique manner so that audiences could never really point to a moment in the film where “offensive acts” took place. Hence the narrative should deny constantly the possibility of such actions while, at other times, admitting the possibility that they occurred. The filmmakers took this advice and, in the process,made it almost impossible for Breen to object to the ramifications of its oblique presentation, as in the following dialogue exchange:

JOHNNY:Get this straight.don't care what you do.But I'm going to see to it that it looks all right to him[Mundson]. From now on,you go anywhere you please, with anyone you please. But I'm going to take you there and I'm going to bring you home.Get that?Exactly  the way I'd pick up his laundry.

 

GILDA:Shame on you Johnny. Any psychiatrist would tell you your thought-associations are very revealing. All to protect Ballin—who do you think you are kidding,Johnny?

This shift in Hollywood's more problematic presentation of morality was detected by French critics such as Nino Frank and Jean-Pierre Chartier in thesummer of 1946. After viewing a relatively large number of Hollywood films produced between 1940 and 1946, films not screened in France during the first half of the 1940s due to the German occupation,they realized that something had changed.For              Chartier, however, this change was not necessarily for the better as he noted in1946:


“She kisses him so that he'll kill for her'’ Emblazoned on the movie posters, over a blood stain, is a description of Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity. The same line would work just as well for Edward Dmytryk's Murder, My SweetIt would hold true again for The Postman Always RingsTwice which is currently big hit in the US. We understood why the Hays Office     had previously forbidden film adaptations of James M.Cain's two novels from which Double  Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice  are drawn. It is harder to understand, given this censor's moral posture,why this interdiction was lifted, as it's hard to imagine story lines with a more pessimistic or disgusted point of view regarding human behavior."