from darkness into light
by
Douglas Messerli
Louise
de Vilmorin (screenplay, based on the novel Point
de Lendemain by Dominique Vivant), Louis Malle (director) Les Amants (The Lovers) / 1958
When
Louis Malle’s film The Lovers first
premiered in the US in 1959, people were scandalized by its open sexuality; a
theater manager in Cleveland Heights, Ohio was arrested
and convicted
for the public depiction of obscene material. Appealing to the United States
Supreme Court, Nico Jacobellis won, with the court finding the film was not
pornographic, but there was no agreement among justices about what might constitute
pornography or whether or not it was even illegal. Perhaps Justice Potter
Stewart expressed the opinion best in his now famous opinion: "I shall not
today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be
embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed
in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture
involved in this case is not that."
If the plot is thin—and it is—the actors
make up for it, particularly the ever evocative Moreau, her best friend, Maggy
(Judith Magre), the sauve de Vilallonga, and the highly romantic Bory.
Moreover, whatever this love triangle suffers in tension, Malle’s and Henri
Decaë’s beautiful cinematography makes up for it. Particularly the scenes in
which Moreau, traveling from Paris to her home Dijon speeds through avenues of
plane trees, Malle’s camera demonstrates by the darkness of the trees masking
the light behind why Madame Turnier feels so trapped and spends so much time in
France’s capital city.
Henri (Alain Cuny), moreover, makes a
perfect villain, a man so caught up in his work that even when his stylishly
dressed wife makes a sudden inexplicable visit to his workplace, with its
massive presses running full speed, that he couldn’t care less, sending a secretary
out to intercept his wife Jeanne as she dodges the woman—who for all she knows
has a closer relationship to her husband than she does—to confront him, yet
cannot find the words to say anything but that she is lonely, and quickly
leaves.
Certainly it is enough for Jeanne, who the
next morning packs her bags and takes off for a completely unknown territory
with the young student, realizing that, if nothing else, it will certainly be
better than the duplicitous life she has been living.
Finally, Malle’s film is a highly moral one.
As he, himself, described was he was attempting to do in this film: “I wanted
to devote an entire film to the study of a woman who gives up a routine of the
usual morality for a higher morality of self-realization.” If this is
pornography, so is everything.
Los Angeles,
September 2, 2016
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