FANTASY AMERICA - cIRcle - University of British Columbia

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States as Seen Through French and Italian Eyes is an exploration of a parallel occurrence ..... made on behalf of Fantasy America's less cosmopolitan quarters.
FANTASY AMERICA: THE UNITED STATES AS SEEN THROUGH FRENCH AND ITALIAN EYES by

MARK HARRIS M.A., The University of British Columbia, 1992 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Programme in Comparative Literature) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard

THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA April 1998 © Mark Robert Harris, 1998

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- i iAbstract For the past two decades, scholars have been reassessing the ways in which Western writers and intellectuals have traditionally misrepresented the non-white world for their own ideological purposes. Orientalism, Edward Said's ground-breaking study of the ways in which Europeans projected their own social problems onto the nations of the Near East in an attempt to take their minds off the same phenomena as they occurred closer to home, was largely responsible for this shift in emphasis. Fantasy America: The United States as Seen Through French and Italian Eyes is an exploration of a parallel occurrence that could easily be dubbed "Occidentalism." More specifically, it is a study of the ways in which French and Italian writers and filmmakers have sought to situate the New World within an Old World context. "Among the (More Advanced) Barbarians" (a.k.a. Chapter One) examines the continuities and discontinuities of French travel writing in America from the days of the Jesuits to the heyday of the existentialists. Certain motifs and idees fixes—the uniqueness of American racism; the "magic" of New York—are first identified and then examined. "A Meeting of the Mafias" (Chapter Two) is more cosmopolitan in scope, tracing the ways in which French, American, and Italian crime fiction have historically influenced each other, as well as the relationship of the policier to differing notions of the nation-state. "The Ruins of Rome" (Chapter Three) demonstrates how Italian intellectuals have looked to the United States for new World Solutions to Old World problems. This chapter encompasses two major sub-themes: the positive possibilities for Italy of "Fordismo" (the American industrial model) and American literature (which was believed to promote political, as well as cultural, liberty). "Lurching Towards the Millennium" picks up the threads of the first three chapters and places them in the contemporary context of globalization, a process which threatens to replace the hegemony of the nation state with the omnipresence of corporate power. The cultural model of Quebec is introduced at this point as a New World/Old World paradigm that embodies the chimerical contradictions of a globe on the brink of a new millennium.

-ii i-

Table of

Contents

Abstract

ii

Acknowledgements

iv

Introduction

1

CHAPTER I CHAPTER II

Among the (More Advanced) Barbarians

11

Mid-Atlantic Melodrama; or, A Meeting of the Mafias

91

CHAPTER III

The Ruins of Rome

194

CHAPTER IV

Slouching Towards the Millennium

243

Conclusion

344

Bibliography

362

Appendix I Who's Afraid of Jerry Lewis?

384

Appendix II

Pity for John Wayne

389

Appendix III

Hypocrisy American Style

392

- iv-

Acknowledgements

As John Donne almost said, no graduate student is an island—which is to say, this Ph.D. dissertation could not have been completed without the aid of a great many people. First of all, I would like to thank the Killam Foundation, the federal government, and the UBC funding agencies for the generous financial help they provided during the writing of this thesis. Secondly, I would like to thank my doctoral committee for the unique and varied insights with which they broadened and enriched my work. Dr. Marguerite Chiarenza, the committee's chair, served as a cool and calming voice of reason when things seemed most hopeless, as well as an eagle-eyed proofreader. Dr. Steven Taubeneck proved equally knowledgeable about university procedure, and made sure that I didn't wander too far afield from my central point. Dr. Patricia Merivale's vast erudition, meanwhile, provided me with an endless supply of pertinent literary leads. I would also like to thank Professor George McWhirter and the students in his translation class for their helpful suggestions in regard to the English-language renderings of the dissertation's appendices. Dr. Eva-Marie Kroeller's contribution should likewise not be under-valued, since she initiated me into the mysteries of Comparative Literature and introduced me to two committee members. Dr. Thomas Salumets, her worthy successor as program head, proved to be no less helpful. I would also like to thank the library staffs of the Pacific Cinematheque and the Italian Cultural Institute for granting me access to out-of-print texts which would otherwise have been extremely difficult to obtain. Similarly, my appreciation extends to the helpful folks at Manhattan Books who kept me regularly supplied with the latest French and Italian tomes. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Carola Ackery, who stood by me during the months following my nearly fatal automotive accident in April, 1997. If not for her selfless care, it would have taken much longer than it did for this dissertation to get back on track. Consequently, it is to her that this project is gratefully dedicated.

1

TNTRODUCTION

In

the 73 volumes of The Jesuit

that stands out from all the others.

Relations,

Amid

there is one passage

endless accounts

of pagan

souls lost and won, of the hardships and torments endured by Christian missionaries

in

the

land

of

the

heathen,

of

the

endless

committed by French drunks and English Protestants, description that owes more to the fantastic

itinerant monks, merchants,

soldiers

there is a single

tradition of Herodotus and

John Mandeville than it does to the dispassionate, of

perfidies

and sea

hardheaded journals

captains.

"[Les]

deux

monstres," spotted by Father Pierre Marquette, SJ, during the course of a seventeenth-century

river journey in the

American

Southwest,

"ont

des Cornes en teste Comme des cheveils; un regard affreux, des

yeux

rouges, une Barbe comme d'un tygre, le corps couuert d'ecailles,

et le

queue si Longue qu'elle fait tout le tour du corps passant par dessus la teste

et

retournant

entre

les

jambes

elle

se

termine

en

queue

de

Poisson" (The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. V o l . 59 140). As we shall see in Chapter One, many of the Jesuits' letters to their religious superiors were written in a style that seems to anticipate

the

anthropological tone of Claude Levi-Strauss's Tristes tropiques. Even so, while reading these texts it is important to bear in mind that even the clearest-eyed

observations

leave

room for

monsters.

Proto-ethnology,

zoology, and botany are never far removed from the realm of magic and wonder. Fantasy America:

The United States as Seen Through French and

Italian Eyes is predicated on this peculiar split in human consciousness.

2 It takes as its starting point the idea that there is an element of magical thinking Italian

in the national perception of other societies. artists

colossus

of

and intellectuals the

New

misrepresentations Orientalism onto

its

World

which—as

did not the

impose

same

Edward

upon

humiliating

Said so

nonetheless

colonies,

characterized by

the

object

otherness

the

of

their

economic

prejudices

eloquently

and Culture and Imperialism—expansionist non-white

If French and

and

complains in

Europe projected observation

rather than by

any

was

"genetic"

points of cultural similarity. In other words, America was always seen as something larger than Europe or as something smaller; it could be "inferior" or "superior". What it could not be was the same. National impinge

on

history,

collective

local

distortions

Probably the only peoples whose extreme other

nations

customs,

and frustrated

rooted

wishes

always

in psychological projection.

immune to this cultural debility are those

geographical isolation blinds them to the existence of and

other

mores.The three

countries

covered

by

this

study obviously do not fall into this exceedingly rare category, although they do enjoy differing degrees of otherness

and affinity. French and

Italian, for instance, are both Latin-based languages, while the structure of English owes most to the ancient Germanic tongues.

On the other

hand, both French and English are, in Gilles Deleuze's sense of the term, "imperialist" languages, while Italian is not. Even so, it should not be forgotten

that

Latin,

the

language

of

ancient

Italy,

was

once

the

universal tongue of the Pax Romana, and must therefore be ranked as the Western World's basis

that it was

Hellenic Greek).

first imperialist system

of discourse

spoken mainly in Asia Minor—one

(if—on

the

does not count

3 As it is with language, American their

sociocultural

Italo-American

so is it with most things. While Franco-

affiliations

can more

counterparts,

these

contradictory and ambiguous. For every

often

be

perceived

comparisons

than

are

often

conclusion reached, one could

have arrived at a counter-conclusion which was almost as sound. What's more, the ties of influence

and observation do not always

flow

in a

bilateral direction. In societies that every day grow more global and less tribal—a description which currently encompasses all but a few communities

in Africa

and Asia—increasingly complex

needed to properly explain the flow cases,

definitive

boundaries

of

pontification

academic

ideograms

of progression/regression.

exceeds

speculation.

even

To speak

the

isolated

In many

most

on such

are

generous

matters

is

to

commit the intellectual sin of hubris. In order to avoid the worst of these excesses, I have decided to limit my study of French and Italian perceptions of America to models which at least two of the concerned parties —one of which must always be the USA—have shared to a significant degree.

For this reason, the

reader will find little or no comment on such subjects as opera, science fiction, Renaissance painting, Impressionism, rock 'n' roll, collections aphorisms, peplumi, thousand Instead,

Broadway

musicals,

rhythm and blues, other I have

locally decided

production. Respectively, and—for

want

of

relation,

American

epic

book

length

poetry,

commedia

popular manifestations to

focus

philosophical

on three

of

primary

these are the travel book, the

a better

term—the

commentators

are

areas

or

less

or a

creativity. of

artistic

polar/policier,

cultural survival essay. more

essays,

dell'arte,

national

of

silent

In

this

partners.

4 Though constantly spoken of, they almost never speak of those who so confidently

define them.

"Among the (More Advanced) Barbarians," the first of America's

four

chapters,

deals

with

French

Fantasy

intellectual

attitudes

towards the United States, from the Counter-Reformation era (when the Jesuit Fathers first set an enduringly Gallic cultural stamp on the New World) to the late 1960s (when aging existentialists poststructuralists

took

this

and more youthful

newly-imperial republic

to

task

for

its

foreign and domestic policies). This was the period when virtually all Gallic

observers

political

saw

convictions

travellers.

Some

the United States as or

of

personal

these

"other," regardless

predilections

accounts

appear

in

of

individual

the

form

of

of

the

literary travel

journalism, others in the guise of fiction. A l l are, to a greater or lesser extent, realistic. Readers in search of a "fantastic" New World akin to the one depicted in J . G . Ballard's science-fiction novel, Hello

America,

will

surely be disappointed. For my purposes, the words "Fantasy America" refer to certain carefully defined outsiders' "takes" on their country of study—nothing more. By adhering to this policy, I hope to underscore the

fantastic

elements

which underlie the

surface

naturalism of

the

texts and films under discussion. For reasons of topicality and source availability, the lion's share of critical attention will be focused on postwar works of film and literature. For historical reasons, early Italian impressions of the New World are not included here. La Nouvelle parcel of the ancien until

1870,

France, after all, was once part and

regime. Because the Risorgimento

was not complete

the Italian government was never in a position to acquire

North American colonies

(even if the newly "discovered"—to its long-

5 term inhabitants, it was never truly "lost"—continent the

Italian

mariner,

Amerigo

Vespucci).

was named

Whatever

after

expansionist

impulses the brainchild of Cavour and Garibaldi might have felt during the last decades of the nineteenth towards

the

last few

acres

century were,

of Africa

of necessity, directed

which were not

already under

European control. In other words, French voyagers to the United States were

imbued with

denied

a vestigial

proprietory interest

to their Italian counterparts.

which

No matter how

was

to

"other" the

be

New

World might appear to Parisian travellers, the ubiquity of French place names

could

not

help

but

remind them

of

a very

distant

familial

relation. Conversely, the very size and success of America had to appear on some level

as a symbol of cultural defeat, an emblem of "Anglo-

Saxon" hegemony,

the economic consummation of anglophone self-

aggrandizement that began with the Hundred Years' War (if the words "Englishman" and "American" House

and Whitehall, they

seem mutually

exclusive

sound far more convergent

in the White in the

Elysee

Palace). The French intellectual elite's deep-seated suspicion of perfidious Albion reborn as the crude but vital U S A did not, however,

entirely

preclude feelings of love, admiration, and curiosity. Quite the contrary. America's limitless and

vast

spaces,

mechanical

ingenuity,

democratic

wealth, industrial capacity, motion pictures, music,

literature

were

at least

as

much

adored as

they

practices, automobiles

were derided.

Above all, the new nation was a paradox. "Barbaric" though it was, this upstart colony in some ways seemed superior to the Old World at a time when the natural superiority of Europeans over all other peoples

was

almost

not,

universally

held—at

least

by

Europeans.

America

was

6 therefore, the kind of exotic Middle Eastern backwater that Victor Hugo and Gerard de Nerval explored in their more flamboyant century fictions. ersatz

Asian

parables

It was,

lands

designed

rather, more like the

which to

admirable but

Voltaire conjured up

underscore

the

social,

nineteenth-

a century

religious

entirely

earlier in

and

political

shortcomings of continental Europe. In some ways, French writing about America can be seen as a sort of convergence

of these two

styles of

"Occidentalism". Italy's interest in the U S A was far more selective and pragmatic. As we shall see in "The Ruins of Rome", my argument's third chapter, for Italian intellectuals possible most

solutions

open

specificity

of

America was primarily seen as a storehouse of

for endemic all

Italian problems. While statistically

European nations

to

outside

influences,

was implicitly assumed to be too strong to suffer

the

Italian

significant

alteration. Regardless of whether one read Georges Simenon or Renato Oliveri, John Steinbeck or Carlo Levi, Calabria would still be Calabria, Tuscany Tuscany, and so on. In the foreward to his bestselling popular history,

The Italians, Luigi

Barzini wrote that, for Italians

"the

most

fascinating subject of all [is] why are we the way we are" (Barzini xv). To write about Italy was notoriously hard, he claimed, because of "the absurd

discrepancy

inhabitants' quality

of

between

achievements

quantity

through

many

and dazzling centuries

their national history...." (Barzini

searching, the presence shadow

the

x).

and

In this

array the

of

the

mediocre

endless

of America can only appear as a distant

selfecho,

or beacon, despite the fact that, post-1945, the United States

has meddled more directly in Italian internal affairs than it has in the political ambitions of the French. Ironically, the nature of this paradox

7 can more profitably be explained in Chapter Two than it can in Chapter Three. As its title suggests, "A Meeting of the Mafias: or, Mid-Atlantic Melodrama"

is

primarily

concerned

specifically,

it deals with the

with

"cops

and

fictional representation

robbers"; of

more

same in

the

novels and feature films of French, Italian and American cineastes and authors. It is no accident that it is also the chapter most marked by sociological bias, since its author will attempt to prove that many, if not all,

of

a given

society's underlying social

structures

are reflected

or

revealed by its attitudes towards social deviance. According to this logic, Inspector

Javert,

Philip Marlowe, and Vittorio de

Sica's

anonymous

bicycle thief say more about deep French, American and Italian societal assumptions

than would a similar array of Rolands, Leatherstockings,

and Infernal poets. The fine points of a nation's imagination are at least as

revelatory

of

hidden assumptions,

fears

and yearnings

as

are

its

economic infrastructure and political mythology. This belief is, of course, very widely shared by genre critics. For the duration of Chapter Two, I must count myself among them. "A Meeting of the Mafias" is the one section of this study where French, American and Italian influences effect,

I have

enjoy

almost equal status. To

achieve

this

eliminated from consideration

Deleuze

would call "le roman a enigme," that is the genteel detective

story whose guiding geniuses were,

what

are, and probably always

Gilles

will be,

Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Since the roman a enigme is a quintessentially English style, it has been dispensed with here. On the other hand, because what I do describe is so beholden to the stylistics of film

noir, I am obliged to mention some of the Germanic influences

on

8 the American and French crime story (Expressionist influence on / gialli being

weak

to

non-existent).

Essentially,

deals with three sorts of policier: and

the

sociological

crime

"Mid-Atlantic

Melodrama"

the underworld saga, the film

drama

(the

latter

an

almost

Italian—and in some ways anti-generic—phenomenon).

noir,

exclusively

These styles are

among the most widely scattered in the domain of international cinema, so

Chapter Two's conclusions

made on behalf of Fantasy

are correspondingly broader than those

America's

less cosmopolitan quarters.

"Slouching Towards the Millennium", the dissertation's concluding chapter,

is

also

the

most

contemporary.

It

deals

with

historical moment wherein American cultural influence

the

present

has assumed a

position so commanding it threatens to occlude all rival visions. In the once culturally secure, closed circuit of France, U.S. sounds and images are no longer just arrogantly seductive exotica, but an integral part of a no longer national mass media. Italian cinema, for many years the most vital

and

desperate

commercially

successful

for international exposure

in

Western

it must

Europe,

package

is

new

now

so

films

like

venerable classics and peddle them to film societies around the globe in the probably vain hope local

that such tactics

distributors. Under

the

will

attract the attention

implacably expansionist

aegis

of

of

Jack

Valenti, the big studios represented by the Motion Picture Producers of America conglomerate have effectively

banished all but a token number

of subtitled features from U.S. and Anglo-Canadian screens. Meanwhile, in post-GATT Europe, Francois Mitterand's former minister of cultural affairs, Jack Lang, still struggles to put meaningful films together by the desperate different

expedient countries.

of As

yoking the

together

possibility

of

backers

from

presenting

an

five

or

six

authentically

9 French or Italian cinematic face to the world diminishes in the presence of the Hollywood juggernaut, it is becoming increasingly difficult to add even a vaguely European visage to the cultural mix. If Jean Baudrillard is to be believed, the barbarians are no longer simply at the gates, but actually

in the

living room, mixing drinks and flicking the

converter. What's more, they're

inter-marrying with

channel

the locals

to

the

point where the genealogy of certain works is difficult to determine. Luc Besson's most

Le

Cinquieme

element (1997), for example,

expensive European feature

known almost exclusively

ever released,

yet

by its U.S. release title,

is reputedly everywhere

The Fifth

Like a Freudian parent, American influence is now so deeply in the European subconscious

the

it

is

Element. embedded

it might well prove impossible

to ferret

out. While

Chapter Four

will

include

a number

of

recent

literary

sources, including Julia Kristeva and Philippe Labro, it will focus more particularly European attached

on

the

changed

perspectives

mass media in general, appendices

for

related

and

and film documents).

survival

problems

in particular (please The

now

dated

of see

Gallic

enthusiasm for be-bop, Alfred Hitchcock, Jerry Lewis, and le roman noir will

be reconsidered in the

similar vein, the seemingly

subtle

light

of post-modern

affectlessness.

downgrading and redefining of Italy's

In a

unique,

insuperable problems will be reassessed.

Following what might, at first glance,

appear to be a

somewhat

dubious distribution of analytical emphasis, fully half of Chapter Four is taken

up

with

the

ways

in

which

Quebecois

poets,

novelists,

and

cineastes have tried to make sense of their uncomfortable closeness to the United States and their painful separation from the ancien

regime.

10 By maintaining their Zeitgeist the

Old and New

France,

Worlds,

mid-way between the dominant myths of

the postmodern

inheritors of

la

nouvelle

I would argue, shed invaluable light on the problems we have

discussed

thus

relentlessly

far.

At

the

present

time,

political

power

is

being

bled away from nation states and ruthlessly transfused

into

the "veins" of large corporations. The governments of France, Italy, and other industrialized countries are all signatories

to a new generation of

free trade agreements which read like documents treaties in which the rights of nations programs,

cultural industries,

interference

are

corporations

to

sentiment

is

declared make

moving

to protect

and social welfare secondary

unrestricted away

of absolute surrender,

from

to

the

profits. the

their own

benefits rights

from

of

political

outside

deracinated

Increasingly,

larger

medicare

nationalist

structures

and

settling into the smaller but more welcoming territory of "regions". For all

these

reasons,

I

have

granted

Quebecois

perceptions

of

the

USA/France conundrum a great deal of space in my summary chapter. True "Italianness", cose all'italiana.

Luigi Barzini believed,

lay in what he called

These were the relatively few national characteristics

that distinguished his countrymen from their European neighbours. But "What exactly are these cose all' italianal" he asked rhetorically (Barzini xv). To answer this question he wrote attitudes

and trends, the strengths

and weaknesses, the strokes

and bad historical luck which resulted situation. While the queries posed

an entire book devoted

in this

by Fantasy

to the of good

unique psychopolitical America

are

nowhere

near so straightforward, in some respects they are quite similar. Before discovering

how

the

three

subject

cultures

shape

and

define

another, one must first understand what makes France French,

one

America

11 American,

and Italy

something

about

notoriously

elusive

Italian. In the process,

both trail

the

nature

of

hopefully,

cultural

one

will learn

production

of international cultural influence.

speaking, this study will probably raise more questions

and

the

Practically

than it answers.

On the other hand, I have tried to make these queries as stimulating as possible

so

investigation

that

they

in the future.

might

serve

as

springboards

to

further

12

CHAPTER ONE: A M O N G T H E (MORE ADVANCED)

BARBARIANS

Politically, France never poured much will into the preservation of its North American colonies. In La Naissance

d'une race, Abbe Lionel

Groulx, the influential Quebecois nationalist, ruefully noted this fact: "Dix mille immigrants! Voila tout ce que la France a jete sur les rives de Saint-Laurent pour y fonder une race et creer un pays" (Groulx 22). The figure of

10,000 colonists,

after more than two

it should be noted, was

centuries

of nominal colonization. At times,

total juddered around zero. During beginning

of

the

the total achieved

one

particularly low

the

point at the

seventeenth century, a Jesuit observer describes

the

plucky Heberts as "...l'unique familie de Francois habituee en Canada" (The

Jesuit

intellectuals

Relations of

the

and Allied time

did

not

Documents,

Volume 5 42).

discourage

the

crown's

French lack

of

imperialist resolve in this corner of the globe. As the Abbe Groulx sadly noted in his nationalist lamentations, Voltaire—the man who coined the famously dismissive phrase "quelques arpents de neige" in relation to la Nouvelle

France— "...appellera un jour le Canada 'le plus detestable pays

du nord....'" (Groulx 81) To some extent this disdain was shared by Europe's other colonial powers.

South American silver and Caribbean sugar were the overseas

commodities and

the

which were

eighteenth

in particular demand between

centuries.

Even

England,

the

sixteenth

in temporary control of

most American possessions north of the Rio Grande following its victory in the Seven Years War, was somewhat dubious about the value of its conquests.

In Le Temps du monde, Fernand Braudel points out that, at

13 the time of the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763,

"L'Angleterre

aurait prefere au Canada (enleve a la France) et la Floride (qui lui cede l'Espagne) la possession de Saint-Domingue" (Braudel 354). On the other side of the treaty table, such a trade, however, was totally unacceptable to a "France desireux sucrieres,

firent

que

de conserver Saint-Domingue, la reine des ties les

'arpents

de

neige'

du

Canada

revinrent a

l'Angleterre" (Braudel 354). Ironically, as J . M . Gautier notes in his introduction to Rene de Chateaubriand's

immensely

popular

century "American" novel Atala,

late

eighteenth/early

nineteenth

the French public's interest in actually

reading about America dramatically waxed even as the country's ability to

influence

events

on

that

continent

travellers' books, such as Moeurs et Description voyage

fait

generale de dans

des

waned.

Sauvages Americains and

la Nouvelle France,

VAmerique

Enlightenment bestsellers.

precipitately

septentrionale,

Early Histoire

avec le journal were

notable

d'un

Age

of

Much of this success can be attributed to the

"sensational" elements contained in these accounts penned by explorers and—especially—missionaries. Jesuit militants never tired of telling their superiors about the "nakedness" and "savagery" of the "lost souls" whom they were attempting to save. Even clothed Indians

seemed

shamefully

bare to these Catholic zealots. As one Jesuit disapprovingly sniffed, even the natives' winter furs "...n'empfeche pas qu'on ne voye la plufpart de leurs corps" (The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. Volume 5 24). If their descriptions calculated these

not

of Indian "licentiousness"

to provoke too

missionary

wanderers

many explicitly

felt

no

such

were

cloaked in terms

concupiscent

compunction

in

thoughts, regard

to

scenes of physical torture. With a cold-blooded detachment that would

14 have

done

credit to

Claude Levi-Strauss, one

observer

described

the

following sadistic procedure in almost surgical terms: "...ils leurs percent les bras au poignet auec des baftons pointus, & leurs arrachent les nerfs par ces trous" (The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, Volume 5 30). French fascination with the "horrific" novelty of America can be found with equal facility in this revealing but anachronistic (the speaker, all, is a Florentine nobleman speaking in 1535) Alfred

de

tournent

Musset's

curiosite monstreuse

speech fragment from

historical play, Lorenzaccio

autour de moi avec

des

yeux

louches,

after

(1835): comme

apportee d'Amerique...." (de Musset

"Ceux qui

autour

d'une

153).

"Monstrous curiosities": for a long time that phrase defined

the

nature of the French reading public's fascination with America. It was precisely

the kind of semi-legendary

land that John Mandeville might

have visited a century or two earlier. In any event, it was

altogether

different—which is to say, both weaker and coarser—than Marco Polo's China.

In

Tzvetan

appertained comprends

to

the

Todorov's class

ni langue

of

ni les

words,

the

"...inconnus, coutumes,

early des

American

etrangers

si etrangers

"Other"

dont

je

que j'hesite,

ne a la

limite, a reconnaitre notre appartenance commune a une meme espece" (La Conquete de l'Amerique 11). Despite these initial impressions towards eighteenth

the

new

World

began

to

and motivations, change

towards

century. In the wake of Napoleon's

French the

attitudes

end

economically

of

the

motivated

dumping of France's last major American possessions, "les Francais," J . M . Gautier reminds us, "pouvaient regretter

'd'avoir perdu ce nouvel Eden

auquel ils avaient laisse le doux nom de Louisiane....'" (Chateaubriand 4). Around the same time, "...au XIXe siecle, l'exotisme americain laisse la

15 place aux mirages de 1'Orient" (Chateaubriand 4). [This change was not absolute,

however.

According to biographer Henri Troyat, even Honore

de Balzac—arguably the major French writer of the early 1800s who was least demonstrably impressed by the American mirage—was inspired by the

sylvan romances

of James

Fenimore Cooper to

turn the

insurrectionaries in his historical novel Les Chouans into

peasant

"Peaux-Rouges"

in the "Bocage normand" (Troyat 126).] On one level, Gautier's contention is absolutely true; on another, it is somewhat misleading. If the romance of America was in the process of

giving way

simultaneously monstrous

to the Romance of Orientalism, the New metamorphosing

shape

in

Gallic

into

a

new

imaginations.

and

America

only the

World

was

slightly

less

horrible and

magical was about to be replaced by America the modern and implicitly dangerous.

As

Fernand

Braudel

observed

"Accarian de Seronne voyait, des 1766,

in

Le

temps du

monde,

se lever un 'Empire americain':

'La Nouvelle-Angleterre, ecrivait-il, est plus a redouter que l'ancienne.-..' Oui,

un Empire independant de l'Europe,

annees plus prosperite

tard (1771) qui menace

sur-tout

de

'un Empire,

dit-il

quelques

dans un avenir tres prochain la

l'Angleterre, de

l'Espagne,

de

la

France,

Portugal et de la Hollande.' C'est-a-dire que s'appercevaient

deja

du les

premiers signes de la candidature a venir des Etats-Unis a la domination de l'economie-monde

europeen" (Braudel 354).

This change, however, occurred gradually, and in a decidedly nonlinear fashion. The immense popularity of Atala was in large measure responsible for this. A relatively small part of Chateaubriand's magnum opus

La

Genie

conservative

du

christianisme,

a polemic in favour of an ultra-

interpretation of Roman Catholicism, Atala relied

heavily

16 on the Jesuit Relations for descriptive passages and background colour. While opinions differ as to whether Chateaubriand ever actually set in

America—the late

nineteenth-century

French

literary critic

Bedier remained firmly convinced that he did not—the to rely on missionary chronicles religious

convictions.

dissertation,

Father

work was

nous

author's decision

conditioned

almost entirely free

Marquette's

contributions

appealing to Chateaubriand. In 1675, laquelle

not entirely

Joseph

by

his

As already mentioned in the introduction to

that massive

descriptions.

was

foot

nous

embarquames

of

were

this

"fantastic"

particularly

this Jesuit wrote "La Riuiere sur

s'appelle

MesKousing, elle

est

fort

large, son fond est du sable...elle est pleine d'Isles Couuertes de Vignes; sur les

bords

parroissent

de

bonnes

terres,

entremeslees

de

bois

de

prairies et de Costeaux, on y voit les chesnes de Noiers, des bois blancs, et

une

autre

espece

d'arbres

dontz

les

branches

armees

de

longues

espines" (The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. Volume 59 Such

reports

exactitude

mingle

the

same

seductive

mixture

of

106).

ethnological

and Eurocentric romance that one finds first in Atala,

then—a century and a half later—in Tristes

tropiques.

Regardless

and of

Chateaubriand's own familiarity with the Mississippi river, Marquette's description

would

be

repeated

almost

narrative power was far more evocative imagination could conceive. would

this

literary

Jesuitical

verbatim in Atala

because

than anything the author's own

Not until very late in the twentieth

ethnology

be

its

largely

expunged

from

century French

consciousness.

Equally

appealing to Chateaubriand and his

successors were the

already cited Jesuit accounts of the Indian science of torture. These gory tableaux

were

an

absolute

godsend

to

the

interlocking

genres

of

17 melodrama

and

grand

guignol.

This

interest

would

doubtless

have

turned the first Americans into one-dimensional villains if the Indians' "innate" propensity for physical cruelty had not been counterbalanced by the great tenderness all

which, the Jesuit fathers disapprovingly noted,

"savages" displayed towards

their undeserving young: "Toutes

les

nations Sauuages de ces quartiers, & du Brafil, a ce qu'on nous temoigne ne fauroient chaftier ny voir chaftier vn enfant: que cela nous donnera de peine dans le deffein que nous avons d'inftruire le ieuneffe"

(The

Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. Volume 5 220). Chateaubriand's integration

of

these

sentimental

opposites

in

Native

protagonists

contributed greatly to the invention of the "noble savage," a type much beloved

by

Rousseau

and other

eighteenth

century progressives.

The

Indian was not a demon, after all; he was a sort of capricious child or innocently

murderous kitten.

Ultimately,

neither

the

Jesuits

nor Chateaubriand were

fated

to

mark out the boundaries of French discourse vis-a-vis the United States. For

one

thing,

questionable Missionary sylvan filtered

judges emphasis

romance out

intervention American

their of

Native

on

moral

were

such key on

ultra-Catholic

religious

character uplift

and

views

Protestant

historical events as of

the

thirteen

them

intention.

and Classical fascination

culturally-determined blinders

behalf

made

the

decisive

revolted

successfully French naval

colonies

Revolutionary War, and Britain's earlier

Acadians. Being the first European to see

that

with

during

expulsion

of

the the

the New World in its true

colours was an honour historically reserved for Alexis de Tocqueville, a literary

traveller who is

observations

as much esteemed for his

nineteenth-century

by contemporary American scholars as Stendhal's

writings

18 of the same period are by modern Italian academics. when

Romanticism was

Tocqueville

gradually effacing

reinvigorated

the

still

studies with some much-needed

Classicism in Europe,

virgin

scientific

The author's most famous book, De was predicated on four interlocking

Around the time

field

of

de

Franco-American

detachment. la democratie en

Amerique,

ideas. The first of these concepts

related to democracy as a political institution; the second addressed the nature of revolution; the third concerned the relationship of individuals to institutions within the binding framework of social style and national character; the fourth—and to modern readers, the least

convincing—was

the thesis that God worked on the doings of men within the confines of a fatal circle of freedom and necessity. Unlike

many

later

French

travellers,

de

Tocqueville

was

favourably impressed by the things that he saw in America. He wrote admiringly

of

the

checks

and

American system of government, the

average

citizen,

of

the

balances

that

were

of the intelligence

innovative

genius

of

essential

to

and worthiness

the of

U.S. engineers and

manufacturers, of the relative freedom of American women, and of the unparalleled

skill

of

Yankee clipper ship

captains,

the

astronauts

of

their day. With great foresight, he saw the future parcelled out between American

and Russian spheres of

influence,

and accurately

predicted

America's coming war with Mexico. If he was not quite so prescient in regard to the War Between the States, he nonetheless pointed out many of the less obvious evils of Southern slavery, and the friction that these ills

caused

within

the

body

politic.

De

Tocqueville

has

never

put

American backs up; indeed, he tends to make U.S. readers preen with gratified pride.

19 As a starting point for French travellers in America, however, Tocqueville's

occasional

criticisms of the new

struck a deeper chord among his fellow numerous praises. disdain

frequently

enthusiasms. les

This was

democraties, prodigeux" first—and

at least partly because a faint current of

flowed

les

il est

lecteurs moins

have

countrymen than did his more

beneath

the

onrush

Comparisons such as the following

aristocraties,

republic seem to

de

sont difficiles

malaise

of

his

diegetic

are ubiquitous: "Dans

et peu nombreux; dans

les

de leur plaire, et leur nombre

est

(De la democratic en Amerique. Tome II 264). Not for the certainly

not

for

the

last—time,

de

Europe's quality with the New World's quantity.

Tocqueville

contrasts

Although generally in

favour of an expanded franchise in his native France, and a theoretical advocate

of democracy, this

articled republican is

clearly troubled by

the cultural cost such a transition might entail; in this regard, his views eerily

prefigure

the

twentieth-century

forebodings

of

Theodor

W.

Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Developing on their own on the fringes of civilization, "Les Americains n'ont point d'ecole philosophique qui leur soit propre, et ils s'inquietent fort peu toutes celles qui visisent l'Europe, ils en savent a peine les noms" (De la democratie en Amerique. Tome II 13). De Tocqueville grimly noted the absence of elegant public buildings and heroic

statuary in U.S. town

squares:

"Les seuls monuments

des

Etats-Unis sont les journaux" (De la democratie en Amerique. Tome I 159).

Although abundant everywhere,

American

newspapers

were

not,

it seems, of particularly high quality. For every admission of political inferiority

in this

book,

there

is

a qualifying expression

of cultural

superiority. The statement below is a good example of the former: "Les Americains forment un peuple

democratique

qui a toujours dirige par

20 lui-meme

les

affaires

publiques,

et

nous

sommes

un

peuple

democratique qui, pendant longtemps, n'a pu que songer a la meilleure maniere de les conduire" (De la democratie en Amerique. Tome II 31). A prime sample of the latter runs as follows: "L'aristocratie est infiniment plus

habile

dans

la

science

du legislation

que

ne

saurait

l'etre

la

democratie" (De la democratie en Amerique. Tome I 181). De Tocqueville's views on American racial problems were fated to make the most lasting impression on French literary travellers. of

his

non-dogmatic

Christian beliefs

Because

and aristocratic background, de

Tocqueville's appreciation of American religious toleration and economic egalitarianism is greatly exaggerated.

It is, for instance, hard to imagine

period American Catholics, for the most part impressed into the worstpaying jobs and largely shut out of the liberal professions, the

following

statement:

"Aux Etats-Unis, point

parce que la religion est

universellement

de

agreeing with

haine

religieuse,

respectee et qu'aucune

secte

n'est dominante...." (De la democratie en Amerique. Tome I 138). It is equally

difficult

to

conceive

of

cellar-dwelling

industrial

workers

accepting the ensuing formula as fact: "En Amerique, cependant, ce sont les

pauvres qui font

la loi, et ils reservent

habituellement

memes les plus grands avantages de la societe" (De

pour eux-

la democratie

en

Amerique. Tome I 30). So clear-sighted in so many ways, de Tocqueville was strangely blind to the existence of an American class system. The religiously

outcast

and the

working poor

could

only

react

to

those

cheerful over-assessments with mocking scorn. Contemporary Black and Native

readers,

on the

other

hand (assuming

same then existed), could only reject their

plight

as

part

of

a

the

psychological

literate

communities

of

Frenchman's summation

of

survival

mechanism.

To

21 acknowledge that things were truly as bad as this foreigner claimed was to run the risk of slipping into suicidal despair. There was writings likely

a strong "noble savage"

element

in de Tocqueville's

about America's original inhabitants. Indeed,

that they contributed to the nineteenth

eighteenth n'avaient

century jamais

orgueilleuses,

de

myth:

"Les

admire

de

plus

plus

century annealing of an

fameuses

courage

plus

intraitable amour de

it seems highly

republiques ferme,

antiques

d'ames

l'independance,

plus

que

n'en

cachaient alors les bois sauvages du nouveau monde" (De la democratie en Amerique.

Tome I 22).

Indians, de Tocqueville sadly noted,

were

steadily being pushed westward by America's small but genocidal army. Steadily, they were losing their land: "Les Indiens l'occupaient, mais ne le

possedaient"

possession

of

(De vast

la

democratie

territories

en

and

Amerique.

lacking

Tome

major

immediate vicinity, America was a land of few

I 24.)

enemies

in

In

their

soldiers but an almost

infinite number of militiamen. No one would intervene on the Indians' behalf; their ancient world was doomed. If

American

slaves

were

in

no

danger

of

being

immediately

exterminated, in all other respects their social situation was

even less

enviable:

servitude;

lTndien

"Le negre aux

Amerique. place vecus;

est

limites

Tome

place

extremes

I 248).

aux dernieres de

la

liberte"

bornes (De

de la

democratie

For Black Americans, there was

to run: "Les Indiens mais la destinee des

mourront dans l'isolement

la

en

literally no

comme

ils

ont

negres est en quelque sort en lacee dans

celle des Europeens" (De la democratie en Amerique. Tome I 262). The fates

of

Blacks

and

Indians,

though

diametrically

opposed,

were

inextricably interlinked: "Ces deux races infortunes, n'ont de commun ni

22 la naissance, seuls

se

ni la figure, ni le langage,

ressemblent"

(De

ni les moeurs; leurs malheurs

la democratie

en Amerique. Tome I 246 -

247). A cloud of dark irony surrounds their respective dooms: "Le negre voudrait se confondre avec l'Europeen, et il ne le peut. L'Indian pourrait jusqu'a un certain point y reussir, mais il dedaigne de le tenter" (De la democratie

en

Amerique. Tome I 248).

the Emancipation Proclamation was

More than thirty years

enforced,

before

de Tocqueville wrote

of

the anti-Black racism found in the so-called abolitionist states—a racism more intense and bitter than any to found in the slave-owning states—and already

Southern

of the nascent inner city ghettoes, which he believed to be

more

continental

dangerous

than

the

meanest

urban

environment

in

Europe.

Despite his unavoidable Eurocentric bias, de Tocqueville's gifts of observation his

were nothing

almost

short

of

extraordinary. In conjunction

untrammelled admiration for the governmental

with

apparatus of

American democracy, this republican aristocrat was

totally appalled by

the

universal

enforced

engendered:

et de veritable

la democratie

spirit of longer

which

the

myth

of

freedom

"Je ne connais pas de pays ou il regne en general

d'independance (De

conformity

1776

liberte

de discussion

moins

qu'en Amerique"

en Amerique. Tome I 199 - 200). In his eyes, the

had already ossified

revolutionary

citizens

into a rigid catechism

could,

like

well-trained

which no-

parrots,

only

repeat by rote. This perhaps explains why "...en Amerique le suicide est rare, mais ailleurs" vein, gladly

de

on assure

(De

la democratie

Tocqueville

suffer

que la demence

the

noted

slightest

commune

que partout

en Amerique. Tome II 125).

In the same

with

est

plus

amusement,

word of

Americans

criticism about

their

would country

not to

23

emerge from even a well-intentioned foreigner's lips. American cultural insularity, he felt, was at least equal to the nation's geographical isolation. A number of the French traveller's ideas would assume their full importance only after the passage of a century or more. As U.S. judicial practice becomes increasingly savage and repressive at the end of the second millenium, an era when penological practice is becoming more enlightened in most of the other nations in the developed world, it might well be because of this underlying belief: "En Europe, le criminel est un infortune qui combat pour deroler sa tete aux agents du pouvoir... En Amerique, c'est un ennemi du genre humain, et il a contre lui l'humanite tout entiere" (De la democratie en Amerique. Tome I 78). The history of the U.S. TV "cop show," both fictional and reality-based, amply bears out this statement. Still, despite his atypical willingness to see others as others saw themselves (what other privileged Frenchman was appreciative

of

the

American myth of

the

as unreservedly

self-made

man?), de

Tocqueville's Old World origins occasionally shone through. When he wrote, for instance, "J'aimerais mieux qu'on herissat la langue de mots chinois, tartares ou hurons, que de rendre incertain des mots francais," he was speaking from the pulpit of linguistic purity epitomized by the Academie Francaise. At bottom open-minded, de Tocqueville's cultural inheritance did not allow him to feel fully at ease in a semi-barbaric land that he otherwise very much admired: "...ce qui me repugne le plus en Amerique, ce n'est plus 1'extreme liberte qui y regne, c'est la peu de garantie qu'on y trouve contre la tyrannie" (De la democratie en Amerique. Tome I 198). If America was the hope of the future, it was

24 also a threat to the glories of the past; as a land of universal liberty, it was paradoxically a threat to the higher form of individualism that Europe's collapsing class system had once bestowed on its appointed thinkers and artists. That the United States could fill this cultural void with the same dexterity with which it expanded the gains of the industrial revolution was something the author obviously doubted. By the late 1840s, at least half of French pre-conceptions about America had already been formed. For the armchair Parisian traveller of 1848, America was a republic that France had helped to colonize and liberate from the yoke of the British crown; if

Quebec—"quelques

arpents de neige"—was not much missed, Louisiana—"ce nouvel Eden"— certainly

was,

thanks

to the

popular mythologizing

of

Rene de

Chateaubriand; literary images of the place were indelibly coloured by the published journals of the early French explorers and missionaries,• a situation which the borrowings of later writers actively encouraged; except for the poems and stories of Edgar Allan Poe, the United States was seen as a land of little literature and even less philosophy; material wealth, both natural and manufactured, was ubiquitous, it seemed, and engineering

skills both abundant and ingenious; the wilderness

was

filled with doomed noble savages, and the Southern plantations with slaves who were made to seem far more oppressed than their fellow indentured Africans dancing to the whip of French colonial masters. In his private journals Victor Hugo wrote, "L'Americain republicain est libre, vend, achete, revend et marchande et brocante des vieillards, des femmes, des vierges, et des enfants. II punit de prison qui apprend. a lire aux petits negres, il tire, au beau milieu d'une ville dite libre, des coups de fusil au negre fugitif; il dresse des chiens a chasser aux

25 hommes; citoyen.

il

trouve

II

est

cela

tout

democrate

et

simple.

II

negrier"

est

marchand d'esclaves

(Choses

vues

Tome

11

et

333).

Contemporary U.S. mores, if they were known at all, were invariably seen through de Tocqueville's prism. American women

were in some

ways freer than their continental counterparts, but also colder and more sexually

inhibited.

American

menace to be feared

democratic

theory

seemed

as

much

a

as it did a model to be followed by well-educated

French deputies. For the most part, this image would remain fixed until shortly after the First World War. In Extreme French

literary attitudes

towards

the

Occident,

United States,

a history of

Franco-American

scholar Jean Philippe Mathy wrote, "The main assumption of this study is

that

many

Tocqueville

French

to

intellectuals'

Beauvoir, are rooted

ethos derived from the models practice

born in the

perceptions

in a humanistic

of intellectual

Renaissance

of

America,

and aristocratic

excellence

and refined

in the

from

and critical

age

of

French

classicism" (Mathy 7). One finds this point of view expressed in its most extreme form in the following decription of Chactas, the "good" Indian hero of Atala, converse

a classical Frenchman in all but name. "[Chactas] avait

avec les

grands hommes

de ce siecle et assiste aux fetes de

Versailles, aux tragedies de Racine, aux oraisons funebres de Bossuet, en un mot, le Sauvage avait contemple la societe a son plus haut point de splendeur"

(Chateaubriand 31).

A

national

as

well

as

a

religious

chauvinist, for Chateaubriand the qualities of culture and human worth were clearly determined by each individual's proximity to the apogee of human civilization, an apex which was unequivocally, univocally French. His

position

could

not

be

further removed

prejudices of cultural relativism.

from

the

more

tolerant

26 Chateaubriand, case.

Nevertheless,

watered-down

it must it

is

version,

be

admitted,

probably fair his

attitudes

was

to

a not

claim

remained

entirely

that, in

at

typical

least

place

in a

until

the

beginning of the twentieth century. During this literary interregnum, the two French writers who most radically expanded Gallic perceptions

of the U.S. were Jules Verne and

Charles Baudelaire. According to one American critic, the author of Fleurs 1855

du mal added the word "americaniser" (Mathy 274).

Since Baudelaire was

Les

to the French lexicon in

such a pivotal figure

in the

evolution of the crime story, his role as a cultural cross-pollinator can more fruitfully be discussed

in Chapter Two than it can here.

Jules

Verne's contributions, on the other hand, deserve to be considered posthaste. What most strikes fiction

stories

alternately

banal

instance, describes speed

that

a

the efforts

blockading

Verne

situated

and prophetic

work

steamship

contemporary readers

largely

about

the

proto-science

in

the

United

realism.

Les

Forceurs

the

English-speaking

unknown

in

States de

is

their

blocus,

for

world,

of a hard-headed Scottish capitalist to steer a high (17

knots-per-hour)

Charleston harbour. The

nothing but scorn for abolitionists,

past

ironically

dismissing

the

Union

named

gunboats

Playfairs

them as "...ces

have

hommes

qui, sous le vain pretexte d'abolir l'esclavage, ont couvert leur pays de sang et de ruines" (Les Forceurs de blocus 38). With their eyes set on the main prize of profits, the Playfairs are notably reluctant to admit "...que la question de la servitude fut predominance dans la guerre civile des Etas-Unis...." (Les Forceurs de blocus 38). Although Captain Playfair does

eventually rescue a heroic abolitionist from a Confederate prison—

27 an

action

primarily

motivated

by the mariner's

daughter—he

returns to England

father's

firm

a handsome

fictional

writings that discuss

pragmatic

with

a cargo

365% profit.

Even

love

for the prisoner's

of cotton today,

that

earns his

it is hard

to find

the U . S . C i v i l W a r in less romantic, more

terms.

The

W a r Between

the States is also one of the narrative engines

propelling one of Verne's more famous speculative

fictions, De la Terre a

la Lune. Even more than Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, this novel is replete a

with Verne's eerie powers

vessel

to the moon

artillerymen what

complex," should

D.

comme

metaphysciens--de more

formidable

excellence descendant ennemi (De

to invent

de

of these

power

NASA travel

of historical

of England's

century

forebears

of

emerged. seemed

That

Americans

perfectly

logical to

musiciens

du

sont

Allemands

(De la Terre a la Lune 12).

One of the

Army

gunners

le

si funestes

In those

fabulation.

et

monde,

les

is

"...l'homme par

Nordiste

colonisateur,

aux Stuarts,

le

et l'implacable

Cavaliers de la mere patri'e" passages,

the

A t a time

industrial revolution

author

when

still

gave

the

makes steam-

the U n i t e d

as the workship of the world, Jules Verne was

on the world-controlling

wet-behind-the-ears

of retired C i v i l W a r

mecaniciens

du Sud, les anciens 24).

to send

dub "the m i l i t a r y - i n d u s t r i a l

sont

ex-Union

Rondes

a la Lune

passing

to

Nouvelle-Angleterre,

K i n g d o m pride of place already

nineteenth

premiers

naissance"

la

leaps

space

Italiens

de ces Tetes

la Terre

driven

les

des gentlemen

enormous

ces

by a group

was

out of which

"Les Yankees,

ingenieurs,

the

Eisenhower

the matrix

be the first

Verne:

is determined

and industrialists,

Dwight

of pre-cognition. T h e decision

United

States.

economic

What's

more,

torch he

to the still-

attributed

that

28 triumph to America's inheritance of the most aggressive, in

British

culture,

the

Round

Head ferocity

that led

puritan streak to

the

rise

of

Cromwell and the fall of the Stuarts. Here, in embryo, we see the origins of

the modern French usage of the phrase

"les

anglo-saxonnes"

a

description that implicitly fuses England and the United States into one seamless socio-historical entity,

a body politic implicitly hostile

interests of France, and one which is seemingly Canada,

Australia,

and

the

many

other

to the

entirely detached from

small

nations

comprising

anglophonia. In this phrase we see admiration and realism locked in an eternal battle with paranoia, fear and hate. Despite reflects

this

theoretical

immense

projection,

familiarity

with

however,

the

Verne's

quotidian

account

realities

of

contemporary American life. The trip to the moon is facilitated by the calculations

of

the

ville ou fut fondee

observatory

in

Cambridge, Massachussetts,

la premiere Universite des Etats-Unis, est

"Cette

justement

celebre par son bureau astronomique" (De la Terre a la Lune 38). Hans Pfaal, Edgar Allan Poe's fictional visitor to the Moon, is wittily treated as an historical personage

(much of this book was

conceived

as

satire).

Most presciently of all, Verne describes the struggle between the states of Florida and Texas for the honour of being the lunar-directed launch site. Less than a hundred years later, when Apollo IX did indeed speed to

the

Moon,

the

rocket was

of

course

fired from Cape Canaveral,

Florida, while its pilots listened to commands from Mission Control in Houston, Texas! What's more, the journey was completed in only slightly less time than the 11 days stipulated by Verne. The American passages in Le tour du monde en 80 jours might have

been

less imbued with prophecy, but they

(1873)

were no

less

29 keen

on logistical

presentement

accuracy: "New

reunis

York

par un ruban

de

et

San Francisco sont

metal

non

done

interrompu qui

ne

mesure pas moins de trois mille sept cent quarante-vingt-six milles" (Le Tour du monde en 80 jours descriptions

194.)

lurk many lesser,

Within

Verne's broad, "trunklike"

"rootlike" details:

"Ce wagon

etait un

'sleeping car', qui, en quelques minutes, fut transforme en dortoir" ( L e Tour du monde en 80 jours passengers

196).

What Phileas Fogg and his

fellow

see from moving train windows is a country in the process

of creating itself. They "...passent par des villes aux noms antiques, dont quelques-unes encore"

avaient des rues et des tramways, mais pas de

(Le Tour du monde en 80 jours 244).

Only

maisons

when describing

encounters with Mormons and skirmishes with Sioux does Verne depart from

the

fantastic

generally plot

realistic

coupled

to

tone of

extremely

groundwork for the infant genre

his

text. This

plausible

unique mixture—

detail—would

of science fiction,

a genre

French would shortly abandon, a popular form that would be perfected by les

anglo-saxonnes

in general and les

lay

the

that

the

subsequently

Americains

in

particular. It is one of the abiding ironies of Franco-American relations that

certain Gallic

quintessentially

cultural

innovations

American—especially

are

subsequently

regarded as

by the French. Where would the

so-called Hollywood musical be, for instance, if not for the early sound films of Rene Clair? For a variety of reasons, not all of them modest (high culture est fait chez nous; popular culture est

importe

d'outre-

mer),

this situation appeals to Parisian intellectuals. In a strange sort of

way,

it

whenever States.

draws they

another focus

on

seductive the

veil

alternately

over

cultivated

French

eyes

brash and admirable United

30 Needless to

say,

the

event that would most

radically transform

existing Franco-American cultural relations was the First World War. On a per capita basis,

the French Army

suffered

heavier

casualties than

any other major participant in that sanguinary conflict.

What's more,

most of the battles were fought on French soil, a circumstance which resulted in as much damage

to the nation's

environment and physical

plant as it did to its reserves of able-bodied cannon fodder. The factor that eventually tilted the balance in favour of the Allied Cause was the commitment trenches

of

ever

following

America's Hungarian,

greater

numbers

Washington's

and Ottoman empires

was

decisive.

Great War with the prestige

American

declaration

actual military role in the

contribution proved to be

of

troops

of

war

in

defeat of

the

German,

relatively

Thus,

1917.

minor, its

America

the

While Austro-

logistical

emerged

of a major military power,

to

from the

the

certainty

that it had replaced Great Britain as the workshop of the world, and a foreign policy that had finally emerged from the carapace of isolation. These

advantages

had been were

won

at

relatively

very

American

casualties

completely

undamaged. With the possible

little

minor,

cost

and

exception

its

to

themselves.

landscape

was

of Canada and the

other dominions, the United States was the only nation to emerge from the First World War in better shape than it went in. Inevitably,

this

historical

turn-around

produced

conflicting

emotions in France. For the first time, Americans in Paris were counted not by the hundred, but by the hundred thousand. Gone were the days when

the few

brash New Worlders lucky enough

into the pages of French literature generally

to worm their way

fell into the category

of

rich potential marriage partners, such as the "richissime Americain" to

31 whom Albertine was briefly betrothed in a suppressed passage of A la recherche

du temps perdu

(Albertine

disparue 292).

In the immediate

post-war period, following demobilization, American writers and artists congregated

in the City

of Light because

the views were pretty, the

costs were low, sex was easy and Prohibition non-existent. same to

time, American movies

1914,

the

giant

French

Around the

started to inundate French screens. film

combines

of

Gaumont

and

Prior Pathe

controlled approximately 60% of the world motion picture market. Since the

same

chemicals that went into the manufacture of celluloid were

also used in the production of high explosives,

French cinema lost its

commercial edge to Hollywood during the Great War, an advantage. it would never regain. Less grudgingly, the French also began to listen to American popular music, particularly jazz. Black U.S. musicians often

treated

better

on

the

Champs

Elysees

than

Broadway. In a French context, the cult of negritude

they

were

were on

served a double

purpose. France's acceptance of Black American artists and of Antillean and African writers such as Aime Cesaire and Leopold Sedar Senghor was a way of affirming moral superiority over the New World giant that so aggressively challenged France's post-1789 claim to be acknowledged as the homeland of secular freedom. How could America truly be the land of liberty if that liberty only extended

to whites?

At the

same

time, it allowed French intellectuals to put the harsher realities of the nation's "off-stage"

colonial practice on the back burner. Only in very

recent years have Gallic authors belatedly acknowledged the skin colour of most Parisian street sweepers. To admit that racisme

ordinaire

was

as prevalent in Marseille as it was in Memphis was to subtly undermine

32 France's claim to being regarded as the only true, the only

legitimate,

the only universal republic. Thanks

to

these

circumstances,

French

reaction

to

American

advances on all fronts could not help but be mixed. Gallic gratitude for U.S.

military

blindness

assistance

was

to France's decisive

undercut

by

that

country's

seeming

but Pyrrhic contributions to Germany's

defeat. The thought that la Belle France might now owe more to General Pershing and his "doughboys" than American patriots once eighteenth-century Lafayette's propre.

assistance

volunteers

was

of

Admiral

de

Suffren's

totally unacceptable

did to the

warships

to the national

Love of American popular culture could not entirely

and

amour disguise

the fact that its progress was often made at French culture's expense. Even

worse,

Paris

were

contact

even

when they knew the local language well. British jounalist Tony

Allan

singularly

expatriate

indifferent

to

American Parisians,

authors

in

eschewing

love

with

personal

made much of this fact in his nostalgic history, The Paris, of

Glamour

Years:

1919 - 1940, quoting art critic Clive Bell to the effect that "Some

[these expatriates]

had French mistresses—kept

mistresses;

but very

few of them had French friends" (Allan 9). In this

context,

Franco-American coming-of-age

one of the most

contact

memoir,

is this

Joseph brief

anomalous

Kessel's

Gallic

Dames

narrative

de

describes

books

about

Californie. the

A

author's

journey across America as he left the battlefields of World War One to participate

in

the

Allied

Powers'

ill-fated

attempt

to

overthrow

the

newly-founded Bolshevik regime in 1918. Kessel and his comrades were cheered by American crowds as their train puffed its

way across

the

U.S. mainland. For once the reader is not faced with "doughboys" being

feted by adoring Frenchmen, but by "poilus" groups of Yanks. alors

etait

being hailed by grateful

With undisguised pride, Kessel wrote,

amoureuse

de

la France"

(Kessel

31).

"L'Amerique

Being

young

and

military, Kessel's communication skills were obviously not aided by the presence of large numbers of bilingual academics, the balm bestowed on most

later

French

writers

of

substance.

"II est

temps

de

dire,"

he

ruefully admits at one point, "que pour tout anglais je connaissais celui que Ton apprend a lycee" (Kessel 37).

Although he had by this time

forgotten most of his high school English, his linguistic facility was still considerably greater than that of his fellow

volunteers:

"II me

restait

bien peu de ces notions lorsque je debarquai en Amerique. Mais je crois que j'en savais encore plus done de la majorite de mes camarades. Je devais

done,

bon gre mal gre,

leur servir d'interprete"

(Kessel

37).

Although Kessel was much cheered by the reception he received from the

women

of

America,

the

omnipresence

of

puritan

strictures

continuously rankled: "La prohibition, si elle n'etait pas encore en vigeur en

Amerique,

regnait

impitoyablement

ces

batiments

de

guerre. On

nous offrait du cafe au lait comme boisson de table" (Kessel 21). Later, in San Francisco, he would frustratedly discover that "On sait qu'il interdit

par

la

loi...d'amener

une

femme

chez

soi

dans

un

est

hotel

americain" (Kessel 42). Like most period French tourists, the author was impressed by everything from skyscrapers to New Year's Eve parties, by the things that were quintessentially non-French. On the other hand, he is delighted when one of his women friends from Saint Louis (a town he seems to assume

is as francophone as New Orleans) "...parlait un

francais adorable de grace.

34 Je retrouvais la langue de la Bruyere et de Fenelon...." (Kessel 84). For Kessel,

America

was

clearly

a

land

as

wonderful

as

it

was

incomprehensible, as pleasurable as it was irritating; it was a paradise whose perfection was spoiled by the buzzing of bluenosed flies. Behind this

mixture

assumption:

of

envy

and

Americans might

admiration have

lurks

a

produced this

single

unspoken

opulence,

but

they

don't know how to enjoy it. Just as youth is proverbially wasted upon the young, so, it would seem, is America upon the Americans. In any event, Joseph Kessel did not see the United States as being in any way inimical to the health and well-being Ahead

of

his

time

nineteenth-century first

prominent

in

this

novelist literary

domination of the globe.

as

in

so

many

of his own country.

other

things,

and travel writer Stendhal was Frenchman

to

worry

about

the

early

perhaps

U.S.

the

cultural

Shortly after the Napoleonic Wars, he wrote,

"En 1900, l'Europe n'aura qu'un moyen de resister a l'enorme population et a la raison profonde de l'Amerique: ce sera de donner a l'Asie Minore, a la Grece, et a la Dalmatie, la meme civilisation; c'est-a-dire

le meme

degre de liberte dont on jouit dans la Pennsylvanie" (Stendhal 277). To survive America, in other words, Europe would have to become

more

like its

good

points

de facto into

its

Kessel, helas,

enemy,

to incorporate more of the interloper's

own modus

vivendi. For French

authors

after

the political pre-emptive strike option had already passed.

European autocracy did not end until 1918,

and then as the

that-broke-the-Triple-Entente's-back

of

America was

Joseph

hands

the

U.S.

feathermilitary.

now the dominant socio-political force on the planet, an

unavoidable current that pulled all others in its wake. The only nations to resist this pull successfully

were those that slipped into some form of

35 totalitarian

structure.

Of

these

new

political

styles,

Soviet-style

Leninism could uniquely afford to pose as a true polar opposite to U.S.style

capitalism.

metastatizing nations--of hybrid

Europe's

capitalist

fascist

growths,

states

while

appeared

the

more

like

democratic/colonialist

which France was one of the most important—were equally

products

of

"free

enterprise"

economics.

For all practical

purposes, Europe no longer controlled the world, as it had since 1800.

In true Hegelian fashion,

power

about

had travelled westwards

once

again. If this changed reality could be felt on some level everywhere in non-Soviet Europe, it was still possible to soften its impact in a number of tactical ways.

Most schools of European thought between the

were singularly free of U.S. influence. American

culture

international

avant

did garde.

not

Outside of literature and jazz,

command

On the

wars

level

a

dominant

place

in

the

of high culture in particular,

European intellectuals continued to feel like top planetary dogs. Theodor W. Adorno was famously dismissive of both Hollywood and syncopated music; Andre Gide wrote

as if U.S. culture were as marginal to

European mainstream as Tagalog poetry. perdu,

unquestionably

the

greatest

In A

triumph

la recherche of

du

twentieth

the

temps

century

French fiction, the most significant mention of the U.S.A.—if one excludes the repressed manuscript claim that Albertine, at the time of her death, was

engaged

to

"un richissme

Americain" (Albertine

disparu

292)—

occurs in the following disquisition on the generally humble provenance of

American family names:

Montgommery,

Berry,

'"...beaucoup

Chandos ou

Capel

d'Americains qui n'ont

de

s'appellent

rapport avec

les

families de Pembroke, de Buckingham, d'Essex, ou avec le Due de Berry'"

36 (Sodome

et

Gomorrhe 471).

America might have been mighty, but in

most matters it seemed both far away and of much less important than Germany, Russia, or England, the nation's

traditional rivals in political

brinkmanship. In retrospect, this attitude seems very much like wishful thinking; at the time, however, it was entirely sincere. These factors should be borne in mind when considering betweenwar French literary impressions of the United States. That this cultural scene was constraint

largely largely

dominated by Catholic conservatives

is

lost on non-French literary scholars.

a defining

While French,

like English and German, is one of the world's privileged "international" languages, has

it is its left-wing,

been most

successfully

experimental and secular literature which exported. The vast quantity of

non-fiction

produced by the likes of Paul Claudel, Paul Valery, Francois Mauriac, Georges Bernanos, and a hundred lesser figures—many

of whom were

both

passed

viciously

anti-Semitic

unnoticed by the outside

and

rabidly

fascist—has

world. This unfortunate

imbalance

largely

inevitably

skews virtually all outside attempts to obtain an objective image of the time,

a portrait in which foreground and background were judiciously

balanced. when

It is

a limitation which must constantly

dealing with the literature's

be borne in mind

better-known but less

representative

texts. In Extreme

Occident,

Jean-Philippe Mathy plausibly contends

that

French criticism of the U.S. in the 1920s was largely conservative and humanist,

while

that

of

(negative)

or right-wing

the (the

1950s so-called

and

'60s

was

either

left-wing

liberal Atlanticists).

Following

the events of 1968, meanwhile, the Gallic tone generally changed to one of postmodernist

praise. These generalities

are useful

tools so long as

37 one

bears

in mind

the

perennial tendency

of

French

intellectuals

to

change steeds in mid-stream. At various times in his career, Andre Gide, for instance, was an anti-Semitic reactionary, a Protestant polemicist, a Catholic semi-convert, homosexual

a pagan philosopher, a thorough-going atheist,

apologist,

a

militant

Communist,

a

much-reviled

a

anti-

Communist, an anti-colonialist, a Vichy accommodator, and a vocal critic of France's Second World War collaboration with the occupying Third Reich. To define Gide by any one of those labels would be misleading; he was all of them and then some. Georges Duhamel was probably the most lucid and articulate of between-war

French

commentators

on

the

American

scene.

A

now

largely forgotten member of the Academie Francaise, Duhamel was once an important literary personage. Even today, Scenes de la vie future

can

stand as one of the least sympathetic studies of the United States ever written. Duhamel crossed the Atlantic with a chip on his shoulder, and he missed no opportunity to coax his hosts into knocking it off. Even his port of arrival reflects this unfailingly antagonistic attitude. Unlike most French

writers,

who

disembarked from

plane

or ship

in New

Duhamel decided to start his journey in New Orleans, la plus des

villes

local

americaines

customs,

just

York, francaise

In this way he could acclimatize himself to the

as Borgia princes once

accustomed

themselves

to

poison by consuming ever larger quantities of arsenic at dinner. Before jumping

into

the

American melting pot,

Duhamel pointedly

held

his

nose. The author's suspicions were deeply rooted in his circular mistrust of

both technicians

therapeutique

pour

and machines: V allegement

"Comme de

nos

les

poisons

miseres,

la

employes plupart

en des

38 inventions

humaines

meme du plus ou

noble,

malhabiles,

morf

propres

de

a nous

donner

du bonheur

sont encore susceptibles,

se

(Duhamel 12.)

transformer

ou du

entre les mains

en instruments

de

plaisir, scelerates

souffrance

et

de

Following this line of reasoning, America, being

ineptly run, must be considered as some sort of giant torture chamber. It is

also a supremely dangerous

deconcerte trouve

moins que le futur:

moins

certaines

depayse

rues

chez

de Chicago'"

dystopia-in-embroyo: "Le passe

un occidental les

adulte,

troglodytes

de

nous

normal

et cultive

Matmata

que

se dans

(Duhamel 16). Without the slightest hint of

irony, Duhamel turns "the normal, cultivated Western adult" into

"the

normal, cultivated Frenchman." In this comparison of New World and Old,

Duhamel doesn't even pretend to be impartial. Kipling

Indians

more

Americans. bridles

benefit

of

the

Everything about

when

his

ship

is

doubt the

than

Duhamel

country

fumigated

alcohol is removed from the ship's

in

seems

to

gave the

would

give

the

irritate him. He

Havana; he

smoulders

when

stores the moment its prow passes

Prohibition's nautical limit. Americans love hypocritically ban alcohol. They seriously Stream for their own uses even though would surely freeze Europe. Even worse,

to guzzle,

he

sneers,

consider diverting the such

a far-fetched

yet Gulf

procedure

these technocratic barbarians

might actually pull off such a demented coup. What a country! Ironically, many of Duhamel's period complaints now

sound like

the on-air whining of conservative U.S. talk show hosts. He is appalled, for example, coverage chacun

by America's obsession with calories.

Universal medical

leaves him equally cold: "Le jour que nous possedons, contre de

ces

rigoureusement

fleaux,

un

vaccin

efficace

dont

1'application

sera

obligatoire, nous ne souffrirons plus des maladies,

nous

39 souffrirons

des

contraintes

exigues par les

lois,

nous souffrirons

de la

sante" (Duhamel 34 - 35). America in the 1920s was already an overregulated society so far as this Frenchman was concerned. Unlike derive

most of

cultural

comfort

instance,

"...sort

dejeuner

sortaient

pictures,

de

miserables,

from

de

and

countrymen,

Hollywood

l'abattoir

d'ilotes,

ahuries

fellow

l'abattoir

newsreels

divertissement

his

a

des

par leur besogne et leurs

les

(Duhamel

collectively

passe-temps

Movie

comme

cochons"

vaudeville un

movies.

musique a

Duhamel did not music,

for

saucisses

du

44).

Motion

comprised

illettres, soucis"

even

de

"...un

creatures

(Duhamel

49). 1

As for America's indigenous music, it was beyond the pale. "O jazz!" he groaned, "Strychnine supreme" (Duhamel

129).

Americans, Duhamel complained, were hard to find: me cache les Americains" (Duhamel 56.) most Americans were rendered formless

This was because, apparently, by Americanism: "Plutot qu'un

peuple, je vois un systeme" (Duhamel 57). something

that

has

impressed

"L'Amerique

virtually

The immensity of the land, all

French

travellers

from

Jacques Cartier's first visit to the present, left this toughest of all critics suspicious

as well as unmoved: "Un building s'eleve de deux ou trois

etages par semaine. Tetralogie, In

turn,

II a fallu vingt ans a Wagner pour construire la

une vie a Littre pour edifier son dictionnaire" (Duhamel 50). he

attacked

the

rationales

buying, and luxurious washrooms. the

fact

that

Americans

were

behind

organized

sports,

credit

For Duhamel, nothing could disguise not

free

men

but

slaves—slaves

of

Ironically, one could easily imagine Karl Marx denouncing movies in much the same terms—albeit with a little more compassion—if that strain of opium had existed in his day. When condemning America, French jeremiads from the right are often indistinguishable from left-wing jabs. 1

40 moralists, doctors, jurists, "et meme [des] electriciens" (Duhamel 59). He was offended by the fact that the face of an Indian and a buffalo were printed on coins in this unfree land that never wearied of touting its illusory liberties: "O ironie! Deux races vivantes et libres que vous avez aneanties, en moins de trois siecles" (Duhamel 62). For his own purposes, he re-packaged many of de Tocqueville's criticisms of America without paying even nominal lip service

to

the

more numerous points of admiration that his illustrious predecessor had emphasized. Root beer, needless to say, was risible: "C'est de la biere des racines, de la biere pour rire, bien entendu" (Duhamel 65). Women were somewhat

better

font-elles,

les

jambes

appreciated—especially

dames

below

the

waist:

"Comment

americaines, pour ce procurer, toutes, ces

delicieuses qu'elles

memes

montrent si genereusement" (Duhamel 76 -

77). Like Celine, Georges Simenon, and so many francophones after him, the

American

"gam" could

strike

a favourable

chord in

this

flinty

Frenchman's heart long after the appeal of the Empire State building had started to fade. much

indulged

compelled female's

to

in

Unsurprisingly, this by

literary

draw attention

to

form of fetishism

Frenchwomen, this

was

but even they

particular part of

the

not felt

American

anatomy.

In addition to the

cult of the

Yankee leg,

Duhamel added

the

demonization of Chicago to the canon of American commonplaces in the French literary imagination. "Chicago!" he railed. "La ville tumeur! L a ville

cancer!"

emphasized

the

The

author's

system's

description

cruelty

and

of

the

inhumanity

Chicago

stockyards

without

expressing

the slightest sympathy for the animals being sacrificed on the altars of the food industry.

41 In the same vein, racism is mentioned in a way that manages

to

make the Americans look doubly bad, since it links modern refinements of

the time-honoured technique

highway

mayhem.

Mrs. Lytton

that American highways

of lynching to the new

mechanics

tells

French

her bad- tempered

rack up "...deux

cent ciquante mille

of

guest

accidents

par an, dont cinquante mille mortels," coyly adding "J'en ai pris ma petite part. Mais

rien que

des

negres...."

(Duhamel

79).

Duhamel mounts a left-leaning horse to more effectively ideological

lance.

No

more

Jean-Paul Sartre's La sur vos

inflammatory

Putain

respecteuse

Once

again

drive home his

statement can be

found in

or Boris Vian's J'irai

cracker

tombes.

Ultimately,

though,

what

America represented

for Duhamel

was

the final triumph of the ants: "...la civilisation des fourmis du depuis des siecles de siecles. Pas de revolutions chez les insectes" (Duhamel While

the

clearly

author still

has

some hope

for Europe's future,

they

216). are

short-term: "L'Amerique peut tomber, la civilisation americaine

ne perira pas: elle est deja maitresse du monde" (Duhamel 217). Louis-Ferdinand Celine was also a man of the right, but no one has ever deigned to dub him either a Catholic, a humanist, or a conservative. A

right-wing anarchist with strong fascist

Syndrome gift for abuse, and

tumultuous

as

tendencies and a Tourette's

Celine's legendary

Duhamel's

were

distastes were as

patrician

and

volatile

restrained.

He

approached America the same way he approached everything else...with a passionate

loathing that owed nothing to received wisdom or common

sense. The

American

passages

in

novel, Voyage au bout de la nuit,

Celine's

semi-autobiographical

first

amount to scarcely more than a tenth

42 of that sprawling, peripatetic text's free-wheeling

bulk. The rest of the

book unfolds on the "opening round" battlefields of the First World War, in

the

depressing jungles

of

colonial Africa,

and in the

even

more

squalid suburbs of industrialized France. Even so, Celine's acidic quick sketches of New York City and the automobile factories of Detroit would make

an

impression

on

the

minds

of

French

literary

travellers

in

America no less indelible than the ones already bequeathed to posterity by de Tocqueville and Chateaubriand. You can despise Celine, but you cannot forget him. As contemptuous of the U.S. obsession was

Georges

Duhamel, Bardamu,

the

with health and safety as

author's

alter

ego,

disdainfully

sneers, "II s'appelait le 'Surgeon general' ce qui serait un bon nom pour un poisson" (Celine 190). Nevertheless, legs

of

American

women—another

thanks to his obsession

passion

with the

shared with Duhamel—the

United States must always in some sense be seen as a land of desire in the eyes of Celine/Bardamu: "En fait de jambes j'ai rarement vu mieux, encore un peu masculines et cependant deja plus delicates, de

chair en

eclosion"

(Celine

192).

Emblematic of

une

this

beaute

sometimes

concrete, sometimes formless erotic yearning is New York City itself, a polis where every building is a symbolic erection: "New York c'est un ville

debout"

situated

(Celine

and often

186).

Unlike

French cities,

which are

modestly

quietly beautiful, Gotham "ne se pamait pas, elles

attendent le voyageur, tandis que celle-la-la pas baisante du tout, raide a faire peur" (Celine between which they

186).

If,

in contrast to the phallic skyscrapers

walk, American women

albeit in a not entirely acceptable exist

in

a

very

uncontinental

sort

are unusually beautiful—

"masculine" way—they of

purdah.

Bardamu

nonetheless is

frankly

43 appalled

by

this

curiously

puritanical

state

of

affairs.

From

the

perspective of his private bench, he observes that "Elles les femmes ne regardaient guere que les devantures des magasins, tout accaparees par l'attrait des sacs, des echarpes, des petites choses de soie, exposees, tres peu a la fois dans chaque vi trine... On ne trouvait pas beaucoup de vieux dans cette foule" (Celine 196). In a young land, it seems, there are only young people.

Women are set

What's more, it is appetites

of

continental

apart from

men, and youth from

strongly suggested that the

American

men

are

far

less

vital

age.

unsublimated physical than

those

counterparts. At one point, Bardamu relies

of

their

largely on the

largesse of a prostitute who has taken a shine to him: "Elle

possedait

d'amples

les

ressources,

cette amie, puis-qu'elle

se

faisait

dans

cent

dollars par jour en maison, tandis que moi, chez Ford, j'en gagnais a peine six. L'amour qu'elle executait pour vivre ne la fatiguait guere. Les Americains font ?a comme des oiseaux" (Celine 230). Despite

his impoverished status and total lack of patrician airs,

Bardamu/Celine substitute,

the

is

only

slightly

more

Hollywood movie:

keen

on

"Le cinema

that ne

supreme

me

sexual

suffisait

plus,

antidote benin, sans effet reelle contre l'atrocite materielle de l'usine" (Celine

229).Unlike

Georges

Duhamel's

old-fashioned

dismissal

of

Hollywood from the hoary heights of Mount Parnassus, Celine's rejection is as up-to-date as the street-level

disdain of a William S. Burroughs

literary junkie: movies are an inadequate drug that fail to provide the consumer with sufficient the poor is

release.

Like Duhamel the wealthy,

appalled by the ubiquity of U.S. beggars:

"C'etaient des

pauvres de partout" (Celine 193).

When poverty obliges

sojourner

a Ford

to

seek

employment

in

factory,

he

Bardamu

this

finds

French himself

44 surrounded by fellow-foreigners:

"Dans cette foule presque personne ne

parlait l'anglais" (Celine 225). Since the operative word in the novel's title is "voyage", it seems only proper that Bardamu's U.S. journey should have an Odyssey-like quality

to

it.

Celine's

alter

ego

tries

to

track

down

his

war-time

American mistress solely for the purpose of borrowing money: "Ce fut bien uniquement pour des

raisons d'argent,

mais combien urgentes

et

imperieuses, que je me mis a la recherche de Lola" (Celine 212). A rich society woman who tended to wounded Allied soldiers during the Great War,

Lola

servants:

takes great pride in the

"'II faisait

radical

pedigree

partie alors d'un societe

of

secrete

one

tres

of her

redoutable

pour 1'emancipation des noirs... C'etait, a ce qu'on m'a raconte, des gens affreux...

L a bande

fut

dissoute

par les

autorites...'"

(Celine

Although suppressed by the powers that be, Lola's domestic to manufacture bombs in his lethal by the

spare time,

without

ever

220).

continues

making them

addition of powder: '"II n'en finira jamais de faire la

revolution. Mais je le garde c'est un excellent

domestique! Et a tout

prendre, il est peut-etre plus honnete que les autres qui ne font pas la revolution..." (Celine 220). Celine's symbolic representation of Lola as a castrating racist is far more subtly modulated than Duhamel's poisoned pen portrait of Mrs. Lytton, the homicidal society

woman whose only

worry about running down Blacks on the street is related to the damage their

dismembered

chassis.

In the

benevolence,

bodies

might

first instance,

do

to

economic

her

automobile's

oppression is

beautiful

combined with

a combination which Herbert Marcuse would later

as the dominant mode of repressive tolerance.

define

In the 1940s, Boris Vian and Jean-Paul Sartre would also conflate negative white

American

female

sexual

and

protagonists,

cracker

Duhamel's

characteristics

generally

Celine's. Still, if the female J'irai

racial

in

anti-heroes

a

form

in La

in

disagreeable

much

Putain

cruder

than

respecteuse

and

sur vos tombes seem, on a superficial level, to owe more to criminally blase

unquestionably

Mrs. Lytton,

their

primary

influence

is

Lola.2

Bardamu's insensitive

attempts to cadge money from his reluctant

benefactor would also bear long-range fruit. At the time of his request, Lola is preoccupied with saving her mother from galloping liver cancer. Although it would clearly be in his girlfriend's

pet

fantasy,

this

best interest

hardheaded

to humour his

doctor-in-embryo

play along. When asked if he doesn't believe

ex-

refuses

the disease is curable,

Bardamu replies "—Non, repondis-je tres nettement, tres categorique, cancers du foie Lola

now

continues l'argent

sont absolument inguerissables"

to

les

(Celine 222).

Although

despises him and wants him to leave post-haste,

Bardamu

to press his outrageous que

vous

m'entendez

vous

complications,

m'avez

promis

repeter

ses

suit: "Lola, pretez-moi je vous prie

tout

heredites,

ce

ou

bien je

que

je

coucherai

sais

sur

le

ici

et

vous

cancer,

ces

car il est hereditaire, Lola, le cancer. Ne

l'oublions pas" (Celine 223). As Henry Miller pointed out in The Books in My

Life

and

development wellsprings

elsewhere, of

his

of his

Celine

own

own

was

literary

the

ethos,

greatest the

sulphurous creativity.

reminded of the many occasions in Sexus,

Black

key

influence that

One can't Spring,

on

the

opened

the

help

but

and Tropic

be of

Lola, it might be worth mentioning here, is the most popular literary derivation of the name Lilith, according to Jewish folklore, Adam's disobedient first wife. For a more detailed consideration of her fascinating persona, please see Chapter Two. 2

46 Capricorn

where

the cheerful narrator tries

obviously

grief-stricken without

feelings.

Celine's

misanthropic

to cadge

funds

from the

the slightest concern for the "mark's" narcissism,

his

gift

for

torrential,

irrational literary utterance, would be adopted by Miller to suit his own New World needs. Since Boris Vian would subsequently his will in J'irai "bestseller",

this

cracher

sur

Americanized

vos

tombes,

Vian's

bend Miller to

one

out-and-out

Celine would return to his place

of

cultural birth, just as Bardamu would return to France.3 Immediately

after

the Second World War, the

"problem" of

United States seemed more insoluble ever. In 1918,

the

the French nation

could console itself with the thought that its army had made the largest single contribution to the defeat of the Triple Entente; in 1944,

on the

other

troops,

hand,

France had

to

be

forcibly

liberated

by

Allied

spearheaded by American tanks, following four years of defeat and Nazi occupation. The upstart New World giant of 1918 super-power

of

1945,

the

world's

nuclear repository. Against complete the battered

foundry, bank,

was now the cocky armoury, and

U.S. hegemony,

there

stood

sole only

but still unbowed hulk of the Soviet Union, the Stalinist

juggernaut which had destroyed the Wehrmacht on the

Eastern Front

3 In addition to the Miller connection, one should probably here make note of a much more indirect, difficult to determine case of cultural cross-pollination. After Bardamu himself, the most important character is unquestionably Robinson, the improbably-named Frenchman whom the narrator first meets on a murky battlefield. Like a bad penny, Robinson keeps turning up, in France, Africa and the United States. A character of exactly the same name also appears in Franz Kafka's Amerika, a character who plays precisely the same role. Even his name is suspect. A suspicious American in that book declares that '"I don't even believe that his name is Robinson, for no Irishman has ever been called that since Ireland was Ireland...'" (Kafka 173). In Frederic Vitoux's definitive La Vie de Celine, Amerika is not cited as a source of inspiration forVoyage au bout de la nuit. On the other hand, that could be because of the popular belief that Celine was a self-taught idiot savant, an ignorant loser who extracted poetry solely from personal experience and paranoia. In any event, the AmerikalVoydge connection is clearly worth further study.

47 at a cost to the Russian people of 10 - 15% of their pre-war population and

50%

of

their

physical

plant.

Russia

the

Heroic, however,

was

counterbalanced by the gloomy spectre of Russia the Horrific, the prison camp country that was intoxicated

dictator.

Europe's

former

pressure

from

themselves their

of

Already either

imperialist both

their

shattered

presided over by a brutal, paranoid, and self-

former

participate in Washington's Stalin's

T-34s,

powers

Eastern

economies,

exhausted were

and

it

being

Western

colonial was

or

in

put

power

possessions. necessary

In

for

to

ally

under

ruins,

increased

blocs

to

order

to rebuild

these

Marshall Plan; to protect

they were obliged

physical

divest

countries

themselves from

themselves with

the North

Atlantic Treaty Organization, an umbrella group entirely

dependent

American

all

military

purposes—foreign films,

books

countries

machinery,

manpower

and—for

and

records

in an unchecked

or

as

on

practical

policy. After five years of Nazi embargoes, American poured flood.

into

France

Never before

absolute.

Never

before

had

and

other

had the

absolute strength in relation to the old continent daunting

to

European

New World's

of Europe, seemed as

the

threat

of

cultural

absorption seemed quite as great. French intellectual take

these

historical

reaction factors

to

into

the

postwar

U.S. must

consideration.

The

obviously

long

French

intellectual romance with Stalinist politics can only be understood in the context of

a once

great,

now

humbled nation

trapped between a rock and a hard place. accomplished writers felt,

as

easily

with

soft

that

felt

to

be

Cultural extinction could be

drinks and T V sets,

as it could with socialist

itself

many French

realism and mandatory Russian

lessons. Being schooled in the French tradition ofrealpolitik,

which is to

48 say, the guiltlessly of

national

amoral consideration ofinternational events in terms

self-interest

routinelyemployed

by

without

recourse

Anglo-Saxon

to

the

obfuscatory

governments

whenever

rhetoric

they

feel

the need to disguise their international events in terms of national selfinterest

without

recourse

to

the

obfuscatory

employed by Anglo-Saxon governments disguise

whenever

rhetoric

routinely

they feel the need to

their less admirable actions—Gallic writers, philosophers,

and

journalists soon realized that America, by virtue of its nuclear arsenal and peerless arms industry, was likely to keep Russian troops off Champs

Elysees

in

the

foreseeable

future.

Thus,

with

the

the

effective

blocking of one particuar foreign peril, they felt free to deal with the nearer,

more

immediate

threat

represented

by

American

neo-

colonialism. These basic facts had as much to do with the conduct of the French

intelligentsia

working

class,

as

did

a mainly

sympathy

Bolshevik

for

the

proletariat

country's

that

gave

industrial the

French

Communist Party 30% of the vote during every national election. The heroic

conduct

of

the

Soviet

Red Army

and of

French Communist

partisans during the Second World War likewise gave the P C F a longerlasting

allure

than

its

Anglo-American counterparts;

unlike

the

Americans and the British, the French felt no need to disguise the fact that the Russians had destroyed 58 - 75% of the Third Reich's military machine believing

(the that

figures

vary); they

France had in any

could

not

significant

delude way

themselves

contributed to

into the

recent Allied victory. In many ways, Russia's over-the-horizon existence was immensely

reassuring. As long as Bolshevism existed as a viable

alternative, U.S. cultural control would never reach 100%. this comforting illusion, intellectual acceptance

To maintain

of the growing

evidence

49 that

pointed

to

Stalin's

great

mistakes

and

crowded prison camps and organized famines,

murderous

paranoia,

to

to purge trials and mass

legal murder was accepted at a much slower pace in France than it was in any other Western European country, with the probable exception Italy.

For the

economic

French,

the

"workers'

paradise" represented

more

salvation; it was also an effective shield against the

of

than

prospect

of U.S. cultural absorption. One sees all these forces Temps

modernes,

at work in the early editorials of

the intellectual journal founded by Jean-Paul Sartre

and Simone de Beauvoir in the mid-1940s. The magazine's the

motivations

behind

America's

pronounced as events in Italy U.S.

economic

attached,

assistance

Marshall

Plan

became

and Greece increasingly

only

came

with

suspicions of

garrotting political

perquisites

left-wing

believed

in

Revolution

or the or

socialist

by

universal the

sun

conviction, culture

kings

Temps

no less sensitive to perceived French

than were their Gaullist and republican opponents.

monarchist

that

strings

groups. Though opposed to French colonialism on principle, Les editorial board was

more

suggested

strings which invariably settled around the necks of

modernes'

Les

virtually

inaugurated

of

the

all

by

French

either

seventeenth

the

and

Whether thinkers French

eighteenth

centuries. Inevitably, this Universal Culture spoke with a French accent. In January of

1945,

Sartre was

intellectuals

to visit the seemingly

time,

existentialist

the

one

of

the

very

first French

invincible United States. At that

philosopher

was

a

moderate

supporter

of

Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal policies, and an unaligned socialist. Four years earlier, he had somewhat controversially published an essay on Herman Melville in the first wartime issue of Comoedia,

an arts-

50 oriented

newspaper

which

occupying German forces generation, plenty, not

he saw

had

been

financed

(Lottman 252).

and

backed

by

the

Like most Frenchmen of his

America first and foremost

as a land of material

a place where the economic privations of occupied France did

pertain.

entering

Sartre

into

enjoyed

sexual

the

liaisons

nation's

with

a

opulence

number

of

and

hospitality,

American

women,

including "Dolores," the lover who came closest to supplanting Simone de Beauvoir as his principal "long-term companion". As de Beauvoir put it in the third volume of her autobiography, "Sartre etait etourdi par tout ce qu'il vu. Outre le regime economique, la segregation,

le racisme,

bien de choses dans la civilisation d'outre-Atlantique le heurtaient:

le

conformisme des Americains, leur echelle de valeurs, leur mythes, leur faux optimisme, leur fuite devant la tragique; mais il avait eu beaucoup de sympathie pour la plupart de ceux qu'il avait approches; il trouvait emouvantes

les

foules

de

New

York,

et

il pensait

que

les

hommes

valaient mieux que le systeme" (La Force des choses 45.) Even this brief "honeymoon period", though, was

shot through with visceral revulsion

at the pandemic conformism which first Sartre, and later de Beauvoir, professed echoed

to find

everywhere

in the U.S. In this regard, they

clearly

Alexis de Tocqueville, that earlier champion of liberty whose

mind was always above the fray. Perhaps because they were used to it by now, this quintessentially

French reservation does not seem to have

unduly disturbed Sartre's American hosts. His criticism of the U.S. State Department,

on the

other hand, came

Twenty years later, Sartre would refuse

close

to getting

him deported.

to lecture in the United States

on the grounds that this once insurrectionary republic had become

the

homeland

the

of

international

imperialism.

Strangely,

despite

51 completeness

of

his

ideological

disaffection,

the

philosopher

did not

devote any of his major writings to the problem of the U.S., with the notable

exception

references

of

La

Putain

respecteuse

A

The

few

Sartrean

to America which do in fact exist must be sought

speeches, interviews collected

in the

and minor journalism, not in the important essays

in Situations.

Many nations were of interest to this

tireless

literary traveller, including Germany (the land where he completed his philosophical training before the war), Spain, Portugal, Italy, Brazil and Israel. The United States was not one of them. Even Sartre's attraction to American artistic techniques have waned after the late 1940s. claim in Simone

de Beauvoir

appears to

Although Kate and Edward Fullbrook

and Jean-Paul

Sartre:

The Remaking

Twentieth

Century

Legend,

their revisionist re-evaluation of the

important

literary

couple

of

the

breakthrough novel La Nausee was A

Farewell

to Arms,

twentieth-century,

that

of a most

Sartre's

strongly influenced by Hemingway's

the validity of their contention is more or less

irrelevant to our concerns, since it seems highly likely that this alleged admiration would have been cast aside

at roughly the same

Sartre

a legitimate

abandoned

literary

technique—which

Fullbrook 84). with

it

American

narrative fiction

a

is

to

as say,

around

twentieth

1949

century

(Fullbrook

and

Indeed, his very praise of U.S.-flavoured writing carried

certain literature

condescending "lay

precisely

dismissal. in

its

For him, pragmatic,

the

A title which French bureaucratic prudery once respecteuse.

insisted

value

of

action-oriented

nature, in its depthlessness and one-dimensionality" (Mathy

4

time that

130).

on printing as La

p

52 Albert Camus also visited the United States in the late 1940s. Like Celine

and Duhamel, he

beauty

of American women, but also experienced

terrifying inaccessibility, Frenchmen

had

confessed

to

him

the

"expressed

impotent

with

afterwards"

with

Simone

Bowery,

(Lottman de

popular

"Camus

embodiment

Camus

he

halls,

for

-

386).

of

was

enthralled

American

fell

in

garish

almost

limitations

of

U.S.

"American

techniques

this

love and

after which the

event,

(Lottman

soon to become identical

writing.

The

were

useful

seeing

383).

with gawdy

it

Although

York

audience pockets: as

the

Sartre's

his bitter intellectual

foe,

on

and

views

the

advantages

Algerian-born author when

they

At one of his New

receipts,

by

crime"

political ally was expressed

the

Almost

made up this loss to their guest out of their own

himself

sometime

women,

385

Beauvoir, dance

a thief stole the cashier's

generously

at

what he called their

American

nightclubs with floor shows" (Lottman 388). lectures,

astonishment

and [one of his friends] knew of cases where

become

contemporaneously "Chinatown,

subsequently

one

was

believed

describing

that

a man

without apparent interior life, and Camus admitted to having used these techniques. But to generalize such use would be an impoverishment, for nine tenths of what makes the richness of art and of life would thereby be lost" (Lottman 418).

Thus, '"The American literature we read, with

the exception of Faulkner and of one or two others who like Faulkner have no success in the United States, is useful as documentation but has little to do with art'" (Lottman 418). Camus's preference the home front was

for American artists

a sentiment

who

were disdained on

to be dutifully repeated by countless

French critics, writers, philosophers and filmmakers during the past half

53 century. To "discover" a despised American is in some way to make him less American and more French. This transmutational process probably began with Baudelaire's

appropriation of Edgar

Poe; it continues

even

now. To return for a moment to La that

strikes

the

'40s. drama is

Putain

respecteuse,

the first thing

contemporary North American reader about its

strangely

deracinated

indeed visited the United States before

this mid-

quality.

Although Sartre had

composing

this play, he seems

every bit as indifferent to place as was the young Brecht before he fled Germany. the

Passages such as the following do not inspire confidence

author's

gagner

understanding

un

match

Americans

from

quintessentially corporate

de the

British

pays

des

of

U.S.

rugby"

cultural mores:

(Sartre

Deep

South

game

is

35). getting

clearly

anglo-saxonnes

To

shameful

path

by

which

Lizzie,

venaient

have

worked

up

over of

the

myth

a little too

far.

An

respectueuse

a prostitute

de

football-mad

pushing

melodrama on the subject of lynching, La Putain the

"lis

in

from

a the

agitprop describes

New

York,

eventually manages to win the respect of her adopted Southern town by falsely claiming that a local black man attempted to rape her. While she is

initially

arguments

reluctant

to

participate

in

this

subterfuge,

are brought to bear that she is eventually

to a murderous, socially-sanctioned

so

many

forced to

submit

lie. She is reminded repeatedly

that

she is not in New York any more, and that Black folks aren't much liked in

her

new

home.

As

one

well-heeled

redneck

domestiques de couleur. Quand on m'appelle

puts

it,

'"J'ai

cinq

au telephone et que l'un

d'eux decroche l'appareil, il l'essuie avant de me le tendre" (Sartre 33). In a place where racism apparently burns as brightly as a Klan

cross,

54 the

second most

tongued

devil who

prolonged entreaty

Satanic of the plays

"good

brainwashing. I say

Southerners is cop" during "second

the the

most",

Senator, a silvercourse

because

that breaks through the Northerner's resistance

of Lizzie's

the

letter

of

was reputedly

written by his wife. In part, it reads '"...il a tue un noir, c'est tres mal. Mais j'ai besoin de lui. C'est un Americain cent pour cent, le descendant d'une de nos plus vieilles families, il a fait ses etudes a Harvard, il est officier—il me faut des officiers—il emploie deux mille ouvriers dans son usine—deux mille chomeurs s'il venait a mourir—c'est un chef, un solide rempart contre le communisme, le syndicalisme et les Juifs" (Sartre 55). Again we see the ghost of Duhamel's Mrs. Lytton. She is, however, only slightly

worse

than everyone

else

in this

particular

corner of

hell.

Sartre's critique of America is painted in the broadest, crudest strokes imaginable.

It is

a polemic that allows

only the most reprehensible,

disagreeable aspects of American life, each one magnified to maximum power, to appear upon the stage. Aside from its political signification, La putain

respectueuse

is as geographically and sociologically vague as a

play by Beckett or Ionesco. J'irai of

the

cracker

more

sur vos tombes seems to have been inspired by one

controversial

moments

in

this

extremely

controversial

"melo". After playing Judas by signing her name to the document that falsely condemns him, her conscience by

Lizzie attempts to assuage her guilt and appease

by offering the innocent fugitive her revolver, a means

which he might legitimately

half-decent existentially

intentions,

defend himself.

Despite

though, the Black victim refuses

meaningful gift:

the

whore's

to accept

this

55 LENEGRE Je ne peux pas, madame. LIZZIE Quoi? LENEGRE Je ne peux tirer sur des blancs. LIZZIE Vraiment! lis vont se gener, eux. LENEGRE Ce sont des blancs, madame (Sartre 71).

Frantz

Fanon

and

other

radical

theorists

would

later

condemn

this

"Uncle Tom" passivity as objectively reactionary, even if it did reflect the "Jim Crow" mentality of Southern Blacks prior to the birth of the U.S. Civil Rights movement.

The playwright obviously agreed with them; in

her memoirs, Simone de Beauvoir explained why the drama was revised for

the cinema in a way that allowed the oppressed Black man to take

up

arms for himself

"Sartre,

d'ailleurs,

niveau des

and—by extension—tous les damnes de la terre:

comprenait

masses, l'espoir

est

le

point

de

vue

des

communistes:

un element d'action; la lutte

est

au trop

severe pour qu'elles s'y risquent si elles ne croient pas a la victoire" (L a Force des choses 129 - 130). A

fellow

Saint-Germain-des-Pres

habitue

with

strong

feelings

against U.S.-style racial prejudice was Boris Vian, a bohemian polymath who belonged for a time to the existentialist eventually

losing his first wife

philosopher's inner circle,

to that legendary womanizer,

following

56 Michelle's decision to "defect" to Jean-Paul's unofficial harem. many talents, France's

Vian was

premier jazz

trumpeter,

a

good

enthusiast

(please

A man of

simultaneously critic,

a noted

Samaritan see

to

attached

experimental

visiting

bebop

appendix),

a

writer, a musicians,

cabaret

talented a

artist,

film

and

a

punster and word game master who was almost as handy in English as he

was

in

French.

Of all

unquestionably the one most

the

French

writers

sympathetic

of

his

day,

he

was

to American popular culture,

as well as the one with the best sense of humour. In his capacity as France's number one jazz interpreter, it was

Vian's enviable

duty to

squire the major Black musical celebrities who visited Paris around the City of Light. According to Noel Arnaud, "...tous les grands musiciens noirs, de passage a Paris, seront, comme le Duke, les

hotes du Club

Saint-Germain-des-Pres et de Boris Vian: Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max

Roach,

Kenny

personal

familiarity

certainly

greater

knowledge novelist willingly

etc"

with

Black

(Arnaud

almost Wright.

acknowledged

Because

of

viewpoints

French

literary peers,

exclusively Like

148).

American

than those of his

came

Richard

Clarke,

from

the

mouth

virtually all white

that the masters

of

jazz

this,

was

almost

since

of

his

their

expatriate

musicians,

he

his

art were darker-hued

than he. At that time, this was one of the few

angles by which non-

biased European observers could properly appreciate the depth of Black talent

even

organs

as it was

and ideology

of

submerged

and blocked at every

institutional racism. Vian

clearly

turn by took

the

these

lessons to heart. J'irai professed

cracker

sur vos tombes,

like Vian's later mock-potboilers,

to be a French translation of a novel penned by the light-

57 skinned mulatto, "Vernon Sullivan". Since Boris and Michelle Vian did in fact

translate

Raymond Chandler's novel

French in 1948,

The Lady

in the Lake

the Sullivan mask was fairly easy to maintain, even if

Vian did write his instant bestseller in ten quick days. Because position

into

in the jazz community, the

fantasy

of being

of his

a light-skinned

"Negro" who could "pass" was a fantasy that obviously appealed to him. He

was

also apparently inspired by an article that he'd read in an

American monthly: "Tous les ans 20 000 Noirs transforment en Blancs. C'est ce qui ressort d'un recent article d'Herbert Asbury du 'Colliers'" (Arnaud

152).

In his bogus preface, Vian asserted

that Sullivan's preference

the Black half of his heritage filled him with "une espece de mepris les 'bons Noirs'..." and his admiration for "des noirs aussis Blancs"

(J'irai

cracher

sur

vos

admitted the book's indebtedness

tombes

9).

More

for pour

'durs' que les

pertinently,

Vian

to the writings of James M . Cain, as

well as to the novels of Henry Miller, a then obscure American author whose more erotic books were sold only in France during the 1940s and '50s.

In addition to those cited sources,

penultimate

of the novel's

chapter are strongly reminiscent of the the denouement

Hemingway's largely

the last lines

For Whom the Bell

borrowed from the

fiction, Native

Tolls,

pages

of

of

while the book's thematics were Richard

Wright's most

famous

Son.

Except for its last nine pages, J'irai

cracher

sur

vos

tombes

is

written in the first person singular. Lee Anderson, the novel's narrator, is, like "Vernon Sullivan", a light-skinned Black who can pass for white; because of the novel's origins, he is also a mask behind a mask. Imbued with

a virility equal

to

his

thirst

for

vengeance—Lee's

family

has

58 suffered

severely

extremely

from

the

ravages

hardboiled hero

buys

of

Southern

a bookstore

in

racism—the the

small

book's town

of

Buckton, then proceeds to check out the local scene. His musical, as well as his sexual, gifts soon win him the favours of the local

"good-time

girls": "J'aurais toutes les filles les unes apres les autres, mais c'etait trop simple...."

(J'irai

cracher sur vos

tombes 41.)

Instead he focuses his

attentions on the upper class Asquith sisters, Jean and Lou, the belles of Prixville slang,

(considering

this

the

might well

be

author's

familiarity

a pun in the

vein

with Anglo-American of Dashiell

Hammett's

Poisonville). Every bit as promiscuous as Buckton's uncultured females, they

are

even

more

obnoxiously

racist.

When

Lee—whom

Lou

erroneously assumes to be white—insists that Duke Ellington is a greater composer

than George Gershwin, the Asquith sister typically responds,

"—Vous etes bizarre... Je deteste les Noirs" (J'irai cracher sur vos tombes 118.)

To

keep

Christianity

his

which

spirit he

mean

believes

and

has

hard,

Lee

crippled the

rejects will

of

the

pacific

his

"good"

brother, Tom: "...je crois qu'on ne peut pas rester lucide et croire en Dieu, et il fallait que je sois lucide" (J'irai cracher sur vos tombes 43). The

vengeance

noxious

which Lee

mixture

of

mutilation

and

Spillane's

standards,

subsequently

impregnation,

murder)

would

never

mind

wreaks

betrayal,

seem

James

does as much to keep the book's

American

bookshelves

the

1990s as

M.

to

shock is

torture,

even

Cain's.

(translated)

did its

Black rage and explicit sexuality in the 1940s. power

rape,

excessive

misogyny

of

on Jean and Lou (a sexual

by

Mickey

Such

graphic

pages off

graphic depictions

the of

In some ways, the book's

greater than that of the more extreme

fictions

of

Georges Bataille and the Marquis de Sade. Seeing the book as a two-

59 pronged

attack

instance,

by

on

Jean-Paul Sartre and Michelle Vian—in

creating

respectueuse,

a text

far

more

incendiary

than

the

La

Putain

in the second by symbolically slaughtering an "unfaithful"

woman—in no way

softens

the reader's

double

reaction of

indignant

outrage and horrified admiration. If there is such a thing as a maudit,

vast gulfs

heat of J'irai instance,

Vernon Sullivan volumes

is to be struck by

that separates their muted impact from the cracher

sur vos tombes. Elles

is almost as misogynistic

anti-female

comments

ne rendent

attitudes

compte,

are more ironically phrased, reflecting

in drag,

these braggarts

obliviously

"Je risque rien, je dis. Moi je

rendent

pas

compte 79).5

lightly

handled,

The book's

although

the

for

as badly

ambivalent—sexual

as on the "bad" behaviour of the women in their lives.

dressed

outlook:

pas

sulphurous

in tone, but in this case the text's

on the (male) heroes "all-American"—and comically

when

roman

this is definitely it.

To read subsequent the

first

assert their

suis heterosexuel'"

Even macho

(Elles

ne

hardboiled elements are equally

novel's

climactic

castration

scene

is

strongly reminiscent of Jim Thompson's more ghoulish endings. As for Et

on tuera

tous les affreux,

the roman

noir

elements

are

now

shot

through with pulp science fiction and espionage elements: "Prendre un coup sur la tete, ce n'est rien. Etre drogue deux fois de suite dans la meme soiree, ce n'est pas trop penible... Mais sortir prendre l'air et .se retrouver dans

un chambre inconnue,

avec

une femme,

tous les

deux

dans le costume d'Adam and Eve, 9a commence a etre un peu fort" (Et on tuera tous les white 5

American

affreux 7). males

in

the

It is interesting to note that virtually all Vernon

Sullivan books

are treated

A good colloquial English title for this bagatelle would be Chicks Don't Count.

as

60 sexual incompetents,

latent homosexuals,

confused

puritans, and absurd

virgins. Most French writers, at one time or another, have played this ego-building card; even Simone de Beavoir, surprisingly, once played it in L'Amerique

au jour le jour. In any event, the Vernon Sullivan series

declined rapidly after its explosive

debut.

Lynching seemed to be something of a magnet to French writers of

the

late

doom-laden

1940s. Even Jacques scenarist,

took

a few

Prevert, that

light-hearted

poet and

potshots at the phenomenon

second collection of poems, Histoires.

in his

"Le Lunch", for instance, describes

the extra-judicial execution of a black "maitre d'hotel" who was hanged from a bridge for having the effrontery to gaze down "le decollete/ de la maitresse

de

maison"

(Prevert

53).

Although the

widespread

French

mistrust of American females is less pronounced here, it is still implicit. How

strange

that in the

land of

popularized

the

that

commodities

within

notion the

Claude Levi-Strauss—the man

females

framework

of

were male

essentially

who

exchange

civilization—American

women should be made to appear so often as active agents of racism-inpractice,

rather

than

as

just

a

tendentious

excuse

trumped

up

by

bloody-minded Klansmen with a marked taste for New World pogroms and ratissages.. racist

than

their

Without arguing that white American women were less male

counterparts

at

which there is absolutely no evidence—it

mid-century—an argument

still seems most unlikely that

they were more virulent in their expressions case,

their

translation

still-binding of

social

anti-Black

"demonization" of white

of racial autocracy. In any

limitations

sentiments

for

generally

into

violent

Southern women must therefore

prevented

the

action.

The

be

explained

in psychological, rather than sociological, terms. Just as the New Yorker

61 represented the "good" American, so did the Southerner stand in his for his evil doppelganger. This division of American men into two

separate

types seems to have been doubly applicable in the case of American women. From the late '40s texts of Sartre, Vian, and Prevert, it would be virtually impossible for the uninformed reader to determine how much pleasure the authors had derived from their encounters in and with the New World. If the land they visited was the land of Cockaigne, the land they

described was

the land of Mordor.

To find

a more "binocular"

vision of mid-century America, one must turn to the writings of Simone de Beau voir, the first important Frenchwoman to write about the United States. Describing her New World adventures in three separate

books,

de Beauvoir was as generous with her praise as she was scathing in her criticism. Collectively, L'Amerique au jour le jour, Les Mandarins, and La Force des choses comprise the richest French chronicle of American life since de Tocqueville's De la democratie en Amerique. is recognized even in the United States—always

This achievement

a good sign. In a recent

New York Times Book Review article, "The Existential Tourist," Douglas Brinkley was fulsome in his praise of the first and least celebrated of these

volumes:

"For

women

and

men,

who

want

to

experience

vicariously Jack Kerouac's open road with less macho romanticism and more existential savvy, 'America Day by Day', hidden from us for nearly 50 years, comes to the reader like a botle of vintage cognac, asking only to be uncorked" (Brinkley 27). polemics regularly weapons

fail to faze mounts

her

to bad food,

Even de Beauvoir's periodic

left-wing

this unabashed American admirer: "Although she soapbox she

to

denounce

everything

exudes maternal kindness

from

atomic

to everyone

she

62 meets, regardless of his or her narrow politics or jingoistic world view" (Brinkley 27). Indeed, it would probably not be pushing the comparison too far to say that de Beauvoir's books about America are almost warmly

embraced by

Americans as

Stendhal's

pen

portraits

of

as

Italy

were by Milanese, Romans, and Neapolitans. In postwar terms, she sets the standard by which all other French interpreters of America must be judged. Ironically, L'Amerique book at all. Les

Temps

au jour

modernes

le jour

was never intended to be a

printed de Beauvoir's travel diary of

her first trip to the United States, and that was supposed to be that.

As

she confessed in her autobiography, "Je ne me premeditais pas d'ecrire un livre sur l'Amerique, mais je voulais la voir bien; je connaissais litterature

et,

couramment"

malgre

Breton, for instance, conduct

L'Amerique

accent

consternant,

(La Force des choses 137).

give her an advantage

to

mon

the

parlais

anglais

Her linguistic fluency

that most of her contemporaries

would

lacked; Andre

spent the war years in New York without learning

simplest

au jour

je

sa

le jour

English conversation.

Although

stylistically

is the roughest of de Beauvoir's three major

American travel narratives, it is also the most detailed, exhaustive,

and

interesting.

one

The author's American adventures,

thread in the broader tapestries of Les choses.

after all, were only

Mandarins

and La

Force

des

What's more, de Beauvoir's journalistic impressions of the land

were often subservient to the "main story," her intense and emotionally fulfilling

affair

L'Amerique

with

American

au jour

le jour

Thus,

nothing

importance. contemplation

of

America,

author

effectively gets circa

in

and

radical,

disguises the

1945-1947.

the

way

of

As

she

Nelson

Algren.

U.S.

writer's

de

Beauvoir's

recalled

in her

63 memoirs,

"J'etais

prete

a

aimer

l'Amerique;

c'etait

la

patrie

de

capitalisme, oui; mais elle avait contribue a sauver l'Europe du fascisme; la bombe atomique lui assurait le leadership du monde et la dispensait de rien craindre; les persuadee conscience those

livres

de certains

liberaux americains

m'avaient

qu'une grande partie de la nation avait une sereine et claire de ses

hopes

responsabilites"

would

be

Beauvoir would describe

(La Force des choses 138). Many of

dispelled

by

her

first

even her growing

U.S. journey,

disillusionment

but

with

de

great

gusto and skill. Characteristically, de Beauvoir clearly felt more than a little guilty about the pleasure she derived from her first U.S. safari. At the very beginning of her first "American" book, she writes, grand pays industriel sans visiter ses techniques,

usines,

"...j'ai traverse

sans voir ses

ce

realisations

sans entrer en contact avec la classe ouvriere. Je n'ai pas

penetre non plus dans les hautes spheres ou s'elaborent l'economie

des

appeasement

U.S.A"

does

not

la politique et

(l'Amerique au jour le jour 7). This tone of last

long.

Soon

she

is

rhapsodizing

about

Broadway, the Great White Way where "...la lumiere en a lave toutes les souillures;

c'est une

lumiere

surnaturelle qui transfigure

l'asphalte...."

(L'Amerique au jour le jour 13). After years of privation in occupied Paris, de Beauvoir is struck dumb by the giddy opulence drug

stores and soda fountains.

Though slightly

of American

more reserved

about

the value of the U.S. fashion industry (not without justice, she felt that "independent" American women slavishly dressed de

Beauvoir

gorges

herself

on

Hollywood

to please their men),

movies

and

milkshakes,

marvelling all the while at the fat luxuriance of the Sunday edition of The New York Times. She visits New York's Spanish library; she smokes

64 marijuana

with

Greenwich Village

bohemians;

she

listens

to

Billy

Holliday. Above all, she is impressed by the warmth of the people: "Ce qui rend

si agreable la vie

quotidienne en Amerique

c'est la bonne

humeur et cordialite des Americains" (L'Amerique au jour le jour 30.) In these early pages, American "minuses" can seem almost like "pluses": "L'arrogance

des

Americains n'est

pas

volonte

de

puissance,

c'est

volonte d'imposer le Bien...." (L'Amerique au jour le jour 71). Again and again

she

contrasts

American

counterparts: "Peut-etre les

ways

of

behaviour with

their

French

amities sont-elles en France plus solides

et

plus profondes: je n'en sais rien; mais en tous cas chez nous le premier accueil n'a jamais cette chaleur" (L'Amerique au jour le jour 53). As defensive

the

preceding

element

in

statement de

makes

Beauvoir's

clear,

there

relativistic

is

a

certain

pronouncements.

America might be big and grand, but in some essential

way it is and

must be spiritually inferior to Europe. Though de Beauvoir dedicated L'Amerique

au jour

many places

le jour

to "Ellen and Richard Wright," and visited

in their company, she felt

no qualms about writing the

following passage: "Hemingway ou Wright, si on les compare a un James Joyce, par example,

n'apportent rien--ils racontent des

histoires,

c'est

tout. Si nous aimons ces livres, c'est par une sorte de condescendance...." (L'Amerique au jour le jour 58). American literature, in other words, is useful to European authors in the same way that Benin sculpture was to Pablo

Picasso;

in

each

case,

a

"sophisticated"

European

derived

inspiration from talented but primitive "idiots savants". This feeling of ownership

extends

even

to

that

most

American

of

arts,

syncopated

music: "Le public americain a plus ou moins assassine le jazz, mais il l'aime encore" (L'Amerique au jour le jour 54.) U.S. intellectuals, de

65 Beauvoir

complained,

were

totally

uninterested

in

any

living

writer

(such as Sartre or herself): "lis detestent tous les ecrivains vivants parce qu'eux-memes ne sont ni ecrivains ni vivants...." (L'Amerique au jour le jour

59.)

This

apparently,

bias

in

favour

directed inward as

of

the

well

as

intellectually

deceased

outward. Much

later

was,

in

her

journey, de Beauvoir would meet "...un professeur de l'universite qui me parle de Dewey,

le

seul

philosophe

(L'Amerique au jour le jour 280.)

connu et reconnu en

Amerique"

Culturally speaking, America is still

Europe's junior partner, but has the perversity to refuse to admit it. For dramatic

effect,

the

American

mouths:

author

"II

sometimes

existe,

me

puts

disent-ils,

americaine, heritiere de la culture europeene directement...." cultural

such une

sentiments

authentique

into

culture

a laquelle elle se rattache

(L'Amerique au jour le jour 58.) Like so many French

critics

before

and

since,

she

comments

on

America's

indifference to its greatest artists (which is to say, the American artists who

are

regarded

as

such

by

French

observers).

According

to

de

Beauvoir, one cocktail party intellectual stammers, '"Edgar Poe...je crois bien que c'est un auteur francais....'"^ Fortunately,

not

all

her

comparisons

are

either

invidious

or

judgmental; many are made in a spirit of genuine inquiry: "Ce n'est pas la coutume ici de travailler dans les endroits ou Ton boit: c'est le pays de specialisation" (L'Amerique au jour le jour 23). Much of the material she transmits is both recondite and chilling. Her passages on drug abuse and youth violence

fairly echo with sad prophecy. If anything, she

even more prescient

on the

origins of Black

seems

anti-Semitism. Even

in

6 A North American reader cannot help wondering how the academic "rube" in question might have responded if de Beauvoir had mentioned 'Edgar Allan Poe." This usually shrewd literary tourist seems totally oblivious to that possibility.

66 1945,

she

ridden

reminds us,

city.

strangling

In

his

Washington, D . C . was

Chicago,

a

fifteen-year-old

eleven-year-old

friend. De

America's most boy

was

crime-

convicted

Beauvoir visits

the

chair waiting at the end of the Windy City's Death Row,

of

electric

emotionlessly

explaining, "Quand on execute un condamne, il y a quatre gardiens qui sont designes pour presser quatre de ces boutons: un seul donne la mort et personne ne sait lequel" (L'Amerique au jour le jour 368).

Petrified

by the Black Dahlia murder, the women of Los Angeles "ont peur de se promener apres minuit" (L'Amerique au jour le jour 123). This now all too

familiar apprehension

introduced

to

the

rich

was and

apparently famous,

de

then

unprecedented.

Beauvoir

is

overawed

by their celebrity. At a Hollywood party, she

with

femme

"la

de

Chaplin

qui

est,

comme

When

anything

but

shakes hands

d'habitude,

enceinte"

(L'Amerique au jour le jour 300). Such dry wit is quite common in this book by a writer who is often accused of being totally humourless. By the same token, de Beauvoir's impatience with bien pensant

thinking is

as sharp as it is merciless: "Chez les blancs 'eclaire' il y a a New York un snobisme de la musique et de la litterature noire" L'Amerique au jour le jour

320).

The author's artistic reactions

are generally

insightful: "Ce

que j'ai senti souvent en ecoutant leur jazz, en parlant avec eux, c'est que le temps meme dans lequel ils vivent est abstrait" (L'Amerique

au

jour le jour 385). In the same way, her brief film reviews are generally sound. After viewing Mr.

Verdoux,

director "...on a l'impression qu'il

for instance, de Beauvoir said of its a ete

intimide malgre lui par son

audace" (L'Amerique au jour le jour 271)7

De Beauvoir's substitution of "Mr" for "M" in the title of Charlie Chaplin's film is symptomatic of what has always been the most unintentionally funny aspect of 7

67 As

she

toured

America,

de

Beauvoir

brought

with

her

the

intellectual baggage of previous French tourists. Following in Georges

Duhamel's

Chicago,

even

as

footsteps, she

she

dismissed

visited as

bogus

the the

stinking

stockyards

haughty

of

academician's

claim that one couldn't see the landscapes of America on account of all the billboards. De Beauvoir's fascination with drugstores, soda fountains, and

other

prototypical "fast food" outlets had almost

certainly

been

primed by Celine's earlier celebration of New York's automat.8 In New Orleans, like so many Parisian pilgrims before her, de Beauvoir listened to a local who spoke "...la francais que la Louisiane a herite du XVIIIe siecle" (L'Amerique au jour le jour 223). A trip to Niagara Falls invokes the shade of Atala's avant

que

paysage

fussent

creator: "Assurement, au temps de Chateaubriand, baties

les

usines

et

les

pavilions

touristiques,

ce

devait etre saissant" (L'Amerique au jour le jour 93). Nearby,

she found a body of water that was "fantastic" in beauty: "Le lac est

French writing about America. English language spelling mistakes, misquotations, errors of agreement, idiomatic usage and capitalization are so ubiquitous in even the best French publications that anglophone readers must sometimes wonder if these untranslated passages have been proofread at all. These problems are exacerbated by an attribution of cultural habits that are totally alien to Americans. Thus, in Elles ne rendent pas compte, we read of an abstemious young man "...qui ne bois que du Perrier" (Elles ne rendent pas compte 77). In 1953 America, the non-alcoholic beverage of choice would obviously have been Club Soda. Even more comically, Jules Verne has U.S. C i v i l War veterans bellowing "Hurrah! Hip! Hip! Hip!" in the place of the standard "Hip! Hip! Hurrah!" (De la terre a la lune 32). While more recent writers, such as Pascale Quignard and Philippe Djian, tend to reproduce a more idiomatically exact English than did their francophone predecessors, this problem has been by no means resolved. 8 At the time she was writing, Celine was in exile, facing a death sentence in his native France for intellectual collaboration with the enemy. O f all living French writers, Celine was unquestionably the one she could least afford to cite favourably.

68 beau comme un paysage de Jules Verne...." (L'Amerique au jour le jour 93).9 When predecessors,

not

following

in

the

footsteps

de Beauvoir preferred to go

where

of

her

illustrious

Americans feared

to

tread. In this way, she visited Harlem, entirely on her own, despite her friends' entreaties not to. Here, she clearly felt, was the New World's New World. Of white America's ghetto fears, she wrote: "Qu'un bourgeois trop riche ait peur s'il aventure dans les faubourgs ou Ton a faim, c'est naturel [d'avoir peur]. II se promene dans un univers qui refuse le sien et qui un jour en triomphera. Mais Harlem est avec

ses

bourgeois

et ses

proletaires, ses

une societe

riches et ses

complete,

pauvres qui ne

sont pas ligues dans un action revolutionnaire, qui souhaitent

s'integrer

a l'Amerique et non le detruire" (L'Amerique au jour le jour 40). De Beauvoir's Harlem is remarkably similarly to the urban playground of "Gravedigger" Jones

and "Coffin

E d " Johnson, the fictional

policemen

created by Black expatriate (he lived in France for many years, permanently settling

in Spain) author Chester Himes. The Harlem that

both of them described now swatch

before

exists no more than does the

of prosperity-altered America: "Le Nevada est

following

le pays

le plus

desert, le moins peuple et le plus pauvre des U.S.A." (L'Amerique

au

jour le jour 153). L'Amerique observations. contemporary subsequently

De

au

jour

Beauvoir

plight

of

le

jour

provides

U.S.

is a

exceedingly penetrating

screenwriters—a

rich account

plight

in of

which

replaced by even worse perils. She makes veiled

such the was

allusions

By the last decades of the 20th century, America will seem increasingly "science fictional" to French intellectuals such as Jean Baudrillard. More about this anon. 9

69 to cultural figures who might well be Gore Vidal, Dwight Macdonald and George Stevens. She explains why Jewish neighbourhoods can flourish in New York but not in Chicago, the Illinois city where competing Irish and Polish

proletarian clans

attack

each

other

with

an imperishable

hate.

She mentions the quotidian horrors of Jim Crow laws, without dwelling unduly

on

expression.

lynching, She

this

charts

detestable

the

first

social

steps

taken

system's by

most

American

extreme politicians

during the early stages of the Cold War, and feels the cold breath of McCarthyism breathing down her neck. She speaks of Philip Wylie and the cult of "Momism," of an up-and-coming Black preachers named "le rev. A . Clayton Powell" (L'Amerique le jour le jour 62), and of a notably non-monolithic

culture:

"II

y

a

un

regionalisme

intellectuel,

en

Amerique; Henri [sic] Miller n'a pas beaucoup d'importance a New York, mais

sur cette

cote

ouest ou il habite

on le

tient

pour un genie"

(L'Amerique le jour le jour 147). When de Beauvoir loves a place, she's not afraid to let you know it: "Nulle part la poesie du passe americain que dans les rues du vieux Boston...." Even her occasional "bloopers" are more amusing than annoying. It seems most unlikely, for instance, she

saw

"une

eglise

de

XlVe

siecle" in Texas

since

that

the European

colonization of the United States did not begin until le seizieme

siecle.

(L'Amerique au jour le jour 212). Still, despite her guiding sympathy for America, and regardless of the new intellectual territory which she staked out, Simone de Beauvoir fits

seamlessly into

the

tradition of

French literary tourism. Like

de

Tocqueville, de Beauvoir lamented the lack of true individuality in the United States: "En Amerique, l'individu n'est rien. II fait l'objet

d'un

culte abstrait...." (L'Amerique au jour le jour 100.) Her feminist views in

70 no

way

incline

her

towards

a

sympathetic

view

of

American

womanhood.

She scorned what she saw as the coed's cult of frivolity,

and

disapproved

clearly

of

the

fact

that

50%

students were still virgins: "Les college-girls ont evidemment jour

334.)

of

female

university

exterieurement

si

faciles

de fortes defenses interieures" (L'Amerique au jour le

Putting her own unique spin on the standard French male

critique of Yankee puritanism, de Beauvoir attributed this

unfortunate

state of affairs to non-stop war between the sexes: "Un des faits qui m'a ete tout de suite sensible en Amerique, c'est qu'hommes

et femmes ne

s'aiment

attributed

the

.ubiquity of alcohol in America—a criticism exactly opposite to the

one

pas"

(L'Amerique au jour le jour 333).

She

made by Georges Duhamel 20 years earlier—to America's need to break through the body. was

puritan straightjacket

of

anti-sexuality

and hatred of

the

Like Claude Levi-Strauss, de Beauvoir's European sensibility overwhelmed

by the very size of New

World towns: "Les

d'Amerique sont trop grandes; a la nuit leur dimensions

se

villes

multiplent,

elles deviennent les jungle ou il est facile de s'egarer" (L'Amerique au jour le jour 144). It would be all too easy to imagine Duhamel or Celine sneering

at

violemment 330).

"les

toilettes

feminin,

[qui]

presque

m'ont

sexuel"

etonne

par

leur

(L'Amerique au jour

caractere le

jour

1 0

Like both her predecessors and her successors, the author initially "hung out" mainly with fellow way

clannish,

Americanism

though. of

the

French people in America. She was

In

particular,

she

despised

local

Petainists,

disgraced

the

political

no

vulgar

anti-

exiles

who

Perhaps the strangest plank in the French cultural superiority package is the rather peculiar notion that primitive sanitation in some way bestows seriousness of purpose on a non-flushing nation. 1

0

71 insisted

that

"cette

attitude

est

la

installe dans ce pays" (L'Amerique expressing disdainful

this

sentiment,

statement

that

seule

pour un

au jour le jour 24).

however, must

possible

de

have

Shortly after

Beauvoir comes

made

her Petainist

Francais

up

with

a

"opponents"

turn green with envy: "Si meme les intellectuels dits de gauche sont si fiers des boites de lait condense que leur gouvernement nous

dispense,

comment s'etonner de l'arrogance de la presse capitaliste...a l'egard de la France..."

(L'Amerique le jour le jour 48). She is as appalled by Uncle

Sam's lack of interest in France's universal culture as was that staunch conservative humanist, Georges Duhamel: "Le pire est que beaucoup de Francais sont complices de cette attitude; nos capitalistes font une active propagande

anti-francaise

en Amerique;

peut-etre

est-ce

leur

servilite

qui autorise certains Americains a parler de la France a une Francaise avec ce ton accusateur: le ton des officiers allemands quand ils disaient en occupant un village: 'Voila ou nous ont conduits vos politiciens et vos Juifs" (L'Amerique au jour le jour 281.) Here as elsewhere, so

many

French

she expresses the underlying belief common to

intellectuals

that

the

idea

of

France

is

somehow

separate from its political misdemeanors, while the idea of America is not. Though de Beauvoir would later play a major role in the French intellectual resistance obligation

to

justify

to the War in Algeria, in America she feels no France's

postwar

crimes

in

Indochina

and

Madagascar, never mind the still-festering wound of Vichy. In the City of

Light,

ghettos:

she

can think of no analogous

"Fiche au coeur

de

New

York,

emblematic Harlem

simile

pese

for U.S.

sur la

bonne

conscience des blancs comme le peche original sur celle d'un Chretien" (L'Amerique au jour le jour 40). When de Beauvoir learns that the U.S.

72 State Department has forbidden the overseas distribution of The Oxbow Incident

because said western

Beauvoir,

like

any

one

dealt with the subject

of her noose-haunted

of lynching, de

contemporaries,

reports this fact as if contained some almost cabbalistic

eagerly

secret. If de

Beauvoir understands why so many American leftists abandoned Stalin in 1936,

she clearly still regards this defection

best, and possibly of mauvais foi. is

quite

happy

to

compare

as a form of naivete at

Like an American tourist in Asia, she

an unfamiliar place

to

a familiar

one:

"[Rockport est] St. Tropez moins colore...." (L'Amerique au jour le jour 304.)

Rapidly

wearying

Beauvoir goes to see aperta

primarily

americain"

of

her

trans-Atlantic

Roberto Rossellini's

"[pour]

(L'Amerique

le

plaisir de

neorealist

film, Roma:

voir un film

au jour le jour 335).

total, but it will prove to be permanent:

playground,

qui ne

de

citta

fut

Her disaffection

pas

is not

"Aimer l'Amerique, ne

pas

l'aimer: ces mots n'ont pas de sens. Elle est un champ de bataille...." (L'Amerique au jour le jour 389). De Beauvoir decides to return to her patrie:

"II va falloir reapprendre la France et rentrer dans ma peau"

(L'Amerique au jour le jour 389.) If America is France's "Other", it is an Other that can make Insiders seem Other to themselves, it would seem. According

to de Beauvoir, only in France can a French citizen

fully

occupy his or her mental skin. With

the

exception

of her affair with

everything

de

Beauvoir

had

L'Amerique

au jour le jour. Some of her subsequent

the

aforesaid

balance

to

Mandarins,

the

incidents more

did

to

say

about

sometimes,

lopsided

aspects

Nelson

America

however, of

her

Algren, virtually was

said

in

re-imaginings

of

provide

original text.

a

certain In

Les

for instance, de Beauvoir's grasp of American politics—or,

73 rather,

of

the perception

Americans—had

grown

disappointed

the

by

of by

American

leaps

capitalist

and

politics

bounds.

super-power's

shared

While

world

by

she

view,

most

is

she

still is

no

longer surprised by it, as one can tell from the following speech by one of the novel's few major American characters: "—Je ne comprends pas ce prejuge contre l'Amerique, dit Bennet.... II faut etre communiste pour ne voir en elle que le bastion du capitalisme: c'est aussi un grand pays ouvrier; et c'est le pays du progres, de la prosperite, de l'avenir'" (Les Mandarins 383). Bennet's defensiveness, of course, is almost identical to de Beauvoir's own in L'Amerique

au jour

le jour,

albeit with the political

polarities reversed. It seems highly unlikely that the author could have written this

speech without coming to terms with her immediate

war insecurities. confused

with

complaint

pas

softening

a weakening

makes

l'impuissance, n'aurez

This

clear:

dis-je; le

of

of

attitude

should

not,

ideological

rigour,

as

"—Tous les

intellectuels

droit

de

vous

indigner

le

jour

however, the

ou

be

following

americains

c'est ga qui parait un curieux

post-

plaident

complexe.

Vous

l'Amerique

sera

completement fascisee et ou elle declenchera la guerre'" (Les Mandarins 534). As the author pointed out in her memoirs, the Korean war had in fact increased her hostility to U.S. foreign policy, and possibly

to the

United States tout court: "Depuis la guerre de Coree, mon aversion pour l'Amerique n'avait pas diminuee" (La Force des choses 395). Towards the belatedly

conceded,

end of her first travel book, the "Nous

avons

d'autres

d'etre malheureux, d'etre inauthentiques,

fagons

que

author les

Americains

voila tout: les jugements

j'ai portes sur eux au cours de ce voyage ne s'accompagnaient sentiment

somewhat

que

d'aucun

de superiorite" (L'Amerique au jour le jour 389). As we have

just seen, this claim is more than a little questionable. Its good faith, though, is not. After the Second World War, French intellectuals would try

to

extend

their

imaginations

to

the

point

where

they

could

apprehend America the way it really was, instead of just re-confirming inherited hopes and fears. Claude

Much

Levi-Strauss and the

new

of

the

impetus

science

of

for this

came

from

structuralism. For this

reason, it probably behooves us to say a few

words about the

great

anthropologist's first impressions of America. Before "discovering" America in the early 1940s, Levi-Strauss had "discovered" Brazil

six years before. Thanks to the exigencies of the

Second World War, his first U.S. port of call was not New York but Puerto Rico. Thus, his second American encounter, like his first, took place in a "Latin" corner of the New World. This chance circumstance was

to

permanently

colour

his

perception

of

cultural

difference,

distance and similarity: "Le hasard des voyages offre souvent de telles ambiguites. D'avoir passe a Porto-Rico mes premieres semaines sur le sol

des

Etats-Unis

me

fera,

dorenavant,

retrouver

l'Amerique

Espagne. Comme aussi pas mal d'annees plus tard, d'avoir visite premiere universite anglaise sur le campus aux edifices

neogothiques

en ma de

Dacca, dans le Bengale oriental, m'incite maintenant a considerer Oxford comme une Inde qui a reussi a controler la boue, la moissure et debordements

de

la

perceptive tourist was

vegetation"

(Levi-Strauss

36).

This

les

extremely

singularly impressed by the artificial "antiquity"

of America: "En visitant New York ou Chicago en 1941, en arrivant a Sao Paulo en 1935, ce n'est done pas la nouveaute qui m'a d'abord etonne,

mais la precocite des ravages des temps" 1 1

most was

(Levi-Strauss 107).

overwhelmed the anthropologist about the New World,

What

however,

the very un-European vastness of the place. As he wrote in his

most famous book,Tristes

tropiques,

"...je l'ai ressentie devant la cote et

sur les plateaux du Bresil central dans les Andes boliviennes et dans les Rocheuses du Colorado, dans les faubourgs de Rio, la banlieue de Chicago et les rues de New York" (Levi-Strauss 86). To feel at home in this new environment,

the

exiled

Frenchmen felt

the

need

to

re-calibrate his

sense of scale and space: "...sans doute, objectivement, New York est une ville,

mais le spectacle

qu'elle propose a la sensibilite

europeene

est

d'un autre ordre de grandeur: celui de nos propres pay sages; alors que les

paysages

systeme

americaines

encore

plus

vaste

d'equivalent" (Levi-Strauss By

trying

geographical,

to

rather

nous

pour

quoi

eux-memes

nous

ne

dans

possedons

un pas

86.)

explain than

et

entraineraient

French

discomfort

sociological,

terms,

in

the

Americas in

Levi-Strauss hopes

to

demystify the problem. His matter-of-fact attitude is far removed from Jean-Philippe Mathy's more sociological

approach to the phenomenon.

For him, the dilemma is indisolubly linked to the fall of the regime:

"The advent

of

a market society

was

the

ancien

undoing of

the

traditional intelligentsia" (Mathy 7). Since America is the market society par

excellence,

by extension it became the devil incarnate, Old Europe's

new Carthage, its demonized "Other". In this new vacuum, the French felt

threatened

universal

"in

their

role

republic of letters...,"

as

the

self-proclaimed

a position to which the

Obviously, Levi-Strauss is speaking exclusively here construction; the ruins of pre-Colombian America are amongst planet. 1

1

leaders Gauls

of

a

first

of post-European the oldest on the

76 appointed themselves, Mathy believes, in 1558

(Mathy 35).

Even now,

this is a role which has not been entirely abandoned. In La defaite pensee—"new

philosopher" Alain Finkielkraut's 1987

behalf of this long-vanished of

the

piece

inheritors

might

ignorant

be

cri de coeur

"universal" culture—the ideological

Herder and

de

cultural relativists

Maistre,

and

their

and undemocratic

regimes, but "born again" barbarism's principal economic

with

an American accent.

relativism,

Finkielkraut

A propos

complains,

"Le

of

on

villains political

Third

World

beneficiaries—

working almost entirely offstage, it must be admitted—would speak

de la

appear to

Levi-Strauss's cultural

roi

est

nu:

nous

autres,

Europeens de la seconde moitie du X X e siecle, nous ne somme pas la civilisation

mais

fugitive

perissable"

et

une

culture

(Finkielkraut 87).

preceding

statement

at

following:

"Dans le proces

desormais

au

reservaient

tout naturellement

banc

particuliere,

des

face

value

variete

et

de

Any temptation immediately

non

Leon Blum

plus

l'humain

to

dispelled

intente a la barbarie, les

accuses,

procureur" (Finkielkraut 81).

is

une

take

the

by

the

Lumieres siegent

a la

place

que

leur

ou Clement Atlee: celle du

To invert Yeats's

famous

words, the best

lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate

intensity.

Finkielkraut's fear of New World/Third World barbarism will, by now, sound

remarkably

familiar

to

readers

of

this

chapter:

culturelle a deux betes noires: l'individualisme et le (Finkielkraut

105).

"L'identite

cosmopolitanisme"

The indignant philosopher never condemns America

by name; by the same token, he never invites it to share the dock with the

"individualistic, cosmopolitan"

confederacy supremacy,

over

which

it would

France

nations

still

of

Europe, the

apparently

presides.

seem, resides in that nation's

intellectual This moral

unique refusal

to

77 indulge in cultural chauvinism of any kind: "Au siecle des

nationalismes,

la France—ce fut son merite et son originalite—refusa 1'enracinement

de

1'esprit" (Finkielkraut 138). The thought that French "universalism" is in fact

a particularly strident

and arrogant form of

does not seem to have occurred to him.

cultural nationalism

Only in America, and possibly,

at times, in England, does one find equivalent intellectual hubris. A much

number of French writers, of course,

quieter,

more

matter-of-fact

"absorbed" America in a

manner.

Marguerite

Yourcenar

spent much of her life in the state of Maine, but the experience adoptive homeland was not reflected in her writing.

While

of her

one

finds

much material about Japan and ancient Greece in the Pleiade edition of her

complete

works,

restricted to two and the

Yourcenar's U.S.

appreciations

announcement

references

are

more

or

less

of Anne Lindbergh's undervalued talent

that "un petit groupe

d'amateurs

eclaires"

had

mounted the first-ever Poussin exhibition in New York (Yourcenar 468). Maine

was

expatriates: things

to

her

a place

what

the

Greek islands

are

to

so

many

literary

to digest the events of the past and write

that have little to do with the immediate present.

about

Of important

French writers, only Andre Breton—who occupied war-time New York as if it were a quarter of Paris filled with an unusually large number of anglophone

tourists—and

Paul

Claudel—the

conservative

Catholic

playwright who was France's ambassador to Washington in the 1920s— were less preoccupied with the meaning of the New World than she. 12 While it is true that she was somewhat more garrulous on the subject of America in her letters to her friends, even there Yourcenar's attitudes towards the New World were more than a little ambivalent, both before and after she accepted U.S. citizenship in 1947. Her first description of the U.S. in her published correspondence is typically Eurocentric: "J'aurais aime vous parler de l'Amerique...il faut pourtant vous dire que I'ete indien est admirable, et que le paysage, en automne, arbore la livree de Peau-Rouge, l'epiderme cuivre d'Atala" 1

2

78 Yourcenar's

overwhelming

interest

in

times

past

and

places

distant most likely accounts for the veil of silence she drew across her U.S.

sojourn. She was, in any case, something of a recluse.

charge

could be

levelled

against

Saint-John Perse,

however.

No such A

high

ranking French diplomat and Free French hero who was stripped of his citizenship by the Vichy government in 1940, Marie-Rene Alexis SaintLeger Leger (the with

poet/ambassador's

Winston Churchill

real name)

and Franklin

Delano

corresponded regularly Roosevelt,

worked

for

Archibald MacLeish at the U.S. Library of Congress, was best friends

(Lettres a ses amis et quelques autres 56). Elsewhere, while describing the topography of the Maine Island where she spent the better part of her life, Yourcenar insisted that this New World earth "ressemble un peu, je crois, aux Ardennes, si seulement les Ardennes et leurs forets etaient au bord de la mer" (Lettres a ses amis et quelques autres 193). O f the American Northeast in general, the author explained that "Cette region s'appelle la Nouvelle-Angleterre, mais ressemble plutot aux pays scandinaves" (Lettres a ses amis et quelques autres 432).Though generally considered to belong to the political right, Yourcenar, like so many other French intellectuals of all political persuasions, expressed great sympathy for the plight of U . S . Blacks—she translated James Baldwin's early writings, as well as many "Negro" spirituals—and insisted that she was singularly free from anti-Communist prejudice. In 1960, without much enthusiasm, she voted for John F . Kennedy, primarily because of "la basse propagande anticatholique" (Lettres a ses amis et quelques autres 189) employed by the Republican camp. References to American writers are still painfully few and continentallyoriented. What follows is the closest thing there is to a specific recommendation: "Je vous ai parle d'un court roman americain qui me parait interessant a traduire a cause de ses vertus d'actualite: A N T H E M d'Ayn Rand" (Lettres a ses amis et quelques autres 72). Like Yourcenar herself, A y n Rand was a European intellectual adrift in America. More than 700 pages will pass before she praises another U . S . writer, Edith Wharton, and then only obliquely. On the other hand, this very Gallic Yankee was seemingly struck by certain random elements in popular U.S. culture. She would repeatedly praise Bob Dylan's song "Blowin' in the Wind," for instance, describing it as ' T u n des plus beaux poemes de notre temps" (Lettres a ses amis et quelques autres 622). Carlos Casteneda's "Don Juan" books, Adele Davis's nutritional tomes, and Ralph Nader's anti-consumerism broadsides were likewise singled out for occasional praise. At times, Yourcenar's critiques of the New World sound "typically French": "les grandes nations technocratiques ne sont pas de grandes nations intellectuelles" (Lettres a ses amis et quelques autres 505). More commonly, though, they reflect her own state of "stoic" isolation: "...je me fais, je 1'avoue, une idee...peu favorable de la litterature americaine, en particulier, et de la litterature contemporaine en general...." (Lettres a ses amis et quelques autres 505).

79 with the attorney-general of the United States,

lived in various parts of

the country between 1940 and 1950, was inspired to write much of his best poetry during this long period of exile, and was inducted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters at the very end of his protracted and

highly

rhyhmic,

productive

repetitive

amorphous

prose

deities

and

precluded the presence Neiges,

and Vents.

stay.

The

poetry even

deliberate loaded

vaguer

obscurity

with

oblique

natural

of

his

work--

invocations

to

forces—more-or-less

of specific place names and characters in

There is nothing unusual in that. What is

Exil,

textually

far more surprising is the lack of concrete detail that one finds in his correspondence,

speeches and short articles. In communication with an

American critic, he wrote, "...J'aime et j'admire la litterature americaine dans

son

evolution

provide a single (Oeuvres

proprement

example

completes 555.)

americaine...."—and

then

neglects

of a work or writer of whom he

to

approves

In homage to T.S. Eliot—the Anglo-American

poet who had assured Leger's warm U.S. reception with the aid of an exquisitely

rendered translation of

his

best-known

work, Anabase —

Saint-John Perse translated the first few lines of The Hollow

Men into

French, but readers will look in vain for a concrete appreciation of this or any other Eliot poem. To be fair, in one letter the author/diplomat did come close

to praising a 1944

Allen Tate collection of verse for

specific reasons, but his letter to e.e.

cummings is mainly polite hot air.

Its

opening

(Oeuvres

phrase is typical: "De vous, completes

1041). Leger was

poete ne et tres princier...." always

willing to encrust

his

prose with bombastic "antiquity". His "Hommage a Jacqueline Kennedy" began as follows: "Quand les Furies du drame antique font irruption sur la

scene moderne,

cherchant encore

la mesure

de l'etre

humain a la

80 limite de l'humain, il semble qu'elles veuillent epargner, pour la mieux supplicier, une victime d'elite entres toutes choisie, et comme prise en temoignage,

pour repondre

l'epreuve"

(Oeuvres

diplomat

liked

de

la

force

completes

everything

535

about

humaine - 536).

the

du plus

Seemingly,

United

States

atroce this

de

poet-

except

its

unfortunate adhesion to the real world. Belgian-born

novelist

Georges

Simenon lived in the

U.S. for a

decade, and did indeed situate a number of his books in his new place of residence.

Inspector

were somewhat

Maigret's first impressions

depressing,

as

befits

of the "Big Apple"

a noirish text: "II pleuvait. On

roulait dans un quartier sale ou les maisons etaient laides a en donner la nausee. Etait-ce cela, New York" (Tout

Simenon 545).

Maigret is

annoyed by America's irritating lack of apartment house concierges telephones with double ear-pieces. capacity

of

American

bars

Conversely, he is

and the

miracle of

intriguingly, at this time (circa 1947)

delighted

room

service.

by

and the

Rather

the inspector's U.S. hosts believe

that his French nationality means the visiting flic must hate whiskey, an assumption which leads one to suspect that this particular beverage had not

yet

caught

observant.

He enters New

themselves, Dijon...."

on in Paris. As always,

"...avec

(Tout

[des]

Simenon

York

neighbourhoods

maisons 597).

alter ego

that

are

is

very

cities

unto

pas plus haut qu'a Bordeaux ou a Like

Celine, Maigret's creator would

discover "...la Cinquieme Avenue et ses desquels il s'arreta" (Tout

Simenon's

magasins

Simenon 570.)

Like

de luxe aux vitrines Simone

de Beauvoir,

Francois Combe, the displaced French actor hero of another novel, Trois

chambres

a Manhattan,

Simenon

would be struck by "...les lumieres

de Broadway, avec de la foule noire qui coulait sur les trottoirs" (Tout

81 Simenon

203).

American

Simenon was as susceptible to the exotic charm of the

Southwest

as

anyone:

"Tucson

est

la

plus

charmante

caricature de 1'image que tous les Europeens se font de la 'conquete de l'Ouest': le desert, les villages fantome, l'influence mexique si proche, le spectre des missions espagnoles et celui de Geronimo... Tout y est. Dans la vieille ville reconstitute on ne serait pas etonne d'assister d'une diligence" (Assouline 549 - 550).

a l'attaque

Although a man of the right

who had fled France to escape the taint of being considered one of the Nazis'

intellectual

collaborators, even

Simenon was

eventually

driven

from the shores of his once adored America by the rise of McCarthyism. As

his principal biographer put it, "Ce torrent de boue,

de haine

et

d'injustice acheve de dissiper ses dernieres illusions sur une democratie qu'il avait quelque peu idealisee" (Assouline 579). In the early simpler:

it

distractedly

was

1940s, of course, quite

approve of

possible the

for

the moral question seemed much anti-Nazi

United States without

French

refugees

in any

way

to

being

interested in the country itself. This state of mind certainly applied to Andre Breton's Surrealist circle, which tended to treat New York like a Gallic outpost on Mars. It was also true of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the aviator/novelist who was, at that time, one of the most admired authors in the world. Virtually all of Saint-Exupery's polemical writings during the years 1941 - 1944 were devoted to the evils of Nazism, the need for occupied Frenchmen to overcome their political differences,

the

moral

necessity of fighting for Free France without psychologically succumbing to General de Gaulle's self-aggrandizing caudillismo,

and—a very distant

fourth priority—America's moral responsibility to rescue the world from an evil political system that was inherently inimical to its own. While

82 living

in

disagreeable

safety

his

regardless

of their political loyalties,

1940,

opposed

to

with

America,

expressed

as

solidarity

in

those

particular bete noire was whinged

from

those

of

the

his

author

fellow

countrymen

had actually fought

who—biens

pensants

repeatedly who,

for France in

all, of

whom

his

the dictatorial "pope" of Surrealism—merely

comfortable

armchairs.

Even

while

travelling

on

a

troopship to North Africa with the Allied invasion fleet, Saint-Exupery tended

to see

America as a means,

not an end: "Les cinquante

soldats de mon convoi partaient en guerre pour sauver, non le des

Etats-Unis, mais

1'Homme

lui-meme,

le

respect de

mille citoyen

l'Homme,

la

liberte de l'Homme, la grandeur de l'Homme" (Saint-Exupery 398). These "universal" virtues were not, of course, universal at all; they were, rather, the humanistic patrimony of Within relations, situate.

the

overall

Jacques An

framework

Maritain is one

orthodox

Catholic

of

1789. Franco-American intellectual

of the more difficult individuals to philsopher,

Maritain

backward-looking reactionary like Paul Claudel, modernist Simone

like

Weill,

Georges

Bernanos,

nor a left-leaning

a

was

neither

a

a machine-hating

anti-

Christian/Marxist hybrid

like

believer

like

Francois

Mauriac.

A

regular visitor to the United States, in the mid-1950s Maritain wrote a book on his impressions of the country in his hosts' language, English. Prior to this, however, between interviews

his

two

he had often participated in cultural exchanges

favourite

countries,

using

as his preferred forum. During the

radio

broadcasts

and

Second World War, he

was a propagandist for the Free French cause, a propagandist who never tired of reminding his fellow Frenchmen of the ties of amity that bound them to America: "Dans ce message je vous dire que le peuple de France

83 tient

toujours

americain...."

une

place

(Oeuvres

privilegiee

completes.

dans

coeur

du

387).

O f all French

perhaps the one

most

loath to over-

of America, he was

generalize.

In a pre-war interview,

he explained,

"Je ne

suis pas

l'ecole de M . Claude Farriere, auquel les Etudes reprochaient d'avoir juge seulement Reflexions readers

dans sur

choses le

pays"

flatteuse

completes.

recemment

avoir passe quelques

completes.

Vol.

de

VII

jours

1083). In

Maritain began the book by assuring his

study

"...on ecrire

Internationale,

ne

trouvera...aucune

allusion

sur ce sujet, et plus

j'aurais

meme pour

V o l . X 768).

apres

(Oeuvres

je devais jamais

la politique

toujours

de Chine,

l'Amerique,

that in this

politique...si sur

des

peuple

VIII

interpreters

Vol.

le

que j'aime

la

particulierement

bien des choses

les pays

a

a dire,

le plus"

et

pas

(Quevres

As you have no doubt already guessed, those

two countries were America and France. Most of what Maritain has to say about the U.S. is extremely flattering to the national amour

propre;

Southern

though

it's

not

American entirely

racism being

somewhat

ignored. In general,

Maritain

materialism and the country's preference His

few

sound

American

for the future over the

good

statement is

"Au premier coup d'oeil

gently

chiding

past.

blistering jeremiads; basically, he accuses Americans of being too

thought:

like

of

than

true. The following

more

approves

even

Jansenism

to be

criticisms

soft-pedaled,

fairly typical of

il semblerait meme

this

line

of

que l'Amerique

croit a la maniere de Jean-Jacques Rousseau en la bonte de la Nature, en la bonte naturelle de 1'Homme" (Oeuvres completes. Vol. X 867). Clearly, such a put-down carries about as much sting as one of Sophie Portnoy's autocritiques. While generally avoiding trans-cultural specifics, professed

to believe

in "...une

mysterieuse

affinite,

une

Maritain

singuliere

et

84 profonde

sympathie,

qui

rendent

leur

destines

historiques

convergentes" (Oeuvres completes. Vol. X 768). In this respect, less anomalous. centre Party

at least, Maritain's socio-cultural allegiances seem

Politically, he is an Atlanticist, one of those right-of-

French intellectuals and

the

American

existentialists

side

occasionally

who

of

even

the

in

Cold

socialist,

opposed their

both

French Communist

undisguised

War. Both

the

the

preference

Gaullist

and

were

a not

Atlanticists

for

the

non-Gaullist, insignificant

factor in the intellectual life of post-war France. The most prominent member of this faction Raymond Aron. common

to

champion negative

In U.S. journals of the

see

of

Aron

portrayed

democracy

(pro-Communist)

Manichean

duality

whose

as

theoretically

the

of

unquestionably

1970s and '80s, "positive"

presence

policies

was

it was

(pro-American)

effectively

blocked

the

While

this

Jean-Paul

Sartre.

the

French left

imbued

hard

quite

with

a

political power it never in fact enjoyed, on the mythological level it did fill a certain void. Sartre could be dismissed as all theory and no sense; Aron, on the other hand, was as unimaginatively pragmatic as Benjamin Franklin himself.

No State Department official could read the

following

passage and not preen: "La Revolution americaine fonda la Republique et les guerres

libertes, et

donnerent decadente

la Revolution francaise dechaina un quart de siecle de

laissa des

en

lecons

354.)

heritage aux

une

nation

Bolcheviks"

The rationale

for

dechiree.

(Plaidoyer

Plaidoyer

Les pour

can

Jacobins l'Europe

found

in

the

introduction to Aron's study of post-war U.S. foreign policy: "Je deteste la tyrannie stalinienne impose a cent millions d'Europeens au lendemain de la guerre menee au nom de la liberation des peuples"

(Republique

85 Imperiale

13).

When one reads both statements together,

the

gist of

Aron's pro-Americanism becomes clear. The author wants to live in a prosperous, non-Communist Europe; in order to do so, the United States must appear strong and its moral authority more valid than that of its opponent.

In

the

post-war

world, no

Frenchmen, with

the

possible

exception of hardcore Gaullists, seriously believed that France was still a great

power

that

could

independently

determine

its

own

political

destiny. To survive, one had to choose between champions. Sartre chose Russia, Aron the United States. In both cases these alliances were made primarily

out

of

interest

in

the

future

of

Europe and

the

cultural

survival of France. Within this mindset, the Soviet Union was no more real than the U.S.A.; both were powerful abstractions that provided the background for the more serious business of foreground life. Each

one

was neither entirely real nor entirely fictitious. One of the last traditional French travellers to the New World was Michel Butor. Like Saint-John Perse, Butor wrote about the U.S. mainly in verse,

although his verse was

amorphous. that

Mobile,

describes

publications

as concrete

as the older poet's

was

for instance, is a sprawling 500-page prose poem

a day

printed

in the in

life

small

of

rural

50

states.

towns

lie

Catalogues

of

ethnic

cheek-by-jowl

beside

historical vignettes of doomed Indian messiahs and runaway slaves. As in Leger's work, repetition is important, but in this case it is used to represent uneasily

the

homogenization

co-exists

with

the

of

America,

nation's

a

homogenization

heterogeneity.

memory of Jackson Pollock, abstract impressionism's painter, Mobile kaleidoscopic

Dedicated best-known

that

to

the

action

can be read as a kind of splintered prism, a drunken,

image of a nation in perpetual motion. In structure, the

86 work bears some resemblance to Ezra Pound's Cantos,

even though its

high-speed,

are

removed

sometimes

from

deliberately

Pound's

superficial

reference-rich

verse.

lines

light-years

Announcements

of

the

author's own presence in America are few and often funny, as when, in a

catalogue

section

devoted

to

local

birds,

he

refers

to

"Butors

americains...." (Mobile 373). Only rarely does the verse turn lyrical: merjles

flammes

des grands

des

hotels,/les

raffineries signaux

dans les derricks,/oublie commonly,

it

historical

passages are

des avions

ta blancheur

involves

unsurprisingly,

derriere

details

relating replete

with

dans

damiers

le cieljle

lumineux

bruit

du vent

dans la nuit" (Mobile 468).

chasing to

nous,/les

details

Native de

chasing

and

"La

More

details.

The

African-Americans,

Tocqueville's

doomed,

fatalistic

romanticism. In the d'eau

par

same "traditional" vein,

seconde

Butor opened

6 810

Niagara Falls.

litres

with quotes from Chateaubriand to explain the eight

tones of voice which would be employed in this "etude of

000

Various pairs of newlyweds say

stereophonique"

their piece

as

the

honeymoon town passes through the four seasons of the year. "Quentin," a visiting professor of French at the University of Buffalo and almost certainly the author's alter ego,

laments

his sexual

solitude

in such a

place: "Et moi qui suis loin de ma femme vivante, separe d'elle par toute l'epaisseur

de

l'Atlantique" (6 810 000 litres d'eau par seconde

273).

Various pairs of Black gardeners function as a kind of Greek chorus throughout the work. Butor gives Chateaubriand the book's reproducing

the

title

and

sub-title

of

the

early

last word,

nineteenth-

century

author's best-known work: "Atala, ou les amours de deux sauvages dans le desert" (6 810 000 litres d'eau par seconde 281).

87 l'epaisseur

de

l'Atlantique" (6 810 000 litres d'eau par seconde

273).

Various pairs of Black gardeners function as a kind of Greek chorus throughout the work. Butor gives Chateaubriand the book's reproducing

the

title

and

sub-title

of

the

early

last word,

nineteenth-

century

author's best-known work: "Atala, ou les amours de deux sauvages dans le desert" (6 810 000 litres d'eau par seconde 281). Butor is a transitional figure in the history of French travellers in America. While Philippe Djian, Philippe Labro, Philippe Sollers, Kristeva, writers either

Pascal

Quignard,

will continue in

to regale

America

somewhat

Jean Baudrillard,

or

and many

French readers

among

Americans,

with

their

other

their

Julia

French

adventures,

grounding

will

be

different. For the "children of Marx and Coca Cola," France

and America will no longer be the mutually exclusive entities they once seemed

to

be.

McDonalds business

With

Euro

fast-food

virtually

by

Disney

outlets the

encroaching

putting

minute,

on

the

centuries-old

and

airwaves

Eiffel

bistrots

and

movie

Tower, out

of

screens

completely dominated by U.S. (sub) cultural product, France is no longer the

reassuring

Beauvoir

so

fortress

gratefully

to

which

retreated.

Georges By

the

Duhamel same

and

token,

Simone

America,

de now

fighting for economic supremacy against Japan, Southeast Asia's "young tigers," and an economically bullish European Economic Community, is no longer the island of isolation it once was. In Chapter Four we will continue this discussion within a radically changed historical context, a time when the largest corporations are in many ways more powerful than long-established painfully

obvious

powerful

companies

that

William

"in cahoots"

Gibson's

nation states. It is now

dystopian

near-future

of

with organized crime while ordinary

88 citizens

struggle to survive in continental power blocs with no obvious

political authority no longer belongs to the realm of science fiction. Like cyberspace

and cybercrime, these

are

quotidian realities

which

will

have an incalculable impact on the first half of the twenty-first century. For foreign

our descendants,

places

in

the

search

of

notion

exotic

of

national

experience

travellers

might

well

visiting seem

as

impossibly quaint as a visit to the beach without recourse to powerful sunblocks.

To find

anything

unique

might

appear

as

improbable

as

discovering Dr. Livingstone in the jungle. By, say, the year 2050, no twist of the Amazon river might be more than fifty miles away from the nearest

home

austere

entertainment

temples,

centre,

churches,

while

pagodAS,

the doors of even

and

minarets

might

the

most

well

be

presumably,

the

overshadowed by the ubiquitous golden arch. At

some point within the

foreseeable

hundred years,

future which I have described will be radically changed by

any number of unforeseen social

next

revolutions.

natural catastrophes,

How this

metamorphosis

economic

will

upsets,

and

occur, however,

and

whether it will be for the better or the worse, is still, at the time of this writing, anyone's Thus

guess.

far, we

have

restricted our investigation

primarily

to

the

upper end of Franco-American travel literature; in Chapter Two, we will both broaden and lower our sights, fiction

in France,

America,

zeroing in on the history of crime

and—for the first time—Italy.

Within

the

context of this study, France and the U.S. should be thought of as past and present

phases of

global cultural

power.

Italy,

for

a variety

of

reasons, provides an interesting contrast to these poles. As "creative" as America and France, Italy has failed to exercise cultural hegemony over

89 the

world since

the

Fall

of

the

Roman Empire,

even though

it

has

probably contributed more to the arts than any other nation. Open to, according to some critics, an alarming degree of outside influence, it is also intensely Because Italy

its

insular, cosmopolitan

and provincial at the

"greatness" and "weakness" are so hopelessly

makes

the ideal

sounding board for two

same

time.

intertwined,

more resilient

powers

who, nonetheless, fear that they, too, might "break". The relationship ship of social history to the creation of distinct crime

genres

stories

of

will

an

considered

economically

founded on the are sure

also be

strength

conservative,

some

detail.

socially

of a loosely-commanded,

to differ from those of

established

in

an equally

The detective

egalitarian

society

arms-bearing militia

revolutionary, but more

polity founded on the bones of an ancient monarchy, while

the police fictions of both are sure to seem alien to the lives of a people whose immersion in local culture is immense, but whose experience of a viable, universally-recognized political authority is extremely If

the

comparisons

between

these

contrasting

limited.

cultures

are

not

always simple, obvious or linear, this is all to the good. Cultural crosspollination has become the defining mode of late twentieth century life, after all, and, like every "biological" process, it is somewhat messy. For this

reason,

expanding with

its

the

while

shapes of

parameters

analysis

province's empires

the

in

of

chapters of

this

Quebecois

unhappy role as

wilt

and four (the

sociocultural

dialogue

self-perceptions

an outpost

a troubled present

macro-nationalisms

two

where

in

latter

section

still

further,

regard

to

of both Old and New micro-nationalisms

and wane) must

be

wax

"romantic",

the

World wildly while

chapters one and three can afford to be "classical". Only in this way can

90 we hope to achieve a three-dimensional view of what goes, is going, has already gone.

91

Chapter Two: Mid-Atlantic Melodrama: or. A Meeting of the Mafias

Determining dates of cinematic origin is almost as difficult as pinpointing precise moments of evolutionary change in the history of the world. As Tag Gallagher wrote of the cowboy movie in his truculent essay, "Shoot-Out at the Genre Corral: Problems in the 'Evolution' of the Western", the linear progression of form championed by Thomas Schatz and other genre critics is largely illusory. Between 1909 and 1915, Gallagher sneered, "there were probably more westerns released each

month than during the entire decade of the 1930s" (Grant 205).

Most of these movies are now lost, and film historians are generally unfamiliar with the few that remain. Thus, they are ignorant of the period fact that, by the time of the First World War, "cliches [were] already an issue" (Grant 206). As it was with the western, so it is with the detective story. While D.W. Griffith's The Musketeers

of Pig Alley (1912) is sometimes

described as the world's first true gangster movie, it almost certainly benefitted from the innovations previously pioneered by numerous nowforgotten genre pieces. Motion picture "firsts" generally refer to the successful launch dates of subsequently imitated conventions and ideas, concepts which would typically have been worked out long before their formal induction by the film industry as a whole. While one can, with some assurance, enumerate the inventors of technological cinema, it is far more dificult to identify the medium's ideological and aesthetic milestones. What

92 this means, essentially, is that cinematic history, like all history, is written not just by but for the "victors" (a word which, in

early

filmmaking idiom, is often synonymous with "survivors"). This is something readers should keep in mind while processing these reflections on the relationship between the American crime story and its French and Italian equivalents. Attempts to nail down precise turning points in the history of film noir and poetic realism, of the polar and the mid-Atlantic gangster movie, are foredoomed to failure by the incomplete archives and commercially-driven memory of the motion picture industry itself. Boxoffice successes are almost always remembered; boxoffice failures are often forgotten. This disclaimer means that the widescreen policier not begin with The Musketeers

probably did

of Pig Alley, or, more obscurely, with

The Italian, a 1915 vintage potboiler which Michel Ciment described as "une premiere version miniature du Parrain II de Coppola...." (Ciment 21). Indeed, that honour might not even belong to a French short released in 1901. According to Jean-Pierre Jeancolas, On considere generalement L'Histoire du crime, attribue a Ferdinand Zecca, comme le premier 'polar' de I'histoire du cinema francais, 'drame en six vues" du la catalogue Pathe de 1901, long de 115 metres, qui evoque successivement I'assassinat d'un banquier, I'arrestation du meutrier dans un cafe (mauvais lieu), la confrontation du meurtrier et de sa victime a la morgue, le meurtrier dans sa cellule (cette scene est fameuse aussi par les incrustations dans le haut de I'ecran qui illustrent les reves, ou les souvenirs, du prisonnier), I'arrivee du bourreau et la toilette du condamne, enfin I'execution sur la bascule a Chariot—ce dernier tableau aurait choque par son realisme, au point que les exploitants I'auraient souvent supprime pour eviter des ennuis avec avec les polices municipales en un temps ou il n'existait pas encore de censure ministerielle (Jeancolas 90).

93

Five years later, Georges Melies, the father of fantasy filmmaking, lensed Les

Incendiaires,

an atypically realistic look at an arsonist

whose mania leads him to the scaffold. Two years after that, Victorin Jasset shot Nick Carter, a 9-part serial that was inspired by American detective stories then being published in French translation—a tradition which would assume major importance after the Second World War. One of Carter's principal foes was Zigomar, a criminal mastermind who preceded Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse by almost two decades. Advanced intellectual circles were particularly keen on Fantomas

(1913), "The

Surrealists [being] struck by Feuillade's vision of a 'defamiliarized reality'" (Abel 75). For early twentieth-century poet Michel Bouzat, the masked master criminal was "Mon frere en Sade/mon assassin/superbe et

malfaisant/mon

bouquet

tragique/ma

grande

ombre/ma

tache

pourpre/indelible" (Fantomas 1201). That Fantomas, Zigomar and their affiliated friends and enemies were the natural by-products of France's commercially-driven entertainment

industry, owing nothing at all to

the dictates of "high" art, made them seem all the more appealing to members of an artistic avant-garde with deep cultural reservations about both the classic and romantic canons. They rejoiced in the fact that Feuillade's name "commence comme feuilleton" (Dufreigne 15). Such

Gallic

precocity

is anything

but

surprising. Until

the

outbreak of the Great War, French studios controlled more than 60% of the world motion picture market. In their heyday, studio heads Louis Gaumont and Charles Pathe were far more powerful than the American moguls who would succeed them as captains of (celluloid) industry in

94 the 1920s and '30s. For twenty years Paris established leads which Hollywood and New York could only hope to follow. At the turn of the century, the City of Light was, like Berlin and Vienna, one of the principal germinators of new cultural ideas. As T.J. Clark emphasized in The Painting of Modern Life, Paris was the place where the creation of les grands magasins

and the classes needed to

service these innovations opened the floodgates to a rash of new diversions.

"It

began,"

he

suggested,

"with

the

feuilleton,

the

chromolithograph, and the democratization of sport, and soon proceeded to

a tropical

tobacconists,

diversity football,

of

forms:

museums,

drugstores,

news

movies, cheap

agents

romantic

and

fiction,

lantern-slide lectures on popular science, records, bicycles, the funny pages,

condensed

Frangaise"

books,

sweepstakes, swimming

pools,

Action

(Clark 235).

While searching for material to adapt to the screen, early French filmmakers proved particularly susceptible to the charms of the serialized newspaper novel. Les Mysteres de New York (1915) was quite shamelessly inspired by Eugene Sue's feuilleton, Les Mysteres

de

Paris (1842). In Le Cinema frangais, film historian Georges Sadoul said of Louis Feuillade, the unchallenged king of the cinematic chapter play, that his thrillers

had adopted "avec une verve facile, les methodes

utilisees par Emile Zola dans ses Rougon modestly, contemporary

Macqart..."

(Sadoul 16). More

French film critic Thierry Jousse expressed

his enthusiasm for Feuillade's 1915 serial Les Vampires

(in which the

anagrammatical Irma Vep made her onscreen debut) in the following terms: "La force, encore presente, de cette serie est de nous plonger directement dans I'atmosphere

de la Belle Epoque, d'un temps ou le

95 roman populaire croisait le serial et les journaux pour composer un recit de violence, d'aggressions nocturnes, d'assassins en cagoule noire, de femmes mysterieuses, d'orgies de cabarets" ("Les Vampires" 120). During the early years of the 20th century, onscreen crime in American movies typically occurred in comedies (where kidnappings were popular) or westerns (where shoot-outs and punch-ups were preferred). Although organized crime was already well-established in American cities, it was seldom at the centre of movie plots, being used primarily as a temptation with which to lure poor-but-honest country boys off the straight-and-narrow-path. In 1910, memories of the "wild West" were not only still vibrant, but virtually current. No one could be sure the last Indian war had been fought; train robberies were still occasionally committed, while nothing, technically, stopped Western outlaws

from holding

up banks on horseback. The chronological

proximity of the cowboy's heyday contributed greatly to his cinematic allure. Despite occasional sorties in the direction of the mob—Josef von Sternberg's

1927

silent

feature,

Underworld,

being the

most

distinguished of these—the Hollywood studios would not constitute the gangster movie as a separate genre until the early 1930s, at a time when the novelty of sound recording equipment allowed directors to reproduce the chatter of machinegun fire and the squeal of getaway tires. In the words of Italian film historian Giuseppe De Santis, during the early days of the Great Depression "L'America...era preoccupata...di creare una nuova formula destinata, insieme all'altra che portava alia rabata la vita dei gangsters, a sostiture con successo il glorioso 'Western'..." (De Santis). Michel Ciment, on the other hand, taking a

96 longer (1992) view of U.S. cinema, sees the genres as complementary, rather than successive: "Le cowboy et le gangster sont les deux grands figures legendaires de l'Amerique. Ils incarnent une nation, jeune et puritaine, qui na?t dans la violence et reduit volontiers les problemes a des contrastes simples: blanc et noir, bien et mal" (Le crime a I'ecran 15). Such a view is, of course, entirely compatible with D.H. Lawrence's definition of "the essential American soul [as] hard, isolate, stoic and a killer" (Lawrence 68). It is also, as we saw in the last chapter, entirely in keeping with the standard French view of the United States, a sometimes paranoid, sometimes prescient, sometimes deadly accurate perspective

in which

the

fatally

effete

refinement

of

aristocratic

European culture is at the mercy of the harsh but vital barbarism of the New World. In France, meanwhile, criminal demographics differed

greatly

from the American norm. In the early 1900s, delits flagrants were as urban as they were rural—which is to say, "Sicilian"—in Italy. At the turn of the century, Joseph Bonnot's gang of anarchists pioneered the motorized

bank robbery

in the streets of Paris.

It was his near

contemporary exploits that fascinated the French public, not the fading memories of Jesse James and Billy the Kid. While crime-hinged plots might have played a limited role in early

Italian

melodramas

(particularly

in

the

so-called

"arcade

movies," which flourished in Naples during the late 1890s and early 1900s), the industry as a whole generally preferred to define itself in terms of such epic celebrations of Roman antiquity as Cabiria

(1913)

and Quo Vadis (1912). While these early features might have acted as a catalyst on the cinematic sensibilities of D. W. Griffith, the American

97 man of the theatre who almost singlehandedly defined the parameters of commercial narrative moviemaking, they did not—indeed, they could not—endow Italy with a healthy, multifaceted film industry. As in other areas of popular culture, the nation found itself obliged to import "escapist trash". In his Quaderni

dal carcere, one of the topics imprisoned Marxist

theorist Antonio Gramsci returned to again and again was the absence of an indigenous, home-grown popular literature. "Perche la letteratura italiana non e populare?" he asked rhetorically (Gramsci 2108). The absence of indigenous crime novels was a subject which seemed to particularly vex him, despite his elaborate and frequently

ingenious

attempts to explain the situation in terms of the specifics of Italy's recent

past. "Una certa fortuna

ha avuto

in

Italia la

letteratura

popolare sulla vita dei briganti," he complained, "ma la produzione e di valore bassisimo" (Gramsci 2121). Crime novels, Gramsci continued, were usually written by conservative foreigners. Even Hungarian and Australian novelists, he complained, fared better in his country than did local authors.

By relying so heavily on French popular literature, he

worried, Italians might pick up certain ideas which were alien to their cultural tradition-such as the time-hardened Gallic prejudice against all things English. Of crime novel aesthetics, he wrote, "In questa letteratura

poliziesca ci sono queste due corrente: una mecanica-

d'intrigo-l'altra

artistica...." (Gramsci 2129). On the one hand, he

endowed the policier with impressive antecedents, seeking its origins in the works of Balzac, Hugo and Poe. On the other hand, he was clearly attracted

to

its

lack

of

high

art

"respectability":

"II

romanzo

98 poliziesco e nato ai margini delle letteratura

sulle 'cause celebri'"

(Gramsci 2128). Of course, having access to books and periodicals, within the claustrophobic universe of Mussolini's prison system, but not to films, Gramsci had very little to say about the state of Italian cinema. Nevertheless, many of the notebook charges he makes against Italian popular literature could just as easily have been advanced against Italian popular film. Thinly-veiled envy is often present when Gramsci writes about French popular culture. Why this should be so is more or less selfevident. Of all continental powers, France was unquestionably the most successful when it came to entertaining its citizens with home-made divertissements.

While the Third Republic was certainly not immune to

the seductive blandishments of Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley, it was anything but a cap-in-hand cultural dependent. What's more, France was an exporter of popular culture as well as an /mporter. Jean Gabin could hold his own on the home—and, to a much lesser extent, global—front against Clark Gable, just as Edith Piaf could sing Billy Holliday to a European draw, while France's achievements in the "higher" arts were literally non-pareil (even if, as in Hollywood, many of the nation's most distinguished cultural workers were actually foreign-born). Despite the undeniable artistic accomplishments of Weimar Germany and Soviet Russia, on the multi-laned highway of cultural imperialism, France was the one continental nation with the generic versatility to give at least as good as it got. In a pinch, it could satisfy most, if not all, of its cultural

needs—a form of national self-sufficiency which American

entertainment conglomerates have been attempting to erode with ever

99 greater missionary zeal for the past half century. (This is a subject we shall return to, at greater length, in Chapter Four). The Third Republic was able to maintain this enviable position because of its versatility. Its publishing houses produced pulp as well as belles

lettres, just as its recording studios were equally receptive

to the airs of Edith Piaf and Claude Debussy. Like the Americans, their principal rivals and de facto antagonists, the

French successfully

bridged the gap between "high" art and "low". For every Marcel Proust and Jean Cocteau there was a Georges Simenon or Francis Carco. By mid-century, there would also be Louis-Ferdinand Celine and Boris Vian,

authors who deliberately

popular literature

obscured the

boundaries

between

and "art", even if their works were read almost

exclusively by aficionados of the latter. Why this should be so is a subject we shall return to later. According to Gerald Mast, "The French film in the first decade of sound may have been the most imaginative, the most stimulating of its generation:

a subtle

blend

of

effective,

often

poetic,

dialogue;

evocative visual imagery; perceptive social analysis; complex fictional structures; rich philosophical implication; wit and charm" (Mast 199). This favourable assessment, it seems, was visible to more than just posterity. In Mists of Regret, his book-length study of French poetic realism, Dudley Andrew writes, "A survey of the New

York

Times

reviews for the whole decade [of the 1930s] shows not only the large number of films that played in the city (170 are reviewed) but also how highly they were valued: a great

majority

are praised, often

for

outscoring Hollywood in artistry, taste, and maturity of content and execution"

(Andrew

13).

These

reviews

"repeatedly

[gave]

the

100 impression that something about French mores, tradition, education, or language [destined] its better films to be serious, candid, atmospheric, and strangely dark" (Andrews 13). This strange darkness, born at the anxious intersection where the brave new hopes of Leon Blum's National Front government encountered fatalistic premonitions

of the coming war with Nazi Germany, was

what poetic realism was all about. Making its precocious debut in the early 1930s in the form of Jean Gremillon's early masterpiece, Petite

Lise,

the movement coalesced out of a number of

La

unlikely

antecedents. Perhaps the most Gallic of these is the belief, shared by Alain Resnais and many others, that "Emile Zola is the father of French cinema...." (Andrew 27). "Curiously," Dudley Andrew notes, "Zola's impact in this era stems not from his status as novelist (storyteller in prose)

but

from the

presence

in

his

novels

of

two

extremes:

'photographic naturalism' on the one side, and the visionary, heavily metaphoric imagery that, on the other side, he uses to paint his melodramas" (Andrew 162). While Andrew's emphasis on the great naturalist's importance to French cinema cannot

be disputed, this

influence

was far

complicated than the previous statements suggest. In The Through

more French

Their Films, Robin Buss points out that the ubiquity of Zola

adapatations

resulted

in a chronological

anomaly

known

as

contemporain

vague," a Never Never Land Paris where Fords could

"le

co-exist with hansom cabs, and gas jets with electric lights (Buss 31). For a similar—albeit aesthetically inferior—parallel to this trend, one must look to the "B" westerns of the 1930s and '40s, low budget genre pictures where Roy Rogers and Gene Autry would alternate between

101 horses and station wagons when it came time to pursue decidely anachronistic villains. Besides conflating historical epochs when cinematically adapting the great naturalist's novels, French filmmakers shared an equally uncertain attitude in regard to Zola's political positions. If the author of "J'accuse" was the fearless champion of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the dauntless opponent of obscurantist oppression who might well have been murdered for his public stance, his "entomological" literary eye did not win him many friends on the left. Marxist critics, such as Georg Lukacs, repeatedly compared the author of Germinal

unfavourably to

Honore de Balzac, the great exposer of early capitalism. No matter how far he stuck out his neck on behalf of the downtrodden, the fact that he had written "...il y a une determination

absolue pour

tous

les

phenomenes humains" could be neither forgotten nor forgiven (Zola 23). In La Roman

experimental,

Zola stated his position as follows: "Sans

me risquer a formuler des lois, j'estime que la question d'heredite a une

grande

influence

dans

les

manifestations

intellectuelles

et

passionelles de I'homme" (Zola 24). What he wanted to do was "substitue a I'etude de I'homme abstrait, de I'homme metaphysique, I'etude de I'homme naturel, soumis aux lois physico-chimiques et determine par les influences du milieu...." (Zola 24). By reducing mankind to little more than a natural outgrowth of interlocking social and biological forces, Zola offered little hope to those who saw in humanity

a less deterministic

circumstances,

was

quite

blank slate which, under the

capable

of

"re-writing"

itself

for

right the

common good. On a certain level, social pessimism must always be seen as a form of conservatism.

1 02 In any event, it is hard to imagine a more perfect way to simultaneously alienate both wings of the French intelligentsia. By denying

the

metaphysical

individuality

of

men and women, Zola

distanced himself from the Catholic right. At the same time, his belief in social laws more rigid and absolute than those promulgated by Charles Darwin and Emile Durkheim made a mockery of collective struggle.

Biology, it seemed, would always get the better

proletarian

will-to-power.

of the

Even the delayed announcement that "Je

suis un republicain de la veille" could not undo the damage he had already done to his progressive image (Zola 299). Fortunately, psychologie

as Jean Mitry

reminds

us

in

Esthetique

et

du cinema, the seventh art "est forme structurante autant

que forme structuree" (Mitry 27). Taking Mitry at his word, for almost eighty years French filmmakers have re-cast Emile Zola in their own, usually less forbidding,

image. We have already seen how Louis

Feuillade managed to superimpose the aesthetics of the Macquart

novels on a subject as unlikely as Fantomas.

Rougon

On the other

hand, in his version of la Bete humaine (1938), Jean Renoir cut out the book's middle class characters entirely, focusing exclusively on its diegetic

proletarians.

Nevertheless, having said all this, one is still hard pressed to explain away the fatalism endemic to films pitched in the key of poetic realism without

recourse to Zola. With very few exceptions, poetic

realist cinema was made by left-wingers: anarchists, socialists and members of the French Communist Party. How could they accept a metaphysics which seemed to assume the permanent nature of the current

hierarchical order? Even after

consciously rejecting

Zola's

103 social determinism, poetic realist cineastes

seem to have absorbed it

subliminally. How else can one explain the snug sanctuary of friendship, marriage, and community aboard the Seine river barge in Jean Vigo's L'Atalante

(1933), or the fleeting independence of the worker-owned

publishing house in Jean Renoir's Le Crime de M. Lange

(1936)?

Cinematic attempts to establish a new and more equitable social order were

tentative,

progressive

and usually doomed to failure.

filmmakers

rejected

with

their

The Zola which

heads

held

almost

unlimited sway over their hearts. With the coming of sound, screenplays assumed new importance in the making of movies. Before the invention of the boom mike and the camera blimp, snappy dialogue was expected to galvanize all scenes where the viewers could actually see the actors' mouths move. No longer could scenarios be roughed out on the back of place settings during lunch hour. Synchronous sound required professional writers, not amateurs. Consequently, Hollywood's major studios recruited

literary

talent from the major New York publishing houses, as well as from the Broadway stage. William Faulkner, Lillian Hellman, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and John Steinbeck were all employed from time to time as contract

screenwriters. As a rule, these literary

imports

looked down upon this sort of work, travelling to Hollywood only when impending bankruptcy made $500 weekly paycheques seem irresistable. It was the time of the Great Depression, and movies were where the money was. This disdain was fully returned by the studios. Only rarely were literary writers permitted to produce screenplays of their own choosing. More commonly, they would be used to embellish the dialogue of dull contract

writers,

to add sparkle to lacklustre scenes. To

104 producers, screenwriters were universally known as "schmucks with Underwoods." For French writers, things were very different. In the snidely superior Scenes de la vie future, French Academician Georges Duhamel might have scornfully asserted that "Je donne toute la bibliotheque cinematographique du monde, y compris ce que les gens de metier appellent pompeusement leurs 'classiques', pour une piece de Moliere, pour un tableau de Rembrandt, pour une fugue de Bach," but he was in the minority (Duhamel 51). More typically, Nobel Prize winner Andre Gide resented the fact that Roger Martin du Gard, another Gallic winner of the world's most celebrated literary prize, got to write the first draft script of La Bete humaine in place of his own august self. While French

writers

would

regularly

whine

about

the

ways in

which

literature was deformed by the seventh art, it seldom inveighed against the idea itself. From their vantage point, the cinema seemed to be so far behind the book and the play in terms of cultural importance, it usually failed to arouse their fears, even if it occasionally incurred their

displeasure.

(For

somewhat

different

reasons,

Hollywood

producers felt much the same way about TV until the late 1940s, when the new medium began to dangerously encroach upon their economic turf). Unsurprisingly,

a

distinguished

caste

of

professional

screenwriters grew up under this regime. The most accomplished of these were Jacques Prevert, Marcel Pagnol, and Charles Spaak. Of the three, Prevert—with the possible exception of Cesare Zavattini, the only

scenarist in film history

whose contributions

to

films

generally more highly praised by critics than were those of

were the

105 directors for whom he worked—unquestionably exercised the greatest influence on the development of poetic realism. This is a subject to which we shall return at the proper time. This said, one should not allow these differences in cultural attitude to obscure the fact that the relative aesthetic success of French and American cinema in the 1930s was in large

part due to the

high quality of their scenarios. Thanks to the awkwardness of early sound equipment, Depression-era movies were seldom distinguished by their visuals. Consequently, actors had to shoulder the burden dropped by the cinematographers, and this was only possible when the words they were given were up to cinematic snuff. Whether admired or despised by themselves or their employers, screenwriters now made the difference between success and failure. In the particular case of the crime film, this verity was even truer than usual. As Paul Schrader pointed out in his famous essay "Notes on Film Noir", one of the principal pre-requisites behind this enduring '40s style was the "influence...of the 'hard-boiled' school of writers. In the thirties,

authors

such as

Ernest

Hemingway,

Dashiell

Hammett,

Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Horace McCoy and John O'Hara created the 'tough,' a cynical way of acting and talking that separated one from the world of everyday emotions—romanticism with a protective shell" (Grant 174). According to Dudley Andrew, a similar school of French tough guy writing fecundated the French film industry around the same time: "Between the wars a publishing boom at Gallimard, Grasset, Plon, Flammarion, and smaller houses sanctioned serious popular fiction coming from the pens of a new brand of professional writer... None of these could be called intellectual, nor did any of them aspire to be

106 intellectual

in their

lives and work, writing of workers, peasants,

sailors, and criminals on the run" (Andrew 155). So far as the history of the French crime film was concerned, by far

the

most

important of these were

critic/screenwriter

Andre

Lang once

Pierre Mac Orlan—whom

famously

described

as

"un

bourgeois sauvage" (Lang 233)—the slang-friendly Francis Carco, and the prolific Belgian author, Georges Simenon. Mac Orlan's penchant for underworld

heroes with

poetic

souls eventually

resulted

in

the

publication of a screenplay and several articles devoted to and inspired by the life and works of Francois Villon, the 16th century dean of Gallic artist/thugs

(a taste he shared with the aforesaid Carco, a fellow

Montmartre flaneur). Le Quai des brumes (1927) and La Bandera

(1931),

his two most influential novels, would serve as blueprints for two of the best widescreen examples of French poetic realism. In place of "realisme poetique", Mac Orlan preferred the term "le social"

to

describe

his

tales

which

engendered

fantastique

'"disquiet

and

mistrust'...in the manner of nocturnal street photography rather than eldritch lore" (Andrew 15). His plots also linked desperate acts to desperate financial straits in a way that was at least as Balzacian as it was Zolaesque. Francis Carco was Mac Orlan's almost exact contemporary, and dealt in very similar material set in the same milieu. Stylistically, however, his books were much more experimental. The author's "deft handling of slang immediately created for Carco an authority as well as fixed

his

popular

Jesus-la-Caille regarded

as

image-expedient,

yet

restrictive"

(Weiner

82).

(1919), Carco's most important book, is generally French literature's

first

successful experiment

with

107 underworld argot. Idiomatically translated, the title could be read as A Certain

Sort

meaning

of Fag, since jesus

invert,

and

caille

was

was a

a

19th

turn-of-the-century century

term

mercantile

word

referring to style or flavour. While nowhere near as slangily dense as Albert Simonin's 1953 masterpiece, Touchez pas au grisbi!, la-Caille

Jesus-

is nonetheless written in decidedly non-standard French. A

typical passage runs as follows: "L'coup des bourriques. Menard et le gros Dupied empoignaient le mome. Je ne les ai pas vus entrer, et v'la bien la preuve que c'etait une combine: ils devaient etre planques dans le placard" (Carco 15). Certain recurring

motifs

in French crime

fiction—the importance of female loyalty, and its presumed scarcity; the

emotional

emphasis

on

male

bonding,

whether

explicitly

homosexual or not; the debased sociology and exchange economy of fille and mec within the apache sub-culture—were codified in Jesus,

even if

Carco could not take credit for inventing them. More or less contemporaneously, in 1930 Georges Simenon gave birth to

his

most

enduring

creation,

Inspector

Jules

Maigret,

a

decidedly un-American detective who was "plebeien, stable, instinctif, apolitique, buveur,

mefiant,

fumeur

routinier,

chaste, neutre,

de pipe, bourru,

securisant,

mangeur,

discret, sedentaire, peu

liant..."

(Assouline 208). Maigret would glide through la France profonde of the 'tween-war years in the same way that Mac Orlan and Carco would nostalgically

recreate the a p a c h e - h a u n t e d

Montmartre

of la

belle

epoque. Between them, they would create an indigenous French universe of crime, a universe which could accommodate any number of imported American

underworld

constellations.

Foreign

traditions

welcomed precisely because local traditions were so strong.

would

be

108 For political reasons, French filmmakers of the 1930s could not be too specific about the relationship between poverty and crime. In 1937, for instance, Jean Renoir was obliged to hide his enthusiasm for the

Popular Front behind a historical tableau set in the French

Revolution at a time when the Popular Front government it implicitly praised was still

in power.

Nevertheless, French filmmakers

did

manage to side, in most cases, with economically oppressed whites (oppressed

North

Africans,

villainous/comic extra status

of course, were still in the

relegated

many adventure films

to

set in

France's Saharan and Magrebhi colonies). To a certain extent, this was as true of right-wingers

as it was of militants

on the left. This

attitude actually preceded the early books of Pierre Mac Orlan, and the other mecs durs authors of the 1920s and '30s. As Georges Sadoul reminds us, it truly begins in 1901 with "les premiers grands succes de Ferdinand Zecca. lis introdusaient a I'ecran la vie des 'basses classes': proletariat et criminels" (Sadoul 11). Like the American film industry during the 1920s, '30s and '40s, French cinema was profoundly

affected

by the

legacy of Middle

European Expressionism imported by emigre German cineastes. Lotte H. Eisner, in L'Ecran inescapably

"German" this

demoniaque, movement

Though

sought to demonstrate how really

was,

the

post-war

proliferation of "film noir" techniques and thematics—most of which were derived from Ufa-style Expressionism—tends to dilute this claim. No matter how imbued with Sturm und Drang ideology, certain "Teutonic" ideas proved to be eminently exportable. "Dans les films allemands," she wrote, "I'ombre devient I'image du destin"—an alchemical process which would later be reproduced on the sound

109 stages of Paris and southern California. (Eisner 95). They would be equally influenced by G.W. Pabst's Joyless

Street, "la quintessence des

visions germaniques de la rue, des escaliers et des corridors, plonge dans une demi-obscurite; c'est aussi la consecration definitive I'architecture 'Ersatz'

de

de studio, derivant de I'expressionisme" (Eisner

174). While Expressionist echoes would ring with equal effect through the cinemas of France and the United States, the two

countries'

methods of appropriating this technique were very different.

In the

1920s, Hollywood was already systematically attempting

co-opt

successfully industry

competing

was

its

national

first target

film

of

cultures.

opportunity,

The

to

Swedish film

Scandinavia's once-

thriving movie business being effectively gutted by the loss of Victor Sjostrom, Mauritz Stiller, Greta Garbo, and other luminaries. Basically, the American studios did not care—as, indeed, most of them still do not—how these cultural immigrants fared in their new surroundings. If they learned to accommodate themselves to the American factory system, well and good; if they did not, Hollywood producers had the satisfaction

of

knowing

they

had

at

least

removed

potentially

dangerous economic competitors from the world market. For Hollywood, it was a win-win situation. Thanks to the rise of Hitler, the steady trickle of German emigres soon became a flood. Many of the masters of film noir, the most Expressionist of all American film styles, got their start in Ufa's giant enclosure. Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity and Sunset

Boulevard;

Fritz Lang's Scarlet

(1944)

Street (1945) and The

Big

Heat (1954); Otto Preminger's Laura (1944): without these seminal features, the movement would never have gotten off the ground.

110 In

France, things

were

Hollywood, it was traditional

a

little

different.

On

the

trail

to

for anti-fascist and/or Jewish-German

filmmakers to make pit-stops in Paris, interrupting their journey long enough to shoot a film or two, their salaries being used to finance the fateful

move to

filmmakers

the

United

absorbed the

States. By doing this,

legacy of poetic

these

exiled

realism, even as they

deepened the already pronounced strain of Expressionism running through French cinema, a strain left by the many Franco-German coproductions undertaken in the 1920s and early 1930s. As Georges Sadoul reminds us, "La [premiere] guerre

[mondiale]

entraine

un

renversement totale de la situation [economique], au profit des EtatsUnis, et en second lieu, de I'Allemagne" (Sadoul 144). To survive this new world order, "French producers were forced to take a slightly partisan position, aligning themselves with the Germans in a 'European' effort to stave off Hollywood domination" (Andrew 172). If German and Central European directors did not make the same "splash" in France that they made in America, Middle European film technicians did. Marcel Carne's moody masterpieces did not succeed solely on the strength of his directorial eye and Jacques Prevert's brilliant scripts; they were equally beholden to Alexandre Trauner's brooding sets and Joseph Kosma's haunting scores. These two irreplaceable collaborators were both born in the Austro-Hungarian city of Budapest. At the same time, the French cinema received an influx of Russian immigrants that was considerably greater than the one absorbed by Hollywood.

In

Dudley Andrew's words,

"Numerically

the

Russian

presence in the [French] cinema went far beyond the German" (Andrew 177). Director Dmitri Kirsanoff and cinematographer

Boris Kaufman

111 both

carved

infrastructure vogue for

enviable

positions

for

themselves

of the French film industry.

within

the

What's more, "A certain

Dostoevsky had infiltrated Paris with the

well-educated

Russian and German emigres" (Andrew 162). For

"Dostoevsky",

Punishment." fictional malignant

one

should

probably

read

"Crime

and

That book, it should be recalled, enriched the realm of

archetypes

with

police agent

Inspector

Porfiry,

in world literature.

perhaps

the

French culture,

most having

already produced Hugo's mercilessly "just" Inspector Javert, as well as Vautrin,

Balzac's

arch-Nietzschean

criminal

turned

police-

commissioner, was obviously in an ideal position to insinuate the sly sleuth from St. Petersburg into its imaginative

universe. Georges

Simenon was one period writer who fell completely under the great Russian's sway. In a recent article, Manuel Vasquez Montalban writes, "Dans le cycle Maigret, presque tous les criminels ont quelque chose de Raskolnikov et le commissaire apparait

comme le juge

que tout

criminel souhaiterait avoir pour avouer son delit" (Montalban 105). In 1935, Andre Lang scripted and Pierre Chenal directed what is generally considered to be the best screen version of Crime and

Punishment—not

least because it was shot in an Expressionist style. In the process, the parameters of the French crime movie were further refined. The "high" art

of Zola and Dostoevsky could now happily co-exist with the

"popular" writing of Simenon and Mac Orlan; Ufa-style Expressionism, with its emphasis on striking cinematography and entirely

artificial

sets, could be re-cast in a Franco-Russian mold. This rich gumbo of influences and motifs could, as we shall soon see, only be enriched by the addition of American ingredients. Almost from the beginning, its

112 style was as much international as it was national. Such forms can only benefit from the widening of the cultural gene pool. Across the Atlantic, German Expressionism came to America in a slower, more gradual manner—a manner inseparable from the steady consolidation of Nazi power. The gangster films of the early 1930s had as much to do with the teething problems of sound film as they did with any native or imported aesthetic. Screeching tyres and yammering tommyguns

provided sounds that did not need to be lip-synched.

Inspired by the urban gangster wars engendered by Prohibition, they allowed Hollywood filmmakers to make movies whose central figures were amoral villains. Howard Hawks's Scarface Leroy's Little Caesar

(1930)

and Mervyn

(1931) were both thinly disguised biographies of

Chicago's most notorious citizen, Alphonse Capone.

The vast majority

of these onscreen mobsters were of Sicilian origin, a fact that had more to do with the Italian mob's victory over rival Irish, Jewish and Polish gangs than it did with any nativist bias. William Wellman's The Public Enemy (1931) was somewhat unusual insofar as it depicted an American veteran's entry into crime as the result of his inability to find remunerative work in the wake of the First World War. In general, though, American mobsters were "foreign". They were also rich, and—as the Great Depression deepened—this wealth became a cause for concern among motion picture moralists. Tuxedoed banquets in the company of beautifully dressed showgirls came to seem increasingly alluring to unemployed Americans as the bread lines lengthened. Thus, gangster films per se were no longer made, having been replaced with the more acceptable "G-man" pictures, underworld dramas where the heroes were not "foreign" gangsters but

113 native agents of the FBI. Along with Mae West's double entendres, Maureen O'Sullivan's nude swim in Tarzan and His Mate (1934), and the eponymous giant ape's violent and sexual indiscretions in King

Kong

(1933), gangster movies were one of the prime reasons why Hollywood chose

to

shackle

itself

artistically

with the

set

of

self-imposed

restrictions which would be known to posterity as the Hays Code. While French cinema was certainly no stranger to censorship, it never suffered from

such chafing constraints—ironically,

not even

under German occupation. Still, as we read in French Film, "[Louis] Feuillade began by celebrating master criminals who stop at nothing, but the pressures of censorship made him turn later to the figure of the avenger" (Armes 23). This would appear to be a close approximation of the

anti-crime

strictures

Feuillade was wont

of the

Hays Code,

until we

recall that

to have his masked villains slaughter

entire

roomsful of social luminaries, an anarchistic excess which Hollywood gangsters, even in their heyday, would never have been permitted to contemplate, never mind enact. Extremely strict in regard to politics and national "honour", French censorship was much more

laissez-faire

in matters of crime—particularly when the crimes in question happened to be passionels.

Marcel Carne, curiously, was the French director who

suffered most from film censorship's obscure whims. A nude shot of Arletty was excised from all prints of le Jour se leve (1939) by the bluenoses of Vichy, and it still cries out to be re-inserted. This is perhaps the least "French" of Carne's run-ins with the

authorities.

More typical is the filmmaker's run-in with "Commandant Calvet", a military officer who, after seeing a workprint of Le Quai des brumes, a bleakly poetic portrait of a deserter on the lam from the colonial

114 infantry, "demandait prononce

seulement

et que, lorsque

les pile soigneusement pele-mele

que le mot [deserteur]

le soldat se debarrasse

ne soit

jamais

de ses vetements,

et les pose sur une chaise,

il

au lui de la jeter

dans un coin de la piece...." (La Vie a belles dents 90). Prior

to the contemporary American hysteria over the issue of flag-burning, such fussy concern with the miniutiae of national honour would have seemed vaguely absurd, even to a Hays Code censor. Since Gabin was doomed to die for his "sins", anyway, a little sloppiness with his uniform, one might have thought, could easily have been forgiven. In the

early

1930s, most

of the

major

"German"

—technically, most of them were Austrians—working

in

directors Hollywood

(Erich von Stroheim; Josef von Sternberg) had been established in Hollywood for many years. Expressionist influence on von Stroheim was correspondingly weak—he was, after all, a disciple of Zola—while von Sternberg's was strong but indirect, stemming largely from his 1929 visit to Berlin, the trip that saw him accomplish the double coup of directing

Der Blaue

Engel,

the first first-rate

talking

picture, a n d

"discovering" its star, Marlene Dietrich. Of Hollywood's early Germans, he alone can be considered a true progenitor of film noir. Because there was never any question about who did what, where, and why, the gangster movie was generically cut off from the mystery

story

and detective

thriller; it was a

frowdunnit

not

a

whodunnit, having more in common with the war movie and western than with its more obvious generic relations. Gangster fiction, as epitomized by the writing of Rowland Brown—an author reputed to have "underworld

connections"—followed its own set of ruthlessly simple

laws (Peary 30). Poverty was of dramatic use only insofar as it

11 5 provided a motivation for criminals to climb socially; onscreen, the pleasures of being criminally on top of the world vastly outnumbered the inevitably violent wages of sin climactically meted out to mob anti-heroes by the Puritan strictures of the Hays Code. In other words, gangster films in their early '30s American guise were separated from their European roots to the point where they could pass as nativist phenomena, even if—according to the rules of heartland amour

propre, as well as period criminal demographics—most of its

underworld

anti-heroes were

international

not. The genre would become truly

only after it had been cross-fertilized by film noir, a

crime story/Expressionist hybrid which was brought to fruition by the window

of cinematic opportunity

perceived by German refugees—

deracinated, embittered, frustrated and on the run from Hitler—in the years immediately preceding and following the Second World War. Fury (1936), and You Only Live Once (1937), Fritz Lang's first two American features, are now often described as the ur-films of the noir stylistic. In

the

process of

directing

them,

Lang furthered

the

postwar

internationalization of crime movies in a way that could not then have been easily imagined. Before embarking on a more specific

study of the French and

American policier, however, it would probably be best to consider more fully the

importance

of German Expressionism to

both cinematic

genres. While Edvard Munch and a number of other late 19th and early 20th century painters and playwrights have been described as protoExpressionists, the movement was imbued with new power by the empire-wrecking carnage of 1914-1918. If Dadaism and Surrealism were

expressions of

French disaffection

with

the

conduct

and

116 aftermath of the First World War, post-war Expressionism was—in this respect at least—their spiritual sister. As Lotte H. Eisner wrote in L'Ecran

demoniaque,

"Mysticisme et magie, forces obscurs auxquelles

de tout temps les Allemands se sont abandonnes avec complaisance avaient fleuri devant la mort sur les champs de bataille" (Eisner 15). Neither

playful

hostile

to

nor

outward-looking,

contemporary

Gallic

Expressionism was

schools

of

artistic

implicitly

expression:

"L'expressionisme, declare Edschmid, reagit contre le 'depiecement atomique' de I'impressionisme qui reflete les chatoyantes equivoques de la nature, sa diversite inquietante, ses nuances ephemeres; il lutte en meme temps contre la decalcomanie bourgeoise du naturalisme et contre le but mesquin ...de photographer la nature ou la vie quotidienne" (Eisner 97). For physically and emotionally scarred veterans such as artist Oskar Kokoschka and filmmaker Fritz Lang, "il serait absurde de...reproduire [le monde] tel que[l]...." (Eisner 97). For them, external objects and events were useful only insofar as they helped to reveal their protagonists "fantaisie secrete" (Eisner 97). Since it was the ideal method for exploring the more obscure corners—not to mention plumbing the more sinister depths—of the soul, psychoanalysis was, .of course, all the rage. In film after film, "[les] ombres manifeste une inspiration freudienne...." (Eisner 97). Expressionists were likewise strongly drawn to the Talmudic myth of Lilith, Adam's disobedient first wife, the metaphysical symbol of conflict and strife, of war within the very heart of the patriarchal family, a great beauty armed with the talons of a bird of prey, a female fury who "[at] times...is an angel who rules over the procreation of mankind, at times a demon who assaults those who sleep alone or those who travel lonely roads" (Borges 149).

117 Appearing first in the plays of Frank Wedekind—which were

later

brilliantly adapted for the screen by G.W. Pabst in the late 1920s, their seductive protagonist being physically embodied by American screen idol, Louise Brooks—the figure of the evil temptress or femme

fatale

would eventually become one of the emblematic figures of film noir. It is surely not coincidental that so many "bad girl" names (Lulu; Lili; Lolita; Lola Lola) begin with a capital "L," a circumstance which turns them all into de facto homonyms of Lilith, the seductive beauty with claws that rend. Of course, in practice this separation from all things French was not as absolute as it was in theory. Fritz Lang, for example, was immensely fond of "les figures a cagoules qui viennent tout droit des VAMPIRES de Feuillade...." (Eisner 162). In German films, "...comme chez Feuillade, comme dans tous les serials, les kidnappers

emportent

ficelee leur victimes" (Eisner 162 - 163). If the ubiquity of postwar Franco-German co-productions exposed French filmmakers to the tics as well as the abilities of their German confreres, they returned the favour

four-fold. Even so, the Gauls learned a lot. Inspired by the post-1917

German practice of shooting every scene on an artificial stage, French set designers began to build trompe I'oeil street scenes and interiors that rivalled the most lavish accomplishments of Ufa, then the best-equipped studio in Europe, if not the world (an advantage which—unfortunately import/export

for

the

Weimar

republic's

notoriously

dismal

balance—did not translate into a commanding German

position in the international movie mart). Alexandre Trauner and Lazare Meerson shone in this metier, while the sets of Jacques Feyder's 1934

118 historical comedy La Kermesse

heroique

were so sumptuous they

attracted for a time the sort of tourist who is irresistably drawn to "mad"

King Ludwig's castles in Bavaria.

Imagination,

intelligently

employed, more than made up for the modest budgets with which most Gallic filmmakers were obliged to work. French cinematographers studied the psychologically revealing camera angles pioneered by Karl Freund, and came up with their brilliantly

crafted

own counterparts.

scripts established high literary

Carl Mayer's

standards which

French screenwriters, with growing success, struggled to surpass. The knowledge that "shadows can become the image of Destiny" subtly inflected the ubiquitous nocturnal sequences that were as much a part of poetic realism as they were of film noir. Indeed, in the aftermath of World War Two, the fatalistic scripts and dark camera angles of such gloomy features as Le Jour se leve and Le Quai des brumes were widely regarded as nothing less than cinematic fifth columnists, defeatist movies that fatally sapped French morale on the battlefield, creating the mood which allowed morose poilus to be ground to powder by the optimistic

storm-troopers

of the Third

Reich during the

shameful

summer of 1940. Neither neorealist studies of poverty nor sentimental romances'— the motion picture genres which one would ordinarily expect to provide the most universally convertible forms of cinematic currency, given the ubiquity of global misery and the probably genetic human need for love—have proven to have the wide-spread appeal of the crime film. As Claire Vasse put it in her essay, "L'enigme 'cinema': La Nouvelle

Vague

et le polar", "Le genre policier est certainement la chose du monde cinematographique la mieux partagee" (Vasse 105.) French crime films

119 were visibly affected by foreign influences even in the 1930s, and— more surprisingly still, even in the works of Jean Renoir, that most "typically French" of French directors. As Charles Tesson would have it, "Autant Toni, construit sur une symetrie de meme nature, est un film dont la forme narrative doit beaucoup a l'Amerique du melodrame, celle de Griffith et surtout de Chaplin...autant La Bete humaine est un film place sous la signe croise de Lang et de Murnau. Lantier est le frere de M (le 'ich kann nicht' de la pulsion criminelle) et la sequence de barque de I'Aurore, celle ou le mari tente d'etrangler sa femme puis renonce, est la sequence

cachee dont La Bete humaine sera la traversee

du miroir en deux temps" (Tesson 67). Like

most

fictional

genres, the

crime

story

precedes

the

invention of the motion picture camera by many centuries. If Gilles Deleuze was right when he claimed that "I'Ancien Testament n'est pas un epopee ni une tragedie, c'est le premier roman...," then the killing of Abel

is literature's

first murder

mystery,

and Cain

fiction's

first

"tra?tre...le personnage essentiel du roman, le heros" (Dialogues 53). If one broadens the definition of crime to include transgression, then humanity's first delit flagrant must fall on the shoulders of Adam and Eve—on the symbolic level, the Ur parents of hairless apes. What this means, basically, is that most Western narratives deal with characters who have breached divine or secular laws or both. Even so, the invention of the policier

proper is generally credited

to Edgar Allan Poe. In his short stories "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter", the American author introduced

world

literature to its first private detective, the Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin: "This young gentleman was of an excellent—indeed of an illustrious

1 20 family, but, by a variety of untoward events, had been reduced to such poverty that the energy of his character succumbed beneath it, and he ceased to bestir himself in the world or to care for the retrieval of his fortunes" (Tales of Mystery and Imagination 180).) A bibliophile, Dupin is flatteringly French: "Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries, and in Paris these are easily obtained" (Tales of Mystery and

Imagination

180). If one excludes Benjamin Franklin and the political "superstars" of the American Revolution, Edgar Allan Poe was probably the first American to be lionized by the Gauls. After excising the author's middle name—endearing him forever to French readers as "Edgar Poe"— Baudelaire proceeded to translate the American's texts with a verve that most critics now regard as superior to the narratives which inspired them. Thus, Poe came to be regarded in Parisian literary circles as one of the first and greatest of the Symbolists, while in his native Baltimore the poet is thought of primarily as the author of various

obscure

19th

century

horror

stories.

In translating

him,

Baudelaire was at least half conscious of casting his American "idol" in his idolator's image. In "Edgar Poe: Sa vie et ses oeuvres", the French poet was pleased to introduce

his public to "un homme qui me

ressemblait un peu, par quelques points, c'est-a-dire une partie de moi-meme...." (Baudelaire 348). In reality, it would probably be fairer to say that Poe shared certain similarities with Baudelaire, rather than the other way around. The French Poe is pre-eminently an urban writer, whereas the American original grew up in a largely agrarian society. It was only after he was thoroughly "Gallicized" that global readers were free to mistake the streets of Baltimore for the streets of Paris. Out of

121 place in his homeland, the author of "The Raven" was turned into a de facto European by the author of "The Albatross". The "fake" Poe of the French is now, ironically, of immeasurably more cultural

importance

than the "real" Poe of his unappreciative and uncomprehending fellow countrymen. Those who continue to be perplexed by the French "canonization" of Clint Eastwood, Blake Edwards and Jerry Lewis would be well-advised to bear in mind that the U.S. citizens in question were all treated to a "Baudelairean" make-over—that is to say, they were first situated in a pre-existing Gallic Zeitgeist—before

receiving

their

official laurels. If their path to the podium had not been paved with influential

essays by Andre Bazin, Georges Benyaoun, and

other

acknowledged cultural authourities they would never have been so honoured. Even so, the "outsider" quality of French perceptions often provides insights which an "inside" American perspective precludes. Thus Tzvetan Todorov writes, "On sait...que Poe a donne naissance au roman policier contemporain, et ce voisinage n'est pas un effet de hasard; on ecrit d'ailleurs souvent que les histoires policieres ont remplace les histoires de fantomes" (Introduction a la fantastique 54). When seen in this light, Poe's double importance as precursor of the "new" and perfector of the "old" seems perfectly self-evident. This insight

would,

in the

20th

century,

effectively

obscure the

line

between horror and detective stories in popular French literature. Thus, Jacques van Herp could claim in "Le monde de Harry Dickson", an appreciation of the texts Belgian fantasy author Jean Ray wrote about "le Sherlock Holmes Americain," that the imaginative universe invoked by these tales was in many respects identical to that of Belgium's best-known

realistic

mystery

master: "On pense irresistablement

a

122 Simenon. Chez tous deux apparaTt le meme gout des heures indefinies, de la pluie, au pave gras, des maisons lepreuses, et une identique puissance d'evocation. Ainsi qu'un meme refus a jouer le jeu au policier classique" (La Heme 278). Boileau and Narcejac, the most popular French mystery writers of the post-war period, composed the original stories for Vertigo,

Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 psychological thriller, and

Les Yeux sans visage, Georges Franju's 1960 surgical horror movie. From the vantage point of a "properly" educated French film critic, the co-authors did not change genres, just as—for an American critic—they obviously did. Ironically, despite their respect for Poe in general and Auguste Dupin in particular, the French have not made much use of the tradition he represents. According to Tzvetan Todorov's "Typologie du roman policier", Dupin and his descendants belong primarily to the genre "que nous pouvons appeler 'roman a enigme'" (Poetique de la prose 57). To a greater or lesser degree, Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot all belong to this genteel—and quintessential^ English—subcategory of amateur detecting. Although it is arguably the most popular crime format in the world, it has very little to do with the American and Italian literary traditions, and even less to do with the French. American private detection, it should be emphasized, is a metier and not

an avocation. Consequently, the "English" style to which

an

American gave birth and which a Frenchman subsequently valorized will play the smallest possible role in the following pages. Dostoevsky's

Inspector

Porfiry,

with

his

subtle,

insinuating,

almost priestly methods of imbuing criminals with the need to confess, was, as we have already seen, the "eminence bleue" behind (Jules)

123 Maigret. In equal and opposite measure, Raskolnikov became the model for countless criminals who must struggle with their conscience as well as the law. In the policier,

the high-ranking plainclothesman and

the tormented outlaw are by far the most important characters. Private detectives of the Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe variety are generally as alien to the French fictive tradition as they are to the Italian (except, of course, for retired police officers, who continue to exercise their office in an unofficial capacity long after they have been pensioned off; obviously,

Maigret

phenomenon).

is

the

most

important

manifestation

of

this

On the very rare occasions when private detectives do

show up in French crime films and novels, they generally lack glamour and existential purpose. The detective agency that Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud), director Francois Truffaut's onscreen alter ego, works for in Baisers

voles does nothing but poke its nose into the

mundane affairs of the adulterous and the mildly dishonest—just as real detectives do. Of the 40 films cited as the all time best French policiers

by a select panel of French film critics, only one, Claude

Miller's Mortelle

randonnee

(1983), employed a private eye as its

principal protagonist. The real polar action would always take place in Surete squadrooms and underworld caves. For indigenous archetypes, the French have recourse to two "home-grown" models. Respectively, these are Victor Hugo's Inspector Javert—Jean Valjean's implacable nemesis, a government

functionary

who pushes justice to the frontiers of inhumanity and sin—and Vautrin, Balzac's

master-criminal-turned-master-Wc.

In his prison diaries, Antonio Gramsci reflected on both of these fictional creations. "II tipo di Javert dei Miserabili

e interessante," he

1 24 wrote, "dal punto di vista della psicologia popolare: Javert ha torto dal punto di vista della 'vera giustizia', ma Hugo lo rappresenta in modo simpatico, como 'uomo di carattere...." (Gramsci 2129). Javert, the diarist felt, would eventually mutate

into superior judicial beings—

such as Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown. Although a prisoner himself—albeit

a political one—Gramsci

appreciated the fact that French and English detective story writers did not, as a rule, romanticize crime. Conversely, he felt that Vautrin was a little off the beaten path of fictional criminal

development:

"Balzac con Vautrin, si occupa del delinquente, ma non e 'tecnicamente' scrittore di romanzi polizieschi" (Gramsci 2129). Far from being a son of privilege, Hugo's incorruptible punisher of the weak was born behind bars himself: "Javert etait ne dans une prison d'une tireuse de cartes dont le mari etait aux galeres. Engrandissant il pensa qu'il etait en dehors de la societe et desespera d'y jamais. II remarqua que la societe maintient

rentrer

irremediablement

en

dehors d'elle deux classes d'hommes, ceux qui I'attaquent et ceux qui la gardaient; il n'avait le choix qu'entre ces deux classes: en meme temps il se sentait je ne sais quel fond de rigidite, du regularity et de probite, complique d'une inexprimable haine pour cette race du bohemes dont il etait. II entra dans la police. II y reussit. A quarante ans il etait inspector" (Hugo 169). This description of a man who was forcibly shaped by society is probably

the

closest

Hugo

ever came to

exploring

what

would

subsequently be described as Zolaesque determinism. It is interesting to note that Javert shares his fictional universe with Jean Valjean, the convict-turned-capitalist-turned

philanthropist-turned-fugitive-

125 turned hero, a Romantic self-creator who is redeemed by the charity of a saintly

bishop and who incarnates in his person the

absolute

antithesis of the naturalistic robot. The tension between these two extremes has provided the locus for many a succesful policier,

dramas

in which the principle of freedom- is embodied by the criminal, while the dead hand of sociological fatality hangs heavily over his legal nemesis. By juxtaposing Javert and Valjean, Hugo unwittingly created a paradigm which underscores the difference between French and Italian attitudes

towards crime. Unfairly, almost obscenely, persecuted on

account of his poverty-driven misdemeanors, Valjean is the last word in guiltless criminals, an Italian neorealist hero avant la lettre. Caught between his robotic devotion to the state and his tragically

human

background, Javert, on the other hand, seems quintessentially French, a polar

commissaire

par excellence,

a mixture of surface ruthlessness

and concealed understanding who is at least a century ahead of his time. Later authors have continued to refine the dramatic polarities of these archetypal antagonists till the present day. That policemen come from humble, often "criminal" backgrounds, and align themselves with the very classes and values that made their early lives a living hell is an idea that would be further developed in 20th century French and American popular fiction—just as it would on the actual streets of New York and Paris. In book after book, Inspector Maigret wonders what his future might have been like if only his family could have afforded to keep him in medical school. Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, different in so many ways, are united in their detestation of "the rich". Javert infused some much-needed ambiguity into a genre

1 26 which, at its worst, reduces important moral issues to crude black and white

dualities. Although of earlier provenance than Javert, Balzac's

protean

Vautrin is clearly cut from the same narrative cloth, even though his limitless ambition would seem to owe more to the author's socialclimbing businessmen. While making his "Human Comedy" debut in Le Pere Goriot (1830), Vautrin explained his nature in the following terms: "Voulez-vous connaitre mon caractere? Je suis bon avec ceux qui me font bien ou dont le coeur parle au mien. A ceux-la tout est permis, ils peuvent me donner des coups de pieds dans les os des jambes sans que je leur dise: Prends garde] Mais, nom d'une pipe, je suis mechant comme le diable avec ceux qui me fracassent, ou qui ne me reviennent pas. Et il est bon de vous apprendre que je me soucie de tuer un homme comme 9a dit-il en lancant un jet de salive" (Le Pere Goriot 106 - 107). A reader and admirer of the murderous, bisexual Renaissance artist Benvenuto Cellini, Vautrin thinks of himself as a poet of crime. A practically-minded

believer

in

the

will-to-power,

he

dreams

of

becoming a wealthy slave-owner in America—an ambition which Hugo's cockroach-like Miserables.

Thenardier

will

eventually

accomplish

in

Les

When angered, his physiognomy changes like the features of

Cuchulainn in Celtic myth: "Horrible

et majestueux

spectacle! sa

physionomie presenta un phenomene qui ne peut etre compare qu'a celui de la chaudiere pleine de cette vapeur fumeuse qui souleverait des montagnes, et que dissout en un clin d'oeil une goutte d'eau froide" (Le Pere Goriot 185). Ready and able to commit murder when it suits his purposes, Vautrin is also modern fiction's first uncloseted homosexual. Behind

prison

walls,

he consummates

his

desires with

younger

127 convicts. In the outside world, he sublimates them in his attempts to push seemingly heterosexual young men of promise into the forefront of post-Napoleonic French society. By frankly orientation

acknowledging his underworld

protagonist's

sexual

at a time when even heterosexual liaisons had to be

described with a great deal of circumspection, Balzac

unwittingly

endowed French crime fiction with a unique and precocious advantage. Le Pere Goriot and its two sequels created a generic precedent which prioritized

male/male

relations

within

le

milieu

criminel.

While

explicitly gay mobster connections remained comparatively rare, what was once described as "feudal homosexuality" would play an important role in the polars of artists as diverse as Francis Carco and JeanPierre Melville. Unlike so many of the artistic developments mentioned in this work, this one seems somewhat "flukey," a wild card that could not have been predicted by any deterministic philosophy. This anomaly should be kept in mind when reading passages where events seem to unfold with the inescapable finality of Calvinist theology. In the midst of even the

most ordered universe, it seems, predestination

will

always play a role. Be that as it may, we must now return to the main thread of our story. Known by a variety of names, Vautrin/Jacques Collin is a master of aliases. When his Lucien de Rubempre project collapses, the archcriminal is coerced into joining the police force in lieu of returning to the pentitentiary or the galleys. As we learn in "La derniere incarnation de Vautrin", "Apres avoir exerce ses fonctions pendant environ quinze ans, Jacques Collin s'est retire vers 1845" (Splendeurs et miseres des courtisanes

641). Unsurprisingly, Marcel Carne, by universal consent

128 the most "poetic" director of policiers,

"Depuis...un certain

nombre

d'annees...[a songe] a porter a I'ecran la vie extraordinaire d'un des personnages les plus etonnants qu'ait compris Balzac dans sa Humaine:

Comedie

Vautrin" (La vie a belles dents 378).

Remarkably, the supremely fictional character of Vautrin (and—as literary scholarship might eventually prove—of Javert as well), was modelled after one of history's more improbable figures. In A

Criminal

History of Mankind, we learn that a certain Eugene-Francois Vidocq was turned into a police spy by an officer known as M. Henry. A veteran of many crimes and escapes, the captured felon was, like Vautrin, forced to choose between prison and "betrayal". Vidocq practiced his turncoat metier with unprecedented skill: "[he] was allowed helpers, all chosen by himself—naturally, he chose criminals. There was fierce opposition from all the local police departments, who objected to strangers on their 'patches', but Henry refused to be moved. Vidocq's little band was called the Security—Surete—and it became the foundation of the French national police force of today" (Wilson 471). After being forced into retirement in 1833 "because a new chief of police objected to a Surete made up entirely of criminals and ex-criminals. [Vidocq] immediately became a private detective—the first in the world—and wrote his Memoirs.

He became a close friend of writers, including Balzac, who

modelled his character Vautrin on Vidocq" (Wilson 471). If one were to compile a detective genealogy, one could say with some surety that Vidocq begat Vautrin who begat Javert who begat Porfiry who begat Maigret. On a parallel line of development, Auguste Dupin begat Sherlock Holmes who begat Father Brown who begat Hercule Poirot who begat Miss Marple. These are not, however, Western

129 narrative's only criminal family trees. To seek out the third major line of descent one must travel to the United States. Hardboiled detective fiction a la americaine

is generally said to

have originated in Black Mask magazine, a pulp fiction periodical which, shortly after its launching in 1920, ceased to be an imitator of Argosy

and other "all story" magazines of that period, preferring to

focus exclusively on tales of crime. Dashiell Hammett's Op" entertainments first appeared in Black

"Continental

Mask, as would Raymond

Chandler's early fictional efforts a decade later. Intriguingly enough, neither author had picked fiction as his first career choice. If the economy had been better, they would probably never have submitted manuscripts to magazines.

Hammett was a

veteran of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, the questionable company— since the 19th century, Pinkerton men had been hired out to large corporations

as ultra-violent

strike-breakers—which

served as

the

model for the Continental, the organization that employed the author's anonymous

"alter

ego". Red

Harvest,

the early "Op" novel which

Bernardo Bertolucci has been trying to adapt cinematically for more than

two

"Italianate"

decades—no doubt style

of

on account

governance—depicts

of

its fictional

a small

town

setting's which

is

controlled by corruption from top to bottom. Employed by a rich old man in Personville—known to the locals as Poisonville—the

Continental Op

proceeds to play one tainted faction against another, choreographing a dance of death eerily similar to the one that would be orchestrated 34 years later by Toshiro Mifune's rootless samurai in Yojimbo writer/director harrowing

Akira

Kurosawa's

of a bandit-ridden

epic

black

comedy

(1961),

about

the

19th century Japanese village whose

130 leaders make the fatal mistake of assuming that the ronin they have hired is really on their side. If anything, the Continental Op's approach to "house cleaning" is even more cynical. As he sneeringly promises his employer, "you'll have your city back, all nice and clean and ready to go to the dogs again" (Hammett 134). In Yojimbo, one of the earliest shots is of a dog running through the streets with a severed arm in its mouth. No wonder Bertrand Tavernier referred to Hammett as "[un des] auteurs de

romans

policiers explicitement

marxistes...." (Montalban

107).

Parenthetically, Woody Haut suggested that "It is no coincidence that Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest was published on the eve of the Wall Street Crash" (Haut 1). In Red Harvest, even the crooked find it hard to survive. The following exchange is fairly typical: '"...What do you think of that? I pick up six hundred berries like shooting fish, and have to bum four bits for breakfast.' "I said it was a tough break but that was the kind of world we lived in" (Hammett 63).

As the above passage clearly denotes, Dashiell Hammett knew how to express himself in period slang with an economy and a clarity which were much emulated. Over and above his political engagement was the instinctive knowledge that less is sometimes more. Aside from the

dated

argot

and

occasional concessions to

pulp

magazine

sensibilities, Hammett today can be comfortably compared to such contemporary connoisseurs of "cool" crime as Barry Gifford and James Ellroy. "Popular

Although his disaffection with the modern world preceded Front"

politics,

it

could

also

outlive

them.

Dialectical

materialist though he was, Hammett did not deny his readers a certain

131 metaphysical dimension. Thus, in a manner seductively reminiscent of the Catholic legitimist Balzac's take on Vautrin, in The Maltese

Falcon

Hammett describes Sam Spade, his most famous protagonist, in the following

quasi-Miltonic terms: "He looked rather

pleasantly like a

blond Satan" (Hammett 225). Although equally suspicious of the motives of the rich, Raymond Chandler's wary heroes were more traditionally

cast in the role of

disaffected knights errant. Even the names of his detectives remind one of the author's proper British public school education. The author's first

private

eye

protagonist,

was

called

"Mallory",

sharing

the

moniker—give or take an "I"—of the author of La Morte d'Arthur, while his second would

be named after

the

most famous

Elizabethan

playwright after Shakespeare. Marlowe's sense of the ubiquity of evil is as vast as Sam Spade's or the Continental Op's, but his apprehension of it is more cosmic than socio-economic. Typically, Chandler—an embittered alcoholic who had failed as an oil executive—writes, "Out there in the night of a thousand crimes people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy car tyres. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered... A city...rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness" (The

Long

Stylistically, Chandler was as romantically

Goodbye 232 - 233). florid as Hammett

was

icily precise. In novels and movies, Philip Marlowe would complete the composite figure which Sam Spade began. Between them, these two fictional archetypes would come to define what readers/viewers now expect from hard-bitten private eyes. To a "t", they fit Lawerence's "hard,

isolate, stoic and a killer" prescription. As Michel Ciment

132 pointed out in his book-length

study of the American crime film,

"Coince entre la police et la truand, le prive est un etre seul qui ne peut compter

sur personne" (Le Crime a I'ecran

58). Of himself, Philip

Marlowe said, with a seductive mixture of pride and self-pity, "I'm a lone wolf, unmarried, getting middle-aged, and not rich. I've been to jail more than once and I don't do divorce business... The cops don't like me too well, but I know a couple I get along with...." (The Long Goodbye 79). Often ex-cops themselves, with an instinctive affinity for those outside the law, "hardboiled dicks" are uniquely privileged catalysts who travel without obstruction between the social classes, moving up and down the social ladder according to the dictates of each case. Though, as we have seen, Vidocq invented the profession of private detective, there has never been much space for such an individual

in the

French fictional

firmament,

and still

less in the

Italian. In "L'americano, pistolero disincantato II mio Ambrosio colto, con la cervicale", an article published recently in the cultural pages of the Milanese daily // Corriere della Sera,

Renato Oliveri—creator of

Commissario Ambrosio, the closest thing Italy has to a successful author of /' gialli— contrasted the characteristics of his flagship hero to those of Raymond Chandler's most famous creation. At first glance, the Milanese municipal employee would seem to suffer invidiously from the comparison. Thus, we learn that "Marlowe perche

non siano

beve regolarmente

dolci, e caffe nero senza

zucchero.

liquori,

In questo,

sul

caffe, Ambrosio gli somiglia." ("L'Americano, pistolero disincantato. II mio Ambrosio colto, con la cervicale" 26.) On the level of ballistics, "Marlowe

usa pistole

automatiche

Colt di vari calibri.

Si ricorda

particolare

una Smith & Wesson speciale cal. 38, probabilmente

in

con una

1 33 canna

di quattro pollici.

d'ordinanza,

e non

Ambrosio

e un

buon

ha invece tiratore"

una

Beretta

("L'Americano,

disincantato" 26). On the field of sex, "L'atteggiamento verso

le donne

e considerato

dal suo

calibro

ideatore

pistolero

di

'normale',

Marlowe da

vigoroso e sano. Non e sposato, tutti Io sanno. Invece Ambrosio lasciato da sua moglie Francesca e ha da anni un rapporto con

Emanuela,

infiermiera

al

Policlinico

di Milano"

9

uomo e stato

soddisfacente

("L'Americano,

pistolero disincantato" 26). Both men suffer from melancholia, but Ambrosio's is said to stem from his physical separation from his girlfriend. The Italian's loneliness, in other words, is both explicable and curable. He is not happy with his slightly isolated position in a very social society. The very sanity of his surroundings precludes the elevation of individual alienation to the level of heroic status that is the measure and reward of America's hardboiled heroes. Although the most famous practitioners of their craft, Chandler and Hammett did not single-handedly define the sub-genre in which they worked. Indeed, from a contemporary perspective it seems most unlikely that hardboiled fiction would have developed in the way that it did if not for the hugely influential "failure" of an unsuccessful "art" novel. With the exception of some of his posthumously published works, To Have and Have Not is unquestionably the most critically despised of Ernest Hemingway's novels (even Across the River and Into the Trees enjoys a better press). First published in 1937 out of the author's need for

money, the

book

seems rushed, disjointed,

and

abominably

constructed. From the perspective of hardboiled fiction, on the other hand, it is a formative masterpiece on the level of The Maltese (1930), The Big Sleep (1939) and The Postman

Always

Rings

Falcon Twice

134 (1935). Its central figure, Harry Morgan, although imbued with the fatalistic stoicism common to all Hemingway heroes, is also ruthless, paranoid, bitter, a murderer,

untrustworthy

to

his friends, and a

cripple. He mutters contemptuous comments out of the corner of his mouth like one of Humphrey Bogart's big screen heroes (it was not for nothing that the cinematic interpreter of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe was chosen to play a far-less-dirty Harry in Howard Hawks's 1944 screen version of To Have and Have Not). He is also very much a man of the "Dirty Thirties". After losing everything in the Depression to a string of "bad luck", boat captain Harry Morgan explains things to a prospective crew mate:

'"...What they're trying to do is starve you Conchs out of here so they can burn down the shacks and put up apartments and make this a tourist town... I hear they're buying up lots, and then after the poor people are starved out and gone somewhere else to starve some more they're going to come in and make it a beauty spot for tourists.' '"You talk like a radical,' I said. '"I ain't no radical,' he said. 'I'm sore. I been sore a long time'" (Hemingway 97).

To Have and Have Not describes scenes of violence with the coldblooded objectivity that would later be perfected by Jim Thompson an— on a more debased level—by Mickey Spillane: "He was trying to come up, still holding onto the Luger, only he couldn't get his head up, when the nigger took the shotgun against the wheel of the car by the chauffeur and blew the side of his head off. Some nigger" (Hemingway 7 - 8).

1 35 Riddled with prejudice and free with racial epithets—"Cubans are bad luck for Conchs. Cubans are bad luck for anybody. They got too many niggers there too"—Harry Morgan is nonetheless willing to give credit where credit is due (Hemingway 258). People constantly surprise him, for better or worse. If he stereotypes co-workers on the basis of skin colour, he fully expects them to return the favour when it comes to him. He is also almost clinically paranoid. He breaks the neck of an illegal Chinese labour importer whom he thought "was the easiest man to do business with I ever met" primarily because he also "thought there must be something wrong all the time" (Hemingway 55). Harry's former friend Eddy, now a pathetic "rummy" and hanger-on,

escapes a

similar fate by sheer dumb luck. In 260 pages, Harry manages to lose everything: his boat, his arm, his life. His philosophy can be summed up by the bitter words, '"No matter how a man alone ain't got no bloody fucking chance'" (Hemingway 225). Harry Morgan set the mold years before "dans le film noir, apparu dans les annees 1940...Ton rencontre la prefiguration du personnage contemporain de loser ' (Garbarz 95). 1

Although obviously written primarily for profit, To Have and Have Not is not without its modernist literary techniques. Narrators, some of whom are only peripheral to the plot, change from chapter to chapter. An "unnnatural act" involving Harry's "flipper" reminds one strongly of Popeye's "corncob rape" in Sanctuary,

the William Faulkner

novel that appeared around the same time and for much the same reasons. Marie, Harry's ex-hooker wife, rhapsodizes about her husband's unique manliness in a couple of medium-length monologues that are essentially pocket-sized distillations of Molly Bloom's soliloquy. For

136 all its coarseness, the major thematic strains and motifs of "lost generation" literature are very much present in To Have and Have Not. The fourth major founder of hardboiled literature was James M. Cain. Typically, when The Postman Always Rings Twice first appeared in 1935, it was appreciated more by the French and Italians than it was by the Americans. Pierre Chenal adapted the book for the screen in 1939, while Luchino Visconti used it as the source of Ossessione,

his

first feature, in 1942, four years before Tay Garnett directed the first American version. Albert Camus claimed to have used The Postman as a blueprint for his existentialist masterpiece, L'Etranger

(1942).

Elio

Vittorini, meanwhile, was particularly impressed by the book's utter lack of introspection: "Cain non da che facce e fatti da vedere, e non permette di vedere o intravedere altro. I fatti interiori da impliciti negli esteriori..." (Diario

in

pubblico 93). For the first time, Cain

shifted the reader's locus of interest not to compromised heroes, but to villains tout court. Although convention still required them to somehow pay for their sordid deeds, Cain's novels managed to turn their readers into conceptual accessories after the fact. The antisocial fun of Fantdmas could now be made explicit in a more quotidian fashion. This "breakthrough" would shortly be exploited by Jim Thompson, David Goodis,

Cornell Woolrich, and the other

inheritors

of

the

Hammett-Chandler-Hemingway-Cain tradition. As we shall see shortly, it was these "adepts" rather than their more famous "gurus" who would capture the imagination of French filmmakers in the postwar world. To understand how this could have occurred, one must first return to the France of the 1930s.

137 As in the United States, the policier was a film genre that was well adapted to the new and still unperfected technology

of

the

"talkie". Jean Renoir enjoyed his first commercial success with

La

Chienne (1931), a black comedy about an unequal romantic triangle that leads to murder and the execution of a pimp who is guilty of everything except the crime for which he is guillotined. A year later, Renoir made La Nuit du carrefour, the first of dozens of movies to feature

the

intuitive detective

methods

of

France's most

popular

detective, Inspector Maigret. Even though this project was seemingly damaged by the persona! problems the director was experiencing at that time—"Selon [Georges Simenon], Renoir qui etait en train de se separer de sa femme...etait deprime. II buvait plus que de raison. C'est ainsi qu'un jour completement ivre, il a oublie de tourner un certain nombre de sequences"—the end result was still impressive enough for Jean-Luc Godard to declare it "le plus grand film policier dis je,

le plus grand film frangais

d'aventure."

frangais,

(Assouline 241

que

- 242;

Pai'ni 54). Renoir made a number of other crime movies during the 1930s, but their sociological emphases can more profitably be discussed in the paragraphs devoted to Neorealism. The parameters of the French crime film were further expanded in 1937 with the release of Julien Duvivier's nostalgic chef-d'oeuvre, Pepe le Moko. Although the film is said to have been "inspired by the non-romantic

Scarface"

(Peary 320), Duvivier's tale of the last days of

a doomed Parisian gangster in exile is a high- water mark in the history of screen romanticism. Jean Gabin, the greatest French actor of 1930s vintage French cinema, plays Pepe like a poete maudit with

1 38 strong fashion sense. Secure in his refuge in the Casbah, this European criminal faces immediate capture or summary execution the moment he sets foot in the more respectable quarters of Algiers. His sense of nostalgia is heightened when he becomes fond of the Parisian-born mistress (Mireille Balin) of an older, wealthy tourist (Charles Granval). Pepe's best friend/arch-enemy Inspector Slimane (Lucas Gridoux), an Arab officer in an otherwise all-white police department,

welcomes

this development since it increases the chances of Pepe falling into his devious clutches. While bewitched by infatuation—as much by memories of his own past as by the new woman in his life—the Casbah-trapped gangster

behaves shoddily

towards

his

greatest

underworld

ally

(Gabriel Gabrio) and loyal gypsy mistress (Line Noro). His legendary reputation and de facto invulnerability seem less and less important when set beside the passage of irrecoverable time. Pepe le Moko is distinguished by many background shots of the real Algiers and its equally real Casbah. Duvivier's camera zeroes in on the town's diverse inhabitants—his emphasis on racial mixing verges on visceral disgust vis-a-vis miscegenation—and records the names of some of its stranger byways, such as "La Rue de

I'lmpuissance".

Initially Pepe is so sure of his Casbah refuge, he gallantly shoots invading policemen in the legs in lieu of killing them. Ultimately, the only thing that can kill him is his love for Paris. Duvivier's gangsters are all imbued with the apache-flavoured misogyny that we first found in Jesus-la-Caille.

"Je n'ecoute jamais

aux femmes," is a typical put-down. Inter-male loyalty is of paramount importance, while Slimane's interest in his French nemesis is at least latently homosexual, a fact underscored by Pepe's "butch" teasing of

139 the policeman whenever he's in this rather effete Arab's presence. Pepe and Gaby's talk about Paris foreshadows the Bogart/Bacall doubles entendres in The Big Sleep (1946). While not as common as in many French crime films, underworld slang is still judiciously used. As one older reprobate explains, "Je n'ai jamais employe les mots d'argots sauf aux gens pour qui la langue francaise est morte." Duvivier's

innovations

would

be carried still

further

by

the

greatest screenwriter/director team of the late 1930s, Marcel Carne and Jacques Prevert. Today best known for Les Enfants du paradis (1945), a large-scale historical romance which was recently voted the best French sound picture of all time by a panel of practicing French film critics, Carne and Prevert jointly created the most acclaimed examples of poetic realism in 1938 and 1939. Like Pepe le Moko, both Le Quai des brumes (1938) and Le Jour se

leve (1939) starred Jean Gabin in the leading role. Although extremely charismatic, in all three films Gabin's fictional personae stem from humble origins. In each feature he kills at least one person, and in all of them he dies. As Jacques Prevert wrote in his bittersweet "Poeme de Jacques Prevert a Jean Gabin", "On ne meurt qu'une fois/dit un diton/on meurt souvent,/on meurt tout le temps,/repond Jean Gabin sur I'ecran...." (Jean Gabin 258). Marcel Came enjoys the unenviable distinction of being the only major filmmaker in the world who is suspected of being creatively inferior to his favourite scenarist. More equitably, Edward Barton Turk argues that the success of their joint efforts was the result of a "clash of two strong creative forces, from the interaction

of

two

incompatible visions" (Turk 45). One thing the two men did have in

140

common was an understanding of poverty: both were mainly

self-

educated, having emerged from humble circumstances. Although a strong fatalistic

streak

ran through

Prevert's scenarios, this

first-

generation Surrealist's public persona was very different. A populist poet, chain-smoking bon vivant, and flaneur with a gift for maintaining prolonged heterosexual relationships as well as countless easy-going friendships, Jacques Prevert seemed in many ways to be the exact opposite

of the withdrawn,

crabbed, homosexual Carne.

Prevert's

infectious sensuality, it was said again and again, was relentlessly leached out of the frame by Carne's dour mise-en-scene.

This could

perhaps be explained by "the premature death of [Carne's]

mother

[which] influenced [his] dark conception of love and women" (Turk 11). On the other hand, these unlikely collaborators loved "les memes comediens. lis ont la meme sensibilite, le meme amour du peniches dans la brume, de la pluie sur les paves de ce Paris ou ils ont connu les meme annees difficiles" (Andry 96). What's more, if Prevert was the one with the "ear" (for marvellously evocative dialogue), Carne was the one with the eye (for splendidly visual effects). Like so many French directors, Came was a retired film critic whose most famous article was "Comment descend le cinema francais dans la rue?", a brief on behalf of realistic urban set design and location shooting. He was a great admirer of German cinema in general, and of F.W. Murnau's work in particular. At the risk of over-simplifying the procedure, one might say that he cut

Prevert's breezy Surrealism with some

much-needed

Expressionist rigour, finding the proper balance between romance and tragedy, poetry and grit, in stories that could all too easily have grown lopsided in the cinematic telling. Without this input, it seems most

141 unlikely that the ingredients needed for realisme

poetique

would ever

have properly gelled. Poetic realism is said to create "a fantastic, stylized world in which myth and reality merge in one...." (Garbicz and Klinowski 288). Although usually regarded as the quintessential^ French film style, it was not immune to foreign influences, American as well as German. "Pictorially," one American critic claims, "Le Quai des Brumes shows the influence of Josef von Sternberg's silent film The Docks

of New

York (1928)" (Turk 104). In recent years, French film scholars have become increasingly intrigued by the sway exercised by Edward Hopper's realistic urban paintings on American popular culture in general, and on hardboiled Hollywood cinema in particular. In "Cinema, cinema: Regard sur Edward Hopper", Jean-Pierre Naugrette observed that, "A regarder de pres les tableaux d'Edward Hopper (1882 - 1967), on a tres vite I'impression que les liens entre peinture, litterature et cinema sont si etroitement,

si finement tisses qu'il est pratiquement

impossible de

dire qui a commence le premier, qui a influence qui, ou est la cause, ou est I'effet" (Naugrette

55). As an example of this confused line of

descent, Naugrette noted, "On sait par example que Hopper admirait beaucoup Hemingway... Hemingway a inspire Hopper, qui a inspire les cineastes...." (Naugrette 55). From the perspective of 1997, one could probably say much the same about Robert Brassai's snapshots of nocturnal Paris in regard to French popular culture.

Although nowhere near as well known in the

1930s as his American comrade-in-arts, the Hungarian-born Brassai's richly

evocative, intensely

"narrative"

black and white portraits of

142 prostitutes and pimps, night clubs and bordellos, abandoned streets and dark canals, were soon absorbed by the commercial French film industry, and brought to the peak of formal perfection by the cinema of Carne and Prevert. The fictional world of Pierre Mac Orlan and Francis Carco had finally been turned into cinematic flesh. Le

Quai

des

brumes

was not

the

first

crime

film

the

Prevert/Carne team turned its hand to, but this moody thriller was fated to be the most influential. More than 20 years after that landmark was released, Pierre Leprohon would observe that even the film version of Pasolini's Una vita violenta would seek "le decor sordide de la zone peripherique, le 'miserabilisme' deviation faussee du neo-realisme, le sens du social eher au film italien, deviennent alors le

pretexte

d'affabulations

souvent

purement

romantiques

toutes

proches—et

poesie en moins—du romantisme prevertien de Quai des brumes et des Portes de la nuif (Leprohon 200).

Pierre Mac Orlan's original novel was largely set in the years immediately preceding the First World War, being capped by a brief post-war epilogue. A group of disparate individuals seek refuge in Montmartre's famous "Lapin Agile" on a cold winter night, and gunfire is briefly exchanged with a gang of shadowy underworld types who want to kill one of the inn's besieged habitues. With the coming

of the

dawn, these chance acquaintances drift off to their various fates—most of them tragic. The mood of the novel is expressed by the following aphorism: "...le cafard n'a pas de patrie, il ne connait qu'une direction: Le Sud" (Mac Orlan 51). In 1960 Frangois Truffaut would, at the end of his second feature, Tirez sur le pianiste, choreograph a snowy death similar to the one suffered by Jean Rabe on page 142 of Mac Orlan's

143 text. Edward Barton Turk described the author as "France's Liam O'Flaherty", and believed that Mac Orlan's "two major themes—escape and destiny—[were] a response to the gruesome forces unleashed by World War I" (Turk 97 - 98). In the case of Came and Prevert, Gilles Deleuze's assertion that "[l]a ligne de fuite est une

deterritorialization

[et les] Francais ne savent bien ce que c'est" most definitely does not apply (Dialogues 47). For the Prevertian hero, as embodied by Jean Gabin in Carne's films as well as Pepe

le Moko, life was always

elsewhere. Nevertheless, despite

the

trench-flavoured

nostalgia

of

Mac

Orlan's prose, the film version of Le Quai enjoyed only a passing connection to its source novel. As Carne recalled in his autobiography: L'action du Quai des Brumes se passait a Montmartre du siecle, plus particulierement au Lapin Agile. Comment reconstituer le vieux Montmartre, celui de la rue des Saules et du cimetiere Saint-Vincent, a Neubelsberg, ou le film devait etre tourne? (La Vie a belles 93).

Originally conceived as a Franco-German co-production, the film was eventually moved to the port city of Brest. Iconic movie star Jean Gabin played Jean, the military deserter who, as we have already seen, was required to refrain from specifying the precise nature

of his

contravention of military justice, and to stack his uniform neatly on a chair prior to assuming civilian garb. Prevert's biographer Marc Andry described Le Quai as "le film cle d'une epoque inquiete. Les brumes. La pluie. Un amour impossible. L'etrangete d'un implacable destin dans un enfer pave d'intonations

surrealistes" (Andry

118). Co-star Michele

Morgan helped to establish the norms of noirish fashion five years

1 44 before

the

stars of

Casablanca

slipped

into

matching

white

trenchcoats. She was helped in this endeavour by Coco Chanel, the famed fashion designer who insouciantly insisted that "Un film comme celui-la n'a pas besoin de robe: un impermeable, un beret, voila tout" (Andry 118). Cinematographer Eugen Schufftan was happily able to fuse Carne's

Expressionist taste

with Prevert's Surrealist sensibilities.

Although Le QuaFs plot is very similar to that of Pepe le Moko, it is the latter film which stands as the signature example of poetic realism. Ironically,

Le

Quai

des

brumes' romantic

fatalism

would

eventually be condemned as a contributing factor to the 1940 collapse of French battlefield morale. To both Vichy and maquisard judges, the film's "defeatist" dialogue and unsavoury characters were more than a little suspect. Even when the film first came out, Jean Renoir—then at the

height

condemned

of

his alignment

with the

French Communist

Party—

Le Quai as "fascist," avoiding a bloody nose from the

outraged Jacques Prevert only by lamely explaining, "—Jacques, tu me connais!... Jamais je ne dirai qu'un film auquel tu as travaille est un film fasciste... Non, j'ai voulu dire que certains personnages appelaient la trique fasciste...." (La Vie a belles dents 110). When first introduced onscreen, Jean Gabin is shown clambering into the cab of a truck while hitchhiking in the fog; this opening would re-appear Ossessione.

four

years

later

in

Luchino

Visconti's

first

feature,

Its look also reminds the late 20th century cinephile of

Raoul Walsh's monochromatic nocturnes in the 1940 melodrama, They Drive by Night, just as Walsh's film in turn makes one think of Edward Hopper. When Gabin is gunned down from a moving car at the end of Le Quai, the origins of this scene clearly belong to Scarface,

Little

Caesar,

145 and the other early gangster epics, but the shadowy decor and full shot mise-en-scene

flash forward to Casablanca,

To Have and Have Not, and

other mid-'40s //7ms noirs. "The French film noir," Raymond Durgnat reminds us, "precedes the American genre. French specialists include Feuillade, Duvivier, Carne, Cloizot, Yves Allegret...." (Palmer 84) In Hollywood, he whimsically points out, Pepe le Moko became not only "Algiers

("Come with me to the Casbah") [but] also Pepe-le Pew [the

amorous French skunk featured in numerous Warner Brothers cartoons]." (Palmer 84) Algiers was not the only Hollywood re-make of a French policier,

either. In Fritz Lang's Hays Code-hobbled hands, Renoir's La

Chienne

was re-cast as Scarlet Street (1945). Hollywood's need to re-

make French films in American garb was established long before the end of the Second World War. Even so, the discovery of American

film noir had a

profound

effect on the French film industry. In Michel Ciment's words, "Si la figure du gangster domine les annees trente, I'avenement du detective prive caracterize le debut de la decennie suivante" (Le crime a I'ecran 53). Although John Huston's 1941 version was technically the third cinematic adaptation of Dashiell Hammett'sThe Maltese

Falcon,

this

seminal work did not make a smooth, sequential transition to the French screen, despite its subsequent status as "le paragon

d'un

nouveau genre, le 'film noir"'(Le crime a I'ecran 53). Thanks to the cultural blockade imposed on France by the triumph of German arms, Hollywood movies were not screened in either Vichy or the Occupied Zone between 1940 and 1944, and very few were seen in 1945. Thus, between mid-July and August of 1946, The Maltese

Falcon,

Double

Indemnity (1944), Laura (1944), Farewell, My Lovely (1944) and several

146 less important

noirish works were projected for the first time onto

Parisian screens. Despite the artistic quality and commercial success of wartime polars—some

of which made Positifs

previously mentioned

"Top Forty List"—these American imports had a huge effect on French intellectual

life.

Italy was equally impressed by these tough new works, although from a somewhat different

perspective.

Giuseppe De Santis, for

instance, an Italian film critic who would later carve out a respectable career for himself in his homeland's postwar film industry, believed that "II realismo del cinema americano assunse le tinte nette e crude che quella societa agitata, sconvolta e ancora in crisi di crescenza suggeriva:

inoltre

erano

gli

anni

solenni

e

tragici

della

crisi

mondiale...." (De Santis 47). For most Italian observers, Hollywood's depiction of onscreen violence had more to do with bleak social conditions than it did with changing popular aesthetics and/or morbid metaphysics. During the floodtide of Neorealism, things could hardly have appeared otherwise. Up until 1945, the crime genre belonged primarily to the English, the Americans, and the

French, with strong stylistic

contributions

being provided by the Germans and, in a far more indirect way, the Russians.

Since

three

of

these

nationalities

do

not

thematically

concern us, we have been restricted thus far to talking about French and American generic contributions. From here on out, however, our theoretical diptych becomes a triptych. Italian cinema—although not Italian literature—will

become a major part of our cross-referential

evolutionary pattern. The reason why can be expressed in one word: Neorealism (the gritty inheritor of poetic realism, the movement which

147 fizzled in 1946 following the disastrous public and critical reception of Came and Prevert's Les Portes de la nuit). For most of Western Europe, film noir and

Neorealism

were

synchronous phenomena. In the cinema of Milan and Marseilles, one could scan Paisa

(1946) and The Maltese Falcon on the same afternoon.

Despite the vast stylistic and ideological differences between these two forms, for a variety of reasons they appeared to be complementary. If not for the sociological input of the Second World War, they would never have symbiotically evolved in the way that they did. Of course, behind Neorealism and film noir lay several other movements, such as poetic realism—which was itself

indebted

to

German Expressionism and the Russian novel. Both before and after the war,

aspiring

filmmakers.

Italian

worked

with

prominent

French

Michelangelo Antonioni, for instance, was "imposed" as an

assistant director Visiteurs

directors

on Marcel Came, who was then shooting

Les

du soir (1942), an experience which the coercive cultural

climate of the Axis occupation doomed neither man to enjoy. Luchino Visconti's experience with French cinema, on the other hand, was both more extensive and purely voluntary: "Visconti prende conoscenza dei film di Vigo, che lasceranno in lui qualche traccia, ed 'aiuta' Renoir per Les basfonds

[sic], Une partie de campagne, Tosca.

questa scelta vediamo in Ossessione,

Le consequenze di

dove non e difficile

anche un passaggio visto con I'occhio del regista della Bete

ritrovare humaine"

(Verdone 75). Many

Italian

filmmakers

considered

poetic

realism

to

be

Neorealism's direct progenitor. It should be emphasized, however, that their conception of poetic realism owed very little to the films of

148 Carne and Prevert, despite that filmmaking team's penchant for the proletariat

and impeccable working

intellectuals

class

credentials.

For

Italian

Toni, the 1934 feature about poor immigrant workers in

Marseilles that Renoir made at Marcel Pagnol's Mediterranean film studio, was the key proto-Neorealist work, not Le Quai des brumes. According to

Peter Bondanella, the

very

"term

'neorealism'

was...first applied not to postwar Italian cinema but, instead, to the French films of the thirties in an article written by Umberto Barbaro in 1943," a full year after the release of Ossessione,

the film which most

critics now regard as the first true brick in the Neorealist edifice (Bondanella 24). Although Italy had been under Fascist control since 1922, very few either

Italian

cineastes were

II Duce or his party. Within the

ideologically committed ultra-modern

to

confines of

Cinecitta and the Centro Sperimentale, they made inconsequential movies of the "white telephone" variety while writing

enthusiastic

articles about foreign motion pictures in the pages of Cinema Bianco

and

e Nero, dreaming all the while of better times at home.

Occasionally, they were required to make patriotic propaganda movies, but even these commissioned efforts were notably light on nationalist fervor. What's more, Roberto Rossellini—the only major postwar Italian filmmaker to have worked regularly on jingoistic morale builders—was first off the mark with Roma,

citta aperta (1945), the flag-bearer of

Neorealism to the world and the first openly anti-fascist Italian film. Ironically, when the critics of Cahiers du cinema and other French film

journals

took

the

rough-and-ready

aesthetics of Rossellini's

ecumenical Resistance movie to heart, they didn't realize that many of his decisions were based on necessity and not artistic choice. Because

149 all the studios in Rome had been damaged by Allied bombers, the Italian director was obliged to take his camera into the streets. A shortage of funds resulted in the employment of many non-actors, and the "raw" quality of the lighting in Roma, citta aperta was the result not only of shooting outdoors with insufficient artificial illumination, but also of the different

grades of black and white film stock which Rossellini

was forced to purchase on the black market. Even the "elliptical editing", which so much impressed the young Jean-Luc Godard and Francois

Truffaut,

was

more

the

result

of

want

than

narrative

innovation. In Open City and Paisa, the

the "enemy" was openly identified with

Nazi troops who had occupied Italy since the fall of 1943.

Nevertheless,

Manichean-style dualism

was

exceedingly

rare

in

Neorealism. The movement's main thrust began with Vittorio De Sica's / Bambini ci guardano (1943) and peaked with the director's 1948 masterpiece, Ladri di biciclette, both works being scripted by Cesare Zavattini, Neorealism's most influential ideologue. In Strapparole,

the

indomitable screenwriter/theorist wrote, "Ogni cinema che mira a un rapporto

stretto

neorealismo,

con

partecipa

i gravi

problemi

a questo

dell'

movimento

uomo coi

moderno, modi

del

propri.

II

neorealismo e ormai la coscienza del cinema" (Zavattini 474). Because of its emphasis on the problems of ordinary people—of the poor and underprivileged wing.

At

times,

classes—Neorealism's politics were this

sensibility

invariably

transcended personal

left-

ideological

conditioning. Roberto Rossellini, for instance, came from a wealthy bourgeois family, made films on demand for the ruling fascists, and was subsequently a vocal apologist for the Christian Democratic party.

150 While these biographical details did earn the director a number of critical brickbats in his native Italy, no one—not even Guido Aristarco, the doyen of PCI film critics—could deny his claim to being the true father of Neorealism. Although aforementioned

many Bicycle

(1946) and Germania policiers.

neorealist Thieves,

films

dealt

with

crime—the

for instance, as well as

Sciuscia

Anno Zero (1947)—few if any could be called

It is perhaps not entirely accidental that Anglo-American

distributors habitually mistranslate the words Ladri di biciclette. The whole point of the film may be culled from its title, since Zavattini ahd De Sica are adamant in their insistence that poverty can make bicycle thieves

out any of us; contextually, the romantic individualism of

bicycle thief just won't wash. If America, France and England are the crime fiction capitals of the world, this is at least in part because of the relative stability of these three countries. For Englishmen, Frenchmen and Americans, the state enjoys a solidity and a legitimacy that is alien to younger, more fragile polities. While Italy, as a recognizable national entity,

has

existed longer than any other European state with the exception of Greece, as a modern country its existence is much less assured. As of this writing, the Risorgimento is only 127 years old. In 1870, citizens of the new Italy had to make sense out of a state that had once been known as the Roman Empire prior to fragmenting into an archipelago of wealthy city-states which were constantly being occupied and attacked by Turks, Austrians, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Normans, Moors and anyone else with a strong national image and sense of national purpose. While Tuscan was the

official

language of this strangely

artificial

new

151 country, most people spoke dialects that were as different from the recognized tongue as Catalan is from Spanish. Northern, central and southern regions were more different from each other than Norway is from Denmark. Attempts to strengthen the sense of national purpose by means of colonial adventures usually ended in disaster, whether on the plains of Adowa (1896) or in the desert sands of El Alamein (1942). Above all, there was the problem of Sicily. After 99.5% of Sicilian voters cast their lot in favour of union with Italy in 1860, the government in Rome proceeded to treat the most occupied and invaded of all Italian provinces like a sort of colony. The Mafia, once a secret society of 13th century

Sicilian knights whose

anti-Norman

battlecry, "Morte Ai Francesi,

Italia Anela," allegedly provided the

acronym for this most famous of all illegal organizations, began to evolve into its present form as the result of a "series of exploitative administrations strangers

[which]

helped

to

create

general

among Sicilians" (Schneider and Zarate

increasingly in the hands of gabelotti, "gombeen

a

men", cynical agents

mistrust

of

10). Land was

the Sicilian version of Ireland's

who

made

profits

for

absentee

landlords at the expense of the peasantry. Mafiosi, therefore, however brutal and self-interested they might appear to outside eyes, could sometimes assume the shape of a viable alternative to the status quo. Mafia elements, then known to yellow journalists as "the Black Hand", began emigrating to the United States in the last decades of the nineteenth-century. After New Orleans Police Chief Dave Hennessy was assassinated by Mafia gunmen in 1890—because he believed his brother to have been murdered by Black Handers in Houston, this Southern policeman was presumed by his pre-emptive killers to be thirsting for

152 revenge—an outraged mob lynched eleven suspects of Italian origin while they languished in jail, awaiting trial. This ferocious example of American vigilante justice convinced period

Mafiosi that they

would

be well-advised

to

confine

their

criminal activities to their own neighbourhoods. Thus, "Italo-American gangs remained secondary to Irish—and later Polish and Jewish—gangs in the first two decades of the [20th] century" (Schneider and Zarate 73). It was the

1920s and the implementation

of Prohibition that

provided Italian gangsters with their "edge". By the early 1930s, the Irish, Jewish and Polish mobs of America had been decisively defeated in a long series of vicious, long-term turf wars. "Bugs" Moran, Dion O'Bannion, Dutch Schultz, "Mad Dog" Vincent Coll, and most of the other headline-grabbing mobsters of the Prohibition era were either killed or put out of business. The few that remained (Bugsy Siegel; Meyer Lansky) made common cause with the new streamlined syndicate perfected by Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, and Vito Genovese during the decade preceding the Second World War. When they died, they were generally not replaced (Nash 538). From the 1880s onward, the Mafia was at least a bi-national corporation.

In

1908, Joseph Petrosino of

the

New York

Police

Department was sent to Sicily to explore U.S./ltalian underworld links, and was subsequently assassinated in the streets of Palermo for his pains (Nash 57 - 59). Only in the 1920s and '30s did the criminal organization suffer real discomfort at the hands of Mussolini's security forces (Schneider and Zarate 58 - 61).

153 Nevertheless, even the Fascist secret police were unable to eliminate

this

problem

entirely.

Today, rumours

persist that

the

American Army was given a much easier time than the British during the

1943 Allied invasion of Sicily thanks to a "sweetheart

deal"

worked out between the State Department and exiled Cosa Nostra kingpin, Lucky Luciano. After the war, the devastation wrought on Palermo provided an excuse to put money in Mafia pockets. "Of the 4025 construction licenses granted between 1957 and 1963, 80% had been issued to only five persons." (Schneider and Zarate 92). Padded construction bills provided the funds required to take the

lucrative

North American heroin trade out of the hands of France's Union Corse. Tax fraud was near universal, since "Four Mafia families [controlled] the 334 tax offices in Sicily leased to them by the state" (Schneider and Zarate 103). Because Sicily is an autonomous region within Italy's body politic, local banks are not accountable to the country's central bank—an ideal circumstance for money-laundering (although

Italy's

tough-new anti-mafia laws will hopefully close this loophole in the near future). For all these reasons, the Sicilian Mafia, as Arnd Schneider and Oscar Zarate convincingly argue in Mafia for Beginners, has always been stronger and more powerful than its better-known

U.S. counterpart.

What's more, the Sicilian Cosa Nostra is outnumbered by the Neapolitan Camorra and the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta (Usher 22). Collectively, the united Southern crime syndicate is truly a force to be reckoned with, especially since, until very recently, it was supported to the hilt by Italy's

long-serving

Christian

Democratic

Party

and

their

State

1 54 Department/CIA allies. It is now generally acknowledged that post-war Italy was kept under "A one-party system [which] had ruled for nearly 40 years by large-scale political and corporate racketeering, with the shady connivance of American and Italian secret agencies, and by a coalition with the Mafia" (Schneider and Zarate 119). Only in very recent years have these once unbreakable cabals begun to unravel. If I have tried to explore Italy's criminal history at some length, it is only because understanding the country's cultural reaction to crime is incomprehensible without it. Criminal counter-governments have been a part of local life since the Medieval/Renaissance days of the condottiere

and briganti.

In many ways, they were seen to be both

more indigenous and more stable than the various unrepresentative regimes that came and went with dismaying regularity. In / Promessi century

Italian

sposi, the greatest and most influential of 19th

novels,

we

do

not

encounter

any

Vautrins

or

Raskolnikovs. Indeed, armed villains are described in a manner that borders on melodrama: "Avevano entrambi intorno al capo una reticella verde, che cadeva sulP omero sinistro, terminata in una gran nappa e dalla quale usciva sulla fronte un enorme ciuffo: due lunghe mustacchi arriciati in punta; una cintura lucida di cuoio a quella attacate due pistole..." and so on and so on, for another 50 hair-raising words (Manzoni

10).

The author's

stock villains are as colourful

and

impersonal as a flamboyant natural disaster. Manzoni's real interest lies with Renzo and Lucia—the young lovers harassed and pursued by the godless Don Rodrigo—the heroic priest Padre Cristoforo, and the legendary bandit prince, I'lnnominato, who "turned from his wicked

155 ways and lived." When Renzo runs afoul of the law he is no more volitionally responsible than he was when he contracted the plague. Even in a work as conservative as this, the Protestant/Jansenist notion of prideful sin—the basis of so much detective fiction—is

notably

absent, just as the polarities between "normalcy," as embodied by society and the state, and "deviance", as made manifest by rebellion and crime, are singularly weak. As Cesare Pavese bitterly noted in his private journal, "L'origine di tutte le violenze tra uomo e uomo, e for all that tra uomo e donna, sta in questo che rarissimamente ci si trova d'accordo sul valore di un fatto, di un pensiero, di uno stato d'animo eio che per uno e tragedia per I'altro e gioco" (II Mestiere della vita 97). Despite the centrality of Roman Catholicism to its culture, and despite the lingering patriotism, (historically

Italy

memory of the

is a country

well-merited)

parcel

of

where—thanks

lack

ecclesiastical authorities—moral

Roman Empire's power and

of

trust

in

to the

the

population's

temporal

and

relativism has long been part and

popular thought. The artistic,

scientific, and economic

advances of the Renaissance did not result in an equally progressive political system. Frenchmen might regard 1789 as the dawn of the modern age, just as Americans are wont to connect the events of 1776 to the global triumph of democracy, but for Italians the slow progress of the Risorgimento provides no such self-aggrandizing dates. The ability to prove that the world was spherical and revolved around the sun did not result in the unification of even two city states. The end result of relentless foreign occupation was a cynicism that in some ways

resembles the

political

disaffection

of

some of

the

more

beleaguered Central European nations. In such an atmosphere, belief in

156 abstract virtues is hard to come by. Thus, when Italian director Tinto Brass, was asked what he thought about Giustizia,

the

filmmaker's

response was jarringly blunt: B- Non esiste. \-Dovere?

B- Non esiste neppure questo (Pisaro 156) On the other hand, as Cesare Pavese put it, "La politica e I'arte del possibile. Tutta la vita e politica" (Pavese 161). By extension, the problem of crime in general, and of the Mafia in particular, is the ultimate

political

dimensions.

In

problem, Cinema

a

Italian!

headache degli

anni

of

perhaps '70,

insuperable

film historian

Uno

Micciche phrased the Mafia film problematic in the following fashion: "Questa

complessa e dolorosa

materia—su

cui

la Commissione

parlamentare antimafia dovrebbe fare definitivemente luce tra qualche mese e che affligge la Sicilia da decenni—non e certamente 'filmabile'" (Micciche 81). Paradoxically, if the Mafia was "unfilmable," its home ground was all too lens-worthy. In the previous century, "Giovanni Verga non ha solamente creato una grande opera di poesia, ma ha creato un paese, un tempo, una societa...." (De Santis 49). What this meant, essentially, was that Verga had turned Sicily into a sort of picturesque outpost of "Orientalism". Most of those who either wrote about Sicily or set movies in its territory, were Northern tourists

or, at best,

immigrants. Sicilian dialect was very seldom used in these works, but local characteristics and customs were very broadly—some might say sterotypically—reproduced. Thus, Pietro Germi, a filmmaker fated to

157 make

his

reputation

with

satirical

comedies

predicated

on

the

absurdities of Sicilian social customs, felt compelled to explain to a French interviewer how he believed that "mes films, on pourrait les imaginer realises en Amerique ou en Russie ou en Angleterre—a part certains, lies des situations

strictement

locales, comme les

films

siciliens" (Germi 65). Rome, in other words, might be like everywhere else

but

Palermo

was

not.

In

Roy Armes's

words,

"In

many

ways...Sicilian films are best regarded not as works in a pure realistic tradition but as stylized Italian equivalents to the American Western" (Armes 140). Since the Italian "Wild West" had never been entirely pacified, it could not, of course, be treated as a purely mythological phenomenon. Since Sicilian culture was even more venerable than mainland Italian culture, there was also the problem of age. A whiff of impropreity clings to the notion of younger countries colonizing older frontiers.

A specifically

political

approach

was

also

out

question, as Pierre Leprohon acknowledges in Le Cinema

of

the

italien: "La

probleme du banditisme sicilien donnera matiere a de nombreux films qui ne pourront toujours I'aborder avec la franchise necessaire" (Leprohon 129). Even when, in the late 1940s, Italian filmmakers did deal more directly with crime than was customary in the better-known works of Neorealism, the diegetic material never quite gelled into a full-scale policier.

Late '40s films such as Alberto Lattuada's // Bandito a n d

Carlo Lizzani's // Gatto might have been set in underworld milieus, but the connections made between the

prevalence of crime and the

devastation wrought by the Second World War and more than twenty years

of

Fascist misrule

rendered

these

narratives

incapable

of

158 transporting the viewer to the semi-abstract cinematic plane inhabited by Scarface, Maigret and Sam Spade. On the other hand, as Ray Armes points out in Patterns

of Realism,

in the first of the two films, a bleak

picaresque about a returning war veteran whom bad luck steers into a life

of

crime,

"There

are

certain

similarities

with

the

defeatist

atmosphere of prewar French works, like Carne's Quai des brumes, but the Prevert poetry is missing" (Armes 103). Armes, like many foreign and domestic film critics, cites Giuseppe De Santis's Riso

amaro

(1950) as the prime example of compromised Neorealism. "There is," he writes, "an epic sweep and plenty of violent action in Bitter

Rice;

quarrels

in

among

the

girls

in

the

rice

fields,

a seduction

thunderstorm, a gun battle amid rotting carcasses in the plant

and a spectacular suicide" (Armes

a

refrigeration

130). Despite the

film's

serious subject matter, "someone in the course of the production saw the commercial possibilities of a film featuring several hundred nakedthighed young women" (Armes 129). Many of the more "commercial" Neorealist film plots sound suspiciously like opera. Senza instance, a 1948 work

directed

by Alberto

pieta, for

Lattuada, follows

the

doomed romance of Jerry, a black American military deserter who commits suicide after his Italian lover Angela dies as an unfortunate consequence of his criminal activites. In early postwar Italian crime films, Le Quai des brumes often seems to run head-on into

Carmen.

Later in this chapter we will see how operatic motifs would eventually "solve" the problem of filming the "unfilmable" Mafia. They also helped to make poverty seem more palatable, the sordid hotel room of the outlaw

on the

run being far

less discomfiting

to

motion

picture

159 audiences of modest means than the squalid apartments of unemployed bricklayers. Before pursuing this argument, however, we must return to the intellectual milieu of postwar France. As we saw in the last chapter, French feelings towards American culture were now exceedingly mixed. On the one hand, there were positive memories of the Liberation and limitless enthusiasm for new Hollywood movies, experimental and jazz. Contrapuntally, there was much worry about the

fiction

long-term

implications of the Marshall Plan, strong working class loyalty to the victors at Stalingrad, and a violent intellectual reaction against the first stirrings of McCarthyism. Despite his admiration for Hemingway, Faulkner, Dos Passos and Duke Ellington, Jean-Paul Sartre produced Le Putain

respecteuse

in the mid-1940s, a depiction of a Klan-dominated

Deep South that was even grimmer than the "Jim Crow" reality that invoked

it.

Even

Boris

Vian,

the

St.-Germain-des-Pres cultural

barometer who, in Jean Cau's words, "aimait le jazz, l'Amerique...les 'Series noires' de Marcel Duhamel'," (Croquis de memoire 47) achieved his greatest commercial success in these years with J'lrai crachez vos

tombes,

a temporarily

sur

banned novel allegedly written by the

lightskinned American mulatto "Vernon Sullivan". With tongue pressed firmly in cheek, Vian disingenuously professed to be merely

the

translator of this book about a Southern American Black man who can "pass" for white and who exacts a terrible

revenge on two

racist

Southern belles (Croquis de memoire 47). Mixing the styles of Richard Wright's

Black Boy (1939)

and Henry Miller's phallus-driven

erotic

fantasies, Vian said of the fictitious Sullivan and his equally fictive motives "...sa preference pour les Noirs inspirait a [lui] une espece de

160 mepris des 'bons durs'," since he temperamentally sides with "des Noirs aussi 'durs' que les Blancs" (Vian 9). While J'irai cracher sur vos tombe scontinues to be a contentious text on account of its ferocious misogyny, the book is also an eerie foreshadowing of certain Black militant fictions of the 1960s and '70s, notably Melvin Van Peebles's genre-bending "blaxploitation" epic,

Sweet

Sweetback's

Baad

Asss

Song (1971). In France, more even than in the United States, it was realized that "With

its

reputation

for

corruption,

racism, poverty,

backward and primitive sexuality, the South [was] an ideal setting for pulp culture crime fiction" (Haut 149). J'irai cracher sur vos tombes was far more sexually explicit than any American crime movie or novel could then have hoped to be, but the book's dark sexual undercurrents were very much in the American vein. Of course, since Vian's unique take on the hardboiled novel was set in the United States rather than France, it was initially seen as less threatening Salammbo

by

Gallic

censors, just

as

the

erotically

decadent

had once been considered less injurious to public morals

than was the relatively chaste Madame

Bovary, primarily because the

action of the first Flaubert text was situated in ancient Carthage while the events of the second unfolded in contemporary—which is to say, mid-1 nineteenth-century—France. In "Chronique d'une imposture: L'erotic thriller'", Michel Cieutat noted that "les films noirs des annees quarantes et cinquantes, par respect pour les romans de Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler ou James M. Cain dont ils etaient les adaptations...ont ete les premiers des thrillers

a

mettre

en

relief

la force

matrice

du

sexe

dans

le

comportement de leur personnages, etre profondement impregnes de

161 I'etat d'esprit propre autant a I'air de la Depression (epoque ou furent ecrits les romans) qu'a celui qui annoncait puis succedait au second conflit mondial (periode ou furent produits ces films)" (Garbarz 97). During the war years, lone wolf detectives achieved new onscreen status because "Coince entre la police et la truands, le prive est un etre seul qui ne peut compter sur personne" (Le crime a I'ecran 58). Because American soldiers overseas were said to be almost universally anxious that their wives and girlfriends—liberated from the home for the first time, and working in the high-paying defence industry jobs that were once exclusively reserved for men—would betray them at their earliest possible opportunity, the image of the femme

fatale

arose from the miasma of turn-of-the-century coffeehouse chatter and became a dominant figure on American screens. Perhaps for related reasons, the latent homosexuality which Leslie Fiedler believes to be at the heart of 19th century American fiction began to integrate itself in precisely those films that favoured demonic female protagonists. In his biography of the Austrian-born American filmmaker, Kevin Lally writes, "[Billy] Wilder has called Double

Indemnity

a love story, but

he's not talking about the relationship between Walter and Phyllis— rather, it's the bond between Walter and his mentor" (Lally 137). When female "praying mantises" are present, it would seem that their male counterparts can do little but huddle together for comfort—just as they would do in foxholes and trenches when under hostile fire. Once again we are reminded of Lilith, the Talmudic demon/angel who preys on men who are young, lonely, and far from home. When French cinephiles "discovered" film noir in 1946, virtually all of the ingredients that went into it were already well known to

162 them. One can find all of the seven noirish characteristics cited by Paul Schrader in his essay "Notes on Film Noir"—a majority of scenes lit for night; a visual preference for oblique and vertical lines; equal lighting emphasis on actors and settings; a tendency to promote compositional tension at the expense of physical action; "an almost Freudian attachment to water"; a love of romantic narration; a complex chronological order—in Le Quai des brumes and Le Jour se /eve. Even so, these darkly-textured

American films appeared to

reflect

something new. In the 1930s, it should be recalled, Jean Gabin usually came to a sorry end on account of his love for a woman—but his death was almost never the woman's fault. The notion of the femme fatale was therefore alien to Popular Front cinema. When dark forces took human shape, they were most likely to do so in the form of Jules Berry, the actor who played this trick in Jean Renoir's Le Crime de M. Lange in 1936, Le Jour se leve in 1939, and Carne's

governments

might

Les

Visiteurs

du soir in

have been more reluctant

1942.

French

than their American

counterparts to grant political rights to their female constituents, but French society as a whole was far less prone to all-male social gatherings.

Underworld society, conversely, was virtually

all male,

with the exception of background wives, mob molls and

affiliated

whores. Male/male relationships were therefore

in such

paramount

dramas, but the more overtly homosexual formulas devised by Francis Carco in Jesus-la-caille

would obviously be unacceptable to

mid-

century French viewers and censors alike. An American compromise was therefore required.

163 If anything, the French craze for Americans romans noirs w a s even

stronger

than

its

penchant

for

the

filmed

variety.

In

his

introduction to the new, now-famous Gallimard book line known as la "Series noir", Marcel Duhamel warned his readers that "L'amateur d'enigmes a la Sherlock Holmes n'y trouvera pas souvent son compte. L'optimiste systematique non plus." (Le crime a I'ecran 158) Just as, by a weird

stroke

of synchronicity,

Albert Camus

physically resembled Humphrey Bogart, so did the Existentialist novel resemble its hardboiled predecessor. Horace McCoy's and James M. Cain's fictions

have both been claimed as key influences on the

composition of L'Etranger

(1942). These two narrative streams were

more than merely compatible; they actively fed and augmented each each other. "En presque trente ans (1952 - 1981), 61 auteurs ont ete adaptes, et cela 117 fois...." (Bertes 90). Ironically, "Le champion absolu est James Hadley Chase (au moins 15 titres adaptes)...." (Bertes 90). Chase, of course, was an English author whose knowledge of American mores was

limited

to

what

he

had

learned

from

American

movies.

Nevertheless, Lemmy Caution, his most popular creation, would thrice be put to good use by Jean-Luc Godard. As

a rule,

French cineastes—very likely

la "Series noire's"

staunchest fans—preferred to tackle the less illustrious of America's hardboiled talents. According to Catherine Berthe, "Les adaptations de Hammett, Chandler ou Cain avaient donne lieu a des chefs-d'oeuvres difficile

a egaler...."

(Bertes

francaise semble etre tiraillee

91).

Consequently, "La Serie

entre

noire

la parodie et le realisme...."

(Bertes 93). In the case of Cain, an Italian, rather than an American,

1 64 definitively explored what Joyce Carol Oates once described as "a world immense with freedom, women hellish and

infantile...money,

power, the tantalizing promise of adventure" (Tough Guv Writers of the Thirties

110).

Instead, French filmmakers enjoyed their

greatest

successes with William Irish, David Goodis, Charles Williams, Jim Thompson,

and

other

hardboiled

authors

whom

the

American

mainstream more or less forgot. Lionel White and Charles Williams would continue to inspire French filmmakers long after they had ceased to exercise the imaginations of their fellow countrymen. As the subject of the next few paragraphs once said, II est difficile aux Francais de mesurer la solitude dans laquelle vivent aux Etats-Unis les ecrivains qui ont choisi la litterature populaire. Les amateurs francais de Serie noire, sans lire forcement tout ce qui est traduit dans notre langue, parviennent vite a reconnaitre le talent de tel ou tel romancier et a le faire savoir. Le telephone arabe fait le reste, et c'est ainisi que les noms de David Goodis, Dolores Hitchens, William Irish, Dorothy B. Hughes, Henry Farrell, Jim Thompson, Joseph Harrington, Harry Whittington...circulent de bouche a oreille et se font une reputation parmi les specialistes (Le Cinema selon Francois Truffaut (419 -420).

Francois

Truffaut—the

critic-turned-cineaste

whose

visceral

distaste for the gangster genre is reflected by his observation that, in Scarface,

director Howard Hawks "a dirige Paul Muni de maniere a le

faire ressembler a un singe, les bras en demi-cercles, le visage grimacant"—was as sympathetic to noirish losers as he was hostile to criminal social climbers (Les Films de ma vie 96). While the director's 1966 feature, La Mariee etait en noir, might have been a visual homage to the techniques of Alfred Hitchcock, his source material was provided

165 by

William

Irish

(the

pen

name

of

Cornell

Woolrich).

Truffaut

appreciated the fact that, in Irish's dyspeptic universe, "Au lieu d'avoir des gangsters dans un milieu social bien defini, on avait des histoires qui ressemblent a des cauchemars. Irish c'est presque toujours des histoires d'amour empeches, histoires effrayantes, qui reposent sur une idee de fatalite" (Le Sounding like

Cinema selon

Francois Truffaut

183 - 184).

a latterday Baudelaire in the presence of his personal

Poe—in 1969, he would turn a second "Irish" novel into La Sirene de la Missisippi—Truffaut [David]

once described Woolrich as "un poete, tout comme

Goodis," another

American

authors

(Le

of

the

filmmaker's

Cinema selon

favourite

Francois Truffaut

hardboiled 184.) He

appreciated the fact that neither Irish nor the author of Down (1956), the dour novel that would eventually

be transformed

There into

Truffaut's darkly comic second feature, Tirez sur le pianiste, were very specific about

locale. "Parce qu'on voit ces livres-la—les romans

d'lrish, de Goodis, que j'aime beaucoup egalement—comme des contes de fees pour adultes," the director explained.

"Et je les adapte dans le

meme esprit que Cocteau tournant La Belle et la Bete, enfin en jouant un jeu moins ouvertment feerique" (Le Cinema selon Francois Truffaut 185). Truffaut

prided himself on his ability not only to find visual

means of reproducing English language "tough guy" prose, but also to insure that those methods were truly French as well: "Ainsi, quand je devais affronter un 'probleme Irish', j'avais des chances de trouver la 'solution Irish'" (Le Cinema selon Francois Truffaut 244). As a critic in the 1950s, the director had questioned the existence of "unfilmable" scenes, and his crime movies provided him with the perfect opportunity to put his theories to the test.

166 Each of Truffaut's five true polars—because

they're more about

adultery than murder, one should exclude from consideration La douce

and La Femme

Peau

d'a cote —is a re-imagining of an American

hardboiled novel. Une belle fille comme moi was inspired by Henry Farrell's Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me, while Vivement Dimanche

was

hived off a Charles Williams story. Of this quintet of cinematic adaptations, Tirez sur le pianiste is unquestionably the most successful. While book and movie both deal with

a

talented

insensitivity

concert

triggered

the

pianist

who

suicide of

believes

his

momentary

his self-sacrificing wife,

the

moods of these works could not be more different. Eddie Lynn, Goodis's variation, is a wounded veteran of Merrill's Marauders who won medals for killing Japanese soldiers in Burma; Charlie, meanwhile, Francois Truffaut's much milder model, is a French pianist of Armenian descent who reads self-help books in order to overcome his timidity. The American pianist's Philadelphia is a joyless urban backwater; Charlie's Paris, on the other hand, though imbued with melancholy, is a city where complete strangers josh with each other, a place dripping with Prevertian romanticism. To make ends meet, Charlie and Eddie both tickle the

ivories in out-of-the-way

neighbourhood

bars, and

both

parties will unwittingly cause the death of barmaids thanks to their unsavoury family connections. The barmaid whose love pulls Charlie out of his snail's shell of emotional romantic conflation of Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca

temporarily

isolation is a

and a feminized

version of Gavroche, Victor Hugo's immortal street urchin; Eddie's doomed muse is neither romantic nor soft in any way, being the sort of embittered, street-savvy woman who'd stab "roosters where it really

167 hurts" with a hatpin whenever it came time to fend off a pass. (Shoot the

Piano

Hardboiled

Plaver 13) If, as Woody Haut claims in Pulp

Fiction:

Fiction and the Cold War, Goodis's women are either wives

or waifs, in Down There the waif is a wife and the wife is a waif. Still, despite its utter lack of alcoholic self-pity, and despite the presence of Groucho Marxist gangsters, funny songs and a decidely nonNeorealist appropriation of elliptical editing, Tirez sur le pianiste is somehow even sadder than Down There. Although he was only 29 when he directed the film, Truffaut

repeatedly told interviewers that the

movie was really about the onset of middle-age. Truffaut, haunted by memories of his own unhappy childhood, clearly related to Charlie as. a fellow sufferer who was trapped by his own genetic heritage. It seems likely he related most strongly to the fictional passage where Eddie Lynn's violent anger over the suicide of his wife finally sputters out, a rage which will soon be replaced by passive, nostalgic despair: "The wild man was gone, annihilated by two old hulks who didn't know they were still in there pitching, the dull-eyed shrugging mother and the easy-smiling, booze-guzzling father." (Shoot the Piano Plaver 87) Noir's

obsession with the past, unsurprisingly, was one of the

factors that most attracted French writers and directors to it. In the homeland of Proust and Bergson, it could hardly have been otherwise. French intellectuals were equally partial to policiers

that shied away

from simplistic moral judgements. Georges Simenon, for instance, the one francophone crime writer who was as revered by French detective story aficionados as were any of his anglophone peers, would "presente le plus souvent le coupable comme un irresponsable de naissance, une victime

de

la societe" (Assouline 812).

By

means

of

judicious

168 borrowing, popular French cinema and literature was able to fuse the otherwise incompatible myths of Hugo and Zola. Since many American crime novels were also obsessed by the idea of escape,

the formula

could be still further broadened to accomodate the sympatico visions of Pierre Mac Orlan and Jacques Prevert. While he might not be most adapted, Jim Thompson would seem to be the hardboiled American author who is most accessible to nonAmerican directors. Alain Corneau, whose 1979 feature Serie noire was taken from Thompson's very different novel A Hell of a Woman, explained this situation in the following terms: "A part Kubrick ou Stephen Frears, Hollywood continue a ne pas etre tres excite par I'adaptation des livres de Thompson, contrairement

aux Europeens.

D'ailleurs Thompson est beaucoup plus connu en Europe, et en France principalement, a cause de ce phenomene. Avec Thompson, on est un peu comme avec le jazz a une certaine epoque, quand les Americains ne suivent plus ou ont de mal a s'y interesser, alors que les Europeens aiment beaucoup ca et ont une vision differente. Or ce n'est pas du tout parce que Thompson devient europeen, mais parce qu'il fait une analyse spectrale de l'Amerique qui correspond a la maniere dont les Europeens ont tendance a regarder l'Amerique." (Singer 97). In practice, this usually means that the bleaker the vision of an American crime writer, the more likely he or she is to be taken seriously by French artists and critics. In their eyes, to be disparaged, dismissed and ignored at home is to become a sort of pulp fiction Alexander Solzhenitsyn living on the fringes of some problem-plagued U.S. town. For Parisian intellectuals, le roman noir is pre-eminently exiles, both internal

a literature of alienation written by

and external. The lack of

recognition

which

169 hardboiled novelists receive in the United States is seen as further proof of the prophetic authenticity of their literary statements. To be despised is to be Edgar Poe; to be Edgar Poe is to be Charles Baudelaire; to be Charles Baudelaire is to be the father of modern literature. No wonder the French admire them. Like so many hardboiled American writers, Jim Thompson was not "destined" to be a popular artist. Raised in the American Southwest, Thompson's easy-going father won and lost fortunes

at

poker and oil speculation. As a teenager, the future noir novelist and screenwriter worked as a bootlegging bellhop when Prohibition was in full flower, as well as a reporter and wildcat oil rigger. For a time, he was a left wing organizer, and his years in Hollywood were not happy. From earliest youth, he was the observer—and sometimes the victim—of cons and scams. His obsession with physical mutilation—the heroes of at least three of his many novels are literally castrated—was perhaps motivated by memories of his unhappy Uncle Ned, a farmer "who had to submit to the gradual trimming

away of his leg." (Bad

Boy 31)

Thompson got into the bottle early, and was only fully pulled out of it when his body was laid in the grave. As a stylist, Thompson tended to mix the laconic exactitude of Dashiell Hammett with the poetic wisecracks of Raymond Chandler. In The Grifters, for instance, a conman is said to be "so crooked he could eat soup with a corkscrew"—in terms of utter admiration.

Memorable

terms of phrase are ubiquitous in Thompson's novels: "I was sweating like a chippie in church;" "The way she hung over the table you would have thought she was the cloth" (A Hell of a Woman 92; A Hell of a Woman 31.) Of all American crime novelists, Thompson was also the

170 one most smitten by modernism. Like Ernest Hemingway in To Have and Have

Not,

he was wont to change narrators

from

paragraph

to

paragraph, and even when he didn't the dominant voice's reliability was constantly compromised by the unstable flux of the speaker's sanity. In A Hell of a Woman, Frank, the book's first-person narrator, is a self-pitying

"loser" who

periodically

commits

impulsive

murders—

although he will usually pretend that he was doing something else. Every second sentence refers to the bad luck he's faced all his life, or else to

his inability

to escape from

equally bad women: "Three

goddamned tramps in a row...or maybe it was four or five, but it doesn't matter. It was like they were the same person" (A Hell of a Woman 99). Before doing away with a bipedal obstacle, Thompson's anti-hero feels compelled to pre-demonize the soon-to-be-victim: "I think maybe he was a Nazi or maybe a Communist—one of 'em that slipped over here during the war" (A Hell of a Woman 101). Even after

committing

murder, this clinical paranoid feels more like the victim than

the

aggressor: "It had to be true. Something had to be true besides what— what was true."

(A Hell of a Woman 167). Of course, Frank will

eventually get his comeuppance when, at long last, he finally meets a woman who really is as "bad" as he believes her entire sex to be. In

his

1979-vintage

feature

Serie

noire,

Alain

Corneau

transferred Thompson's small town Hell of a setting to the suburbs of Paris. He also, as befits the French crime tradition, made the narrative slightly more Dostoevskyan. In Positifs

oft-cited polar poll, the film

would be deservedly voted the third best French crime movie of all time.

171 Thompson also provided Bertrand Tavernier with a means of exploring some of the darker aspects of the French colonial experience. As we saw in the last chapter, the French intellectuals who were so solicitous of America's exploited Blacks were often strangely blind to the African and Arab street sweepers who eked out a miserable existence closer to home. Coup de torchon (1983) pivoted on the direct transposition of the eponymous Florida hamlet in Thompson's Pop. 1280 to an outpost of French colonial Africa. In Thompson's text, "Un agent de la loi raconte au lecteur ces crimes avec parcimonie, et un sens du non-sens qui inscrit presque dans la litterature de I'absurde;

au cours

de ce voyage, il demolit les valeurs morales comme la familie, I'Etat, la religion, les rapport de dependance, la societe capital" (Montalban 107). Pushing the chronological clock back to 1938, "Tavernier francise le sherif en le transformant en policier des colonies, plonge dans une ambiance coloniale plein d'hommages au cinema des annees trente" (Montalban 109). Coup de torchon unfolds against the backdrop of the Munich accords, and the

lazy, smalltown

policeman portrayed

by

Philippe Noiret, his adulterous wife, his battered mistress, his racist colleagues, and the various canaille whom he shoots out of hand are all representative of a dying world that deserves grave.

to slip into the

Most of the film was shot in Steadicam, the hand-held shots

being used "en partie comme une reference a la facon de filmer dans le

cinema colonialiste

representation

du

des

monde

annees trente,

de Jim Thompson

en ou

partie

comme

Ton n'a

la

jamais

I'impression d'etre sur la terre firme, sur un champ mine" (Montalban 109). In Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1958), an anti-war movie coscripted by Jim Thompson, the filmmakers were obliged to substitute

172 French characters for American; in Coup de torchon an equal and opposite alchemy occurs. Much

of

the

attraction

of

hardboiled

fiction

for

French

filmmakers lay in the genre's extremely imaginative argot. To find a suitable French equivalent for Jim Thompson's unique speech rhythms, Georges Perec, the experimental novelist who composed the script for Serie

noire,

entirely...from

found

himself

cliches, quotations

obliged

to

construct

it

"almost

and set phrases...." (Bellos 653).

What's more, "...every phrase uttered [would be] repeated elsewhere in the film" (Bellos 653). Georges Simenon, who, in the late 1940s, won the top mystery writer prize from Ellery which

Queen's

marked "la premiere fois qu'un auteur

Magazine—an de langue

event frangais

I'emporte aux Etats-Unis sur un terrain ou les Anglo-Saxons passent pour des maitres incontestes"—tended to compose his policiers

in a

fairly standard French, give or take the odd Belgicism (Assouline 564). As a stylist, he was far removed from the half-Rabelaisian, halfTourette's

Syndrome-driven verbal explosions of a Louis-Ferdinand

Celine. Nevertheless, thanks to earlier writers such as Francis Carco, French crime fiction was endowed with an authentic underworld idiom. In the post-war years, it would be adapted and embellished by

policier

specialists such as Albert Simonin, whose 1953 novel Touchez pas au grisbi! included a sixteen page glossary of the specifically criminal slang that he worked into a text which contained few standard French words apart from pronouns and articles. While such works would never replace the American models, they were hugely influential. Jacques Becker's 1954 film version of Touchez pas au grisbh,starring the iconic Jean Gabin, was recently voted the best French polar of all time. More

173 commonly, though, argot heavy crime movies fall into the popular Henri Verneuil "B movie" category—such as Le Clan des Siciliens

(1971)—or,

more recently, the angry-ethnic-youth-in-the-suburbs expose, such as Mathieu Kassowitz's Cesar-winning second feature, La haine (1995). This submission to American mores, though carried out with seeming

enthusiasm,

was

inevitably

accompanied

by

certain

misgivings. For one thing, it meant that France was drifting ever further away from the central place in world culture and politics which post-Enlightenment

intellectuals

had

accorded it.

It

also

rubbed

abrasively against the French concern for the "purity" of the national language, a purity made manifest Frangaise.

In

his meditation

in the form

"De la superiority

of the Academie de

la litterature

anglaise/americaine", Gilles Deleuze explained, with a mixture admiration

and horror,

of

how the English tongue was "une langue

hegemonique, imperialiste. Mais elle est d'autant plus vulnerable au travail souterrain des langues ou des dialectes qui le minent de toutes parts, et lui imposent un jeu de corruptions et variations tres vastes" (Dialogues

72). Once again, Anglo-American culture

is paid the

backhanded Gallic compliment of being more vibrant thanks to its New World crudity, barbarity

and linguistic promiscuity. The interlopers'

"undeserved" victory can therefore be attributed largely to their nonGallic refusal to "play fair." In French policiers,

characters are constantly making metaphors

that relate to American crime movies. In Boris Vian's Elles ne rendent pas

compte, a car chase is "[c]omme dans les films de gangsters...

Ecoute les pneus" (Elles ne rendent pas compte 152). In a provincial police

station

visited

by Georges Simenon's most famous

hero,

174 meanwhile, a detective wannabe "avait son chapeau en arriere comme dans les films americains" (Les Vacances de Maigret 28). Indeed, even Commissario Ambrosio, the best known of Italian literary

detectives,

is constantly likening aspects of his cases to Woody Allen or Jane Fonda movies, even if his ultimate cultural loyalty, as Raffaele Croni believes, is to "un understatement inglese" (Maledetto

Ferragosto 10).

Renato Olivieri, Ambrosio's creator, is likewise clearly familiar with Georges Simenon's sympathetic approach to crimes passionels. other hand, the ubiquity

of African women in Olivieri's

Somalian model in Maledetto

Ferragosto

isole Seychelles" in Dunque

Marranno—are

fiction—the

;"[la] ragazza...orginaria della almost certainly

echoes of French attempts to re-capture echoes of their colonial pasts by re-casting the

On the

motifs

Southern American melodrama (Dunque

and dramatis

Italian

respective

personae of

Maranno 20). Oliveiri's plots

often sound like elaborate riffs on the single paragraph, black-type descriptions of murder that so often favourite

newspaper,

valiant attempts

Corriere

to Italianize

appear in the pages of his

della sera. a distinctly

Nevertheless, despite his non-Italian

genre, Oliveri's

limited success reminds us irresistibly of Gramsci's frustration

with

his homeland's lack of popular literature. "Ogni popolo," he wrote in his prison notebooks, "ha la sua letteratura, ma essa puo venirgli da un altro

popolo, cioe il popolo in parola puo essere subordinate

all'

egemonia intelletuale e morale di altri popoli" (Gramsci 2253). Happily, this state of affairs would not apply to crime movies in the 1950s and '60s. During that decade, the film noir would burn itself out in Hollywood—Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958)

is

generally

regarded as the last true descendant of this distinguished '40s style—

175 while the outlaw anti-hero movies of the late

1960s—pre-eminently,

Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Dennis Hopper's Easy

Rider

(1969)—were gradually taking shape as the moralistic strictures of the Hays Code fell one by one. In France, after Marcel Carne and Jacques Prevert's attempt to resuscitate poetic realism failed when audiences rejected their first post-war effort, Les Portes de la nuit (1946),

a

wave of underworld nostalgia quickly replaced it. Jacques Becker's Casque

d'or (1952) highlighted a meticulously reconstructed

apache

Montmartre even more venerable than Francis Carco's, while his 1954 adaptation of Touchez pas au grisbi! re-made star Jean Gabin in the image of an ageing underworld kingpin who must come to terms with his own mortality

and declining physical powers, as well as battle

opposing mobs and the police. Except for the "B movie" bottom of the market, polars did not generally concern themselves with the doings .of the Union

Corse,

international

France's indigenous Mediterranean mob, a gang of

criminals who controlled the flow

of heroin

into the

Americas untill they were edged out by the Sicilian Mafia in the mid1950s. Like its wars in Algeria and Indochina, France's real c r i m e problems were left largely untouched by French filmmakers until long after they had ceased to stick in the national craw. The man who really steered the French crime film into new waters, though, was Jean-Pierre Melville. An eccentric known

for

sleeping by day and making movies by night, this sometime collaborator of Jean Cocteau seemed ideally situated to create a noirish world of his own. Bob le flambeur (1955), a "heist movie" about a degenerate gambler whose plans to rob a luxurious casino are spoiled when he finally gets lucky at cards, was Melville's first genre entry, even if he

176 refused "le label policier a ce film qui'il prefere definir comme une comedie des moeurs" (Rouyer 100). At bottom, Bob was a nostalgic love poem to the vanishing Montmartre of Jacques Prevert, Francis Carco and Pierre Mac Orlan. His later films, however, would all be predicated upon the assumption that "la trahison est le moteur

de Taction"

(Rouyer

homosexual

102). What's

more, following

in the

latently

footsteps of hardboiled American fictions, Melville's signature movies were all "'films d'hommes' ou les femmes n'ont qu'un role episodique et secondaire, sans que pour autant

apparaissant necessairement

comme des femmes fatales, ce qui les differencie des grands films noirs Hollywoodien qui en sont la modele" (Martin 73). Melville's Americanophilia is perhaps best exemplified by the following anecdote. In 1958 he planned to make a political thriller that was inextricably linked to the constitutional

structure of the Fourth

Republic. When that regime fell, to be replaced by the Fifth Republic with General De Gaulle at its head, the film no longer made sense. Then the filmmaker noticed that the set he had built for "un President de conseil francais" was more-or-less identical to Louis Calhern's flat in John Huston's 1950 underworld drama, The Asphalt Jungle

( "Jean-

Pierre Melville decide de partir pour New York" 80). Pierre Grasset, the director's

set designer, suggested they

transport

their

production

across the Atlantic, and Melville eagerly agreed. The experience was to have a profound experience on the filmmaker, insight

into

the

relative

strengths

of

his

providing

him with

bi-national

cultural

inheritance. As Thierry Jousse would have it,, "en passant de I'autre cote de I'Atlantique, il regie une bonne fois pour toute la question de sa relation a l'Amerique. II existe une Amerique reelle, celle de

Deux

1 77 hommes

dans

Manhattan,

et une Amerique fantasmee, celle des

policiers des annees 60-70 et on ne peut absolument pas les confondre. Autrement dit, cette decision d'aller tourner a New York...permettra a Melville de se liberer de toute idee saugrenue d'aller s'installer' a Hollywood et, par la meme occasion, de reinventer, tranquillement dans les rues de Paris...." ("Jean-Pierre Melville decide de partir pour New York" 80). This knowledge would bear rich fruit. If Le Samourai,

Melville's

1967 masterpiece about a trenchcoated hitman who pushes stoicism to the edge of catatonia, was consciously modelled after Frank Tuttle's 1942 noir, This Gun for Hire, its originality would later allow John Woo, the greatest living Hong Kong director of policiers,

"introdui[re]

les constantes de son style avec des personnages qui doivent tout a Melville, que Woo considere comme son maitre" (Saada 69). In the same fashion, Thierry Jousse, when watching Melville's 1963 tough guy epic Le Doulos

on TV a few years ago, "eu la nette impression qu'il

anticipait tres largement un film recent parmi les plus importants, en I'occurrence Miller's Crossing des freres Coen" ("Le Doulos" 46). A particularly direct gift to tough guy French cinema arrived in the form of Jules Dassin. Chased out of McCarthyite Hollywood on account of his left-wing politics, Dassin became a cinematic gypsy who benefitted

the film industries of each of the nations in which he

temporarily

resided. Rififi chez les hommes (1955) was the definitive

French heist movie of the 1950s, a film that counterpoised prolonged, carefully choreographed scenes of a complicated burglary's planning and execution with shorter, more jagged shots of its bloody aftermath. Its influence continues to be felt on both sides of the Atlantic. As

178 Francois Truffaut wrote in his book The Films in My Life—this text does not appear in Les Films de ma vie, a source work whose diegetic material

sometimes

differs

from that

of

its

"translation"—"Dassin

shot the film on the street during high winds and rain, and he reveals Paris to us Frenchmen just as he revealed London to the English (Night and the City) and New York to the Americans (Naked City)" (The Films in My Life 209). Truffaut might well have added "and would eventually reveal Athens to the Greeks (Never on Sunday)." We have already seen how Hollywood furthered—and continues to further—its fortunes by enriching competing

its

human

national

assets with the

film industries.

more

talented

members

of

In a small way, Jules Dassin

reversed this entropic process. One of the major influences on the harder '50s in crime films, both

French and American, was Mike Hammer. Mickey Spillane's

sociopathic alter ego: "Ce detective peu sympathique n'a pas de valeur morale ni sociale, et n'est pas un justicier...quand il tue, c'est pour se defendre...." (Garsault 82). In Kiss Me Deadly (1953) we learn that "There's no such thing as innocence,' says Hammer. 'Innocence touched with guilt is as good as you get'" (Kiss Me Deadly 221). While nobody seems to have much liked him, Hammer's brutal self-interest would, in one way or another, come to mark the more sophisticated creations of Jean-Pierre Melville, Jean-Luc Godard and Arthur Penn. Like the atomic bomb, he was a sign of the times that could not be ignored. In the early 1960s, the filmmakers of the Nouvelle Vague would take to the policier in a big way. Before directing 7/rez sur le pianiste,

Truffaut wrote the screen treatment

for Jean-Luc Godard's

first feature A bout de souffle (1959), an intellectual picaresque about

179 a likable cop killer, his lust for American women and cars, and his narcissistic identification

with Humphrey Bogart's hardboiled persona.

Unsurprisingly, the film was dedicated "a Monogram Pictures". In "La Paresse" (1961), Alphaville

(1965), and Germany

Nine Zero

(1992),

Godard would resurrect that most overexposed of borrowed "American" tough guys, James Hadley Chase's two-fisted,

hard-drinking

Lemmy

Caution (played in all instances by expatriate American actor, Eddie Constantine) and use him for everything from a paragon of laziness to a futuristic James Bond, from a defender of humanism to a psychopathic killer, from a mythic hero to a mute observer of the post-Communist world.

With typical Godardian insouciance, Made in USA (1966)

was

based on a Donald Westlake crime novel which the director did not even deign to read. Although set in "Atlantic City" and loaded with American names and cultural archetypes, the film has nothing to do with New Jersey's underworld

milieu. In Annie Goldmann's words, "En realite

c'est un film politique: les U.S.A., c'est la France...." (Goldmann 169). In Pierrot le fou (1965), the film that directly inspired Arthur Penn's Bonnie

and Clyde, voice-over narrators constantly remind us that the

proceedings are "comme dans un roman de...William Faulkner ou...Raymond Chandler." In his book on the director, Richard Roud reminds us that "Hardly any of his characters seem to have families" (Roud 20). What's more, if Godard's protagonists are enfants

de Marx

et Coca

Cola",

his women seem to be "more

"les the

daughters of Coca-Cola than of Marx"—a view which partially explains the filmmaker's abiding misogyny. Claude Chabrol, the third wheel in the Nouvelle

Truffaut-Godard-Chabrol

Vague troika, soon became a specialist in policiers.

Three .of

180 his

murder

mysteries would make Positif's

polar "Top 40", while

Godard and Truffaut could lay claim to only one film apiece. Chabrol is one of the masters of the psychological

French crime

story, as

embodied by Georges Simenon's romans durs, such as Le Chat, a novel— made into film in 1971 by Pierre Granier-Deferre—into which the only "crime" is the murder of her husband's pet by an aggrieved, aging housewife. An expert on the provincial bourgeoisie, Chabrol's oeuvre

owes little to any American influence except for one: Alfred

Hitchcock.

1

Whether re-making Fritz Lang's M in late '80s Berlin, or

adapting Ruth Rendell (La Ceremonie) or Georges Simenon

(L'Enter),

Chabrol approaches the material with the shrewd eye of a smalltown apothecary who lets down his guard only in the presence of such simple, peasant pleasures as good food and good wine. Italian cinema, meanwhile, has yet to transform the policier into an indigenous Italian style. A film industry that is famously rich in genres—the peplum; the sex comedy; the "spaghetti western"; the fake documentary; the slasher movie—"Hollywood on the Tiber" has seldom managed to abstract onscreen criminal activities to the point where they constitute a distinct sub-category in the entertainment

industry.

Readers of this chapter will doubtless be surprised to discover that I was able to progress so far without once mentioning the English-born "Master of Suspense", the generic giant whose greatness is now acknowledged on both sides of the Atlantic. I have refrained from reflecting on his overwhelming influence on the Franco/American crime film for two reasons. In the first place, as Michel Ciment pointed out in Le crime a I'ecran, Hitchcock's "oeuvre s'etait constitute a part, marquee d'un sceau si personnel qu'elle s'integre difficilement a un genre." (Le crime a I'ecran 94) In keeping with this proud islation, the lessons of Hitchcock were not only studied in the articles and then incorporated into the films of the critic/cineastes of Cahiers du cinema, but were subsequently applied in a wide variety of ways-some of which had nothing to do with the dynamics of the thriller. The seemingly po/arphobic Eric Rohmer was as infatuated by Hitchcock as were the po/a/philic Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. T o describe this class of Hollywood-friendly auteurist critic, Cahiers founder Andre Bazin went so far as to coin the word "HawksoHitchcockian." "Alfred the Great" will therefore be considered in this dissertation's final chapter, "Luc Moullet; or, The Last of the Hawkso-Hitchcockians." 1

181 If the gialli

have to struggle for

respect in the world

of

Italian

publishing, they can barely cast a shadow at Cinecitta.2 Nevertheless, construct

to

despite

determine

the

its

absence

norms,

of

Italian

a

distinct

cinema

was

narrative able

incorporate criminal motifs in new and intriguing ways throughout

to the

1950s, '60s, and, '70s. In 1958, for instance, Mario Monicelli used noirish parody to great comedic effect:

"The super-efficient

jewel

thieves of Jules Dasin's Rififi become the hopelessly incompetent gang in Monicelli's / ignoti soliti..." (Italian

Films IX). In addition to its

mockery of a "serious" Franco/American model, / soliti ignoti w a s simultaneously poking precocious fun at the virtuous victims of classic Neorealism, the deprived individuals whose desperate poverty rendered even the concept of crime more-or-less irrelevant to the cruelty of their circumstances. As Peter Bondanella describes it, this "hilarious parody of the typical American gangster film...concludes not with the traditional gun battle...but with a bittersweet conversation among the would-be robbers over plates of pasta and beans" (Italian Cinema 145). If the film was refreshingly

anti-sanctimonious,

in the context

of

1950s-vintage Italian Marxism, it could also be perceived—and thus condemned—as "objectively

reactionary."

Ettore Scola's eponymous // Commissario

Pepe (1969), one of the

very few Italian features to employ a police detective as its hero, enjoys a pedigree that makes even Commissario Ambrosio, an amateur

Obviously, this claim can only be justified if one thinks of Dario Argento-style "murder mysteries" as horror movies rather than policiers. Since the whole point of this rather disgusting sub-genre seems to revolve around the "aesthetic" depiction of the gory murders of young women, and since the "whodunnit" elements of such works are minor to nonexistent, I feel no compunctions about doing so. In terms of Hollywood, Argento and his disciples have more to do with Friday the 13th than they do with Silence of the Lambs. 2

182 of modernist German literature, sound a little crude. This anomaly was not wasted on critic Lino Micciche: "Al Commissario Pepe—un uomo buono

e gentile,

umanistiche

(una

non privo

di cultura

e anzi frequenti

eccezione in somma rispetto

aperture

alia imagine

non

precisamente umanistica del polizotto italiano)...." (Micciche 41). More typically, Marco Bellochio's / pugni in Tasca (1965) integrated

murder

so deeply within the Oedipal subtext of the story, that the film played more like Greek tragedy than giallo. All of which is not surprising, considering Italy's unique political circumstances. If the economy continued to improve as the twentieth century progressed, the legitimacy and solidity of the state remained very much in doubt. Christian Democratic hegemony, everybody knew, rested on the twin pillars of Mafia and CIA/U.S. State support.

Department

It is difficult to feel guilty about smuggling cigarettes when

the biggest contrabbandiere

of them all are the Prime Minister and his

confederates. Progressive and centrist Italians also had to contend with the

shadowy

forces

of

Operation

Gladio,

the secret anti-

communist army whose "members were armed and paid by the USA" to "continue

internal

resistance" within the

occupation, if such a situation

country

arose." (Hobsbawn

"after

a Soviet

165) This unit

"originally consisted of last-ditch fascists...who subsequently acquired a new value as fanatical anti-communists" (Hobsbawm 165). In such conditions the concept of crime as social deviance cannot possibly make headway against the shared idea that crime means business as usual. Of this daunting edifice of corruption from which Italians are currently

struggling

to

free

themselves, the

Sicilian

Mafia

was

183 unquestionably its most famous and invasive arm. Movies about this lethal organization, and the need for its suppression, became more frequent as the 1960s wore on. One of the earliest was Un uomo da bruciare

(1962), a film made the same year as Alberto Lattuada's

Mafioso,

a drama co-directed by the Taviani brothers and Valentino

Orsini about 'Tassassinat du Sicilien Savatore Camevale par le mafia en 1955...." (Leprohon 202). This would establish the custom of having heroic judges and prosecutors doing the work in Italian antiMafia movies that French and American filmmakers would usually assign to "maverick" detectives. Even before the Sicilian underworld took to eliminating troublesome authority figures in large numbers— between 1979 and 1992, they assassinated three judges, four police commissioners and three high-ranking politicians, as well as ancillary wives and bodyguards—they were depicted as being quite capable of doing so. No one explored this idea more thoroughly than Francesco Rosi, the Neapolitan filmmaker whose entire career was devoted to detecting

and

superstructure.

dissecting

the

fatal

flaws

in

his

homeland's

France's Andre Cayette and Filipino filmmaker

Lino

Brocka attempted similar assessments of their own societies, but— despite the nobility of their intentions—their

analyses were nowhere

near as sharp as Rosi's. A keen observer and sharp dialectician, even Rosi's guesses were "lucky". Collectively,

Rosi's films touch

on virtually

every aspect of

Southern Italy's social dysfunction. La sfida, his debut feature, dealt with the rise and fall of an ambitious Neapolitan black marketeer in the employ of the Camorra. / magliori (1959) and Le momento

(1964)

focussed on the

specifically

Mediterranean

della

verita

mechanics of

184 employment-driven

emigration.

Salvatore

Giuliano

(1961)—the

breakthrough "investigative" feature that would profoundly

influence

the "Gillo Pontecorvo di La battaglia di Algeri (1966), al miglior CostaGavras, e...di altro...."—was an attempt to demystify the specifically Sicilian

circumstances which gave rise to the

island's legendary

separatist bandit (Francesco Rosi 108). Le mani sulla citta (1963) was a portrait of a corrupt developer/politician in Naples, a courtroom drama in which the realms of commerce, control and crime are closely related. // caso Mattei (1972) is, as Pauline Kael pointed out, a sort of super-Citizen Kane in which the postwar giant of Italy's natural gas industry finds his body, as well as his life, in pieces at the film's beginning, a circumstance which prompts a formal investigation of the magnate's past. In 1973, Rosi made a typicially non-linear "biopic" about the most powerful of all Italian-American mobsters. "Pourquoi Lucky Luciano?" he pondered rhetorically. "Parce que je pense que c'est une bonne cle pour comprendre les rapports entre le pouvoir legal et le pouvoir

illegal,

interdependance"

et

plus

encore

que

leurs

(Dossier Rosi 140). Cadaveri

rapports,

eccellenti

leurs

(1976), the

first Rosi feature to be based on a novel—and a French one at that— follows in the melancholy footsteps of Inspector Rogas (Lino Venturi), "un policier qui doit retrouver

I'assassin d'un certain

nombre de

juges...." after unknown assassins start taking aim at an unnamed—but obviously Italian—judicial system (Dossier Rosi 173). Terrorism would be on the agenda in Tre fratelle (1981), and the subject of ItaloAmerican criminal collusion would be returned to more realistically in Dimenticare

Palermo

(1990), a work that was co-written by American

185 novelist Gore Vidal. Drug trafficking in his native Naples would be the principal motif in the director's 1991 documentary, Diario Michel features can politique

critic

Ciment be

has rightly

perceived

observed that

as "I'histoire

locates the Neapolitan director's

Rosi's

sociale,

de Tltalie sous la Republique" (Dossier

napoletano. interlocking

economique

Rosi 162).

et

The French

neorealist heritage

in "[son]

desir de rompre avec le cinema mensonger du fascisme, de combattre des cliches et les mythes, appartient sa demarche a celle de Rossellini et de De Sica et Zavattini" (Dossier Rosi 30). Unlike more traditional Neorealists, however, Rosi is fascinated by the past, finding in its Byzantine miasmas the roots of his country's contemporary

troubles.

Starting with Salvatore Giuliano—the Sicilian "Robin Hood" who waged a Jesse James-like guerilla war against the authorities

for seven

years, championing a politically separate Sicily and entering

island

folklore as a hero until his reputation was permanently tarnished by the massacre of a group of Communist Party supporters in 1947—Rosi would

structure

his films

like open-ended

inquests.

Francis Ford

Coppola was impressed by the fact that "you hardly ever see Giuliano!" in this film about his life. (Cowie 222) In 1987 Michael Cimino would direct a more traditional Giuliano screen biography—one which does exploit the outlaw's "cowboy" elements—but The Sicilian was neither a critical nor a commercial success. In Rosi's portrait, on the other hand, "I'urgenza

dell'

interrogativo

precede. ..I'inf uzione

narrativa"

(Francesco Rosi 14). What's more, "Nei film di Rosi, al contrario delle tipiche storie poliziesche

hollywoodiane,

manca

proposto...." (Francesco Rosi 20).

intanto

la

soluzione

del

caso

186 As we have already seen,

Salvatore

Giuliano's

narrative

innovations had a profound effect on filmmakers—not least upon Francis Ford Coppola, the Italo-American director of The Godfather

trilogy.

Nevertheless, when it came time to make Lucky Luciano, the influence— as Rosi himself freely conceded—was not all one-way: "Quant a mon rapport avec les films de gangsters americains, j'en ai tellement vu, surtout dans ma jeunesse, qu'il m'en reste surement quelque chose dans ma fagon de regarder" (Dossier Rosi 145). Even when being influenced, however, Rosi's cinematic vision is rigorously self-aware. At the core of Lucky

Luciano,

for instance, "La polemica di Rosi e

rivolta

indirettamente contro alcuni esempi contemporanei di film sulla mafia: sicuramente // padrino di Francis Ford Coppola, con il suo messaggio superoministico

e il fascino escercitato dalle

anche il piu commerciale Joe

Valachi

menti

- I segreti

criminali, ma

di Cosa Nostra

di

Terence Young, provvisto di un ritualita morbosamente dettagliata nella messa in scena del codice d'onore mafioso" (Francesco Rosi 137 - 139). Gaetana Marrone believes that this critical distance is not always recognized by Rosi's American supporters, an outside clique that collectively tends to exaggerate "la componente eroica, essenziale alia mitologia del genre gangster Hollywoodiano" (Francesco Rosi 79). In the early 1970s, this was a particularly easy mistake to make. Thanks to the explosion of specifically Italo-American during

the

early years of

that decade, the

film talent

similarities

between

Hollywood crime films and their Cinecitta equivalents appeared to be particularly marked. The paranoid universe imagined by Francis Ford Coppola in The

Conversation

(1974)

seemed contiguous

to

the

Kafkaesque corruption of Elio Petri's Indagine su un cittadino al di

187 sopra

di ogni sospetto

(1970). Coppola's lonely, sax-blowing wire-

tapper would have fit right into the world of Petri's murderously kinky "capo della 'squadri omicidi'...." (Micciche 55). If Cadaveri

eccellenti

"[ha visto] la Sicilia in chiave metaforica," Martin Scorsese's

Taxi

Driver (1976) attempted to deal with the analogous American problem of "irrational" violence in a somewhat similar fashion (Francesco Rosi 104). The

most

commonly

bracketed

Italian/American

cinematic

"complements", though, were Coppola's The Godfather and Rosi's LuckyLuciano,

movies released within a year of each other. Although Peter

Cowie thought that "The Godfather gives a romantic picture of gangster life" (Cowie 74), Pauline Kael took a contrary position, insisting that the film provided "A wide, startlingly vivid view of a Mafia dynasty, in which

organized crime becomes an obscene nightmare

image of

American free enterprise" (5001 Nights at the Movies 220). Far from simply going over the same well-trodden ground with less verve and originality,

The Godfather, Part Two (1974) covers a much broader

canvas, both chronologically and thematically, than did its predecessor. Its distanced, quasi-Marxist perspective seems to spring from same source that prompted Rosi to make Lucky

Luciano.

the

The Italian

social critic explained his interest in the deported Sicilian mobster in the following terms: "II a liquide la vieille conception de la Mafia et a commence a chercher les alliances avec les Juifs et les Irlandais, deux groupes criminels importants dans l'Amerique de cette epoque, alors qu'auparavant le probleme de ces alliances n'avait meme pas ete pose. II avait meme convaincu les differents

groupes mafiosi italiani de

s'allier au lieu de ce faire concurrente, comme c'etait le cas dans la

188 lutte ouverte qui opposait Napolitains et Siciliens" (Dossier Rosi 140 141). Jewish mobsters, American politicians and Cuban officials would play prominent roles in the second half of The Godfather, Part Two. Ten years later, Sergio Leone would pivot Once Upon a Time in

America

(1984), his only gangster movie, on the life-long friendship/enmity of two Jewish mobsters. Ethnicity and crime would become a major theme of American crime movies in the 1980s and '90s, with Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza, the Jamaican Posse, Colombian drug lords, the RussoGeorgian "mafia" and other groups all vying for attention. Long-gone were the days when Italo-American pressure groups—some of which were Mafia controlled—forced The Untouchables,

a popular 1950s' TV

show set in the Prohibition-era Chicago of Al Capone, into premature retirement

on account of the

"harmful"

anti-Italian stereotypes

it

presented on a weekly basis. With the exception of Year of the Dragon, Michael Cimino's 1985 potboiler about a tough white policeman at war with the Triads in New York, few of these neo-gangster movies have aroused the ire of the groups concerned. Indeed, many second and thirdgeneration

Americans—now safely ensconced within the

matrix

of

middle class respectability—seem to revel in them. The reasons for this are various, but most are in some way involved with America's semiparanoid obsession with crime and race. Black music, sports heroes and fashion sense are all highly prized by white American teenagers, even as their parents flee to the suburbs, elect candidates sworn to reduce social

programs,

complain

bitterly

about

the

"inequities"

of

affirmative action, and sign petitions in favour of capital punishment, more prisons and longer terms of incarceration. To imagine a criminal past is to reduce guilt over black/white inequities. We were poor and

189 criminal once, this questionable logic runs, but somehow managed to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. What's the matter with them? The underlying logic of a Rosi film, in other words, is light years removed from contemporary American views of crime and punishment. What looked like a joining in 1974 is now exposed as what it always was: an Atlantic-sized rift. If ethnic crime has been a factor in French polars since before the release of Pepe le Moko—with reservations, of course since Jean Gabin's displaced Parisian gangster marooned in Morocco was made to seem at least as "all French" as Jimmy Cagney's whitebread mobster was made appear "all-American" in William Wellman's Public recently

become an almost indispensable additive

Enemy—it to the

standard

generic formula. The Algerian underworld of Bob Swaim's La (1981)—like

has

Balance

Jules Dassin's Riffifi, a policier with an American at its

helm—has now become as fixed in French popular culture as Mafia myths are in America. In flic movies such as Bertrand Blier's (1985),

Claire

Tavernier's

Denis's J'ai pas sommeil

L. 627

(1994),

the

(1993),

onscreen

and

proceedings

Police

Bertrand would

be

unthinkable without the presence of "minority" pressures. The current crop of so-called banlieue

pictures, such as Mathieu Kassowitz's La

haine (1995), are also indebted to this trend—even if they do tend to take the decidedly Italian approach of siding with the underdog. Of course, in France the polar remains

multi-faceted.

It

still

includes heist films, gangster movies, poetic realism, films noirs, neonoirs,

psychological

studies,

chamber

mysteries,

police

detective stories, street exposes, nostalgic turns down fin-de-siecle

apache

alleys, black

comedies, road

dramas,

Montmartre's

movies,

erotic

190 thrillers and what North Americans would probably define as horror. Gilles Deleuze once promised to compose a new form of philosophical discourse which would be situated "entre le roman policier et la science-fiction" (Narboni 23).3 Aided in this instance by language itself—before they were recast in the hardboiled mold, the words "roman

noir" originally referred to

the Gothic romances of the early 19th century—the polar has managed to insert itself in that precise, theoretical situation. The inheritor of all that has preceded it—including Hollywood's enormously rich generic dowry—like DNA, it continues to mutate in new recombinant ways, employing "foreign" means for local ends. In the mid-1990s, Hollywood re-made La femme Nikita and Les Diaboliques,

attempting to refresh an

"exhausted" genre with fresh, exogamous blood (it began doing the same with French screen farces in the late 1970s). The binational release of Luc Besson's latest feature (known in France as Leon, and in the U.S. as The

Professional)

probably represents some sort of

breakthrough in multinational filmmaking. That the French crime movie can

maintain

its

own

identity

in

this

trans-Atlantic

style

is a

testament to its generic resilience.

It would seem that Deleuze's prediction has been confirmed more completely than he could possibly have imagined. Since the late 1970s, futuristic thrillers, such as Bladerunner, routinely plunder the film noir canon when searching for visual ideas, while an even greater number of faux-space operas thematically strip-mine the Hollywood western. In Star Wars, for instance, Luke Skywalker's family is massacred in a manner virtually identical to the one employed against Ethan Edwards' relatives in John Ford's 1956 masterpiece, The Searchers. Four years later, in 1981, Peter Hyams would enter Hollywood history thanks to his famously brief pitch for Outland. "It's High Noon in outer space," the director explained. This terse summation—reputedly then the shortest ever made—was enough to get the project greenlighted. 3

1 91 Troublingly,

serial

murder

sagas

seem

to

have

struck

a

particularly resilient chord with the global public. As Camille Nevers accurately pointed out,

Les Gilles de Rais, les Lacenaire, Landru, Jack I'Eventreur, Dr. Petiot ou Dr. Holmes, et autre Vampire du Diisseldorf, tout ont alimente via la tradition orale populaire, une litterature des contes, de roman noir, roman policier, roman de gare, romanfeuilleton, et des feuilles de chou (type Detective). Tous firent I'objet de transpositions au cinema avec un bonheur inegal selon qu'elle etaient issues d'un Marcel Came ou d'un Fritz Lang, d'un Robert Hossein ou d'un Edgar G. Ulmer, d'un Christian de Chalonge ou d'un Claude Chabrol, d'un Francis Girod ou d'un Charlie Chaplin.

Nevers could easily have added "d'un Aki Kaurismaki ou d'un Denys Arcand, d'un Shohei Immamura ou d'un Kathryn Bigelow, d'un Dario Argento ou d'un Ulli Lommel." The serial killer/slasher movie is now an almost universal style. Even more popular and widely-dispersed is the

neo-gangster

movie. Beat Takeshi and other young Japanese directors of "NeoYakuza" sagas have, in the last five or six years, broadened the vocabulary and widened the popularity of a genre that was once little more than a modern dress variation of the more violent sort of geki [costume film].

jidai-

Contemporaneous with this upgrading were Hong

Kong director John Woo's affectionately nostalgic, latently homosexual, blatantly cinephilic, joyously violent re-mixings of traditional and American formulae. In Hardboiled other

dazzlingly

Melville"

created

well-crafted a style

thrillers,

that

was

French

(1991), The Killer (1989), and the

man

"qui

so competitively

doit

tout

a

compelling,

1 92 Hollywood felt constrained to remove him from Hong Kong and set him to work making American movies. By the last decade of the 20th century, directing policiers

was

anything but an all-white profession. Generic influences could now travel as freely across the Pacific as they could across the Atlantic. Pierre

Leprohon's adage that "Chaque pays ecrit

I'histoire a sa

maniere" was now as much a practical reality as it was a theoretical construct. In America, meanwhile, the home of the detective story, the genre is continuing to evolve. While policiers

might not be as consciously

critical or socially engaged as they were in the 1970s,

neos-noirs—

once again, the French coined the defining term first—continue to tap aspects of the national psyche that regular watchers of LAPD and other pro-police "reality" shows would prefer to forget. Contemporary crime novelists such as Barry Gifford and James Ellroy describe anti-heroes whose cynical amorality might give pause to Mike Hammer at his most ornery. On the screen, David Lynch's Blue Velvet, with its Id-level take on the fictitious small town America of Ronald Reagan's propagandafuelled dreams, is perhaps the most accurate Rorschach blot portrait we have of the psychological underpinnings of the so-called "Greed decade".

More recently, fear of AIDS and other

(hetero)sexually

transmitted diseases has resulted in a slew of erotic thrillers in which the femme fatale of

thel890s/1940s returns with a vengeance to an

imaginative universe that was only briefly freed from its perennial dread of the "great pox". No doubt because of their very different attitudes towards the nature of society, the police, the state, the judiciary and the causes,

193 meaning and consequences of crime, French, American and Italian policiers

have managed to maintain distinct national identities despite

the post-GATT escalation of mid-Atlantic levelling and normalization. In general, this process has benefitted only the culture industry of the United States, but polars have somehow managed to survive under the shadow of Hollywood hegemony. It is interesting to note that the French crime film has followed an opposite policy to that of the French language. Where the Academie Francaise ceaselessly sought to keep the contaminating influence of "franglais" out of Racine's pure tongue, polar directors have tried to discover new ways to work them in. Far from being subservient, this policy is actually "imperialist" in the way that Deleuze described the English language. By being open to outside influences, the polar and policier they

manage to re-charge their batteries constantly; by absorbing, escape

being

absorbed.

American

influence

is

therefore

everywhere present within their generic structures, but this influence is nowhere dominant. What's more, such input is filtered through a selective—if policiers

not

exactly

distorting—mirror.

In

other

words,

les

et les polars are only as American as they want to be.

Unquestionably, this is the single greatest secret of their longevity. Italian crime films, meanwhile, despite all that has happened during the last forty years of social upheaval, remain inseparably tied to Neorealism's apron strings. Organized crime and government are probably close allies in most countries, but only in Italy is the average citizen so painfully aware of this collusion. The state as idealized whole or secular God substitute is an idea that simply

194

CHAPTER THREE: THE RUINS OF ROME

A s w e s a w in the l a s t t w o c h a p t e r s , A m e r i c a has long c o n s t i t u t e d b o t h a c h a l l e n g e and a t h r e a t , an a f f r o n t and a s e d u c t i o n , to F r e n c h i n t e l l e c t u a l s of a l l p o l i t i c a l p e r s u a s i o n s . It w a s s e e n as a d o u b l e - e d g e d s w o r d w i t h a d a n g e r o u s t e n d e n c y to " c u t " even t h o s e who a d m i r e d for its

strength

and b e a u t y . W i t h the p o s s i b l e e x c e p t i o n s of

it

Great

B r i t a i n and G e r m a n y , i t w a s p r o b a b l y the c o u n t r y t h a t the F r e n c h c o u l d l e a s t a f f o r d to i g n o r e . In I t a l y , t h i n g s w e r e v e r y d i f f e r e n t . Even w h e n the U n i t e d S t a t e s w a s the f a v o u r e d l a n d of e m i g r a t i o n , i t a l w a y s s e e m e d to be a v e r y d i s t a n t Utopia, a paradise on the f a r side of the horizon. On s o m e l e v e l , I t a l i a n s m i g h t d e r i v e a c e r t a i n m u t e d s a t i s f a c t i o n f r o m the k n o w l e d g e that

they d i s c o v e r e d

A m e r i c a , but

this

emotion

has

never

been

p a r t i c u l a r l y m e a n i n g f u l or p r o f o u n d . The q u a s i - i n d i f f e r e n c e of w h i c h I speak o w e s n o t h i n g to the c u r r e n t l y p o p u l a r b e l i e f t h a t the New W o r l d c o u l d not, in f a c t , have been " f o u n d " s i n c e i t w a s n e v e r l o s t in the f i r s t p l a c e , h a v i n g l o n g been s e t t l e d by the o r i g i n a l A s i a n p i o n e e r s w h o , in the v e r y d i s t a n t p a s t , poured o v e r the l e g e n d a r y l a n d b r i d g e t h a t once linked

Alaska

discovery

that

to

Siberia; still

l e s s does it

V i k i n g s and B a s q u e s had s e t

relate silent

to

the

foot

belated on

North

A m e r i c a n s o i l hundreds of y e a r s b e f o r e C h r i s t o p h e r C o l u m b u s of Genoa r e c e i v e d h i s c h a r t e r of e x p l o r a t i o n f r o m Queen I s a b e l l a of S p a i n . What i t does r e f e r t o , r a t h e r , i s the i n e s c a p a b l e f a c t t h a t I t a l y n e v e r d e r i v e d much b e n e f i t f r o m C r i s t o f o r o C o l o m b o ' s e x e r t i o n s . T y p i c a l l y , in his p r i s o n d i a r i e s , A n t o n i o G r a m s c i l a m e n t s the f a c t

t h a t m o s t of

his

195 c o u n t r y m e n c a n n o t a p p r e c i a t e the l a r g e r c o n s e q u e n c e s of the G e n o e s e m a r i n e r ' s e n d e a v o r : " C h e C r i s t o f o r o C o l o m b o s i p r o p o n e s s e di a n d a r e ' a l a b u c a l del Gran K h a n / non s m i n u i s c e i l v a l o r e del suo v i a g g i o r e a l e e d e l l e sue r e a l i s c o p e r t e per la ci vi 1 i t a e u r o p e a " ( G r a m s c i 2 1 9 2 ) . D u r i n g the age of e x p l o r a t i o n

and c o n q u e s t , I t a l y w a s , f o r

m o s t p a r t , c o n q u e r e d and c o l o n i z e d i t s e l f . The m a r i t i m e

the

republics

of

V e n i c e and Genoa m i g h t have h e l d a M e d i t e r r a n e a n i s l a n d o r t w o

in

f o r t r e s s f i e f , but t h e i r e m p i r e s w e r e a l w a y s e s s e n t i a l l y

mercantile.

M a r c o P o l o , the m o s t f a m o u s I t a l i a n t r a i l b l a z e r p r i o r to C o l u m b u s , w a s l e s s the e m i s s a r y of the G r e a t Khan of C h i n a than he w a s a

city-to-city

t r a v e l l i n g s a l e s m a n . A d d i n g i n s u l t to i n j u r y , h i s A s i a n m e m o i r s written

not

in

I t a l i a n but

i n F r e n c h , the

language

h o m e l a n d ' s p r i n c i p a l o c c u p i e r s . A s an I m p e r i a l i s t get s t a r t e d u n t i l w e l l a f t e r the l a t e

worse, its

one of

empire consisted primarily

reputation

as a m a j o r

e v e r to be s u f f e r e d

by an i m p e r i a l i s t

the of

European

c o l o n i a l p l a y e r w a s d a r k e n e d by the " d i s a s t e r " at A d o w a , the m i l i t a r y defeat

his

power, Italy didn't

19th c e n t u r y c o m p l e t i o n of

R i s o r g i m e n t o . Even t h e n , t h i s l a t t e r d a y E r i t r e a and L i b y a . S t i l l

of

were

worst

p o w e r at

the

hands of a n o n - E u r o p e a n people d u r i n g the 19th c e n t u r y . Colombus, therefore,

was something like Guglielmo Marconi, a

m a g n i f i c e n t i n n o v a t o r w h o s e d i s c o v e r i e s w o u l d u l t i m a t e l y be e x p l o i t e d by

non-Italians.

One

senses

the

marginality

of

Cristoforo's

a c c o m p l i s h m e n t s in the I t a l i a n p e r i o d by a q u i c k s c a n of the e p i c p o e t s of

the

16th

and

17th

c e n t u r y . The

I t a l i a n genre m a s t e r s

Ludovico

A r i o s t o and T o r q u a t o T a s s o sang of the a n c i e n t C a r o l i n g i a n hero R o l a n d and of the " l i b e r a t i o n " of J e r u s a l e m . P o r t u g a l ' s L u i s de C a m o e n s , on the o t h e r hand, c o m p o s e d The Lusiads,

his heroic g l o r i f i c a t i o n

of h i s s e a -

196 f a r i n g c o u n t r y m e n and the v a s t o v e r s e a s e m p i r e t h e i r c o u r a g e and s k i l l were bringing into being.

1

It s h o u l d c o m e as no s u r p r i s e , t h e r e f o r e , to

d i s c o v e r t h a t n e i t h e r J o h n G l e n ' s Christopher

Columbus:

nor R i d l e y S c o t t ' s The Conquest of Paradise-th&

The

Discovery

two mega-movies w i t h

w h i c h the w o r l d f i l m m a k i n g c o m m u n i t y c e l e b r a t e d the

quinticentennial

of

even

the

great

Genoan's nautical

achievement-was

partially

f i n a n c e d by I t a l i a n s o u r c e s . T h e r e w e r e as many f r a n c s and p e s o s as d o l l a r s i n t h e s e c o - p r o d u c t i o n s , but a b s o l u t e l y no l i r e . Italy's rather

reserved reaction

to the n a t i o n ' s

most

famous

e x p l o r e r i s p e r h a p s b e s t e x p r e s s e d by C e s a r e P a s c a r e l l a ' s La

Scoperta

de ^America.

century,

W r i t t e n in Roman d i a l e c t in the l a t e n i n e t e e n t h

t h i s m o c k - e p i c poem s e l d o m r i s e s above the l e v e l of d o g g e r e l . Its tone i s t h o r o u g h l y a n t i - h e r o i c , s h o t through w i t h c r i t i c i s m s of the C a t h o l i c Church,

and

strongly

sympathetic

to

the

New

World's

original

i n h a b i t a n t s . Even s o , the a u t h o r i s a n y t h i n g but i n d i f f e r e n t to h i s h e r o ' s heritage: " E h , la s t o r i a , percristo, e sempre s t o r i a / C r i s t o f o r o Colombo era i t a l i a n o " a l w a y s envied

( P a s c a r e l l a 9 4 ) . F o r e i g n e r s , the a u t h o r b e l i e v e s , have Italians

b e c a u s e of

their

innate

genius:

"L'italiano

t ' i n v e n t a e r l e t t r i c i s m o " ( P a s c a r e l l a 98). In m o s t c o u n t r i e s , s u c h a s s u m p t i o n s about the n a t i o n a l

spirit

w o u l d l e a d d i r e c t l y to p u g n a c i o u s a r r o g a n c e , but not i n I t a l y . In Italians,

The

L u i g i B a r z i n i argued t h a t h i s c o u n t r y m e n are i n f u s e d w i t h a

seemingly ineradicable self-contempt

historically

derived from

the

Being a man of his time, Camoens naturally said nothing about the underhanded p o l i t i c s , military brutality and psychological intimidation that were then seen as equally essential to the s u c c e s s f u l establishment of overseas dominions. This almost universal code of silence was particularly pronounced in Portugal, a seafaring power which soon found that rule by terror could compensate in large part for a small nation's limited manpower. 1

197 p e n i n s u l a ' s r e p e a t e d " f a i l u r e s to f u s e i n t o a u n i f i e d n a t i o n s t a t e d u r i n g the e a r l y R e n a i s s a n c e and l a t e M i d d l e A g e s . T h a t t h i s f a i l u r e of

will

o c c u r r e d in a l a n d f i l l e d w i t h g r e a t m i n d s and s t u d d e d w i t h the r i c h e s t and m o s t c u l t u r a l l y p r i v i l e g e d c i t i e s in Europe only made t h i n g s w o r s e . In I t a l y , t h e r e s e e m s to be an a l m o s t u n i v e r s a l d e s i r e to s n a t c h f a i l u r e f r o m the j a w s of s u c c e s s . B a r z i n i p a r t i c u l a r l y mother's

d e s i r e to d e v o u r h e r o w n c u b s : "It

regretted this is true

that in

wolfother

c o u n t r i e s g r e a t men have a l s o o c c a s i o n a l l y been p e r s e c u t e d and put to death.

Nowhere

else,

however,

has

it

happened

with

the

same

d i s c r i m i n a t i o n , r e g u l a r i t y , and d e t e r m i n a t i o n " ( B a r z i n i x i i ) . I t a l y ' s a l m o s t u n i v e r s a l p o p u l a r i t y w i t h o u t s i d e r s d o e s n o t h i n g to d i s p e l l t h i s a i r of a l m o s t c o s m i c g l o o m . Q u i t e the c o n t r a r y : " T h e I t a l y o f . . . f o r e i g n e r s , both r i c h and poor, i s m a i n l y an i m a g i n a r y c o u n t r y , not entirely

c o r r e s p o n d i n g to the I t a l y of the I t a l i a n s . T h e

expatriates

o f t e n do not r e a l l y pay a t t e n t i o n t o , see c l e a r l y , or l i k e the I t a l y of the I t a l i a n s " ( B a r z i n i 1 1). T h i s l a n d - p e r h a p s one s h o u l d s a y Jands-has irresistible attraction

a l w a y s e x e r c i s e d an

to w r i t e r s . S h a k e s p e a r e s i t u a t e d m o s t of h i s

c o m e d i e s in I t a l i a n t o w n s , though the B a r d of A v o n a l m o s t

certainly

never set foot in Verona. Italianate verse f o r m s s t r u c t u r e d C h a u c e r ' s c a n t o s , w h i l e S p e n s e r and M i l t o n , though p a t r i o t i c a l l y opposed to t h e s e continental

conventions, were always mindful

of t h e m . G o e t h e r e -

d i s c o v e r e d c l a s s i c i s m i n R o m e , w h i l e B y r o n , K e a t s , S h e l l e y , and the o t h e r E n g l i s h R o m a n t i c p o e t s s a i l e d to I t a l y to e i t h e r l i v e o r d i e , as the p r e - C h r i s t i a n gods w i l l e d . A l f r e d de M u s s e t w r o t e

Lorenzaccio,

his

g r e a t e s t p l a y , as the r e s u l t of an unhappy r e s e a r c h t r i p to F l o r e n c e i n the c o m p a n y of h i s u n f a i t h f u l

m i s t r e s s , George Sand. F o r m o r e than a

198 century, w r i t e r s Forster,

Ezra

l i k e Henry J a m e s , E d i t h W h a r t o n , T h o m a s Mann, E. M.

Pound,

Ernest

Hemingway,

Richard

A l d i n g t o n , D.H.

L a w r e n c e , K a t h e r i n e M a n s f i e l d , F r a n k O ' C o n n o r , J u l i a O ' F a o l a i n , and c o u n t l e s s o t h e r w r i t e r s , both g r e a t and s m a l l , f l o c k e d to the c o u n t r y i n s e a r c h of an a m b i e n c e t h a t w a s t o t a l l y i n k e e p i n g w i t h t h e a r t i s t i c t e m p e r a m e n t . T h e m a r b l e s and c i t i e s of I t a l y w e r e m o r e p e r f e c t

than

a n y w h e r e e l s e ; the r u i n s of Rome w e r e c r o w n e d w i t h the g l o r i e s of the Renaissance. This extraordinary

n o s t a l g i a i n e v i t a b l y exacerbated the

g u l f b e t w e e n r e a l i t y and d r e a m . In B a r z i n i ' s w o r d s , " T h e e i g h t e e n t h c e n t u r y I t a l y of f o r e i g n e r s ' d e s i r e s , the c o u n t r y of dead l a n g u a g e s , dead I t a l i a n s , and m u t e s t o n e s , w a s n e v e r so d i s s i m i l a r f r o m t h e I t a l i a n s ' Italy" (Barzini 30). Ironically,

there

i s one o u t s i d e

observer whom

virtually

all

I t a l i a n i n t e l l e c t u a l s have long a c k n o w l e d g e d as the u l t i m a t e a u t h o r i t y on t h e n a t i o n a l

character.

L i k e A l e x i s de T o c q u e v i l l e , t h e o f f i c i a l

f o r e i g n e x p e r t on e a r l y A m e r i c a n m o r e s , M a r i e Henri B e y l e ( S t e n d h a l ' s real

name)

was a Frenchman

travelling

abroad.

Indeed,

in

many

r e s p e c t s , S t e n d h a l ' s p r o n o u n c e m e n t s upon the M i l a n e s e , N e a p o l i t a n s and R o m a n s a r e n o w r e g a r d e d as even more a c u t e and p r o p h e t i c than de Tocqueville's

period

reflections

on N e w E n g l a n d e r s , S o u t h e r n e r s ,

Indians and A f r i c a n s l a v e s . T h i s N a p o l e o n i c o f f i c i a l w a s t h a t r a r e s t of c u l t u r a l p h e n o m e n a , the f o r e i g n - b o r n t r a v e l w r i t e r w h o s e e s t h e l o c a l s m o r e c l e a r l y than the l o c a l s s e e t h e m s e l v e s . S t e n d h a l ' s p r e c o c i o u s p e r s p e c t i v e s c o n t i n u e to f a s c i n a t e . A s an o f f i c e r i n N a p o l e o n ' s a r m y , and a l o n g - t i m e r e s i d e n t of I t a l y , he c a n be s e e n as a c i t i z e n of t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s of Europe 150 y e a r s avant lettre.

la

H i s s e n s e of F r e n c h n a t i o n a l i s m w a s c o u n t e r b a l a n c e d by an

199 e q u a l l y s t r o n g s e n s e of European i n t e r n a t i o n a l i s m . T h i s double v i s i o n endows his travel w r i t i n g w i t h enduring value. C u r i o u s l y enough, many of S t e n d h a l ' s c o m m e n t s sound l i k e e e r i e p r e m o n i t i o n s of G r a m s c i ' s p r i s o n p r o g n o s t i c a t i o n s . In Rome, Naples, Florence

et

en 1317, f o r i n s t a n c e , the F r e n c h o b s e r v e r w r o t e , " L a m u s i q u e

est le seul art

qui v i v e e n c o r e en I t a l i e " ( S t e n d h a l 3). J u s t o v e r a

century later, Gramsci would complain, " L a letteratura 'nazionale' cosi d e t t a ' a r t i s t i c a ' non e p o p o l a r e in I t a l i a . Di chi l a c o l p a ? Del p u b b l i c o che non l e g g e ? D e l l a c r i t i c a

che non s a p r e s e n t a r e

ed e s a l t a r e

al

p u b b l i c o i ' v a l o r i ' l e t t e r a r i ? Dei g i o r n a l i che i n v e c e di p u b b l i c a r e

in

a p p e n d i c e ' i l r o m a n z o moderno i t a l i a n o ' p u b b l i c a n o i l v e c c h i o Conte di Montecristo"

( G r a m s c i 2 1 1 5 - 2 1 1 6 ) . To r e t u r n to S t e n d h a l in

this

r a t h e r o n e - s i d e d game of l i t e r a r y p i n g - p o n g , " E n A n g l e t e r r e , un d e r n i s o t f a i t s o u v e n t un bon l i v r e . I c i , un homme de g e n i e c o m m e F o s c o l o s ' a m u s e a f a i r e un p a m p h l e t l a t i n c o n t r e s e s e n n e m i s " ( S t e n d h a l 2 0 ) . A s u s u a l , S t e n d h a l thought he knew the r e a s o n f o r t h i s c u r i o u s s t a t e of affairs

i n the l a n d of D a n t e , P e t r a r c h and V i r g i l : " . . . [ l ' l t a l i e n ]

essentiellernent

obscure, d'abord

parce

que

depuis

trois

p e r s o n n e n'a d ' i n t e r e t a e c r i r e s u r des s u j e t s d i f f i c i l e s . . . . " 72). This unfortunately structure writing,

siecles (Stendhal

r e s u l t e d i n the i n d i r e c t , s e r p e n t i n e

t h a t c o n t i n u e s to be the bane of so m u c h f o r m a l a shortcoming

est

sentence Italian

w h i c h s e e m to be t o t a l l y at odds w i t h

the

p e o p l e b e h i n d the pens: " O n v o i t pourquoi l a f r o i d e u r a c a d e m i q u e g l a c e l e s l i v r e s du peuple le p l u s p a s s i o n e de l ' u n i v e r s " ( S t e n d h a l 7 2 ) . In the F r e n c h m a n ' s day, T u s c a n w a s f a r f r o m being e s t a b l i s h e d as the n a t i o n a l t o n g u e , and t h i s r e s u l t e d in a l o c a l i z e d babel w h i c h , to a c e r t a i n admittedly

m u c h r e d u c e d - d e g r e e , p e r s i s t s to the p r e s e n t

day: " E n

200 croyant

p a r l e r i t a l i e n , l e s gens des p r o v i n c e s p a r l e n t

encore

leur

d i a l e c t e " (Stendhal 72). As a privileged tolerant

of

Italian

foreigner, foibles

Stendhal could afford

than,

to

s a y , an i m p r i s o n e d

be

more

Communist

i n t e l l e c t u a l s c r i b b l i n g a w a y in s e c r e t i n the o b s c u r i t y of M u s s o l i n i ' s p e n a l s y s t e m . T y p i c a l l y , he m i x e d r i g o u r and f o n d n e s s i n the

same

p h r a s e . T h u s , " R o s s i n i e c r i t un opera c o m m e une l e t t r e . Quel g e n i e s ' i l se f u t donne l a peine d ' a p p r e n d r e s a l a n g u e " ( S t e n d h a l 16). Even I t a l y ' s m o r e n o t o r i o u s c r u e l t i e s S t e n d h a l o b s e r v e d w i t h an u n j a u n d i c e d e y e : "Je

s o r s de l a f a m e u s e c h a p e l l e S i x t i n e . . . j ' a i

entendu ces

fameux

c a s t r a t s de l a S i x t i n e " ( S t e n d h a l 18). S h o r t l y a f t e r W a t e r l o o , t h i s e x N a p o l e o n i c o f f i c e r o b s e r v e d t h a t I t a l y w a s a l r e a d y in the p r o c e s s of b e i n g o c c u p i e d by i t s m o s t t e n a c i o u s t o u r i s t / i n v a d e r s : " J e f a i s , en I t a l i e , un voyage en A n g l e t e r r e " ( S t e n d h a l 2 0 ) . H a r d h e a d e d F r e n c h m a n t h a t he w a s , S t e n d h a l n o n e t h e l e s s f r e e l y c o n c e d e d t h a t h i s c o u n t r y m e n w e r e no m a t c h f o r the I t a l i a n s w h e n i t c a m e to c y n i c i s m : " L a n a i v e t e est

une c h o s e i n c o n n u e en I t a l i e , et

s o u f f r i r La Nouvelle i s the

author's

Helo'ise"

( S t e n d h a l 54.) I m p l i c i t in t h i s

unspoken belief

delusion might well

c e p e n d a n t p e r s o n n e n'y

constitute

that a complete an i m p e d i m e n t

peut

statement

a b s e n c e of

self-

to g r e a t n e s s . B e y l e

a t t r i b u t e d m o s t of the f a u l t s of I t a l y to the s t r e n g t h of the c h u r c h and the w e a k n e s s of the p r e s s . In the f i r s t i n s t a n c e , " A R o m e et a N a p l e s , l a s e u l e l o i en v i g u e u r c ' e s t l a r e l i g i o n " ( S t e n d h a l 6 2 ) . A s f o r latter, "Le dix-neuf

the

v i n g t i e m e s de l a c i v i l i s a t i o n de l a F r a n c e , de

T A n g l e t e r r e et de l a P r u s s e , s o n t dus a l a l i b e r t e de l a p r e s s e , et i c i e l l e ne d i t que des m e n s o n g e s " ( S t e n d h a l 6 2 ) .

201 In d i s c u s s i n g I t a l i a n c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s , o n l y r a r e l y d i d S t e n d h a l s t o o p to s e n t i m e n t a l

p l a t i t u d e s . The f o l l o w i n g

i s one of the

more

e g r e g i o u s e x a m p l e s of t h e s e e x t r e m e l y a t y p i c a l l a p s e s : " L a c a r a c t e r e i t a l i e n , c o m m e l e s f e u x d'un v o l c a n , n'a pu se f a i r e j o u r que p a r l a m u s i q u e et l a v o l u p t e " ( S t e n d h a l 140).

Even a c l e a r - e y e d

materialist,

i t s e e m s , can o c c a s i o n a l l y get c a r r i e d a w a y . A s a l r e a d y m e n t i o n e d in C h a p t e r One, S t e n d h a l w a s one of

the

v e r y f i r s t F r e n c h i n t e l l e c t u a l s to w o r r y about the f u t u r e p o w e r and coming

greatness

mollified

by

the

of

the

young

United

S t a t e s . He w a s

republic's

not

in

well-established

the

least

democratic

i n s t i t u t i o n s . N e w Vork and P h i l a d e l p h i a , f o r i n s t a n c e , are d e s c r i b e d a s " p a y s r e b e l l e s aux a r t s " ( S t e n d h a l 5 7 ) .

E l s e w h e r e he c o m p l a i n s t h a t

the U n i t e d S t a t e s " n e p r o d u i s e n t que des d o l l a r s " ( S t e n d h a l 145). A s w e s a w i n the p r e v i o u s c h a p t e r , a n t i - A m e r i c a n w e r e n e v e r as s t r o n g i n I t a l y as t h e y

sentiments

w e r e in F r a n c e , d e s p i t e

the

p r e s e n c e of much g r e a t e r o b j e c t i v e c a u s e . A m e r i c a n p o l i c e m e n p u r s u e d the M a f i a on the I t a l i a n m a i n l a n d w i t h a p e r s i s t e n c e t h a t w a s n e v e r to be a p p l i e d to F r a n c e ' s U n i o n C o r s e . D u r i n g the l a s t t h r e e y e a r s of

the

S e c o n d W o r l d W a r , i t w a s the U n i t e d S t a t e s A r m y A i r F o r c e t h a t c a u s e d the m o s t damage to I t a l i a n c i t i e s and t o w n s , both b e f o r e and a f t e r the e s t a b l i s h m e n t of the S a l o R e p u b l i c . In the l a t e 1 9 4 0 s , i n t e r n a l

Italian

p o l i t i c s w e r e i n t e r f e r e d w i t h by the U.S. S t a t e D e p a r t m e n t on a l e v e l that

had

previously

been r e s e r v e d

almost

exclusively

for

those

u n f o r t u n a t e L a t i n A m e r i c a n and C a r i b b e a n c o u n t r i e s w h o s e d e s t i n i e s w e r e c o m p r o m i s e d by W a s h i n g t o n ' s s e l f - s e r v i n g i m p o s i t i o n

of

Monroe D o c t r i n e . To a l l i n t e n t s and p u r p o s e s , W a s h i n g t o n t r e a t e d

the Italy

202 l i k e an o v e r g r o w n " b a n a n a r e p u b l i c " . L o g i c a l l y s p e a k i n g , I t a l i a n s s h o u l d not have l i k e d A m e r i c a n s . N e v e r t h e l e s s , they did. One of the p r i n c i p a l r e a s o n s f o r t h i s a t t i t u d e w a s e m i g r a t i o n . Letters

from an American

In

Farmer, J . H e c t o r S t . J o h n de C r e v e c o u r t ' s

g e n e r a l l y sunny a c c o u n t of the l a t e 18th c e n t u r y y e a r s he s p e n t i n the New

W o r l d , the

author

o b s e r v e d t h a t the

American

people

"are

a

m i x t u r e of E n g l i s h , S c o t c h , I r i s h , F r e n c h , D u t c h , G e r m a n s and S w e d e s . From this

p r o m i s c u o u s b r e e d t h a t r a c e now c a l l e d A m e r i c a n s

have

a r i s e n " (Crevecourt 37). Crevecourt h i m s e l f , however, a f t e r composing h i s p o p u l a r paean to the new r e p u b l i c in

a b o r r o w e d E n g l i s h i d i o m , and

d e s p i t e h i s o f t - p r o f e s s e d a d m i r a t i o n f o r h i s s e c o n d h o m e l a n d and the e m o t i o n a l e n t a n g l e m e n t s of an A m e r i c a n - b o r n f a m i l y , d e c i d e d to spend h i s d e c l i n i n g y e a r s in h i s n a t i v e F r a n c e . T h i s r e t r e a t w a s t y p i c a l . In one w a y o r a n o t h e r , the F r e n c h p i l l a r h o l d i n g up A m e r i c a w a s d e s t i n e d

to

r o t a w a y . L i k e t h e i r D u t c h , S c o t t i s h , S c o t c h - I r i s h , and G e r m a n p e e r s , the w e l l - b o r n F r e n c h m e n who r e m a i n e d in A m e r i c a tended to d i s a p p e a r willingly

i n t o t h e i r host c o u n t r y ' s e m e r g i n g r u l i n g c l a s s .

By the e a r l y

2 0 t h c e n t u r y , the R o o s e v e l t s and the Du F o n t s , the C a r n e g i e s and the M o r g a n s , the R o c k e f e l l e r s and the G e t t y s , a l l b e l o n g e d to the seamless upper-class milieu

commonly-if

not

always

same

accurately-

d e s c r i b e d as W A S P . In t h i s c o n t e x t , F r e n c h names w e r e as o f t e n Norman as G a l l i c , w h i l e the F r e n c h language and Roman C a t h o l i c r e l i g i o n a b s t r a c t p r o p e r t i e s of l i t t l e i m p o r t a n c e and l e s s e m o t i o n a l to p e o p l e w h o d i d n ' t even see t h e m s e l v e s

were

resonance

as H u g u e n o t s . T h e

self-

i d e n t i f i e d F r e n c h of A m e r i c a w e r e a l m o s t e x c l u s i v e l y New F r e n c h : the e x p e l l e d A c a d i a n s who

created Creole culture

in New O r l e a n s ;

the

d i s p o s s e s s e d Q u e b e c o i s p e a s a n t s who f l o c k e d to the m i l l t o w n s of New

203 E n g l a n d i n the l a t e 1 9 t h c e n t u r y in s e a r c h of w o r k . W h i l e t h e i r a b s o r p t i o n w a s n o w h e r e n e a r as c o m p l e t e as the one t h a t their

upper c l a s s

brethren,

inter-marriage

with

ethnic

overtook

I r i s h , P o l i s h , and

I t a l i a n C a t h o l i c s e r o d e d " C a n u c k " n u m b e r s to a s i g n i f i c a n t degree. A s w e s a w i n C h a p t e r One, 2 0 t h c e n t u r y

French t r a v e l l e r s

to t h e N e w

W o r l d s a w very f e w A m e r i c a n s as " F r e n c h " . In t h e i r t r a v e l d i a r i e s , the Quebecois usually appear offstage like some modestly i n t e r e s t i n g t r i b e of I n d i a n s w h o m t h e y n e v e r q u i t e found t h e t i m e to v i s i t .

Whatever

n o s t a l g i a t h e s e modern Europeans m i g h t have f e l t f o r the brave J e s u i t s and i n t e n d a n t s w h o d i s c o v e r e d so much of N o r t h A m e r i c a , and w h a t e v e r f e e l i n g s of p r i d e m i g h t have s u f f u s e d t h e i r b r e a s t s when t h i n k i n g about F r a n c e ' s i n v a l u a b l e c o n t r i b u t i o n to A m e r i c a n v i c t o r y d u r i n g i t s h a r d f o u g h t W a r of Independence, t h e s e e m o t i o n s s e l d o m s p i l l e d o v e r i n t o f a s c i n a t i o n w i t h the tidbitonts'

descendants. For P a r i s i a n i n t e l l e c t u a l s

w r i t i n g b e f o r e the 1 9 6 0 s , the Q u e b e c o i s m a s s e s w e r e not j u s t c o u n t r y c o u s i n s , but c o u s i n s t o o many t i m e s r e m o v e d to be w o r t h t h e m o s t h a l f - h e a r t e d s u c c o u r . Indeed, A m e r i c a c o u l d h a r d l y have appeared to be so f a s c i n a t i n g i f i t had not a l s o s e e m e d so c o m p l e t e l y u n - F r e n c h . With

Italians,

things

were

very d i f f e r e n t .

Between

1 4 9 2 and

1 8 9 2 , the c i t i z e n s of I t a l y ' s d i s p a r a t e r e g i m e s had p r e c i o u s l i t t l e to do with

the land

that

Columbus discovered. As occupation

o c c u p a t i o n , and even t h e once f i e r c e l y under foreign

domination,

Italians

followed

independent c i t y s t a t e s

became preoccupied w i t h

fell their

i n c o h e s i v e u n i q u e n e s s . Even a f t e r the R i s o r g i m e n t o w a s c o m p l e t e , I t a l y still

d i d not f e e l l i k e a " n o r m a l " c o u n t r y , l i k e F r a n c e o r the U n i t e d

States.

A b o v e a l l , t h e r e w a s the p r o b l e m of the S o u t h ,

S i c i l y , an i s l a n d t h a t s e e m e d to have n o t h i n g

particularly

in common w i t h the

204 northern

and c e n t r a l " p a r t s of the p e n i n s u l a , an u t t e r l y a l i e n

within-a-state influence.

o v e r w h i c h Rome c o u l d e x e r c i s e an

state-

all-too-limited

2

P o v e r t y , I t a l y ' s o t h e r m a j o r p r o b l e m , w a s i n d i s s o l u b l y l i n k e d to the i n t r a c t a b l e Italy

heel of the n a t i o n ' s boot. What made the c r e a t i o n

impossible

was

the

Giuseppe Calzerato wrote America!

America!,

e doloroso

that

in h i s i n t r o d u c t i o n

made

it

essential. As

to A n t o n i o

Margariti's

" P e r quanto p a r a d o s s a l e p o t r a a p p a r i r e , i l t r i s t e

fenomeno

nell'unificazione

same thing

of

dell'

emigrato Italia"

ha una del 1 e sue c a u s e (Margariti

8).

Italy's

principali

outpouring

of

p a u p e r s w a s n o t h i n g s h o r t of p h e n o m e n a l : " D a l 1 8 7 6 al 1901 i n t u t t o i l ' r e g i o ' ci furono 5.792.546 e m i g r a t i , e nella sola C a l a b r i a 310.363...." (Margariti

1 1). T h e l a n d to w h i c h they w e n t w a s not the p l a c e w h i c h

g l a d d e n e d de T o c q u e v i l l e ' s h e a r t : " [ . ' A m e r i c a non e l ' e l d o r a d o f e l i c e e incantato

ma una n a z i o n e v q r a c e che i n g h i o t t e

l a v o r o ed u o m i n i

c a m b i o di un i n s i g n i f i c a n t e pugno di d o l l a r i " ( M a r g a r i t i In the p a r t i c u l a r always

elude

him:

"A

f a b b r i c a . . . . " ( M a r g a r i t i 76). factory,

10).

c a s e of A n t o n i o M a r g a r i t i , p r o s p e r i t y Philadelphia

ho

lavorato

in

quasi

would

sempre

in

A s in C e l i n e ' s n i g h t m a r e v i s i o n of the F o r d

English was seldom spoken. Unlike Bardamu, however,

the

F r e n c h d o c t o r ' s a l t e r ego, M a r g a r i t i k n e w he had no a l t e r n a t e f u t u r e as a s u r g e o n o r a w r i t e r . C o n s e q u e n t l y , he p o u r e d a g r e a t

d e a l of

his

S i c i l i a n p a r a l l e l s a r e , of c o u r s e , not e n t i r e l y u n k n o w n in o t h e r c o u n t r i e s - i n c l u d i n g F r a n c e and the U n i t e d S t a t e s . C o r s i c a n s , f o r i n s t a n c e , are even more a l i e n a t e d f r o m P a r i s than S i c i l i a n s are f r o m Rome; they a l s o play a c o m m a n d i n g r o l e in the F r e n c h u n d e r w o r l d , even i f they are n o w h e r e n e a r as v i o l e n t as t h e i r p e e r s in the M a f i a and C a m o r r a . In The Nine Nations of North America, J o e l G a r r e a u s u g g e s t e d t h a t the s t a t e of F l o r i d a - t h a n k s l a r g e l y t o the r e g i o n ' s u b i q u i t o u s L a t i n A m e r i c a n d r u g d e a l e r s - m i g h t be s i m i l a r l y d i s a f f e c t e d f r o m the U S A , a l t h o u g h h i s c l a i m s i n t h i s r e g a r d are too c o m p l i c a t e d to e x p l o r e in any depth here.

2

205 l i m i t e d l e i s u r e i n t o the s t r u g g l e f o r w o r k e r s ' r i g h t s : " P r e s i anche p a r t e attiva

alle

lotte

miglioramento

per il

progresso

sociale,

dei l a v o r a t o r i " ( M a r g a r i t i

t r i p b a c k to the o l d c o u n t r y

to v i s i t

per il

76).

A m e r i c a mi

americano...."

chiamo

his dying mother,

italiano,

e per

qui i n

this

still-

in e a s i l y in

either

I t a l i a mi

chiamano

(Margariti 82).

J u s t as m e m o r i e s of the p o t a t o f a m i n e c o n t i n u e to haunt a u t h o r s a c e n t u r y and a h a l f a f t e r the e v e n t , the s p e c t r e of c o n t i n u e s to be a f a c t o r in I t a l y ' s a r t i s t i c Blasetti,

il

D u r i n g the c o u r s e of a

m i l i t a n t w o r k e r d i s c o v e r e d t h a t he no l o n g e r f i t p l a c e : "In

lavoro

an

important

film

critic

of

Irish

emigration

imagination. Alessandro the

1930s

and

the

one

" e s t a b l i s h e d " d i r e c t o r f r o m the f a s c i s t p e r i o d w h o s e r e p u t a t i o n did not s u f f e r i n the l i g h t of p o s t w a r r e a s s e s s m e n t , made a d o c u m e n t a r y 1972

entitled

Storie

dell'

emigrazione.

When a s k e d w h y

he

in

felt

c o m p e l l e d to t u r n h i s hand to t h i s t o p i c , the f i l m m a k e r r e p l i e d t h a t he w a n t e d to u n d e r s t a n d del f e n o m e n o e m i g r a z i o n e , partendo da una a n a l i s i del 1 e c o n d i z i o n i s o c i a l i e p o l i t i c h e al m o m e n t o d e l l ' u n i t a d ' l t a l i a , quando c i o e , da una p r i m a e m i g r a z i o n e i n t e r n a , s i passo alle m a s s i c c e e m i g r a z i o n i v e r s o l ' A m e r i c a di cui hanno f a t t o le s p e s e s o p r a t u t t o le p o p o l a z i o n i m e r i d o n a l i , a l l e t t a t e con a r g o m e n t a z i o n i s p e s s o m e n z o g n e r e o f r a u d o l e n t i e che erano d e s t i n a t e a prendere i l p o s t o d e g l i s c h i a v i neri che l a p o l i t i c a a b o l i z i o n i s t a aveva t o l t o dal m e r c a t o , di q u e g l i s t e s s i s c h i a v i che in una p r i m a f a s e s i era p e n s a t o di s o s t i t u i r e con g l i i r l a n d e s i i q u a l i erano poi p a s s a t i a c o m p i t i meno i n g r a t i (Blasetti 370). T h i s r a t h e r s h o c k i n g and u n f a m i l i a r e x p l a n a t i o n c e r t a i n l y goes a long

way

towards

explaining

why

Italian/Black

and

Irish/Black

206 r e l a t i o n s have been "and c o n t i n u e to be so p o o r in the U n i t e d S t a t e s , seemingly racisme in w h i t e

s u b - s t a n d a r d e v e n by the

ordinaire.

grim

statistical

averages

of

H a v i n g been c o n s i d e r e d no b e t t e r than b l a c k s l a v e s

s k i n by A m e r i c a ' s P r o t e s t a n t r u l i n g c l a s s , R o m a n C a t h o l i c

I r i s h and I t a l i a n i m m i g r a n t s f e l t c o m p e l l e d to t r u m p e t t h e i r E u r o p e a n c r e d e n t i a l s at a l l t i m e s and in a l l p l a c e s , r e j e c t i n g identification

every form

of

w i t h the f o r m e r s l a v e s w i t h w h o m t h e y had m o r e

in

c o m m o n than they c a r e d to a d m i t . The v e r y w e a k n e s s of t h e i r c l a i m s to b e i n g c o n s i d e r e d p a r t of the A m e r i c a n m a i n s t r e a m a g g r a v a t e d

their

h o s t i l i t y t o w a r d s the only people i n the m e l t i n g - p o t w h o s e a m b i t i o n s i n t h i s r e g a r d w e r e r e g a r d e d , by m e m b e r s of the P r o t e s t a n t c l a s s , to be even m o r e r i d i c u l o u s than t h e i r s . In t h i s c a s e ,

ruling

familiarity

bred h o r r i f i e d , even v i o l e n t c o n t e m p t . A m e r i c a , h o w e v e r , does not e n t i r e l y d o m i n a t e I t a l i a n e m i g r a t i o n l i t e r a t u r e . A r g e n t i n a , a f t e r a l l , and not the U.S.A., i s the s e c o n d m o s t I t a l i a n n a t i o n on e a r t h . A l a r g e p e r c e n t a g e of I t a l i a n e m i g r a t i o n i n t e r - E u r o p e a n , and the l a r g e s t s h i f t s Italian.

Pane e ciocolata

(1973),

of a l l c o n t i n u e to be

arguably

inter-

Franco B r u s a t i ' s

m e m o r a b l e f i l m , d e a l t w i t h the p l i g h t of a S o u t h e r n I t a l i a n

was

most

immigrant

t r y i n g to get h i s f i n a n c e s t o g e t h e r i n d i s d a i n f u l , G e r m a n - s p e a k i n g S w i t z e r l a n d , a r i c h c o u n t r y w h e r e the s o - c a l l e d g u e s t w o r k e r s do a l l the m e n i a l t a s k s . C l o s e r to h o m e , the move f r o m P a l e r m o to M i l a n o r e m a i n s one of the w e l l s p r i n g s of I t a l i a n n a r r a t i v e a r t . O u t s i d e of the country's s m a l l , s h o r t - l i v e d empire (Ethiopia; Eritrea; Libya; Albania), Italian

rags-to-riches

stories

were

in

exceedingly

short

supply.

U n s u r p r i s i n g l y under the c i r c u m s t a n c e s , H o r a t i o A l g e r w a s not one of

207 the A m e r i c a n a u t h o r s c u l t i v a t e d by I t a l i a n i n t e l l e c t u a l s i n s e a r c h of s o c i a l and c u l t u r a l r e n e w a l . F o r v a r i o u s r e a s o n s , the e m i g r a t i o n p h e n o m e n o n p r o v i d e d m u c h m o r e f o d d e r to I t a l i a n c i n e m a than i t did to I t a l i a n l i t e r a t u r e . M e m o i r s s u c h as America!

America!

AJtre

memorie

del

popolo

were

usually

w r i t t e n by u n e d u c a t e d w o r k e r s , o f t e n w i t h o u t s i d e e d i t o r i a l a s s i s t a n c e and, as a c o n s e q u e n c e , they r e s e m b l e the c u r r e n t l y f a s h i o n a b l e genre of t a p e r e c o r d e d and t r a n s c r i b e d o r a l h i s t o r y m o r e than they do l i t e r a t u r e per

se. T h o s e f e w

literary

works

devoted

to

the

Italo-American

e x p e r i e n c e w h i c h do not f o c u s on u n d e r w o r l d r i t u a l s and i n i t i a t i o n s , t e n d to be c a s t i n the f o r m of f a m i l y s a g a s about c l a n s of c o n s t r u c t i o n w o r k e r s . Even h e r e , h o w e v e r , the p e d i g r e e i s a n y t h i n g but J e w i s h - A m e r i c a n n o v e l i s t / s c r e e n w r i t e r Richard Price's c o v e r s much the s a m e ground as I t a l o - A m e r i c a n D o n a t o ' s Christ

in Concrete,

pristine.

Bloodbrothers

a u t h o r P i e t r o Di

and i s at l e a s t as w e l l k n o w n . One l o o k s i n

v a i n f o r a s c h o o l of I t a l o - A m e r i c a n w r i t i n g t h a t c o u l d p r o f i t a b l y

be

c o m p a r e d to t h e i r A f r i c a n - A m e r i c a n , I r i s h - A m e r i c a n , and J e w i s h A m e r i c a n c o u n t e r p a r t s . Even c r i m e n o v e l i s t S a l v a t o r e L a m b i n o h i d e s b e h i n d the d i s i n g e n u o u s l y " W A S P " p s e u d o n y m s " E v a n H u n t e r " and " E d McBain". T h i s s h o u l d not be t a k e n to mean t h a t the I t a l i a n p r e s e n c e w a s entirely

invisible

in

America

in

non-criminal

format.

Popular

e n t e r t a i n e r s s u c h as Frank S i n a t r a and J i m m y D u r a n t e , s p o r t s h e r o e s s u c h as R o c k y M a r c i a n o and J o e D i M a g g i o , w e r e very m u c h in the p u b l i c eye. T w o of the m o s t h i g h l y - e s t e e m e d A m e r i c a n f i l m d i r e c t o r s of the 1 9 3 0 s , ' 4 0 s , and ' 5 0 s w e r e Frank C a p r a and V i n c e n t e M i n n e l l i , but the I t a l o - A m e r i c a n s o c i a l experience was never central

to t h e i r

work.

208 Onscreen, recognizable Italian types were scarcely l e s s stereotyped than B l a c k m a i d s and b u t l e r s , w h i l e t h e i r p r e s e n c e w a s a l m o s t a l w a y s tangential

to the p l o t .

In H a y s Code H o l l y w o o d , a p l a c e w h e r e

the

p r e s u m e d p r e j u d i c e s of s m a l l - t o w n P r o t e s t a n t A m e r i c a n s w e r e n e v e r u n d e r e s t i m a t e d , I r i s h C a t h o l i c i s m w a s about as much " e t h n i c i t y " as an A - l i s t m o v i e hero c o u l d s t a n d . To a c e r t a i n e x t e n t , t h i s s i t u a t i o n changed r a d i c a l l y i n the 1 9 7 0 s . D u r i n g t h a t d e c a d e , m o s t of the " h o t " new A m e r i c a n d i r e c t o r s w e r e of I t a l i a n d e s c e n t . M a r t i n S c o r s e s e , F r a n c i s Ford C o p p o l a , B r i a n de P a l m a , and M i c h a e l C i m i n o brought a new c o n s c i o u s n e s s to A m e r i c a n c i n e m a that was often between

their

d e s c r i b e d as " o p e r a t i c " . C r i t i c s f o u n d work

and the

more

baroque p r o d u c t i o n s

connections of

Luchino

V i s c o n t i , Michelangelo A n t o n i o n i , Bernardo B e r t o l u c c i , Francesco R o s i , and S e r g i o Leone. Even h e r e , h o w e v e r , the change w a s m o r e a p p a r e n t than r e a l . N e i t h e r C i m i n o nor De P a l m a poured much a r t i s t i c energy i n t o I t a l i a n s u b j e c t s , and w h e n they did i t e m e r g e d in the hoary old f o r m of Mafia

melodrama. While

Godfather

the

first

two

of

F r a n c i s Ford Coppola's

f i l m s are a l m o s t u n i v e r s a l l y r e c o g n i z e d as m a s t e r p i e c e s ,

t h e y , t o o , are M a f i a e p i c s , even i f they do d i s p l a y an u n p r e c e d e n t e d u n d e r s t a n d i n g of u n d e r w o r l d s o c i o l o g y .

3

T h e mob l i k e w i s e c a s t s a s h a d o w o v e r S c o r s e s e ' s w o r k , but

at

l e a s t here w e are g i v e n a chance to see the l a r g e r s o c i e t y t h a t p r o d u c e d t h i s c r i m i n a l phenomenon. In Mean Streets,

the d i r e c t o r ' s

breakthrough

A s P a u l i n e K a e l and o t h e r A m e r i c a n c r i t i c s c o r r e c t l y p o i n t e d out at the t i m e . The Godfather m o v i e s w e r e the f i r s t H o l l y w o o d f e a t u r e s to suggest that the l i n e b e t w e e n b i g t i m e c r i m e and b i g b u s i n e s s w a s o f t e n t h i n to the p o i n t of n o n - e x i s t e n t . In one of h e r r e v i e w s , K a e l d e s c r i b e d the i n t e r l o c k i n g e p i c s as " A w i d e , s t a r t l i n g l y v i v i d v i e w of a M a f i a d y n a s t y , i n w h i c h o r g a n i z e d c r i m e b e c o m e s an o b s c e n e n i g h t m a r e i m a g e of A m e r i c a n f r e e e n t e r p r i s e " (5001 N i g h t s at the M o v i e s 2 2 0 ) .

3

209 1 9 7 3 f e a t u r e ; the M a f i a i t s e l f i s broken down i n t o b i g - s h o t s and s m a l l operators

in a l i t t l e

Hollywood

movies,

I t a l y f u l l of p r i e s t s , m a c h i s m o , s e x u a l instinctual

patriotism,

guilt,

neighbourhood

bars,

c o f f e e h o u s e s , r e s t a u r a n t s and a p a r t m e n t b u i l d i n g s w h e r e f a m i l i e s s t a y t o g e t h e r u n t i l m a r r i a g e doth t h e m p a r t . T h i s i s e s s e n t i a l l y the s a m e m i l i e u t h a t S c o r s e s e w o u l d r e p r o d u c e s e v e n y e a r s l a t e r in Raging his

acclaimed "biopic"

of

Italian-American

Bull,

b o x e r J a k e La M o t t a .

S c o r s e s e ' s M a f i a i s both a p r e s e n c e and a t e m p t a t i o n ; i t f u n c t i o n s on the s a m e l e v e l as e n t e r i n g the p r i e s t h o o d , s l e e p i n g w i t h

non-Italian

g i r l s — t h e f e m a l e p e r s p e c t i v e is seldom c o n s i d e r e d in these m o v i e s and l e a v i n g the n e i g h b o u r h o o d "melting

pot"

emotional

f o r the f r i g h t e n i n g ,

o u t s i d e . More o f t e n

emigres

who

half-understood

than not, S c o r s e s e ' s heroes

nonetheless

think

of

themselves

as

are all-

American. The e m i g r e e x p e r i e n c e i s p a r t i c u l a r l y g e r m a n e to I t a l i a n c i n e m a proper.

The

aesthetic

remembered, was

ancestor

of

Toni, J e a n R e n o i r ' s

neorealismo, 1934 study

it of

should

be

multi-lingual

M e d i t e r r a n e a n e m i g r a n t s t r y i n g to s u r v i v e in the bidonvilles

around

M a r s e i l l e s . Even in f i l m s s i t u a t e d in v i l l a g e s and t o w n s w h e r e the l o c a l f a m i l i e s have l i v e d f o r c o u n t l e s s g e n e r a t i o n s , t h e r e i s the f e e l i n g i n N e o r e a l i s t c i n e m a t h a t p o v e r t y can at any m o m e n t s e n d t h e s e p e o p l e w a n d e r i n g f r o m p l a c e to p l a c e . T h i s i s as t r u e of the

impoverished

f i s h e r m e n in V i s c o n t i ' s La Terra trema ( 1 9 4 7 ) as i t i s of the R o m a n s u b - p r o l e t a r i a t d e p i c t e d in De S i c a ' s Ladri di biciclette and His Brothers

( 1 9 6 0 ) , V i s c o n t i ' s l a s t b l a c k and w h i t e

d e a l t w i t h an i m p o v e r i s h e d S o u t h e r n f a m i l y

(1948).

Rocco

masterpiece,

that sought s e c u r i t y

in

i n d u s t r i a l i z e d M i l a n ; w i t h the e x c e p t i o n of the t r a g i c f a m i l y d y n a m i c s ,

210 L i n a W e r t m u l l e r ' s Mftfii metallurgico

ferito

nell'onore

( 1 9 7 2 ) and Tutto

a posto e niente in ordine ( 1 9 7 4 ) c o v e r much the s a m e ground. In many ways,

Franco

Brusati's

already

mentioned

Pane

e

ciocolata

is

s t r u c t u r e d l i k e a l i g h t e r , c o o l e r v e r s i o n of Toni. One of the m o r e i n t e r e s t i n g ongoing Lamehca.

problem

of

emigration

is

Gianni

Amelio's

1994

feature

T h i s t i m e the s t o r y i s not about p o o r I t a l i a n s t r y i n g to m a k e

good in s o m e m o r e f o r t u n a t e about

I t a l i a n c i n e m a t i c a p p r o a c h e s to the

q u a r t e r of the i n d u s t r i a l i z e d w o r l d , but

I t a l i a n c o n m e n t r y i n g to e x p l o i t the s t a r v i n g i n h a b i t a n t s

c o u n t r y w h i c h I t a l y i t s e l f has h e l p e d to i m p o v e r i s h . Lamehca

of a

begins

w i t h documentary footage describing M u s s o l i n i ' s i n v a s i o n / o c c u p a t i o n of A l b a n i a in 1 9 3 9 . The s c e n e then s h i f t s to the A l b a n i a of the 1 9 9 0 s , a c o u n t r y only r e c e n t l y e m e r g e d f r o m the n i g h t m a r e y e a r s of the E n v e r Hoxha r e g i m e and c u r r e n t l y

c r i p p l e d by an e c o n o m i c s t a g n a t i o n

g r e a t e r than t h a t of I t a l y in 1 9 4 5 . Gino ( E n r i c o Lo V e r s o ) , one of two

even the

I t a l i a n c o n f i d e n c e men i n t e n t on b i l k i n g t h e s e p o o r p e o p l e out of

t h e i r l i m i t e d f u n d s and even more l i m i t e d s u p p l i e s of hope, g e t s d r a w n i n t o the v o r t e x of A l b a n i a n m i s e r y , and e v e n t u a l l y f i n d s h i m s e l f a b o a r d a r e f u g e e - c r o w d e d s h i p t h a t p l a n s to beach i t s e l f on I t a l i a n s a n d s , to seek refuge

in a country

that unceremoniously

sends most

illegal

e m i g r a n t s home. F o r G i n o ' s v i c t i m s , I t a l y i t s e l f l o o k s l i k e A m e r i c a . In a m o v i n g i n t e r v i e w he gave to Positif

m a g a z i n e , the

director

e x p l a i n e d h i s m o t i v a t i o n s : " J ' a p p a r t i e n s a une f a m i l i e d ' e m i g r a n t s : mon g r a n d - p e r e a e m i g r e et n ' e s t j a m a i s r e v e n u , i l a l a i s s e ma g r a n d - m e r e e n c e i n t e ( e l l e a v a i t t r o i s e n f a n t s et e t a i t e n c e i n t e du q u a t r i e m e ) , i l a d i s p a r u en A m e r i q u e du Sud. Mon p e r e - j ' a v a i s un an et demi et l u i d i x h u i t - e s t p a r t i a l a r e c h e r c h e de son p e r e , i l T a r e t r o u v e et a d i s p a r u l u i

2 1 1 a u s s i " ( V i v i a n i 2 5 ) . By m a k i n g Larnerica,

the d i r e c t o r c o n t i n u e d , " J e

voulais

cette

faire

un f i l m

sur

l'ltalie,

vue

fois

d'une

distance

g e o g r a p h i q u e a s s e z p a r t i c u l i e r e " ( V i v i a n i 25). This ubiquitous

need to s o l v e

Italy's multitudinous

problems

s h o u l d , h o w e v e r , not be t a k e n as a s i g n of s e l f - c o n t e m p t . Even the i l l educated Antonio

Margariti, certainly

no f r i e n d

of the

status

quo,

d e s c r i b e d h i s h o m e l a n d as " N e l l a ' t e r r a i t a l i c a , madre d e l l a c i v i 1 i t a del mondo'...."

(Margariti

19). B e h i n d

the

d i s o r d e r of p r e - and p o s t - R i s o r g i m e n t o

massive

chaos

and

chronic

I t a l y l a y the m e m o r y of R o m e ,

the w o r l d ' s f i r s t c e n t r a l i z e d m e g a - s t a t e , b r u t a l p e r h a p s , but s t i l l most e f f i c i e n t l y

run e m p i r e the w o r l d had e v e r k n o w n .

4

the

If, on the one

hand, I t a l y ' s p r o b l e m s s e e m e d i n c u r a b l e , on the o t h e r they s e e m e d to be of a c y c l i c a l , t r a n s i t o r y n a t u r e . The p r o b l e m w a s : how to s o l v e t h e m ? B e n i t o M u s s o l i n i had one a n s w e r ; A n t o n i o G r a m s c i had Mussolini northwards

looked backwards

to

Imperial

In

sedimentazioni

A m e r i c a , , he

wrote,

vischiosamente

passate,

ha

permesso

and other

Marxist principles, preferred

look to the U n i t e d S t a t e s f o r p a r t i c u l a r

storiche

inspiration,

f o r m i l i t a r y s u p p o r t f r o m G e r m a n y . G r a m s c i , on the

hand, d e s p i t e his d y e d - i n - t h e - w o o l

problems.

Rome f o r

another.

a n s w e r s to s p e c i f i c

"La

non

parassitarie una

s p e c i a l m e n t e al c o m m e r c i o e p e r m e t t e

base

esistenza lasciate sana

di

to

Italian queste

dalle

fasi

all'industria

sempre piu la riduzione

e

della

f u n z i o n e e c o n o m i c a r a p p r e s e n t a t a dai t r a n s p o r t i e dal c o m m e r c i o a una r e a l e a t t i vi t a s u b a l t e r n a d e l l a p r o d u z i o n e , a n z i i l t e n t a t i v o di a s s o r b i r e q u e s t a a t t i vi t a n e l l ' a t t i v i t a

p r o d u t t i v a s t e s s a . . . . " (Quaderni dal c a r c e r e

2 1 4 5 ) . G r a m s c i ' s p r o - A m e r i c a n e n t h u s i a s m s w e r e a l l p r e d i c a t e d on the 4

With the possible exception of the B r i t i s h , of course.

212 v e r y M a r x i s t need to advance Italy to the l e v e l of i n d u s t r i a l / d e m o c r a t i c p e r f e c t i o n then b e l i e v e d n e c e s s a r y f o r the s u c c e s s f u l t r a n s l a t i o n i n t o a t r u l y s o c i a l i s t s t a t e . Anything that advanced t h i s cause w a s promoted by G r a m s c i ; a n y t h i n g t h a t h i n d e r e d i t , he o p p o s e d . T h u s , w e r e a d the following

s a d l y d i s a p p r o v i n g c o m p a r i s o n : L / A m e r i c a ha i l R o t a r y e

TV.M.C.A., T E u r o p a ha l a M a s s o n e r i a e i G e s u i t i " (Quaderni dal c a r c e r e 246.)

T o w a r d s t h i s e n d , the p r i s o n p h i l o s o p h e r s p e c u l a t e d t h a t a

g e n e r o u s dose of s e x u a l p u r i t a n i s m and P r o t e s t a n t C h r i s t i a n i t y well

be b e n e f i c i a l

to

Italy, although

might

he o b v i o u s l y w o u l d not

have

d e f e n d e d t h e s e p r i n c i p l e s as i n d e p e n d e n t v i r t u e s i n t h e m s e l v e s . The t r i c k w a s to get I t a l y i n d u s t r i a l i z e d , and a n y t h i n g t h a t f u r t h e r e d

that

p u r p o s e w a s w o r t h p u r s u i n g . T h u s , he w r o t e , " L ' a n t i a m e r i c a n i s m o e c o m i c o p r i m a a n c o r a di e s s e r e s t u p i d o " (Quaderni dal c a r c e r e 6 3 5 ) . G r a m s c i w a s as p r a g m a t i c here as he w a s e v e r y w h e r e e l s e . P e r h a p s , t o o , he w a s haunted by a n o t h e r one of S t e n d h a l ' s d i s t u r b i n g I t a l i a n o b s e r v a t i o n s , and sought some w a y to c i r c u m v e n t i t s s t u b b o r n t r u t h . In Promenades

dans Rome, the g r e a t F r e n c h l i t e r a r y j o u r n a l i s t

contended

t h a t " L e m a t e r i a l i s m e d e p l a i t aux I t a l i e n s . L ' a b s t r a c t i o n e s t p e n i b l e p o u r l e u r e s p r i t . II l e u r f a u t une p h i l o s o p h i e t o u t e r e m p l i e de t e r r e u r et d ' a m o u r , c ' e s t - a - d i r e un Dieu pour p r e m i e r m o t e u r " ( S t e n d h a l 6 4 5 ) . T h e F u t u r i s t s , c u r i o u s l y e n o u g h , had v e r y l i t t l e to s a y America. While Filippo-Tommaso Marinetti modern

Europe that

" L ' i d e a di

patria

about

w a s q u i t e happy to

a n n u l l a T i d e a di

tell

famiglia"

( M a r i n e t t i 3 8 9 ) , and to e x t o l l the m a g n i f i c e n t l y n o n - h u m a n g l o r i e s of a i r p l a n e s , m o v i e s , m a c h i n e g u n s and e v e r y o t h e r p r o d u c t

of

modern

i n d u s t r y , he s e e m e d c o m p l e t e l y i n d i f f e r e n t to the v e r y f o u n t a i n h e a d of the m a c h i n e w o r l d he e x t o l l e d , the U n i t e d S t a t e s of A m e r i c a . One w o u l d

213 have e x p e c t e d a c o n d e m n a t i o n of A m e r i c a n d e m o c r a c y , p e r h a p s , but w h a t about i t s f a c t o r y s y s t e m ? P e r h a p s in the f i r s t t w o d e c a d e s of the 2 0 t h c e n t u r y i t w a s s t i l l p o s s i b l e f o r an a e s t h e t i c and p o l i t i c a l r a d i c a l to be c o m p l e t e l y E u r o c e n t r i c . By the e a r l y 1 9 3 0 s , h o w e v e r , t h a t o p t i o n had begun to e r o d e - a s m u c h by c h o i c e as n e c e s s i t y . A s Italo C a l v i n o p o i n t e d out in h i s i n t r o d u c t i o n to C e s a r e P a v e s e ' s s e m i n a l s t u d y , Letteratura there

was

more

intellectual

than

simple

enthusiasm

for

Americana,

U.S. w r i t i n g

behind

I t a l y ' s m i d - 1 9 3 0 s p a s s i o n f o r New W o r l d a u t h o r s . F o r

w r i t e r s on the l e f t , s u c h as P a v e s e and E l i o V i t t o r i n i , A m e r i c a n p o e t r y and f i c t i o n

c o u l d be w i e l d e d , "...come

politica

letteraria-italiana."

e

American sentiments

went

uno

strumento

(Letteratura a g a i n s t the o f f i c i a l

di

poJemica

A m e r i c a n a xv). P r o fascist line

which

d e c r e e d t h a t the U n i t e d S t a t e s s h o u l d be p r e s e n t e d as " u n a s o c i e t a in c u i l ' a l f a e l ' o m e g a d e l l a v i t a e r a i l denaro e p r o t a g o n i s t a

autentico

d e l l a v i t a s o c i a l e era d i v e n u t a l a m a c c h i n a . . . . " (Zunino 3 2 9 ) . U.S. l i t e r a r y

c r i t i c i s m c r e a t e d a s u r p r i s i n g l y f e r t i l e avenue f o r

d i s g u i s e d c r i t i c i s m of the s t a t e . A c c o r d i n g to L i n o P e r t i l e , " A m e r i c a n literature

p r o v i d e d young I t a l i a n i n t e l l e c t u a l s w i t h a l l t h a t s e e m e d to

be m i s s i n g f r o m I t a l i a n l e t t e r s and l i f e " (Fourgues 181). L e t us c o n s i d e r V i t t o r i n i ' s author

of

Moby

Dick,

for

c a s e f i r s t . When c o m m e n t i n g on the

instance,

the

editor/translator

wrote,

" M e l v i l l e non s a c r e d e r e in una c o n q u i s t a t o t a l e d e l l a p u r e z z a . M e l v i l l e d i f f i d a . Crede t u t t a v i a

n e l l a l o t t a " (Diario in oubblico

1 16). J u s t as

M i k h a i l B a k h t i n i m p l i c i t l y c r i t i c i z e d S t a l i n , w i t h h i s c o n d e m n a t i o n of fifth

century

Athenian

aristocrats

who

preferred

Oriental-style

a u t o c r a c y to Greek d e m o c r a t i c i n s t i t u t i o n s , so did V i t t o r i n i

challenge

214 M u s s o l i n i ' s d e l u s i o n s of I t a l i a n p o l i t i c a l s o l i d a r i t y . In t h i s

context,

even s o m e of h i s m o r e l i g h t h e a r t e d c o m m e n t s can be r e a d as s l i g h t l y m i s c h i e v o u s p r o p a g a n d a . In W i l l i a m S a r o y a n ' s f i c t i o n a l u n i v e r s e , f o r e x a m p l e , " L ' A m e n c a appare come una r e i n c a r n a z i o n e m o d e r n a d e l l ' A s i a di H a r u n - a l - R a s c i d , San F r a n c i s c o s u o n a c o m e B a g d a d . . . . " ( D i a r i o

in

p u b b l i c o 9 0 ) . It goes w i t h o u t s a y i n g t h a t no f a s c i s t I t a l i a n c i t y of t h i s p e r i o d i n s p i r e d the a u t h o r w i t h s u c h p l e a s i n g , w h i m s i c a l c o m p a r i s o n s . • ne can a l s o s e e how p r a i s i n g a n o v e l i n w h i c h a l l the e v e n t s

are

e x t e r n a l c o u l d s e e m s l i g h t l y s u b v e r s i v e w i t h i n the c o n f i n e s of a p o l i c e s t a t e w h e r e p r i v a t e o p i n i o n s w e r e not above the l a w : " C a i n non da che f a c c e e f a t t i da v e d e r e , e non p e r m e t t e di v e d e r e o i n t r a v e d e r e a l t r o . I fatti interiori

da i m p l i c i t i

negli e s t e r i o r i . . . . " (Diario in pubblico 93).

N a z i r e a d e r s of V i t t o r i n i ' s a n t h o l o g i e s and t r a n s l a t i o n s m u s t have been put

off

by

positively

the

Italian's

suggestions that

"Negro" spirituals

i n f l u e n c e d the w o r k s of G e r t r u d e S t e i n and E z r a

had

Pound.

V i t t o r i n i ' s m o s t u n f o r g i v a b l e p o l i t i c a l s i n , though, w a s u n q u e s t i o n a b l y h i s c h a m p i o n s h i p of J o h n S t e i n b e c k , J a c k L o n d o n , and E r s k i n e C a l d w e l l , the A m e r i c a n w r i t e r s an

w h o s e s o c i a l c r i t i q u e s c o u l d m o s t e a s i l y be

translated

to

Italian

context.

T h u s , the

author's

anthology

Americana

w a s banned "...not on a c c o u n t of the A m e r i c a n t e x t , but

b e c a u s e of V i t t o r i n i ' s I t a l i a n c o m m e n t a r y " (Fourgues 182). In the e a r l y days of t h e i r p r o f e s s i o n a l a s s o c i a t i o n , C e s a r e P a v e s e w a s , i f a n y t h i n g , an even s t a u n c h e r d e f e n d e r of A m e r i c a n

literature

than his p r i n c i p a l c o m r a d e - i n - a r t s , Elio V i t t o r i n i . Pavese w r o t e

his

doctoral

and

dissertation

on

Walt

Whitman's

Leaves

of

Grass,

t r a n s l a t e d Moby Dick at the t e n d e r age of 2 6 . In a l e t t e r w r i t t e n to h i s American friend

A n t o n i o C h i u m i n a t t o , Pavese gushed, "You are

the

215 p e a c h of the w o r l d ! Not only in w e a l t h and m a t e r i a l l i f e but r e a l l y in l i v e l i n e s s and s t r e n g t h of a r t w h i c h m e a n s t h o u g h t

and p o l i t i c s and

r e l i g i o n and e v e r y t h i n g . You've got to p r e d o m i n a t e in t h i s c e n t u r y a l l o v e r the c i v i l i z e d w o r l d as b e f o r e did G r e e c e , and I t a l y , and F r a n c e " (Lettere

1 926 -

1 9 5 0 1 17).

5

S a d l y , P a v e s e w a s q u i c k to r e m i n d h i s

A m e r i c a n c o r r e s p o n d e n t t h a t he had n o t h i n g in c o m m o n w i t h C h i c a g o ' s m o s t f a m o u s p e r i o d c i t i z e n , A l Capone: "...you m u s t not f o r g e t t h a t w e I t a l i a n s are t w o d i s t i n c t n a t i o n s , the N o r t h and the S o u t h , and t h a t w e are the N o r t h e r n and t h a t the C h i c a g o gunmen are the S o u t h e r n and t h e r e i s a d e e p e r d i f f e r e n c e of r a c e and h i s t o r y b e t w e e n us and t h e m t h a t n o t h i n g c o u l d r e p a i r " ( L e t t e r e 1926 - 1 9 5 0 152). In p r a c t i c e , P a v e s e w a s as e n t h u s i a s t i c about A m e r i c a n m o v i e s as he w a s about A m e r i c a n b o o k s . In h i s o w n s l i g h t l y

ungrammatical

E n g l i s h w o r d s , " W h a t in t h e i r l i t t l e sphere have A m e r i c a n m o v i e s done in o l d E u r o p e - a n d I've a l w a y s abused t h o s e who m a i n t a i n e d i t w a s t h e i r f i n a n c i a l o r g a n i z a t i o n and a d v e r t i s e m e n t s w h i c h brought t h e m up: I say i t i s not even t h e i r a r t i s t i c v a l u e , but t h e i r s u r p a s s i n g s t r e n g t h of v i t a l e n e r g y don't m i n d w h e t h e r p e s s i m i s t i c or j o y f u l - w h a t

I say have done

m o v i e s w i l l do f o r the w h o l e of y o u r a r t and t h o u g h t " ( L e t t e r e

1926 -

1 9 5 0 1 17). What P a v e s e p a r t i c u l a r l y w a n t e d to do w a s v i s i t A m e r i c a - b u t the c i r c u m s t a n c e s w e r e n e v e r p r o p i t i o u s . He s i g h e d , "I d r e a m , hope, l o n g , die a f t e r A m e r i c a . I m u s t c o m e " ( L e t t e r e 1 9 2 6 - 1 9 5 0 2 0 8 ) . T h e young

P a v e s e used h i s l e t t e r s to t h i s i n c r e a s i n g l y d i s t a n t a c q u a i n t a n c e as a p r i m a r y means of p e r f e c t i n g h i s E n g l i s h . He w a s p a r t i c u l a r l y i n t e r e s t e d i n w a d i n g h i s w a y t h r o u g h U.S. a r g o t : " [ A m e r i c a n b o o k s l are f u l l of s l a n g , i d i o m s , I don't k n o w w h a t , and so f o r an h a l f i n c o m p r e h e n s i b l e . I w a n t [a book on m o d e r n s l a n g usage] as the a i r I am b r e a t h i n g " ( L e t t e r e 1926 - 1950 90).

5

216 P a v e s e s e e m e d to b e l i e v e t h a t the New W o r l d w a s s u p e r i o r i n a l m o s t e v e r y w a y to the Old: " S u r e l y A m e r i c a n s are k i n d e r t h a n w e " 1926 this

(Lettere

1 9 5 0 2 0 5 ) . T h u s , the m o r e " A m e r i c a n " a book w a s , the

Italian reader was

likely

to

endorse it.

One of

his

more

earliest

e n t h u s i a s m s w a s E d g a r Lee M a s t e r s ' The Spoon River Anthology, b e l l i s s i m o l i b r o che non e poi di liriche,

ma di personaggi,;

"...un

un l i b r o c h e ,

a detta degli Americani s t e s s i , contiene tutta l ' A m e r i c a

attuale...."

(Lettere 1926 - 1950 220). A s e a r l y as 1 9 3 2 , P a v e s e ' s e a r l y p a s s i o n f o r A m e r i c a w a s a l r e a d y w e a r i n g the s t i g m a t a of s e c o n d t h o u g h t s . The a u t h o r ' s f i n a l

published

l e t t e r s to A n t o n i o C h i u m i n a t t o a r e c r i t i c a l - i n d e e d b a r b e d - i n the w a y t h a t the e a r l y s c r e e d s w e r e not. In one e p i s t l e , P a v e s e argued v i s - a - v i s the Old W o r l d ' s unpaid m u n i t i o n s b i l l s , "I m u s t say t h a t I don't t h i n k Europe w i l l pay: a f t e r a l l Europe a l r e a d y paid in the W o r l d W a r w i t h a l l i t s d e a d , w o u n d e d , and m a i m ' d [sic], and i t ' s only r i g h t you a l s o pay with money" (Lettere

1926 -

1950 221). Things went

from

bad to

w o r s e : " A s f o r p o l i t i c s : h e r e ' s to y o u , hoping to e n c o u n t e r you at my m a c h i n e - g u n ' s end and have you c r y mercy... P e r h a p s o n l y in the

next

W o r l d - w a r , w e ' l l f i n d out our t r u e c a l l i n g " ( L e t t e r e 1926 - 1 9 5 0 2 2 3 ) . In P a v e s e ' s

d i a r i e s , the

S t e n d h a l del n o s t r o t e m p o " American

culture,

author

wrote

that

"Hemingway

e lo

(11 m e s t i e r e di v i v e r e 3 3 4 ) . C o m m e n t s on

had, h o w e v e r ,

c e a s e d to

exercise

his

artistic

c o n s c i e n c e . I n s t e a d , he w a s p r e o c c u p i e d w i t h the p r o b l e m s of r e a l i s m , " w o m e n " , and s u i c i d e . A s h i s f a i t h in the r e s t o r a t i v e p o w e r s of l o v e declined, Pavese grew

increasingly

m i s o g y n i s t i c : " S o n o un

popolo

n e m i c o , le donne come i l popolo t e d e s c o " (11 m e s t i e r e di v i v e r e 3 2 7 ) .

217 T h e a u t h o r ' s A m e r i c a n o p h i l i a peaked when he w a s s t i l l i n h i s 2 0 s . E v e r y t h i n g about the U.S. s e e m e d to f a s c i n a t e h i m : "11 N o r d a m e r i c a e s e m p r e s t a t o un paese di b e v i t o r i e c c e z i o n a l i " ( L e t t e r a t u r a

Americana

5). P a v e s e b e l i e v e d t h a t l i t e r a r y A m e r i c a n s l a n g c o n s t i t u t e d " . . . l a v e r a creazione

di

un l i n g u a g g i o - i l

volgare

americano...."

Americana

2 8 ) . He b e l i e v e d t h a t U.S. a u t h o r s

indigenous

tradition,

(Letteratura

even

if

"Un

greco

A m e r i c a n a 79.) Moby Dick,

had b u i l t t h e i r

veramente

Pavese

most

wanted

his

e

own

Melville"

he f e l t , made ( o b v i o u s l y

m a l e ) r e a d e r s f e e l " p i u v i v o e piu u o m o " ( L e t t e r a t u r a What

(Letteratura

countrymen

to

all

A m e r i c a n a 79.)

absorb

from

these

o v e r s e a s a u t h o r s w a s a p o p u l a r language of t h e i r o w n v e r s a t i l e enough to e x p r e s s the t o t a l r e a l i t y of p o s t - R i s o g i m e n t o I t a l y , " u n l i n g u a g g i o r i c c o di t u t t o i l sangue d e l l a p r o v i n c i a e di t u t t a l a d i g n i t a di un v i t a rinnovata." (Letteratura

A m e r i c a n a 34.) P a v e s e b e l i e v e d t h a t

writers

l i k e 0. H e n r y , in T h e o d o r e R o o s e v e l t ' s t i m e , had helped to make A m e r i c a one n a t i o n

from

Atlantic

to

P a c i f i c , an a l c h e m i c a l

process

that

s u p p l i e d the c o l l a t e r a l b e n e f i t of d e - p u r i t a n i z i n g the c o u n t r y . E v e n t u a l l y , P a v e s e w o u l d c o n c e n t r a t e on h i s o w n l i t e r a r y

works,

r a t h e r than t h o s e w r i t t e n by f o r e i g n e r s ; in p l a c e of f o r e i g n m o d e l s , h i s a e s t h e t i c g r e w i n c r e a s i n g l y w e d d e d to the h o m e - g r o w n c o n s t r u c t s of n e o r e a l i s m and r e g i o n a l a u t h e n t i c i t y .

Even s o , in a r a d i o

broadcast

d e l i v e r e d s h o r t l y b e f o r e h i s s u i c i d e in 1 9 5 0 , P a v e s e i n d i c a t e d t h a t t h i s r u p t u r e w a s not as c o m p l e t e as s o m e c r i t i c s b e l i e v e d : "...quando m i s i descrive

come

uno

che

sarebbe

passato

n e o r e a l i s m o p o l e m i c o e poi a d d i r i t u r a

dall'americanismo

al r e g i o n a l i s m o n o s t r a n o

c o n f e s s o di non c a p i r e " ( L e t t e r a t u r a A m e r i c a n a 2 9 2 ) .

al io

218 Although emigrants

Southern

Italians

made

up

the

vast

majority

to A m e r i c a , m o s t of the m a j o r S i c i l i a n w r i t e r s

of

seemed

c o m p l e t e l y u n i n t e r e s t e d in New W o r l d l i t e r a t u r e . L u i g i P i r a n d e l l o , f o r instance, was almost completely regionalist. Thirty

years later,

G i u s e p p e T o m a s o di L a m p e d u s a ' s m a s t e r p i e c e // Battopardo, r e f e r e n c e to the U n i t e d S t a t e s i s a w i s t f u l

in

the only

a s i d e r e l a t e d to a 1 9 4 3

bomb f a t e d to d e s t r o y a once b e a u t i f u l palazzo.

This indifference,

it

s h o u l d be e m p h a s i z e d , w a s not e x c l u s i v e l y l i m i t e d to N a p l e s , C a l a b r i a and S i c i l y . I t a l o S v e v o , Ignazio S i l o n e , and E l s a M o r a n t e , to

mention

j u s t t h r e e s t e l l a r t a l e n t s , a d d r e s s e d t h e m s e l v e s f i r s t l y to t h e i r f e l l o w c o u n t r y m e n , s e c o n d l y to E u r o p e a n s , and t h i r d l y i f at a l l to r e a d e r s i n the

New

and

Neo-colonial

Worlds.

In

some

cases,

Communist

s y m p a t h i e s l e d to a d e l i b e r a t e c o l d - s h o u l d e r i n g of l i t e r a t u r e f r o m the f o u n t a i n h e a d of c a p i t a l i s m . O b v i o u s l y , t h i s t e n d e n c y w o u l d g r o w once the

New

Deal

McCarthyism.

era

was

replaced

by

the

Cold

War

regime

of

6

Even s o , t h r o u g h o u t

the

1930s, most w r i t e r s

in N o r t h e r n

and

C e n t r a l I t a l y s h a r e d , to a g r e a t e r or l e s s e r d e g r e e , the p r o - A m e r i c a n l i t e r a r y t a s t e s of V i t t o r i n i

and P a v e s e . N e v e r t h e l e s s , A l b e r t o M o r a v i a

w a s one of the f e w who a c t u a l l y s p e n t s o m e t i m e i n the U.S.: " N e T 1 9 3 5 sono a n d a t o a New Vork, o s p i t e su i n v i t o di G i u s e p p e P r e z z o l i n i d e l l a C a s a i t a l i a n a d e l l a C o l u m b i a U n i v e r s i t y " ( D i a r i o Eurooeo 138). M o r a v i a w a s m o r e c l e a r - e y e d about the p r o m i s e d l a n d t h a n w e r e m o s t of h i s

T h i s t e n d e n c y s e e m s p a r t i c u l a r l y p r o n o u n c e d in r e g a r d to M o r a n t e ' s g r e a t 1 9 6 4 n o v e l , HistoriQ. A l t h o u g h the b o o k ' s s t r u c t u r e o w e s a g r e a t d e a l to J o h n Dos P a s s o s ' s 49th Parallel, r e f e r e n c e s to A m e r i c a are e x t r e m e l y s p a r s e . A t y p i c a l e x c e p t i o n r e a d s a s f o l l o w s : " S u l f r o n t e di C o r e a , i n c u r s i o n e U S A a P y o n g Vang con l a m o r t e di s e i m i l a c i v i l i " (Morante 1026).

6

219 c o n t e m p o r a r i e s , a l t h o u g h he did not s e e m to be p a r t i c u l a r l y a w a r e of it: "Agli

occhi

di

un

tecnologicamente arretrato,

europeo, e piu

l'America

avanzato

e un

paese

dell'Europa,

schizof renico:

politicamente

piu

nel s e n s o che non ha p a r t i t i di s i n i s t r a che c o n t e s t i n o

la

s t r u t t u r a . E un po' c o m e , d i c i a m o , l a F r a n c i a p r i m a del 1 8 4 8 . Dal punto di v i s t a t e c n o l o g i c o e piu v e c c h i o di n o i , da q u e l l e s o c i o l o g i c o e p i u g i o v a n e . Un p a s t i c c i o " ( I n t e r v i s t a s u l l o s c r i t t o r e s c o m o d o 9 5 ) . Even s o , he b e l i e v e d t h a t "11 n e o r e a l i s m o n a s c e in I t a l i a da un l i b r o s o l o , e p e r g i u n t a non di un i t a l i a n o . Addio alle armi sullo s c r i t t o r e scomodo

di H e m i n g w a y "

(Intervista

22)7

Even a poet as o t h e r w o r l d l y Hemingway's

as Eugenio M o n t a l e w a s c a p a b l e of

responding

to

Hemingway

non d e l u d e v a , c o n f e r m a v a a n z i quel s e n s o di

s c h i e t t a , quasi i n f a n t i l e - m a

tough-guy

charms:

"Tuttavia

respinta furiosamente

l'uomo

un'umanita

e c o m p r e s s a nel

fondo d e l l a c o s c i e n z a come indegna d'un uomo ' d e l n o s t r o t e m p o ' - c h e i suoi l i b r i m i g l i o r i l a s c i a v a n o i n d o v i n a r e " (Montale 236). Under

fascism,

fondness

for

American

culture

sometimes

a s s u m e d s e m i - c o m i c f o r m s . T h u s , one of the young F e d e r i c o F e l l i n i ' s first creative banned

t a s k s w a s to w r i t e an a l t e r n a t i v e

American

Federico

science fiction

F e l l i n i , alors

jeune

d e s s i n e e , se s u b s t i t u a n t ,

comic

strip:

journalists,

s u r la demande

Italian text for a "Le futur

devint

auteur

cineaste de

de l ' e d i t e u r , a un

bande Alex

R a y m o n d m i s a l ' i n d e x p a r l e f a s c i s m e en I t a l i e , a f i n de t e r m i n e r

un

h i s t o i r e de Flash Gordon" (Le Monde D i p l o m a t i q u e . Dec. 1 9 9 6 2 9 ) .

T h i s s o m e w h a t s u r p r i s i n g c l a i m s e e m s more c o m p r e h e n s i b l e a f t e r r e a d i n g M o r a v i a ' s p e r s o n a l d e f i n i t i o n of the movement: "11 n e o r e a l i s m e a u t o b i o g r a f i s m o e d o c u m e n t a r i s r n o a 1 i v e i l o l i r i c o " ( I n t e r v i s t a s u l l o s c r i t t o r e scomodo 23).

7

220 One

of

Italy's

few

prominent

literary

intellectuals

to

be

a s s o c i a t e d w i t h the a n t i - A m e r i c a n c a m p i n 1 9 3 0 s I t a l y w a s E m i l i o C e c c h i . W i t h the a i d of Messico,

America

amara, and Messico

rivisiata,

t h r e e t r a v e l books f i r s t p u b l i s h e d in the 1 9 3 0 s and l a t e r f u s e d i n t o the o m n i b u s v o l u m e Nuovo continente,

t h i s l i t e r a r y a e s t h e t e , v i r t u a l l y by

d e f a u l t , a s s u m e d the p o s i t i o n of i d e o l o g i c a l opponent to P a v e s e and V i t t o r i n i . America

amara,

in p a r t i c u l a r , e n s c o n c e d h i m in t h i s r o l e ,

a l t h o u g h he s u b s e q u e n t l y took c o n s i d e r a b l e p a i n s to deny i t . S

in h i s

i n t r o d u c t i o n to the p o s t - w a r t r i l o g y ' s r e - p u b l i c a t i o n , C e c c h i e x p l a i n e d , "Apparsa infatti comunisti,

per

decisamente

durante la seconda guerra mondiale, a f a s c i s t i e opposte

ragioni

America

antiamericano, mentre

amara

sembro

cercava soltanto

la

un

libro

verita...."

(Nuovo c o n t i n e n t e v i i ) . In r e t r o s p e c t , C e c c h i ' s w r i t i n g s on A m e r i c a r e a d l e s s l i k e p r o f a s c i s t p o l e m i c s than the s o r t of t r a c t s w e have c o m e to e x p e c t f r o m the t r a v e l

j o u r n a l s of F r e n c h i n t e l l e c t u a l s v i s i t i n g A m e r i c a i n

y e a r s i m m e d i a t e l y p r e c e d i n g and i m m e d i a t e l y f o l l o w i n g the W o r l d W a r . In p a r t i c u l a r , the a u t h o r r e s e m b l e s a s o r t of

the

Second

Italianate

G e o r g e s D u h a m e l . A s Di B i a s e w o u l d have i t , " S i veda i l p r o b l e m a d e l razzismo,

q u e l 1 o dei

n e g r i , dei

lavoratori

legati

alle

catene

di

T h e v e r y t i t l e of the m i d d l e v o l u m e in t h i s t r i l o g y plagued i t s a u t h o r u n m e r c i f u l l y . A s C a r m i n e Di B i a s e noted in h i s book l e n g t h s t u d y of C e c c h i , the a c c u s e d i n s i s t e d t h a t he w a s p r i m a r i l y a t t r a c t e d by t h e a l l i t e r a t i v e m a g i c of t h e l e t t e r " a " : " P e r i l t i t o l o America amara ( 1 9 3 0 - 1 9 4 3 ) C e c c h i s t e s s o d i c h i a r a , n e l l ' Avertimento al l i b r o , di e s s e r e a t t r a t t o da u n ' a l l i t t e r a z i o n e c o m e Arnica America di J . G i r a u d o u x , Amusante America di A . de M e e u s , America primo amore di Ii. S o l d a t i e con n e l l ' o r e c c h i o ' m a r e m m a a m a r a ' d'una v e c c h i a c a n z o n e t o s c a n a " (Di B i a s e 8 9 ) . T h a t h i s a l l i t e r a t i v e t i t l e w a s the only n e g a t i v e one of the f o u r he c i t e d w a s a d e t a i l w h i c h C e c c h i c h o s e not to d w e l l on u n d u l y . T h e f a c t t h a t Harlem, a Second World War vintage a n t i - A m e r i c a n p r o p a g a n d a f e a t u r e c o m m i s s i o n e d by the f a s c i s t s w a s l a r g e l y d e r i v e d f r o m C e c c h i ' s t r a v e l w r i t i n g , w a s l i k e w i s e s o m e t h i n g he p r e f e r r e d to d o w n p l a y .

8

221 m o n t a g g i o , del c i n e m a , d e l l a d e l i n q u e n z a m i n o r i l e , dei gangsters, scuola,

della

religione,

della

d o n n a " (Di

Biase

89).

della

Long-legged

A m e r i c a n w o m e n ; s k y s c r a p e r s ; m o v i e h o u s e s ; Henry F o r d ' s f a c t o r i e s : f o r r e a d e r s of C h a p t e r One, C e c c h i ' s i t i n e r a r y w i l l s e e m v e r y

familiar.

F a r f r o m b e i n g r a c i s t , C e c c h i w a s as fond of " N e g r o s p i r i t u a l s " as any writer

on

the

u g l i n e s s , it

antifascist

usually

left.

What's

w a s ugly: " V i

more,

sono l u o g h i

when

he

described

che l ' i n d i g e n z a ,

la

v e r g o g n a , l ' i n f a m i a hanno t a l m e n t e i m p r e g n a t i e s a t u r a t i , da r e n d e r l i , a cosi dire, eloquenti Sinistre

c o m e una s t o r i a t r a s f u s a s i i n s o s t a n z a v i s i v a .

epopee m u m m i f i c a t e .

Vie e piazze devastate

e

deserte;

l u g u b r a m e n t e s o l e n n i come c i m e t e r i . La B o w e r y , a Nuova Y o r k , e uno di • u e s t i l u o g h i " ( A m e r i c a amara 519). He w a s , of

c o u r s e , not

immune

to

the

feelings

of

cultural

s u p e r i o r i t y t h a t p e r m e a t e d so many F r e n c h and G e r m a n i n t e l l e c t u a l s of his time. At

the

M u s e u m of N a t u r a l

History, for

i n s t a n c e , he

was

p r o m p t e d to m a k e the f o l l o w i n g o b s e r v a t i o n , " E c c o A m e r i c a . . . g r a c e e p u e r i l e ; s e m p r e con q u e g l i o c c h i a l i da nonna e con q u e l l ' i n c a r n a t o di l a t t e e r o s e ; c r e d u l a , eppoi pedante f i n o a l l ' i n v e r o s i m i l e "

(America

a m a r a 2 0 ) . U.S. m u s e u m s s e e m to have o f t e n d r i v e n t h i s s e a s o n e d a r t l o v e r to c u l t i v a t e d d e s p a i r : " E d i f f i c i l e

c r e d e r e che m u s e o

' d i m o r a d e l l e M u s e , ' s i g i u d i c a da una q u a n t i t a di m u s e i

significhi americani"

( M e s s i c o 4 8 ) . L i k e Duhamel and h i s F r e n c h c o m p a t r i o t s , C e c c h i t h o u g h t of

America

as

a

strange

mixture

sexlessness,

a circumstance

separazione

dei

sessi;

p u r i t a n e s i m o . . . . " (Jodi 3 0 4 ) .

of

matriarchy

occasioned

effetto

dei

by

"il

preguidizi

and

enforced

fenomeno instillati

della dal

222 C e c c h i d i d , h o w e v e r , d i f f e r f r o m Duhamel in h i s a t t i t u d e t o w a r d s m o v i e s . W i t h g r e a t p l e a s u r e , he d e s c r i b e s h i s m e e t i n g s w i t h A d o l p h e M e n j o u , G l o r i a S w a n s o n , and George A r l i s s . S i n c e h i s f i r s t v i s i t

to

A m e r i c a c a m e in the f o r m of a v i s i t i n g p r o f e s s o r s h i p at the U n i v e r s i t y of C a l i f o r n i a at B e r k e l e y in the e a r l y 1 9 3 0 s , the a u t h o r c o u l d o b s e r v e the d e a t h of the s i l e n t m o v i e and the b i r t h of i t s t a l k i n g s u c c e s s o r at f i r s t hand. S o m e w h a t s u r p r i s i n g l y f o r a c o n s e r v a t i v e I t a l i a n c i n e p h i l e , he p r e f e r r e d B u s t e r K e a t o n ' s m a t e r i a l i s t c o m e d i e s to the m o r e e t h e r e a l m o v i e s of " t h e l i t t l e t r a m p " , l a u d i n g the s t o n e f a c e d s i l e n t " S e n z a le s e n t i m e n t a l i

master

f i n e z z e e le t r a s c e n d e n t i i r o n i e di C h a p l i n . . . . "

(Messico 29). I t a l i a n f i l m t h e o r i s t s , c o n v e r s e l y , g e n e r a l l y p r e f e r r e d C h a p l i n to Keaton.

From

9

an

millionaire-kicking cultural

antifascist

point

"little tramp"

of

view,

the

cop-hating,

o b v i o u s l y made a m o r e

effective

w e a p o n than did K e a t o n ' s s t o n e - f a c e d l o n e r . F o r the

critics

who w r o t e f o r Bianco e Nero and the o t h e r s e r i o u s I t a l i a n f i l m j o u r n a l s of

the

1 9 3 0 s and ' 4 0 s , A m e r i c a n c u l t u r e

selectively American

than novels

it

was

were

in

the

useful,

literary

more

magazines. "Hardboiled"

because

t r a n s l a t e d i n t o I t a l i a n t e r m s of r e f e r e n c e .

was appropriated

they

could

so

easily

be

1 0

H o l l y w o o d , on the o t h e r hand, w a s r e g a r d e d w i t h m o r e s u s p i c i o n than l o v e . C h a p l i n a s i d e , i t w a s g e n e r a l l y s e e n as the b a s t i o n of

the

In the 1 9 6 0 s , P i e r P a o l o P a s o l i n i w e n t so f a r as to argue t h a t the r e l e a s e of C h a p l i n ' s Modern Times c o n s t i t u t e d an i m p o r t a n t t u r n i n g point in human h i s t o r y . 9

A t h e o r y w h i c h L u c h i n o V i s c o n t i proved c o n c l u s i v e l y w h e n he t u r n e d J a m e s l i . C a i n ' s D e p r e s s i o n E r a pulp novel The Postman Always Rings Twice i n t o the f i r s t g r e a t I t a l i a n n e o r e a l i s t f i l m in 1 9 4 1 . A t f i r s t banned by the a u t h o r i t i e s , i t w a s l a t e r r e l e a s e d at 11 Duce's request in 1942 despite a decidedly u n p a t r i o t i c subtext that c e l e b r a t e d bohemian h o m o s e x u a l i t y o v e r both b o u r g e o i s m a r r i a g e and h e t e r o s e x u a l a d u l t e r y . 1 0

223 w o r l d ' s most c o m m e r c i a l l y s u c c e s s f u l " w h i t e telephone m o v i e s . "

1

1

J e a n R e n o i r ' s Toni w a s t h e i r model of c i n e m a t i c e x c e l l e n c e , not V i c t o r F l e m i n g ' s Gone with

the Wind. A n d , so f a r as l i t e r a r y

sources were

c o n c e r n e d , the f a t h e r s of n e o r e a l i s m did not look to E r n e s t H e m i n g w a y for

i n s p i r a t i o n , as A l b e r t o

Giovanni

c l a i m e d , but to

V e r g a . F o r t h e m , V e r g a ' s s t a n d a r d of " v e r i s m o "

narrative norm. As

Moravia contentiously

1 2

Cal 1 i s t o

neorealismo,

s e t the

Cosulich wrote

in his i n t r o d u c t i o n

a c o l l e c t i o n of the hugely i n f l u e n t i a l

to

Verso

il

e a r l y w r i t i n g s of

G i u s e p p e De S a n t i s , " l ' e p i s o d i o s a l i e n t e r e s t a n o i due a r t i c o l i c h e De S a n t i s s c r i s s e in c o l l a b o r a z i o n e con Mario A l i c a t a p e r r i c h i a m a r e l'attenzione

del cinema italiano

s u l l ' o p e r a di V e r g a , l o

scrittore

s i c i l i a n o c i o e i n q u e g l i anni e r a d i v e n t a t o i l punto di r i f e r i m e n t o tutti

i focolai

di d i s s i d e n z a c u l t u r a l e . . . . "

(De S a n t i s

di

18). F u t u r e

c i n e a s t e s w e r e a d v i s e d t h a t , " G i o v a n n i V e r g a non ha s o l a m e n t e c r e a t o una g r a n d e o p e r a di p o e s i a , m a ha c r e a t o un p a e s e , un t e m p o , una s o c i e t a . . . . " (De S a n t i s 4 9 ) .

1 3

W h i l e De S a n t i s a d m i r e d many t h i n g s about

A m e r i c a n r e a l i s m , the p r i n c i p a l c r i t i c of the j o u r n a l Cinema

believed

that European culture w a s e s s e n t i a l l y c l a s s i c a l , w h i l e i t s A m e r i c a n counterpart, lacking sufficient historical reference points, " e s i s t e e continue

a esistere mediante

schemi e convenzioni

instabilmente

' r o m a n t i c i ' " (De S a n t i s 6 0 ) . R o m a n t i c i s m , De S a n t i s p r i m l y n o t e d , had T h e c o n t e m p t u o u s t e r m by w h i c h the l i g h t , f l u f f y , r o m a n t i c c o m e d i e s m a s s p r o d u c e d by M u s s o l i n i ' s f i l m s t u d i o s w e r e g e n e r a l l y known. 1 1

V i s c o n t i w o u l d take t h i s a d v i c e to heart in the i m m e d i a t e p o s t - w a r period when he shot La Terra trema, a f i l m based on a V e r g a t e x t , i n S i c i l i a n d i a l e c t w i t h S i c i l i a n n o n - a c t o r s in an a u t h e t i c S i c i l i a n f i s h i n g v i l l a g e . On the m a i n l a n d , t h i s p i c t u r e w a s s h o w n w i t h T u s c a n subtitles. 1 2

224 e x e r c i s e d l i t t l e i n f l u e n c e on I t a l y . C o n s e q u e n t l y , " L ' A m e r i c a , i n v e c e , e r a p r e o c c u p a t a s o l t a n t o di c r e a r e una nuova f o r m u l a d e s t i n a t a i n s i e m e a l i a a l t r a che p o r t a v a a l i a r i b a l t a l a v i t a dei g a n g s t e r s , a s o s t i t u i r e con s u c c e s s o i l g l o r i o s o ' w e s t e r n ' . . . . " (De S a n t i s 60). In m a t t e r s of r e a l i s m , De S a n t i s b e l i e v e d t h a t A m e r i c a n c i n e m a f o l l o w e d r a t h e r t h a n l e d : " F u il cinema americano a continuare la esperienza

r e a l i s t i c a del c i n e m a

e u r o p e o . . . . " (De S a n t i s 4 7 ) . W h i l e he a d m i r e d K i n g V i d o r , J o h n F o r d , Frank C a p r a , and s e v e r a l o t h e r A m e r i c a n d i r e c t o r s , De S a n t i s c l a i m e d t h a t " i l m i o ' c r e d o ' p a r t i v a d a l l ' e s e m p i o del c i n e m a f r a n c e s e di q u e g l i anni s c a t u r i t o dal c l i m a del F r o n t e P o p o l a r e , e che a v e v a in J e a n R e n o i r i l suo piu a t t e n t o e profondo poeta c i n e m a t o g r a f i c o . . . . " (De S a n t i s 3 8 ) . French c r i t i c s

w e r e among the f i r s t i n t e r n a t i o n a l

viewers

to

r e c o g n i z e the unique g e n i u s of t h i s n e w f i l m s t y l e , but they d i d not f e e l i n c l i n e d to bask in the r e f l e c t e d g l o r y of t h e i r a l l e g e d t u t e l a g e . A n d r e Bazin

and h i s

Rossellini

more

disciples

might

have

o r l e s s e q u a l l y , but

admired

R e n o i r and

Roberto

to

they

entirely

them

separate geniuses, discrete national p e r s o n a e .

1 3

were

R o s s e l l i n i , of c o u r s e ,

w a s the d i r e c t o r w h o made a v i r t u e out of p o v e r t y of m e a n s , w h o s h o t i n the s t r e e t

under v a r i a b l e l i g h t i n g

c o n d i t i o n s b e c a u s e the r o o f

C i n e c i t t a and R o m e ' s o t h e r s t u d i o s had a l l been b l o w n o f f

of

by A l l i e d

b o m b e r s , who w o r k e d w i t h a m a t e u r a c t o r s b e c a u s e he c o u l d n ' t a f f o r d a f u l l y p r o f e s s i o n a l c a s t , w h o - d u r i n g the s h o o t i n g of Open

City-mixed

N e v e r t h e l e s s , the F r a n c o - I t a l i a n c u l t u r a l exchange w a s so e x t e n s i v e on the c i n e m a t i c p l a n e t h r o u g h o u t the 1 9 3 0 s and e a r l y ' 4 0 s , the p h e n o m e n o n d e s e r v e s s o m e c o m m e n t . Luchino V i s c o n t i w o r k e d as a d e s i g n e r and a s s i s t a n t d i r e c t o r f o r J e a n R e n o i r during those y e a r s , w h i l e M i c h e l a n g e l o A n t o n i o n i a p p r e n t i c e d w i t h M a r c e l C a r n e . In P i e r r e L e p r o h o n ' s w o r d s , " L ' a x e R o m e - B e r l i n f a c i l i t a i t l e s e c h a n g e s a v e c l ' A U e m a g n e , m a i s de P a r i s egalement, p l u s i e u r s r e a l i s a t e u r s vinrent t r a v a i l l e r avec les equipes i t a l i e n n e s . A p r e s Max O p h u l s , J e a n de L i m e u r , J e f f M u s s o et P i e r r e C h e n a l , M a c e l l ' H e r b i e r . . . e t J e a n R e n o i r (La Tosca) s'y t r o u v a i e n t en 1 9 4 0 " (Leprohon 80). 1 3

225 and m a t c h e d b o o t l e g f i l m s t r i p s he bought on the b l a c k m a r k e t ,

pour

faute de mieux, a f t e r a l l the u s u a l o u t l e t s had shut d o w n . R o u g h , e d g y , verging

on d o c u m e n t a r y :

n e o r e a l i s m s e e m e d to be j u s t

p o s t w a r w o r l d needed. W h i l e f i l m s s u c h as Roma citta and Ladri di biciclette

what

aperta

the

(1945)

a l l f o c u s s e d on e x t r e m e l y l o c a l s o c i a l p r o b l e m s ,

the i n t e r n a t i o n a l p o s s i b i l i t i e s of the f o r m b e c a m e a l m o s t i m m e d i a t e l y apparent.

As

neorealism's

foremost

ideologue

and

exponent,

s c r e e n w r i t e r Cesare Zavattini wrote in his autobiography: "Ogni cinema che m i r a a un r a p p o r t o s t r e t t o con i g r a v i p r o b l e m i d e l l ' uomo m o d e r n o , fa del n e o r e a l i s m o , p a r t e c i p a a questo movimento

che e o r m a i

la

c o s c i e n z a del c i n e m a " ( Z a v a t t i n i 4 7 4 ) . Perhaps

the f i r s t

neorealist

film

to d e a l w i t h

the

wartime

r e l a t i o n s h i p s of A m e r i c a n s and I t a l i a n s w a s R o b e r t o R o s s e l l i n i ' s 1 9 4 6 o m n i b u s f i l m , Paisa.

B e g i n n i n g w i t h t h e A l l i e d l a n d i n g s i n S i c i l y and

1 9 4 3 , and c o n c l u d i n g w i t h j o i n t Wehrmacht in northern evolves

from

mutual

U.S./partisan actions against the

I t a l y t w o y e a r s l a t e r , t h e mood of t h e f i l m hostility

and s u s p i c i o n to t o t a l

t r u s t and

understanding, between these l i n g u i s t i c a l l y separated protagonists, as t i m e p a s s e s and the t r o o p s m a r c h n o r t h . Not a l l of t h e s e e a r l y t a k e s on U.S./Italian Lattuada's

relations Senza

were

pieta,

quite

so upbeat,

however.

f o r e x a m p l e , deals w i t h a doomed romance

b e t w e e n a b l a c k A m e r i c a n m i l i t a r y p o l i c e m a n and an I t a l i a n A s i n La putain

Alberto

respectueuese,

m o s t of the b l a m e f o r t h i s

s t a t e of a f f a i r s i s d i r e c t l y a t t r i b u t e d

prostitute. unfortunate

to i n g r a i n e d , i n s t i t u t i o n a l i z e d

American racism. Ironically, quite a f e w neorealist f i l m s escapist

attributes

of

the A m e r i c a n

a s s u m e d s o m e of t h e

cinema

whose

norms

they

226 o s t e n s i b l y s o u g h t to e s c a p e . A s Roy A r m e s w r o t e of // Cammino speranza,

della

" T h e g u n f i g h t at the r a i l w a y s t a t i o n in Rome i s c o n s t r u c t e d

in t r u e g a n g s t e r f i l m f a s h i o n , w h i l e the r i t u a l i s t i c e l e m e n t i s s t r e s s e d i n the k n i f e f i g h t to the d e a t h t h a t t a k e s p l a c e in the s h o w b e t w e e n S a r o and V a n n i f o r the p o s s e s s i o n of B a r b a r a " ( P a t t e r n s of R e a l i s m 140). In the s a m e v o l u m e , A r m e s a d d e d , "In many w a y s [the] S i c i l i a n films

of G e r m i are b e s t r e g a r d e d not as w o r k s i n a pure

realistic

t r a d i t i o n but as s t y l i s e d I t a l i a n e q u i v a l e n t s to the A m e r i c a n w e s t e r n " ( A r m e s 140). B e t w e e n the l a t e 1 9 4 0 s and l a t e 1 9 5 0 s , I t a l i a n c i n e m a e v o l v e d in a n u m b e r of s i g n i f i c a n t w a y s . N e o r e a l i s m p r o p e r soon d e g e n e r a t e d i n t o the c o r r u p t s u b - g e n r e k n o w n as neorealismo

rosa, a f o r m a t in w h i c h

the t r a g e d y of I t a l i a n p o v e r t y w a s l a r g e l y s u p p l a n t e d by l o w c o m e d y and l o c a l c o l o u r .

1 4

So f a r as the m a s s a u d i e n c e w a s c o n c e r n e d , b r o a d

f a r c e w a s the p r e f e r r e d b i l l of f a r e , though f e w of t h e s e c o m e d i e s were ever exported outside Italy's b o r d e r s . f o r m u l a e i n c l u d e d the "peplum"

1 5

Other viable c o m m e r c i a l

(or n e o - m y t h o l o g i c a l f i l m , m u s c l e m a n

h i s t o r i c a l e p i c s w h o s e r o o t s r e a c h e d back to M a c i s t e , the hero of Cabiria),

strongman

the I t a l i a n s o c i a l c o m e d y (in w h i c h S i c i l i a n s e t t i n g s

w e r e u b i q u i t o u s ) , o m i n i b u s m o v i e s ( c o l l e c t i o n s of s h o r t f i l m s ,

often

t h e m a t i c a l l y l i n k e d by a u t h o r or human f o i b l e ) , the o p e r a t i c f i l m ( o f t e n of v e r y high q u a l i t y ) , and the m u s i c a l ( u s u a l l y w r e t c h e d ) . In the 1 9 6 0 s

Even i n t h e i r h e y d a y , i t s h o u l d be n o t e d , n e o r e a l i s t p r o d u c t i o n s n e v e r a m o u n t e d to m o r e t h a n a m o d e s t p e r c e n t a g e of o v e r a l l I t a l i a n f i l m o u t p u t . A c c o r d i n g to P e t e r B o n d a n e l l a , of the 8 2 2 I t a l i a n f e a t u r e f i l m s p r o d u c e d b e t w e e n 1 9 4 5 and 1 9 5 4 , " o n l y about 9 0 ( o r s l i g h t l y o v e r \0%) c o u l d e v e r be c a l l e d n e o r e a l i s t f i l m s . . . . " ( B o n d a n e l l a 3 5 ) . A n u m b e r of t h e s e f i l m s n o n e t h e l e s s c o n c e r n e d t h e m s e l v e s w i t h I t a l o - A m e r i c a n s u b j e c t m a t t e r . R a f f a e l l o f l a t a r r a z z o ' s Come scopersi VAmerica ( 1 9 4 9 ) i s a c a s e i n point. 1

4

1 5

227 and ' 7 0 s , t h e s e s t a p l e s w o u l d be a u g m e n t e d by Mondo

cane-style

documentaries

sensational

(questionably

non-fictional

records

of

e v e n t s f r o m around the w o r l d ) , the " s p a g h e t t i w e s t e r n " ( m o r e t h i s l a t e r ) , the e r o t i c h o r r o r m o v i e , and "la

luce rossa"

about

(pornography,

both h a r d - a n d s o f t - c o r e ) . Hollywood

studios, meanwhile,

often

availed

themselves

of

C i n e c i t t a ' s s e r v i c e s , w h e n they w a n t e d to m a k e e p i c s on the cheap. A m e r i c a n a c t o r s f r e q u e n t l y s t a r r e d in I t a l i a n m o v i e s of both the f i r s t and s e c o n d r a n k .

1 6

F o r many y e a r s , Rome w a s a f f e c t i o n a t e l y k n o w n as

" H o l l y w o o d on the T i b e r . " S u r p r i s i n g l y , t h i s U.S. i n v a s i o n did not have an i n i m i c a l e f f e c t on l o c a l p r o d u c t i o n . A s P e t e r B o n d a n e l l a p o i n t e d out

in Italian

Cinema: From Neorealism

to the Present,

in 1972 " I t a l i a n

p r o d u c t s g a i n e d 62.5% of the b o x - o f f i c e r e c e i p t s as c o m p a r e d to a m e r e 15.1% earned by H o l l y w o o d f i l m s " ( I t a l i a n C i n e m a 145). A r t i s t i c c h a n g e s ran p a r a l l e l to t h e s e e c o n o m i c g a i n s . M o s t of the m a s t e r s of n e o r e a l i s m g r a d u a l l y d r i f t e d a w a y f r o m the o r t h o d o x

path.

F o r V i s c o n t i , t h i s " h e r e s y " took the f o r m of p e r i o d f i l m s s u f f u s e d w i t h elegant

n o s t a l g i a f o r the M a r x i s t d i r e c t o r ' s

own a r i s t o c r a t i c

past.

A n t o n i o n i , on the o t h e r hand, abandoned p r o l e t a r i a n and p e t i t - b o u r g e o i s concerns

almost

entirely

in

favour

of

his

intimate,

exhaustive

e x p l o r a t i o n s of upper c l a s s a n o m i e . F i n d i n g i t i n c r e a s i n g l y d i f f i c u l t to f i n d b a c k e r s f o r the n e o r e a l i s t p r o j e c t s he s t i l l w a n t e d to c o m p l e t e , Rossellini

gradually

switched

media,

specializing

in

unadorned

t e l e f i l m s about f a m o u s people w h i c h w e r e made in F r a n c e as w e l l as I t a l y . De S i c a f l o u n d e r e d

1 6

for

many y e a r s , u n t i l

the

world

and

A t a c t i c made much e a s i e r by the a l m o s t u n i v e r s a l I t a l i a n p r a c t i c e of p o s t - d u b b i n g .

the

228 H o l l y w o o d A c a d e m y e m b r a c e d // Giardino

dei Finzi-Contini,

his

1972

e l e g y to I t a l i a n J e w s k i l l e d in the H o l o c a u s t . With

his

highly

personal

iconography, s u r r e a l i s t i c

childlike innocence, playful a n t i - c l e r i c a l i s m , pre-pubertal and c i r c u s a e s t h e t i c s , of a l l the m a j o r

imagery, sensuality

Italian directors, Federico

F e l l i n i w o u l d a p p e a r to have t r a v e l l e d the f u r t h e s t f r o m the n e o r e a l i s t point

of

origin.

He m i g h t

a l s o s e e m the

furthest

removed

from

A m e r i c a n c u l t u r a l i n f l u e n c e . And y e t , as I s h a l l s h o r t l y a r g u e , t h i s i s f a r f r o m b e i n g the c a s e . A s a l r e a d y m e n t i o n e d , one of F e l l i n i ' s e a r l i e s t j o b s w a s w r i t i n g the I t a l i a n t e x t f o r the A m e r i c a n s c i e n c e f i c t i o n c o m i c s t r i p ,

Flash

Gordon.

most

He w a s a l s o one of the c o - w r i t e r s of Paisa,

still

the

r i g o r o u s s t u d y of U . S . / I t a l i a n s o c i a l r e l a t i o n s , a f a c t w h i c h s u g g e s t s he w a s then as c o m f o r t a b l e w i t h n a t u r a l i s t i c c o v e n t i o n s as he w a s w i t h c o m e d i c and f a n t a s t i c f o r m u l a e . In Testaments

trahis,

we learn that

" D e p u i s l o n g t e m p s i l [ F e l l i n i ] r e v e de f a i r e de L'Amerique K a f k a ] un f i l m , et dans Intervista

[the n o v e l by

i l nous a f a i t v o i r l a s c e n e du c a s t i n g

pour ce f i l m reve...." (Kundera 61) A l l t h i s i s f a i r l y w e l l - k n o w n . What I a m a b o u t to s u g g e s t n o w , h o w e v e r , i s m u c h m o r e u n o r t h o d o x .

After

h a v i n g r e a d C u r z i o M a l a p a r t e ' s a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l n o v e l La Pelle,

I can

only

c o n c l u d e t h a t the n o v e l i s t ' s s t y g i a n i m a g i n a t i o n

exercised a

p o w e r f u l i n f l u e n c e o v e r the younger f i l m m a k e r ' s e l y s i a n p s y c h e . If t h i s c o n n e c t i o n has not been made e a r l i e r , I s u s p e c t i t i s p r i m a r i l y b e c a u s e radical d i f f e r e n c e s in e m o t i o n a l tone have o b s c u r e d the i m a g i s t i c s i m i l a r i t i e s . M a l a p a r t e d e d i c a t e d h i s g r e a t e s t book as f o l l o w s : " A l l '

memoria

del Colonnello

Henry H. Cummings, dell' Universita

affetuosa

di

Virginia,

229

e di tutti

i bravi, i buoni, gli onesti soldati

americani,

d'arme dal 1943 al 1945, morti inutilmente

miei

per la liberta

compagni

dell'

Europa"

( M a l a p a r t e 4). A g a i n and a g a i n , the a u t h o r i d e n t i f i e s h i m s e l f w i t h the spirit

of the Old Europe w h i c h the w a r has d e s t r o y e d . D e s p i t e h i s

sympathy

for

the A m e r i c a n s o l d i e r s w h o f o u g h t

" b o o t " , h i s book s h a r e s none of the o p t i m i s m of the f i l m Paisa.

their

way

up

the

similarly-themed

H a v i n g been both a f a s c i s t and an a n t i f a s c i s t , M a l a p a r t e

w a s s e e m i n g l y t r u s t e d by f e w of h i s f e l l o w

I t a l i a n s , and he r e t u r n e d

t h i s f a v o u r w i t h ( l i t e r a r y ) i n t e r e s t . He both b l a m e s h i s h o m e l a n d f o r W o r l d W a r T w o and e x t r a c t s a l m o s t m a s o c h i s t i c s a t i s f a c t i o n f r o m the b i t t e r n e s s of d e f e a t : " E c e r t o a s s a i piu d i f f i c i l e p e r d e r e una g u e r r a che v i n c e r l a " ( M a l a p a r t e 12). He and the o t h e r I t a l i a n s o l d i e r s now e n l i s t e d in

the

Allied

uniforms

cause wear

the

haunting

stigmata

of

bloodstained

w h i c h were taken from "ai soldati britannici

c a d u t i a El

A l a m e i n e a T o b r u k " ( M a l a p a r t e 12). The l a t e s t o c c u p i e r s of N a p l e s are s i m u l t a n e o u s l y c o n t e m p t u o u s and f r i e n d l y . A n A m e r i c a n o f f i c e r s a y s , "'I

l i k e i t a l i a n (sic)

people. I

l i k e t h i s b a s t a r d , d i r t y , w o n d e r f u l p e o p l e ' " ( M a l a p a r t e 17). On a c c o u n t of the g r e a t s u f f e r i n g s of the N e a p o l i t a n s , " C r i s t o e r a n a p o l e t a n o " ( M a l a p a r t e 17). M a l a p a r t e ' s l i k i n g f o r A m e r i c a n s i s the e x a c t o p p o s i t e of t h a t of h i s U.S. s u p e r i o r s : '"I c l e a n , the w o n d e r f u l a m e r i c a n (sic)

l i k e A m e r i c a n s . I l i k e the p u r e , the p e o p l e ' " ( M a l a p a r t e 17).

In a s c e n e t h a t c o u l d not help but s t i r the i m a g i n a t i o n of a F e l l i n i , w e are t o l d t h a t N e a p o l i t a n w h o r e s f a v o u r not only blonde w i g s but a l s o blonde m e r k i n s , b e c a u s e f o r b l a c k A m e r i c a n s G.l.s, t h e i r p r e f e r r e d p r e y , " n o n p i a c c i o n o l e donne b i a n c h e t r o p p o

nere" (Malaparte 21). Like

C e l i n e , M a l a p a r t e w a s an a n t i - r a t i o n a l i s t :

" ' P e r capire l'Europa...la

230 r a g i o n e c a r t e s i a n a non s e r v e a n u l l a . L ' E u r o p a e un p a e s e m i s t e r i o s o pieno

di

segreti

inviolabili'"

(Malaparte

2 7 ) . A m o n g the

indigent

f a m i l i e s of N a p l e s , b l a c k s o l d i e r s are t r a d e d l i k e s l a v e s by l o c a l s t r e e t a r a b s j they are not p e r c e i v e d as f i e l d h a n d s , h o w e v e r , but as h u s b a n d s . Even m o r e i m p o r t a n t

than h i s c o l o u r , t h o u g h , i n the c o n t e x t

of

this

s t a r v i n g c i t y , i s a G.l.'s a c c e s s to A l l i e d s u p p l i e s : "...un b i a n c o del P X c o s t a quanto un driver

di c o l o r e " ( M a l a p a r t e 3 4 ) .

1 7

On a p a r t i c u l a r l y

bizarre Neapolitan s t a i r c a s e , Malaparte described a vision that could not h e l p but i n f l a m e

the young F e l l i n i ' s i m a g i n a t i o n , an u r b a n

hell

i n h a b i t e d s o l e l y by g r o t e s q u e f e m a l e d w a r v e s : " S o n o c o s i p i c c o l e , che giungono a s t e n t o al g i n o c c h i o di un uomo di m e d i a s t a t u r a " ( M a l a p a r t e 37). While

American soldiers will

sometimes

cohabit

with

these

c r e a t u r e s as p r o s t i t u t e s , even the m o s t hardened I t a l i a n w h o r e - m o n g e r w i l l have n o t h i n g to do w i t h t h e m .

1 8

Of N a p l e s ' r e c e n t s t r u g g l e to f r e e

i t s e l f f r o m N a z i o c c u p a t i o n , the a u t h o r i s e q u a l l y proud and h o r r i f i e d : "I r a g a z z i e le donne furono i piu t e r r i b i l i , in q u e l l e q u a t t r o g i o r n a t e di l o t t a s e n z a q u a r t i e r e " ( M a l a p a r t e 6 3 ) . A v i s i t to the " V i r g i n of N a p l e s " ( a l l e g e d l y , the o n l y g i r l of the c i t y to have not t h u s f a r herself,

although

she m a k e s h e r l i v i n g

exclusively

prostituted

from

publicly

p r o v i n g t h a t she i s s t i l l " v i r g o i n t a c t a " ) f i l l s M a l a p a r t e w i t h the m o s t S u c h e x p l o i t e d b l a c k c h a r a c t e r s w e r e a l s o f e a t u r e d i n Paisa, Senza pieta, ande v e n t u a l l y — L i l i a n a C a v a n i ' s 1981 s c r e e n v e r s i o n of La Pelle. A r e l a t e d f i g u r e can a l s o be found in F e d e r i c o F e l l i n i ' s 1957 m a s t e r p i e c e , I Hotte di Cabiria. 1 7

Images of d i s t o r t e d f e m a l e s e x u a l i t y are one of the abiding c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s of F e l l i n i ' s c i n e m a . One i s r e m i n d e d of the p i l l b o x o g r e s s f r o m Otto e demi, the g i a n t e s s a t t e n d e d by t w o p e r i w i g g e d d w a r v e s in Fellini Casanova, the h e r m a p h r o d i t e / " f r e a k s h o w " a t t r a c t i o n f r o m Fellini Satyricon, and d o z e n s of o t h e r s of s t r i k i n g e x a m p l e s t h a t m i g h t , u n d e r s l i g h t l y d i f f e r e n t c i r c u m s t a n c e s , have been e t c h e d by M a l a p a r t e ' s pen. One m i g h t a l s o p o i n t out t h a t , a c c o r d i n g t o M i l a n K u n d e r a , w h a t m o s t a t t r a c t e d F e l l i n i t o K a f k a ' s America w a s the f i g u r e of B r u n e l d a , a g i a n t - s i z e d d i v a - t u r n e d - p r o s t i t u t e w h o m the C z e c h n o v e l i s t d e s c r i b e s as " u n m o n s t r e de s e x u a l i t e a l a f r o n t i e r e du r e p u g n a n t et de l'excitant...." (Kundera 62). ,

8

231 profound

shame; it

makes

him

feel

conquered

f o r e i g n e r s who are no l o n g e r f r i e n d s but v i c t o r s . i s l e s s than p l e a s e d by the t r a n s f o r m a t i o n what

he

describes

as

the

1 9

in

the

presence

In the s a m e v e i n , he

of I t a l y ' s l a r g e s t c i t y

homosexual

of

capital

of

the

into

world:

" L i n t e r n a z i o n a l e degli i n v e r t i t i , tragicamente s p e z z a t a della guerra, si r i c o m p o n e v a in quel p r i m o l i m b o d ' E u r o p a l i b e r a t a da s o l d a t i (Malaparte

123). M a l a p a r t e

a s s o c i a t e s these

C o m m u n i s m , the new g e n e r a t i o n of w r i t e r s ,

alleati"

gay i m m i g r a n t s

and the a r t i s t i c

with avant-

g a r d e ; he s e t s t h e m up i n o p p o s i t i o n to b o t h h i m s e l f and I t a l y ' s t a i n t e d but s t i l l

glorious p a s t .

2 0

A t one p o i n t , the a u t h o r goes so f a r as to

s u g g e s t t h a t G e n e r a l Donovan a c t i v e l y r e c r u i t e d h o m o s e x u a l s f o r

the

OSS as a m e a n s of s p r e a d i n g s u b v e r s i o n and bad m o r a l e behind G e r m a n lines.

2

1

On a v e r y f e w o c c a s i o n s , M a l a p a r t e ' s l i t e r a r y v o i c e a s s u m e s the s u p e r c i l i o u s t o n e s of a s u p e r i o r F r e n c h v i s i t o r to the New W o r l d : " C o m e t u t t i i G e n e r a l i d e l l ' U.S. A r m y , i l G e n e r a l e Cork [ C l a r k ? ] a v e v a un s a c r o t e r r o r e dei S e n a t o r i e dei C l u b s f e i m m i n i l i d ' A m e r i c a " ( M a l a p a r t e 2 7 9 ) . Once o r t w i c e , he even s a t i r i z e s F r e n c h a t t i t u d e s

towards

Italy. A

f r i e n d in the F r e n c h A r m y , f o r i n s t a n c e , i s not e n t i r e l y s a t i s f i e d w i t h Stendhal's 19th-century

r e p o r t a g e f r o m the C i t y of the C a e s a r s : " ' S i

j ' a i un r e p r o c h e a l u i f a i r e - d i s s e P i e r r e L y a u t e y - c ' e s t d ' a i m e r R o m e que P a r i s " ( M a l a p a r t e 3 9 0 ) . 1 9

Need one add t h a t b i z a r r e b r o t h e l

mieux

Malaparte's p e s s i m i s t i c view

of

s c e n e s are y e t a n o t h e r f i x t u r e of F e l l i n e s q u e

cinema? W h i l e the F e l l i n i w h o shot Satyricon w a s c l e a r l y q u i t e s y m p a t h e t i c to the n o t i o n of s e x u a l a m b i g u i t y , the d i r e c t o r w h o made La Dolce vita a d e c a d e e a r l i e r u s e d gay c h a r a c t e r s as a m e a n s of u n d e r l y i n g c o n t e m p o r a r y d e c a d e n c e in a m a n n e r not u n l i k e Malaparte's. 2

0

I n t e r e s t i n g l y enough, Donovan's name w a s purged f r o m the e a r l i e s t A m e r i c a n t r a n s l a t i o n of La Pelle, as w e r e many of the book's more g r a p h i c s e x u a l d e s c r i p t i o n s .

2

1

232 E u r o p e ' s i m m i n e n t d o o m - a n d A m e r i c a ' s n a i v e a t t e m p t to p r e v e n t perhaps

best

impotently

epitomized

when

a volcano erupts

and U.S.

it-is

fighters

pour m a c h i n e g u n b u l l e t s i n t o the l a v a in a v a i n a t t e m p t to

s t o p i t . Once a c i v i l i z a t i o n had been r e d u c e d to a p r i m i t i v e

survival

l e v e l , M a l a p a r t e a p p a r e n t l y b e l i e v e d , t h e r e w a s n o t h i n g anyone c o u l d do to r e s t o r e i t to i t s f o r m e r s t a t e . 2 2 A l t h o u g h N e o r e a l i s m w a s abandoned by v i r t u a l l y i t s pure f o r m , i t s m o r a l a u t h o r i t y

everyone

in

2 3

c o n t i n u e d to h o l d s w a y o v e r

the

c o n s c i e n c e s of m o s t s e r i o u s I t a l i a n d i r e c t o r s . G u i d o A r i s t a r c o ,

the

s e l f - a p p o i n t e d g u a r d i a n of M a r x i s t p u r i t y in I t a l i a n f i l m c r i t i c i s m , had f a m o u s l y t h u n d e r e d , "I s o l i o p p o s i t o r i del n e o r e a l i s m o f u r o n o dunque i f a s c i s t i , i r e a z i o n a r i di q u a l s i a s i s p e c i e " ( A r i s t a r c o 2 8 ) . S i n c e A m e r i c a m e d d l e d i n s o many o t h e r a s p e c t s of I t a l i a n

life

d u r i n g the e a r l y y e a r s of p o s t w a r p o l i t i c a l and e c o n o m i c r e c o v e r y , i t s h o u l d c o m e as no s u r p r i s e to d i s c o v e r t h a t H o l l y w o o d r e p r e s e n t a t i v e s w e r e s i m u l t a n e o u s l y doing e v e r y t h i n g in t h e i r p o w e r to u n d e r m i n e the c o m m e r c i a l h e a l t h of n e o r e a l i s m . A s A r i s t a r c o a s t u t e l y w a r n e d : "'11 M a n i f e s t o del C i r c o l o romano del c i n e m a d i c e anche d e l l a c o n c o r r e n z a a m e r i c a n , ' " s o t t o l i n e a nel 1 9 5 5 ' C i n e m a N u o v a ' che c o s i c o m m e n t a : 'Quando, tempo f a , venne in I t a l i a Mr. J o h n s o n p e r c o n t o d e l l a M P A A e c i i n v i t o c h i a r a m e n t e ad abbandonare l a s t r a d a del n e o r e a l i s m o con l a p r o m e s s a di a p r i c i , in c a m b i o , i grandi c i r c u i t i a m e r i c a n i , non fu d i f f i c i l e s c o r g e r e i l f i n e d e l l a m a n o v r a , l a quale t e n d e v a a e l i m i n a r e un ipo di c o n c o r r e n z a p e r i c o l o s a perche c o s t i t u i v a un genere b a s a t o su b a s s i c o s t i , per i n v i t a r e i n o s t r i i n d u s t r i a l i a s c e n d e r e in c a m p o s u l t e r r e n o d e g l i a m e r i c a n i , dove a l i a f i n e s a r e m m o s t a t i f a c i l m e n t e b a t t u t i (come g i a a c c a d d e 2

2

2 3

T h i s m e s s a g e , h a p p i l y , w a s not absorbed by I t a l y ' s g r e a t e s t l i f e - a f f i r m i n g

director.

Accatone, P i e r P a o l o P a s o l i n i ' s 1961 d i r e c t o r i a l debut, w a s r a t h e r p e r v e r s e l y s h o t i n

a pure n e o r e a l i s t s t y l e .

233 t r e n t ' anni f a ; come e a c c a d u t o di r e c e n t e ad A r t h u r R a n k ) " ' ( N e o r e a l i s m o e nouva c r i t i c a 140).

As

things

turned

out,

many

Italian

movies

of

less

than

A u g u s t i n i a n m o r a l r i g o u r did indeed p e n e t r a t e the A m e r i c a n m a r k e t

in

the e a r l y 1 9 6 0 s , d e s p i t e A r i s t a r c o ' s deep r e s e r v a t i o n s . Many of t h e s e f e a t u r e s w e r e s e r i o u s w o r k s w i t h a s e x u a l c o n t e n t t h a t U.S. c e n s o r s w e r e p r e p a r e d to t o l e r a t e in o v e r s e a s i m p o r t s , but not in motion picture productions.

homegrown

A decade l a t e r , when H o l l y w o o d f u n c t i o n e d

u n d e r f e w e r " b l u e n o s e " c o n s t r a i n t s , the s e r i o u s d r a m a s of F e l l i n i , V i s c o n t i and A n t o n i o n i had been l a r g e l y r e p l a c e d by l i g h t s e x f a r c e s , many s t a r r i n g L a u r a A n t o n e l l i . By and l a r g e , t h e s e l a t e r w o r k s

were

i n f e r i o r not only to I t a l i a n c i n e m a ' s m a j o r p o s t w a r m a s t e r p i e c e s but a l s o to s u c h s k i l l f u l l y made s a t i r i c a l f a r c e s as V i t t o r i o de S i c a ' s oggi domani ( 1 9 6 3 ) and P i e t r o G e r m i ' s Divorzio

all'

Italiana

(1961).

F r a n c e s c o R o s i and the T a v i a n i b r o t h e r s w e r e p r o b a b l y the l a s t I t a l i a n c i n e a s t e s to

be m o r e

or l e s s guaranteed

U.S.

leri

major

distribution.

B e r n a r d o B e r t u l u c c i s t i l l i s , p r i m a r i l y on a c c o u n t of the f a c t t h a t , f o r the l a s t f i f t e e n y e a r s , m o s t of h i s m o v i e s have been made w i t h A n g l o A m e r i c a n money and s h o t in E n g l i s h .

2 4

In r e t r o s p e c t , i t now s e e m s

c l e a r t h a t I t a l i a n c i n e m a n e v e r a c h i e v e d m o r e than a succes

d'estime

among A m e r i c a n a u d i e n c e s , even d u r i n g i t s " a r t h o u s e " heyday. N a t i v e i n s u l a r i t y and s t u d i o m a n i p u l a t i o n of a d v e r t i s i n g , t h e a t r e c h a i n s , and p o p u l a r t a s t e - M P A A s p o k e m a n J a c k V a l e n t i has been t e l l i n g the

world

A c c o r d i n g to f i l m h i s t o r i a n P e t e r B o n d a n e l l a , even Last Tango in Paris ( 1 9 7 2 ) , the d i r e c t o r ' s f a m o u s s t u d y of a g r i e f - s t r i c k e n m i d d l e a g e d A m e r i c a n e x p a t r i a t e s e e k i n g s e x u a l s o l a c e i n the C i t y of L i g h t , w a s o r i g i n a l l y c o n c e i v e d , at l e a s t i n p a r t , as an i n v e r t e d , e n t i r e l y n e g a t i v e i m a g e of V i n c e n t e M i n n e l l i ' s i r r e p r e s s i b l y c h e e r f u l An American in Paris ( 1 9 5 1 )

2

4

234 t h a t " A m e r i c a n s don't l i k e m o v i e s w i t h s u b t i t l e s ' " f o r the p a s t t h i r t y y e a r s - H o l l y w o o d on the T i b e r n e v e r s t o o d m u c h c h a n c e of t u r n i n g i n t o a New W o r l d succes de

scandale.

N e v e r t h e l e s s , in s p i t e of e v e r y t h i n g , the s p i r i t c o n t i n u e d to l i v e on. S o m e t i m e s i t

of

neorealism

c r o p p e d up i n the m o s t

unlikely

p l a c e s . Who, f o r i n s t a n c e , w o u l d have e x p e c t e d to f i n d i t in w h a t

later

b e c a m e d e r i s i v e l y k n o w n as the " s p a g h e t t i w e s t e r n , " the i m m e n s e l y p o p u l a r I t a l o - A m e r i c a n s u b - g e n r e w h i c h d i r e c t o r S e r g i o Leone f i r s t c r o s s - b r e d in 1 9 6 4 ? In Per un pugno di dollari dollaro

( 1 9 6 4 ) and Per

qualche

in piu ( 1 9 6 5 ) , Leone e s t a b l i s h e d many of the c o n v e n t i o n s w h i c h

h u n d r e d s of i m i t a t o r s w o u l d soon f o l l o w . U s u a l l y f r o n t e d by A m e r i c a n s t a r s ( m o s t f a m o u s l y C l i n t E a s t w o o d ) , f i l m e d in the p l a i n s of A n d a l u s i a ( E u r o p e ' s c l o s e s t e q u i v a l e n t to A m e r i c a ' s Old W e s t ) , and h e l m e d by Italian

directors

who

sometimes

affected

Anglo-Saxon

names,

s p a g h e t t i w e s t e r n s w e r e both more c y n i c a l and b l o o d i e r than t h e i r U.S. c o u n t e r p a r t s . O c c a s i o n a l l y , they w e r e a l s o m o r e p o i n t e d l y A c c o r d i n g to U.S. c r i t i c Danny P e a r y , Per qualche dollaro

political.

in piu c o n t a i n s

" t h e k e y p o l i t i c a l s c e n e i n a l l of L e o n e ' s w o r k : at the end E a s t w o o d p i l e s up the dead b o d i e s of V o l o n t e ' s gang, c o u n t i n g t h e m not by n u m b e r but by the b o u n t i e s each c o r p s e w i l l earn h i m . S o c i a l i s t L e o n e ' s p o i n t i s c l e a r : in c a p i t a l i s t A m e r i c a , dead men equate w i t h m o n e y " ( P e a r y 156). It

might

a l s o be n o t e d t h a t , in h i s h e r o i c l o n e r r o l e s w i t h L e o n e ,

E a s t w o o d ' s n a m e l e s s h e r o e s w e r e i n v a r i a b l y t r e a t e d to s a v a g e b e a t i n g s w h o s e i c o n o g r a p h y c o u l d e a s i l y be c o m p a r e d to t h a t of the C r u c i f i x i o n . Once a g a i n w e are r e m i n d e d of the d e e p l y b u r i e d , a l m o s t I t a l i a n c o n f l a t i o n of the briganti the Old W e s t .

subliminal

of m o d e r n S i c i l y w i t h the o u t l a w s of

235 M a r x i s m and C h r i s t i a n h u m a n i s m a s i d e , h o w e v e r , the n e o r e a l i s t element in spaghetti

westerns was extremely

slight. Super-heroes

gunned d o w n a r m i e s of v i l l a i n s w i t h l i t t l e r e g a r d f o r the l a w s of e i t h e r p r o b a b i l i t y o r b a l l i s t i c s . In L e o n e ' s f i l m s in p a r t i c u l a r , w o m e n w e r e even s c a r c e r than they w e r e in the r e a l Old W e s t , w h i l e h i s c o l d - e y e d s u p e r - h e r o e s poured m o s t of t h e i r e r o t i c energy i n t o h i g h l y r i t u a l i z e d , c i r c u l a r d u e l s t h a t e m p h a s i z e d f l i n t y - e y e d c l o s e - u p s . In a w o r d , t h e y w e r e s t r a n g e . Of // Buono il brutto the Man W i t h

No Name t r i p t y c h ,

il cattivo

( 1 9 6 6 ) , the l a s t panel i n

P a u l i n e Kael

wrote,

"This

Italian

W e s t e r n s e t in our C i v i l W a r p e r i o d , l o o k s m o r e f o r e i g n to us than an ordinary

Italian f i l m - w h i c h

g i v e s r i s e to s p e c u l a t i o n about how

we

a l t e r the s c a l e , and hence the m e a n i n g , in our m o v i e v e r s i o n s of f o r e i g n s t o r i e s " (Going S t e a d y 53). Or, as A m e r i c a n c r i t i c B i l l Krohn put i t in a F r e n c h f i l m j o u r n a l , " L e o n e n ' e t a i t pas a m e r i c a i n , et l e c i n e m a dont i l t i r e son i n s p i r a t i o n l e p l u s p r o f o n d e n ' e t a i t l e n o t r e . II

commence

c o m m e a s s i s t a n t de V i t t o r i o de S i c a , et son p r e m i e r w e s t e r n f u t ' r e m a k e ' p r e s q u e s c e n e a s c e n e , de Yojimbo, p l a n e t e L e o n e " 12).

un

le f i l m de K u r o s a w a " ( " L a

A s the I t a l i a n ' s f i l m s g r e w m o r e a m b i t i o u s , C l i n t

E a s t w o o d began to f e e l as i f t h i s I t a l i a n a u t e u r w e r e " t r y i n g to be m o r e D a v i d L e a n t h a n S e r g i o L e o n e " ( S c h i c k e l 169). E v e n the

filmmaker's

g e n e r a l l y s y m p a t h e t i c f e l l o w c o u n t r y m a n L i n o M i c c h i c h e f e l t t h a t the d i r e c t o r w a s m o r e on P l a n e t a S e r g i o t h a n in the Old W e s t : ' " L e o n e a t t e s t a con grande e v i d e n z a al c a r a t t e r e f o n d a m e n t a l m e n t e

asttrato

del p r o p r i o c i n e m a : i l suo r e f e r e n t e e s c l u s i v o , i n f a t t i , r i s u l t a e s s e r e non g i a l a s t o r i a del W e s t , s i a pure f i l t r a t a a t t r a v e r s o l ' e p o p e a che ne ha f a t t o i l c i n e m a a m e r i c a n o , ma l ' e p o p e a c i n e m a t o g r a f i c a s t e s s a ; non

236 la

s t o r i a , c i o e , e neppure

il mito,

ma l a s t o r i a

del c i n e m a e la

rapprentazione del mito.../" ( S t o r i a e f i l m 64). Leone h i m s e l f , h o w e v e r , w a s s t r o n g l y i n s i s t e n t on t h e . a b s o l u t e i m p o r t a n c e of H o l l y w o o d c i n e m a to h i s l i f e and w o r k . In a t r i b u t e to J o h n F o r d , he w r o t e , " J e n ' a u r a i s j a m a i s pu tourne // etait

un fois dans

1'ouest, et m e m e Le Bon, la brute et le truand, s i l ' e n f a n t que j ' e t a i s n ' a v a i t vu l e s d e s e r t s de T A r i z o n a , l e s v i l l e s de b o i s en f e u que J o h n F o r d m o n t a i t dans une l u m i e r e pure et e t o n n a n t e " ( L e o n e 1 5 ) . F o r L e o n e , F o r d w a s a n y t h i n g but a r e a l i s t : " L a v e r i t a b l e f o r c e de s e s f i l m s on l a trouve

dans

la puissante

irremediablement

nostalgie

p e r d u e s et s u r t o u t

d'un monde

aux

frontieres

dans s o n i d e e v i s i o n n a i r e de

l ' A m e r i q u e qui t r a n s p i r a i t de chaque p h o t o g r a m m e " (Leone 15). It s h o u l d , p e r h a p s , be e m p h a s i z e d here t h a t t h e l a t e

nineteenth

c e n t u r y - t h e h i s t o r i c a l p e r i o d in w h i c h m o s t s p a g h e t t i w e s t e r n s w e r e s e t - w a s a t i m e when Italian i n t e l l e c t u a l i n t e r e s t in the New World was

negligible

to n o n - e x i s t e n t . T h e l i t e r a r y

t r e a s u r e s of H e r m a n

M e l v i l l e and Mark T w a i n w e r e not to be o f f i c i a l l y

acknowledged for

a n o t h e r h a l f c e n t u r y . L i t e r a r y P a r i s i a n s m i g h t have k e p t one u n q u i e t eye p e r m a n e n t l y f a s t e n e d on t h e b r a s h p o l i t i c a l and e c o n o m i c g i a n t g r o w i n g by l e a p s and bounds on t h e o t h e r s i d e of t h e A t l a n t i c f o r t w o c e n t u r i e s o r m o r e , but I t a l y ' s s e l f - i n v o l v e m e n t w i t h i t s o w n s e e m i n g l y i n s u p e r a b l e p r o b l e m s d i d not a l l o w N e a p o l i t a n w r i t e r s and F l o r e n t i n e p h i l o s o p h e r s the s a m e l e i s u r e . T h i s e a r l y i n d i f f e r e n c e has o f t e n had t h e u n i n t e n t i o n a l but u n a v o i d a b l e e f f e c t of m a k i n g I t a l i a n p o r t r a i t s of t h e A m e r i c a n p a s t s e e m even more f a b u l o u s (i.e. Zabriskie

Point) than t h o s e

of t h e F r e n c h . A m e r i c a n e c o n o m i c a t t i t u d e s , p o l i t i c a l a m b i t i o n s , and

237 ethnic

hierarchies were already fully

formed

by t h e t i m e

outside

I t a l i a n o b s e r v e r s f i n a l l y took a b e l a t e d - i f g e n e r a l l y a d m i r i n g - l o o k . Even s o , i t

would

be w r o n g

to s u g g e s t

that

distant

Italian

o b s e r v e r s w e r e e n t i r e l y b l i n d to U.S. f a u l t s . Even S e r g i o L e o n e , d e s p i t e h i s s e l f - e v i d e n t l o v e f o r a l l t h i n g s A m e r i c a n , w a s q u i t e c a p a b l e of implicitly criticizing anti-Italian

s t e r o e t y p e s w i t h i n the iconography

of H o l l y w o o d c i n e m a . It i s f o r t h i s r e a s o n , I a s s u m e , t h a t he made t h e underworld

protagonists

of Once Upon a Time in America,

g a n g s t e r f i l m , J e w i s h r a t h e r than S i c i l i a n .

h i s only

2 5

A s i d e f r o m L e o n e ' s p o p u l a r r i f f s on A m e r i c a n g e n r e s , f e w I t a l i a n productions motifs.

of t h e 1 9 6 0 s and ' 7 0 s f e a t u r e d

Marco

Ferreri's

Dilinger

e morto

significant (1969),

for

r e s t r i c t e d i t s e x p l i c i t U.S. c o n t e n t to a s i n g l e Chicago

American instance, Sun-Times

h e a d l i n e . S i n c e w e have a l r e a d y d i s c u s s e d t h e A m e r i c a n c o n n e c t i o n running through Francesco R o s i ' s c r i m i n a l autopsies in Chapter T w o , t h e r e i s no need to r e - c o n s i d e r t h e m here beyond t h e b a s i c a c t of r e m e m b r a n c e . T h e m a j o r e x c e p t i o n one s h o u l d make to t h i s r u l e w o u l d be t h e s i n g l e f l a s h b a c k s e q u e n c e i n Tre fratelli

(1981) wherein Second

W o r l d W a r e r a I t a l i a n s make j o y f u l c o n t a c t w i t h I t a l o - A m e r i c a n G.l.s. T h i s f i l m e d m e m o r y i s c l e a r l y a n o s t a l g i c homage to R o s s e l l i n i ' s Paisa. In t h e " A g e of Marx and Coca C o l a " , V i t t o r i o de S i c a made s e v e r a l features with partial e f f o r t s {After

U.S. f i n a n c i n g , but none of t h e s e

throw-away

the Fox; Woman Times Seven) c a n be c o u n t e d among h i s

H i s t o r i c a l l y s p e a k i n g , of c o u r s e , he w a s q u i t e w i t h i n h i s r i g h t s to do s o . U n t i l t h e y e m e r g e d t r i u m p h a n t f r o m the i n t e r - e t h n i c P r o h i b i t i o n gang w a r s of t h e l a t e 1 9 2 0 s and e a r l y 1 9 3 0 s , L a C o s a N o s t r a had to s h a r e urban p o w e r w i t h a l a r g e n u m b e r of I r i s h and J e w i s h A m e r i c a n gangs. If they had not, p o p u l a r s t e r e o t y p i n g i n the U.S. w o u l d d o u b t l e s s have f o l l o w e d a s o m e w h a t d i f f e r e n t course. 2

5

238 major works. "Toby D a m m i t / ' Federico F e l l i n i ' s short contribution the 1 9 6 8 h o r r o r - t h e m e d o m n i b u s f i l m Spirits

to

of the Dead, d e a l t w i t h a

s e l f - l o a t h i n g A m e r i c a n a c t o r in R o m e , and the e p o n y m o u s a n t i - h e r o of Casanova ( 1 9 7 6 ) w a s p l a y e d by Donald S u t h e r l a n d .

2 6

Aside from these

r e l a t i v e l y m i n o r d e t a i l s and one s i n g u l a r l y e v o c a t i v e f i l m t i t l e e Fred),

the d i r e c t o r ' s

post

\9b0-oeuvre

(Ginger

w a s m o r e I t a l i a n and l e s s

A m e r i c a n than w e r e h i s m o r e n a t u r a l i s t i c w o r k s of the 1 9 5 0 s ( w h i c h w e r e o f t e n f r o n t e d by s u c h m i n o r H o l l y w o o d s t a r s as R i c h a r d B a s e h a r t and B r o d e r i c k C r a w f o r d ) . A s has a l r e a d y been m e n t i o n e d , d u r i n g the l a s t d e c a d e of h i s l i f e ( 1 9 6 6 - 1 9 7 7 ) , R o b e r t o R o s s e l l i n i ' s c r e a t i v e e n e r g i e s w e r e a l m o s t e n t i r e l y c o n s u m e d by the p r o d u c t i o n of s e m i - d o c u m e n t a r y t e l e f i l m s about the l i v e s of c u l t u r a l l y s i g n i f i c a n t E u r o p e a n s . In s i m i l a r f a s h i o n , the l a v i s h h i s t o r i c a l d r a m a s w h i c h c h a r a c t e r i z e d the

latter

t h i r d of L u c h i n o V i s c o n t i ' s d i r e c t o r i a l c a r e e r m o r e or l e s s l i m i t e d U.S. influence

to

occasional

casting

choices.

American enthusiasms, meanwhile, were director/poet's oft-stated

2 7

Pier

Paolo P a s o l i n i ' s

seemingly

limited

to

the

l i k i n g f o r the f i l m s and p e r s o n a of C h a r l i e

C h a p l i n . T h a n k s to h e r m a s s c i r c u l a t i o n f a n s in New V o r k ' s j o u r n a l i s t i c c o m m u n i t y , L i n a W e r t m u l l e r w a s i n v i t e d to make a s i n g l e U.S. f e a t u r e

(The End of the World in Our Usual Beds on a Night Full of Rain) in 1 9 7 6 , an

entirely

unsatisfactory

venture

which

not

only

damaged

the

d i r e c t o r ' s r e p u t a t i o n , but w h i c h a l s o drove h e r back to the b u r l e s q u e

2

6

A l t h o u g h t e c h n i c a l l y a C a n a d i a n , S u t h e r l a n d i s s t i l l thought of as A m e r i c a n by m o s t

Europeans. B u r t L a n c a s t e r ' s s t a r r i n g r o l e in // Gattopardo (1962) being by f a r the m o s t n o t a b l e . R e c o g n i z i n g t h i s f a c t , B e r n a r d o B e r t o l u c c i , u n q u e s t i o n a b l y the m o s t A m e r i c a n i z e d of the m a j o r I t a l i a n d i r e c t o r s , w o u l d s u b s e q u e n t l y use the a g i n g H o l l y w o o d a c t o r i n a l m o s t i d e n t i c a l i c o n o g r a p h i c f a s h i o n i n Novecento ( 1 9 7 6 ) . P e r h a p s not so c o i n c i d e n t a l l y , B e r t o l u c c i l i k e w i s e c h o s e D o n a l d S u t h e r l a n d , t h e d i s a g r e e a b l e l e c h e r of F e l l i n i ' s Casanova, f o r the part of A t t i l a , the c o n t r o v e r s i a l e p i c ' s f a s c i s t v i l l a i n . 2

7

239 portraits

of I t a l i a n c u l t u r e w h i c h had made h e r f a m o u s in the

first

place. Ermanno O l m i ' s oeuvre w a s i n t e n s e l y n a t i o n a l , as w a s P i e t r o G e r m i ' s (even if Italian

he did c a s t D u s t i n H o f f m a n i n h i s

s e x u a l m o r e s , Alfredo

Bertolucci's

Last

existentially

tormented

Alfredo).

Tango in Pahs

w i t h the

(brilliantly

last

d a y s of

p l a y e d by

an

Marlon

B r a n d o ) , w h i l e La Luna ( 1 9 7 9 ) d e a l t w i t h the i n c e s t u o u s t r a v a i l s A m e r i c a n s in I t a l y . Indeed,

aside

of

On the o t h e r h a n d , B e r n a r d o

dealt

U.S. e m i g r e

1973 s a t i r e

of

2 8

from

Bertolucci

and

Francesco Rosi,

only

M i c h e l a n g e l o A n t o n i o n i e v i n c e d s t r o n g U.S. i n t e r e s t s in the 1 9 6 0 s and ' 7 0 s . Professione:

Reporter

(1 9 7 5 ) d e a l t w i t h the Odyssey of a doomed

overseas correspondent

( p l a y e d by t h a t q u i n t e s s e n t i a l l y

actor,

who

Jack

Nicholson)

fatally

a s s u m e s the

American

identity

of

an

international arms dealer. While this feature was favourably received by m o s t A m e r i c a n c r i t i c s , A n t o n i o n i ' s e a r l i e r e f f o r t , Zabhskie

Point

( 1 9 7 0 ) , m o s t d e f i n i t e l y w a s not. P r i m a r i l y c o n c e r n e d w i t h the r a d i c a l s t u d e n t m o v e m e n t in C a l i f o r n i a , c i r c a 1 9 6 9 , the f i l m w a s denounced by m o s t A m e r i c a n c r i t i c s as the m o s t v i c i o u s p i e c e of

anti-American

p r o p a g a n d a e v e r to be u n l e a s h e d by a n o n - E a s t e r n B l o c f i l m m a k e r . 2 9 The p a s s a g e of a l m o s t t h i r t y y e a r s h a s , a l a s , done v e r y l i t t l e to change

I r o n i c a l l y , v i r t u a l l y a l l of the m o v i e s w h i c h B e r t o l u c c i a c t u a l l y made in the U n i t e d S t a t e s w e r e c o n c e r n e d w i t h m a t t e r s N e a r and F a r E a s t e r n . T h i s i s t r u e of The Last Emperor ( 1 9 8 7 ) , The Sheltering Sky ( 1 9 9 0 ) , and Little Buddha ( 1 9 9 4 ) . On the o t h e r hand, Stealing Beauty ( 1 9 9 6 ) , the d i r e c t o r ' s f i r s t I t a l i a n f e a t u r e s i n c e La Tragedia di un uomo hdiculo ( 1 9 8 1 ) , r e t u r n e d to h i s f a v o u r i t e t h e m e of A m e r i c a n s a b r o a d . W h a t ' s m o r e , i t w a s s i m u l t a n e o u s l y r e l e a s e d i n m a i n l y E n g l i s h and m a i n l y I t a l i a n language v e r s i o n s . T h u s , d e s p i t e a c e r t a i n t h e m a t i c r e p e t i t i o u s n e s s , Bernardo B e r t o l u c c i 2

8

r e m a i n s the m o s t e t h n i c a l l y u n c l a s s i f i a b l e of a l l m a j o r I t a l i a n f i l m m a k e r s . P e r h a p s b e c a u s e he w a s then l a r g e l y u n k n o w n to a l l but c o n n o i s s e u r s of a l t e r n a t i v e t h e a t r e , U.S. p l a y w r i g h t S a m S h e p a r d ' s c o n t r i b u t i o n to A n t o n i o n i ' s s h o o t i n g s c r i p t d i d n o t h i n g to a s s u a g e the c r i t i c s ' xenophobic fury.

2

9

240 this

national

c o n s e n s u s . P e r i o d I t a l i a n c r i t i c s , on the

t e n d e d to see the f i l m v e r y d i f f e r e n t l y . "Alia

maggior parte

other

hand,

In the w o r d s of one of t h e m ,

dei r e c e n s o r i s t a t u n i t e n s i

di Zabriskie

Point

s e m b r a , i n f a t t i , t o t a l m e n t e s f u g g i t o che l ' u l t i m o f i l m di M i c h e l a n g e l o A n t o n i o n i non e un ' p a m p h l e t ' contro

I ' A m e r i c a , ma un p o e m a

sull'

A m e r i c a " ( M i c c i c h e 65). This

difference

of

opinion

reminds

us o n c e a g a i n of

L e p r o h o n ' s i n f i n i t e l y w i s e a x i o m f r o m Le Cinema italien:

Pierre

"Chaque pays

e c r i t l ' h i s t o i r e a s a m a n i e r e " (Leprohon 3 2 ) . F o r I t a l y , t h i s m e a n t t h a t the long, p e r i o d i c a l l y p r o s p e r o u s , p o l i t i c a l chaos that f o l l o w e d

the

c o l l a p s e of the Roman E m p i r e - a s i t u a t i o n w h i c h did not e n t i r e l y change w i t h the t h e o r e t i c a l c o m p l e t i o n of the R i s o r g i m e n t o p r o c e s s - c a s t a l o n g s h a d o w o v e r t h a t c o u n t r y ' s i n h e r i t o r s , j u s t as A m e r i c a n s w e r e i n d e l i b y m a r k e d by the r e v o l u t i o n a r y e v e n t s of

1 7 7 6 , and F r e n c h m e n

w e r e p e r m a n e n t l y changed by 1 7 8 9 , the y e a r w h e n B o u r b o n a b s o l u t i s m was

dealt

its

death

blow.

These

radically

different

political

i n h e r i t a n c e s in l a r g e p a r t e x p l a i n the d i v e r g e n c e of F r e n c h and I t a l i a n a t t i t u d e s t o w a r d s the U n i t e d S t a t e s as c u l t u r a l s y m b o l and p o l i t i c a l entity.

If

F r a n c e has c a u s e to

s e e the

U n i t e d S t a t e s as a g l o b a l

c o m p e t i t o r w h i c h t h r e a t e n s i t s o w n c l a i m s to b e i n g c o n s i d e r e d the u n i v e r s a l r e p u b l i c , one w o u l d e x p e c t I t a l i a n s to e x p e r i e n c e a c e r t a i n d e g r e e of envy i n r e g a r d to a n a t i o n w h o s e u n i t y

can be r e a d as an

i m p l i c i t r e p r o a c h to t h e i r t r a d i t i o n a l f r a c t i o u s n e s s . Even s o , i t m u s t be a d m i t t e d t h a t A m e r i c a n o p h o b i a has t h u s f a r n e v e r r e a c h e d the s a m e l e v e l s among I t a l i a n l e f t i s t s t h a t i t did among t h e i r F r e n c h - s p e a k i n g c o u n t e r p a r t s , d e s p i t e the f o r m e r g r o u p ' s g r e a t e r o b j e c t i v e g r i e v a n c e s . In p o l i t i c a l l y m i l i t a n t Roman c i r c l e s , s y m p a t h y f o r T h i r d W o r l d c a u s e s

241 and s u s p i c i o n of m a s s c u l t u r e

3 0

d i d not a u t o m a t i c a l l y t r a n s l a t e

into

e x p l i c i t c o n d e m n a t i o n of U.S. f o r e i g n p o l i c y i n S o u t h e a s t A s i a the w a y t h a t i t d i d a m o n g r a d i c a l P a r i s i a n s and B e r l i n e r s . G r a m s c i after

a l l , had a r g u e d t h a t

the ideology

himself,

of a n t i - A m e r i c a n i s m w a s

i n h e r e n t l y s t u p i d . U n t i l the n a t i o n had s o l v e d i t s m o s t p r e s s i n g p r o b l e m of i n c o m p l e t e n a t i o n a l c o h e s i o n , I t a l i a n i n t e l l e c t u a l s w e r e not about to pre-emptively

s l a m any s o c i o e c o n o m i c d o o r s t h a t m i g h t be m a d e t o

s w i n g i n a p r o g r e s s i v e f a s h i o n w i t h i n the c o n t e x t of I t a l i a n c u l t u r e and social conditioning. thinkers

have

3 1

P e r h a p s f o r r e l a t e d r e a s o n s , I t a l i a n w r i t e r s and

generally

been r e m a r k a b l y

tolerant

of

foreigners'

m i s c o n c e p t i o n s of t h e i r h o m e l a n d . U n l i k e t h e i r F r e n c h p e e r s , t h e y a l m o s t n e v e r w a x p a r a n o i d , w h i l e t h e i r o u t b u r s t s of t e s t i n e s s a r e f e w and f a r b e t w e e n .

3 2

D u r i n g the p a s t q u a r t e r c e n t u r y , I t a l i a n i n t e r e s t i n A m e r i c a n l i f e has not so m u c h w a n e d as b e c o m e m o r e p e r i p h e r a l to n a t i o n a l

self-

i n t e r e s t . C o n t e m p o r a r y and n e a r - c o n t e m p o r a r y w r i t e r s s u c h as U m b e r t o Eco and I t a l o C a l v i n o have w r i t t e n f r e q u e n t l y on A m e r i c a n t h e m e s and s u b j e c t s , but g e n e r a l l y i n a tone of c o o l d e t a c h m e n t t h a t s t a n d s i n

T h e o d o r W. A d o r n o ' s i n f l u e n c e w a s at i t s peak d u r i n g the 1 9 6 0 s , t h e s a m e d e c a d e i n which Antonio G r a m s c i ' s prison diaries were f i n a l l y published in t h e i r entirety.

3

0

S i n c e both n a t i o n s a t t a i n e d u n i t a r y s t a t e h o o d more o r l e s s c o n t e m p o r a n e o u s l y d u r i n g the 1 8 7 0 s , a f t e r h a v i n g e x i s t e d f o r many c e n t u r i e s as g e o g r a p h i c a l a b s t r a c t s of r e l a t e d r e p u b l i c s and p r i n c i p a l i t i e s , i t w o u l d m a k e f o r an i n t e r e s t i n g s t u d y t o c o m p a r e and c o n t r a s t the v e r y d i f f e r e n t a t t i t u d e s t o w a r d s n a t i o n a l i d e n t i t y w h i c h have been h e l d by the c i t i z e n s of Italy and Germany. Such s p e c u l a t i o n i s , of c o u r s e , o u t s i d e the p a r a m e t e r s of the p r e s e n t d i s c u s s i o n .

3 1

S t e f a n o M o n t e f i o r e p r o v i d e d us w i t h one of t h e s e r a r e e x a m p l e s of i l l - h u m o u r i n the N o v e m b e r 14, 1 9 9 6 e d i t i o n of Corriere della Sera: " E m a f i a l a p a r o l a i t a l i a n a p i u c i t a t a nel l a s t a m p a s t r a n i e r a , " ( M o n t e f i o r e 14) t h i s l i n g u i s t i c p a t r i o t c o m p l a i n s . T h e w o r l d p r e s s , i t s e e m s , w i l l go to any l e n g t h s to add i n s u l t to i n j u r y : " U n r e g o l a m e n t e di c o n t i a T o k i o ? E s t a t a l a Japanese mafia. Non l a yakuza" ( M o n t e f i o r e 14.) S u c h d i s e n c h a n t m e n t w i t h m a i n l y A n g l o - S a x o n m e d i a i s , of c o u r s e , p r e t t y m i l d s t u f f w h e n c o m p a r e d t o t h e a n g r i e r j e r e m i a d s of Georges Duhamel and L o u i s - F e r d i n a n d C e l i n e . 3

2

242 s t a r k c o n t r a s t to the h o t - b l o o d e d , a l m o s t d e s p e r a t e e n t h u s i a s m s of C e s a r e P a v e s e and E l i o V i t t o r i n i . W h i l e i t i s s t i l l a l a n d of m a r v e l s , f o r these later authors potential

it

has l o n g s i n c e c e a s e d to be a H o l y L a n d of

Italian salvation. Commissario Ambrosio might walk

through

the s t r e e t s of M i l a n t h i n k i n g about the l a t e s t Woody A l l e n m o v i e , and the t e r r o r i s t - h a u n t e d

f a m i l y of G i a n n i A m e l i o ' s Colpire

al cuore

w a t c h dubbed e p i s o d e s of Kojak on T V , but t h e s e c u l t u r a l

might

comestibles

a r e o n l y i m p o r t e d l u x u r i e s , not the s t a p l e s of t h e i r l i v e s . If I t a l y h a s b e c o m e s o m e w h a t m a r g i n a l i z e d in r e l a t i o n to the m o d e r n w o r l d , so has A m e r i c a in r e l a t i o n to Italy. S i n c e t h i s s i t u a t i o n i s i n many w a y s i n s e p a r a b l e f r o m p o s t m o d e r n e x i s t e n c e as a w h o l e , w e w i l l

not e l a b o r a t e on i t h e r e . I n s t e a d , w e

s h a l l c o n t i n u e the a r g u m e n t at the a p p r o p r i a t e p l a c e in C h a p t e r F o u r , o u r s t u d y of the d i s s o l u t i o n of n a t i o n a l i d e n t i t y w i t h i n the a c i d b a t h of a multinational

world.

243

CHAPTER

As

FOUR: SLOUCHING TOWARDS

the

intellectuals

twentieth tend

to

century

view

the

fades

United

THE MILLENNIUM

into

the

21st,

States from

two

French radically

d i f f e r e n t , m u t u a l l y i n c o m p a t i b l e p e r s p e c t i v e s . On the one hand, t h e r e i s a c a l m a c c e p t a n c e of the c e n t r a l i t y o t h e r , t h e r e i s the h o r r i f i e d most

extreme

of U.S c u l t u r a l h e g e m o n y ; on the

r e a l i z a t i o n t h a t the w o r s t f e a r s of

anti-American

Jeremiahs

of

the

past

have

the been

confirmed with interest. As

Jack

Ralite

Diplomatique,

wrote

in

a

recent

edition

of

Le

Monde

"Les enterprises geantes-Time Warner-Turner, Disney-

A B C , W e s t i n g h o u s e - C B S - s o n t , de p l u s en p l u s p r e s e n t e s en E u r o p e , ou elles

achetent

interviennent

des s t u d i o s , c o n s t r u i s e n t

des s a l l e s

multiplexes,

dans l e s r e s e a u x c a b l e s , p a s s e n t des a c c o r d s a v e c l e s

e n t e r p r i s e s l o c a l e s " ( R a l i t e 32). T h i s c e n t r a l i z a t i o n of c u l t u r a l has

resulted

in

a situation

where

"Aux

quelque

140

capital

monopoles

n a t i o n a u x de T a u d i o v i s u e l s ' e s t s u b s t i t u e un o l i g o p o l e m o n d i a l c o m p o s e de 5 ou 6 g r o u p e s avec un chef de f i l e a m e r i c a i n "

1

(Ralite 32). A g a i n s t

C a n a d i a n r e a d e r s , s t e e p e d i n t h e i r o w n s u b j e c t i o n to the a l l - d e v o u r i n g U.S. m e d i a m a c h i n e , w i l l undoubtedly w a r m to the l e g i t i m a c y of R a l i t e ' s c l a i m s when they peruse the f o l l o w i n g p a s s a g e : " L e g o u v e r n e m e n t f r a n c a i s , r e p r e s e n t s p a r l e m i n i s t e r e des f i n a n c e s et s o u m i s a l a v i g i l a n c e des m i l i e u x de l a c r e a t i o n , s ' e f f o r c e d ' o b t e n i r une c l a u s e d ' e x c e p t i o n c u l t u r e l l e ' dans le AMI, s e m b l a b l e a c e l l e q u i , a l a demande du C a n a d a , f i g u r e d a n s l ' A c c o r d de l i b r e - e c h a n g e n o r d - a m e r i c a i n . . . . " ( R a l i t e 3 2 ) C a n a d i a n c u l t u r a l n a t i o n a l i s m has long been f u e l l e d by the notion that the nation north of the 4 9 t h P a r a l l e l i s the one m o s t in t h r a l l to U.S. e n t e r t a i n m e n t c o n g l o m e r a t e s . To d i s c o v e r t h a t the C a n a d i a n p r e d i c a m e n t s e e m s e n v i a b l e to a r e p r e s e n t i v e of F r a n c e , the m o s t c u l t u r a l l y independent of W e s t e r n E u r o p e a n s t a t e s , i s to r e a l i z e j u s t how c o m p l e t e A m e r i c a n c o n t r o l of the p r e s s and the a i r w a v e s has become. 1

244 t h i s u n r i v a l l e d c o l o s s u s , t h e r e i s no l o n g e r a C o m m u n i s t " O t h e r "

to

keep i t in c h e c k ; y i n g no l o n g e r k n o w s y a n g , n o r a n i m a a n i m u s . Indeed, in even the m o s t " p o s i t i v e " F r e n c h a c c o u n t s of A m e r i c a n t r i u m p h a l i s m , one can hear a c e r t a i n note of m e l a n c h o l y , the

fatalistic

sigh

unwanted

of

defeated

realists

who

know

they

must

n e c e s s i t y . T h i s i s t r u e not only of Realpolitik-minded

bow

to

Atlanticists

of

the R a y m o n d A r o n s c h o o l , but of l e f t i s t " h e r e t i c s " as w e l l . It a p p l i e s w i t h p a r t i c u l a r f o r c e to the m o s t i n f l u e n t i a l

m e m b e r of t h i s s e c o n d

group, J e a n B a u d r i l l a r d . W h i l e , as we s h a l l soon s e e , many F r e n c h w r i t e r s and f i l m m a k e r s s e t the s t a g e f o r B a u d r i l l a r d ' s p o s t - E u r o p e a n p e r s p e c t i v e , t h i s weary

i c o n o c l a s t r e m a i n s the m o s t

classical

Gallic

intellectual.

In

striking

e x a m p l e of

1 9 8 5 , he w r o t e ,

world-

the

anti-

"L'Amerique

est

p u i s s a n t e et o r i g i n a l e , l ' A m e r i q u e e s t v i o l e n t e et a b o m i n a b l e - i l ne f a u t chercher

ni

a effacer

Tun

ou l ' a u t r e ,

ni

a reconcilier

les

deux"

( A m e r i q u e 87.) In l o v e w i t h A m e r i c a n f r e e w a y s and d e s e r t s , B a u d r i l l a r d r e v e l s i n the m i n d l e s s s p e e d of New W o r l d l i f e : " L a V i t e s s e e s t

le

t r i o m p h e de l ' e f f e t s u r l a c a u s e , l a t r i o m p h e de T i n s t a n t e s u r le t e m p s c o m m e p r o f o n d e u r , le t r i o m p h e de l a s u r f a c e et de l ' o b j e c t a l i t e pure s u r l a p r o f o n d e u r du d e s i r " ( A m e r i q u e 12). A t one p o i n t , he even f l i r t s w i t h the u n t h i n k a b l e by s u g g e s t i n g t h a t the h o m e l a n d of l y n c h i n g i s , i n practical

t e r m s , l e s s r a c i s t t h a n the n a t i o n t h a t gave the

huddled m a s s e s

liberte,

F r a n c e , on a s u r t o u t

egalite,

fraternite:

l'impression

world's

"...quand on r e v i e n t

v i s q u e u s e de p e t i t

en

r a c i s m e , de

s i t u a t i o n f a u s s e et h o n t e u s e pour t o u t le monde. A l o r s qu'en A m e r i q u e , chaque

ethnie,

chaque

race

developpe

une

langue,

une

culture

245 c o m p e t i t i v e , p a r f o i s s u p e r i e u r e a c e l l e des ' a u t o c h t o n e s ' . . . " ( A m e r i q u e 82). To be s u r e , s o m e of the a u t h o r ' s c o m m e n t s do a p p e a r to be f a i r l y t r a d i t i o n a l . When he w r i t e s , f o r i n s t a n c e , t h a t " L e s A m e r i c a i n s c r o i e n t aux f a i t s , m a i s pas a l a f a c t i c i t e " imagine almost

identical

(Amerique

words flowing

8 4 ) , one c o u l d e a s i l y

f r o m the pen of A l e x i s de

T o c q u e v i l l e . In s i m i l a r f a s h i o n , h i s c l a i m t h a t " . . . l ' A m e r i q u e e n t i e r e e s t pour nous un d e s e r t . La c u l t u r e e s t s a u v a g e : e l l e y f a i t le s a c r i f i c e de l ' i n t e l l e c t et de t o u t e e s t h e t i q u e , p a r t r a n s c r i p t i o n reel"

(Amerique

97)

inevitably

r a i s e s the

G e o r g e s D u h a m e l . In a p a r t i c u l a r l y imagine

l i t t e r a l e dans le

Eurocentric

spectre

e n t h u s i a s t i c m o m e n t , one

S i m o n e de B e a u v o i r t r i g g e r i n g

the

following

of

could

explosion

of

e c s t a t i c g u s h : " B e a u t e des N o i r e s , des P o r t o r i c a i n e s a New York. En d e h o r s de l ' e x c i t a t i o n s e x u e l l e que donne l a p r o m i s c u i t e r a c i a l e , i l f a u t d i r e que l e n o i r , le p i g m e n t

des r a c e s s o m b r e s , e s t c o m m e un

n a t u r e l qui s ' e x a l t e du f a r d a r t i f i c i e l

fard

pour c o m p o s e r une b e a u t e - n o n

s e x u e l l e : a n i m a l e et s u b l i m e - q u i manque d e s e s p e r e m e n t aux v i s a g e s b l e r n e s " ( A m e r i o u e 2 1). Still,

if

Baudrillard

s e e s A m e r i c a as a s u c c e s s f u l U t o p i a , a

p a r a d i s e r e g a i n e d , the e n s u i n g g a r d e n of d e l i g h t s i s m o r e w o r m

than

apple. " L e p a r a d i s , " he w r i t e s , " e s t ce q u ' i l e s t , e v e n t u e l l e m e n t funebre,

monotone

et

superficiel"

(Amerique

96). Under Ronald's

R e a g a n ' s h a p p y - f a c e d r e g i m e , he a r g u e s , the U n i t e d S t a t e s b e c a m e a g i a n t C a l i f o r n i a s a n d b o x , and, d e s p i t e i t s o f t - d e m o n s t r a t e d

potency, a

" m e n o p a u s a l " c u l t u r e . Under R e p u b l i c a n r u l e , w a r i t s e l f has b e c o m e a s o r t of a u d i o v i s u a l game. The i n v a s i o n of G r e n a d a , f o r e x a m p l e , e n j o y e d

246 the l u x u u r y

of "[Un]

S c e n a r i o s a n s r i s q u e , m i s e en s c e n e c a l c u l e e ,

e v e n e m e n t a r t i f i c i e l , s u c c e s a s s u r e " ( A m e r i q u e 107). N e e d l e s s to s a y , the p r e v i o u s c o n s t r u c t w a s b r o u g h t to the peak of p e r f e c t i o n by George Bush d u r i n g the G u l f War. A s B a u d r i l l a r d w o u l d have i t , " A p r e s l a guerre chaude (la v i o l e n c e du c o n f l i t ) , a p r e s l a g u e r r e froide morte-decongelation

de l a g u e r r e f r o i d e - q u i

nous l a i s s e aux

p r i s e s a v e c le c a d a v r e de l a g u e r r e , et l a n e c e s s i t e de gener ce c a d a v r e en d e c o m p o s i t i o n , que p e r s o n n e aux c o n f i n s du G o l f e ne p a r v i e n t

a

r e s s u c i t e r . Ce que l ' A m e r i q u e , S a d d a m H u s s e i n et l e s p u i s s a n c e s du G o l f e se d i s p u t e n t l a - b a s , c ' e s t le c a d a v r e de l a g u e r r e " (La G u e r r e du G o l f e n'u a oas eu l i e u 9). In 1 9 9 1 , A m e r i c a ' s " v i r t u a l " energy w o u n d up s e r v i n g the i n t e r e s t s of the W h i t e H o u s e , the W e s t , I s r a e l and the A r a b m a s s e s : " T o u t se p a s s e c o m m e s ' i l a v a i t un agent de l a CIA d e g u i s e en Saladin"

(La

Guerre

du

Golfe

n'u

a pas

eu

lieu

71).

General

S c h w a r t z k o p f ' s p r e d i c t i o n of a c o s t l y c a m p a i g n ended in v i c t o r y

tinged

w i t h f a r c e : " P a r f o i s un t r a i t d ' h u m o u r n o i r : l e s douze m i l l e c e r c u e i l s a c h e m i n e s en meme t e m p s que l e s m u n i t i o n s et l e s a r m e s . La a u s s i , l e s A m e r i c a i n s avons f a i t preuve de p r e s o m p t i o n : l e u r s p e r t e s s o n t s a n s c o m m u n e m e s u r e avec l e u r s p r e v i s i o n s " (La Guerre du G o l f e n'u a pas eu 1 i e u 5 3 ) . Indeed, " U n s i m p l e c a l c u l f a i t a p p a r a i t r e que s u r 5 0 0

000

s o l d a t s i m p l i q u e s dans l e s o p e r a t i o n s du G o l f e , i l en s e r a i t m o r t t r o i s f o i s p l u s s i on l e s a v a i t

l a i s s e s dans l a v i e c i v i l e , u n i q u e m e n t

en

a c c i d e n t s de l a r o u t e " (La Guerre du G o l f e n'u a pas eu l i e u 7 4 ) . When c o m p a r i n g Europe to A m e r i c a , B a u d r i l l a r d d o e s so i n a m a n n e r t h a t d e v a s t a t i n g l y d e f l a t e s the p r e t e n t i o n s of b o t h : " Q u a n d j e v o i s des A m e r i c a i n s , s u r t o u t i n t e l l e c t u a l s , l o u c h e r avec n o s t a l g i e s u r l ' E u r o p e son h i s t o i r e , s a m e t a p h y s i q u e , s a c u i s i n e , son p a s s e , j e me d i s

247 q u ' i l s ' a g i t l a d'un t r a n s f e r ! rnalheureux. L ' h i s t o i r e et le r n a r x i s m e s o n t c o m m e l e s v i n s f i n s et l a c u i s i n e ; i l s ne f r a n c h i s s e n t pas v r a i m e n t l ' o c e a n , m a l g r e l e s t e n t a t i v e s e m o u v a n t e s pour l e s a c c l i m a t e r . C ' e s t l a revanche j u s t i f i e e

du f a i t que n o u s , E u r o p e e n s , n ' a v o n s j a m a i s

apprivoiser vraiment

l a m o d e r n i t e , qui se r e f u s e a u s s i a

pu

franchir

l ' o c e a n , m a i s dans l ' a u t r e s e n s " ( A m e r i q u e 7 9 ) . F o r a l l h i s m o d e r n i t y , on t h i s l e v e l at l e a s t , B a u d r i l l a r d a p p r o a c h e s the U n i t e d S t a t e s in a manner indistinguishable

f r o m t h a t of

his i l l u s t r i o u s

nineteenth-

c e n t u r y f o r e b e a r , A l e x i s de T o c q u e v i l l e . Once a g a i n , Old W o r l d s are o l d , and New W o r l d s are n e w , and n e v e r the t w a i n s h a l l m e e t . In any e v e n t , n e i t h e r Europe nor A m e r i c a have any r e a l hope of triumphing quotidian

over

the

realities:

other "Mais

in que

the les

effectless US ne

void

soient

of

postmodern

plus

le

centre

m o n o p o l i s t i q u e de l a p u i s s a n c e m o n d i a l e , ce n ' e s t pas q u ' i l s

Taient

p e r d u e , c ' e s t t o u t s i m p l e m e n t que le c e n t r e n ' e x i s t e p l u s " ( A m e r i o u e 105). T h i s p r o b l e m i s i n t i m a t e l y r e l a t e d to the 2 0 t h c e n t u r y c o m m o d i t y w h i c h i s in s h o r t e s t s u p p l y : " A u j o u r d ' h u i , t o u t e s t l i b e r e , l e s j e u x s o n t faits,

et

nous nous r e t r o u v o n s

collectivement

devant

la

question

c r u c i a l e : QUE FAIRE A P R E S L ' O R G I E ? " (La T r a n s p a r e n c e du m a l 1 1). In the l a t e 2 0 t h c e n t u r y , A m e r i c a n i n f l u e n c e i s by no m e a n s the o n l y t h r e a t to F r e n c h amour-propre:

"Les cultures fortes

(Mexique,

J a p o n , I s l a m ) nous r e n v o i e n t le m i r o i r de n o t r e c u l t u r e d e g r a d e e , et l ' i m a g e de n o t r e c u l p a b i l i t e p r o f o n d e " ( A m e r i o u e 121). If

we jump f o r w a r d

a decade in t i m e , we w i l l

discover that

B a u d r i l l a r d ' s once unusual p e r s p e c t i v e s have b e c o m e c o i n of the r e a l m in c o n t e m p o r a r y F r e n c h d i s c o u r s e . If t h i s i s not a l w a y s

immediately

a p p a r e n t , i t i s p r o b a b l y b e c a u s e not e v e r y o n e a c c e p t s the n e w

world

248 order

with

the

same

sanguine, shoulder-shrugging

r e p e a t e d l y d e m o n s t r a t e d by the a u t h o r of Amerique.

indifference

W h i l e hope f o r

F r a n c e ' s f u t u r e i s now e x c e e d i n g l y r a r e , the w i l l to r e s i s t i s f a r f r o m dead. Le Monde Diplomatique,

f o r i n s t a n c e , c o n t i n u e s to r a i l a g a i n s t the

d y i n g of the (European) l i g h t in f r o n t page a r t i c l e / e d i t o r i a l s . In one s u c h t h i n k p i e c e , Ignacio R a m o n e t c o m p l a i n e d t h a t " l ' e m p i r e a r n e r i c a i n est

l e s e u l au m o n d e , c ' e s t

une h e g e m o n i e e x c l u s i v e , et

c'est

la

p r e m i e r e f o i s que ce phenomene e t r a n g e s u r v i e n t dans 1 ' h i s t o i r e de l ' h u m a n i t e " (Ramonet 10). Ramonet s e e m s p a r t i c u l a r l y d i s t u r b e d by U.S. d o m i n a n c e of E u r o p e a n m e d i a : " . . . s u r l e s 5 0 c h a i n e s e u r o p e e n e s de t e l e v i s i o n a d i f f u s i o n n a t i o n a l . . . l e s f i l m s a m e r i c a i n s r e p r e s e n t a i e n t , en 1 9 9 3 , 55% de l a p r o g r a m m a t i o n " (Ramonet 1). In

all

s u c h a r t i c l e s , the

editorialists

typically

focus

on a

c u l t u r a l l y t h r e a t e n e d Europe r a t h e r than a c u l t u r a l l y t h r e a t e n e d F r a n c e . In the l a t e 1 9 9 0 s , only a u n i t e d Europe s e e m s s t r o n g enough to r e s i s t extra-continental

s o c i o - e c o n o m i c i n c u r s i o n s , a changed s t a t e

of

a f f a i r s f r o m the C o l d W a r days w h e n European e n t r e p r e n e u r s d e f e n d e d virtually

any A m e r i c a n c o n n e c t i o n on the g r o u n d s t h a t i t c o u l d o n l y

s t r e n g t h e n the Old W o r l d ' s f i r s t l i n e of d e f e n c e a g a i n s t C o m m u n i s m , b o t h f o r e i g n and d o m e s t i c . W i t h the c o l l a p s e of the S o v i e t U n i o n , h o w e v e r , the old p l a y i n g f i e l d w a s changed beyond r e c o g n i t i o n . Interestingly

e n o u g h , i n Le Monde's

pan-European

polemics,

A m e r i c a i s no l o n g e r p r e s e n t e d as the only c a p i t a l i s t b a r b a r i a n at the g a t e s . I n c r e a s i n g l y , J a p a n e s e e c o n o m i c s u c c e s s e s are r i n g i n g

alarm

b e l l s as w e l l . In h i s r e c e n t s t u d y of the g r o w i n g p o w e r of the w o r l d ' s l a r g e s t m u l t i n a t i o n a l s , F r e d e r i c F. C l a i r m o n t p o i n t e d out t h a t , at the

249 p r e s e n t t i m e , J a p a n c o n t r o l s 6 2 of t h e s e e c o n o m i c j u g g e r n a u t s

while

A m e r i c a i s in c h a r g e of only 5 3 . The Land of the R i s i n g S u n , the a u t h o r c o n t e n d s , i s even m o r e of a c h a l l e n g e r than t h e s e f i g u r e s s u g g e s t . He w r i t e s , "11 e x i s t e c i n q e n t e r p r i s e s M i t s u b i s h i p a r m i l e s ' d e u x c e n t s p r e m i e r e s ' , dont le c h i f f r e d ' a f f a i r e s agrege d e p a s s e l e s 3 2 0 m i l l i a r d s de d o l l a r s " ( C l a i r m o n t

16). In o t h e r w o r d s , M i t s u b i s h i by i t s e l f

is

e c o n o m i c a l l y m o r e p o w e r f u l than the 1 1 m u l t i n a t i o n a l s c o n t r o l l e d by H o l l a n d , V e n e z u e l a , S w e d e n , B e l g i u m , M e x i c o , C h i n a , B r a z i l and C a n a d a . Under the c i r c u m s t a n c e s , the need f o r an e c o n o m i c a l l y u n i t e d E u r o p e an a r e a w h i c h , a f t e r

all, still

c o n t r o l s 37%

of the top 2 0 0

global

c o r p o r a t i o n s - s e e m s more urgent than ever. Le Monde, i n t r i g u i n g l y cultural

e n o u g h , s e e m s as p e t r i f i e d

of J a p a n e s e

i n f l u e n c e as i t i s of the i s l a n d n a t i o n ' s e c o n o m i c s t r e n g t h .

P e r h a p s b e c a u s e they have a p p a r e n t l y s e i z e d a " f r i g h t e n i n g " 50% of the French

bandes

dessinees

market-by

expanding

it,

it

should

be

e m p h a s i z e d , not by d e c i m a t i n g i t - P a s c a l L a r d e l l i e r ' s r a t h e r p a r a n o i d a r t i c l e on the J a p a n e s e manga e m p h a s i z e d the a l l e g e d c r u d i t y , c r u e l t y , and i n h u m a n i t y

of t h i s i m m e n s e l y p o p u l a r c o m i c book f o r m ,

while

s a y i n g v e r y l i t t l e about i t s c r o w d - p l e a s i n g v i s u a l s t y l e ( L a r d e l l i e r 2 9 ) . N o w a d a y s , i t w o u l d s e e m , the b a r b a r i a n s a t t a c k f r o m b o t h e a s t and w e s t . F o r t h o s e who a s s o c i a t e F r e n c h c u l t u r e w i t h the e a r l y e s p o u s a l of B l a c k j a z z , nigritude,

B e n i n s c u l p t u r e , japonaiserie,

Mesoamerican

m y s t i c i s m , and a h o s t of o t h e r n o n - w h i t e or n o n - W e s t e r n i n f l u e n c e s , the t h i n l y - v e i l e d x e n o p h o b i a of s u c h a r t i c l e s m u s t c o m e as s o m e t h i n g of a s u r p r i s e . C o u l d R e g i s D e b r a y , C h e ' s c a m p a i g n c o m p a n i o n in B o l i v i a and the m o s t a d m i r e d i n t e l l e c t u a l m a n - o f - a c t i o n s i n c e A n d r e M a l r a u x ,

250 r e a l l y f e a r t h a t F r a n c e i s b e c o m i n g "un pays sans Jules,

sans Ernest, un plein pays de Boris et d'Ursula, Milan

et

Julio..."

resurgence

of

(Debray

186).

French l e f t - w i n g

Indeed, activism

sans

de Djamila prior

to

a propos

Hippolyte,

et de Rachel,

the

refreshing

the

country's

r e a c t i o n a r y new a n t i - i m m i g r a t i o n l a w s , i t s e e m e d f o r a t i m e t h a t m o s t of the n a t i o n ' s l e a d i n g i n t e l l e c t u a l s a c c e p t e d at l e a s t s o m e of

the

p l a n k s of J e a n - M a r i e Le P e n ' s n e o - f a s c i s t p r o g r a m . In r e a l i t y , of c o u r s e , m o d e r n F r a n c e f a l l s s o m e w h e r e in b e t w e e n the e x t r e m e s of a c t i v i s m and r e a c t i o n . Much P a r i s i a n

intellectual

d i s c o n t e n t i s not so much a r e j e c t i o n of the o u t s i d e w o r l d as i t i s a d e s p e r a t e , a l m o s t e c o l o g i c a l , a t t e m p t to p r e v e n t the d e s t r u c t i o n of the e n v i r o n m e n t they know b e s t . It a l s o c o n s t i t u t e s a r e a r - g u a r d a t t e m p t to p r e s e r v e F r a n c e ' s r o l e as the " A t h e n s " of the m o d e r n w o r l d

long

a f t e r i t s t o p p e d a t t e m p t i n g to be i t s " R o m e " . S i n c e the a u t h o r i t y

for

t h i s r o l e r e s t s s o l e l y w i t h the F r e n c h R e v o l u t i o n and the s o c i o p o l i t i c a l E n l i g h t e n m e n t w h i c h i t s p a w n e d , any c h a l l e n g e to t h i s

increasingly

f r a g i l e l e g i t i m a c y i s d e e p l y r e s e n t e d . One f i n d s t h i s a t t i t u d e c r o p p i n g up in a d i z z y i n g v a r i e t y of f o r m s . Even Liberation's

recent

"Livres

Tokyo 1 9 9 7 " supplement seemed f a r more preoccupied w i t h F r a n c e ' s d e c l i n i n g i n f l u e n c e on J a p a n e s e thought than i t w a s w i t h the r e a l i t y of J a p a n e s e l i t e r a t u r e t o d a y . "[Meme] s i l e s n o m s de D e l o n et de B a r d o t d i s e n t e n c o r e v a g u e m e n t quelque c h o s e , l ' l t a l i e s e m b l e a v o i r r e m p l a c e e l a F r a n c e dans l a p e t i t e p l a c e que l e s J a p o n a i s l a i s s e n t aux m o d e s o c c i d e n t a l e s , " one c r i t i c

complains (Haraig K i l l ) , w h i l e

another

is

o b v i o u s l y d e l i g h t e d w h e n a J a p a n e s e a u t h o r a s s e r t s t h a t the h i g h e s t p r a i s e one can p r o f f e r a book i s to l i k e n i t to J e a n G e n e t ' s Journal voleur (Ludon 111). In t h i s c o n t e x t , i t w o u l d s e e m , the U n i t e d S t a t e s

du

251 does not t r u l y count as the " W e s t " . F o r H a r a i g and h i s a s s o c i a t e s , the w o r d occidentale

o b v i o u s l y r e f e r s to E u r o p e , and not the N e w W o r l d ,

w h i c h i s a l m o s t as d o m i n a n t in J a p a n as i t i s e v e r y w h e r e e l s e . T h i s u n d e r s t a t e d but v e r y c o m m o n a t t i t u d e p u t s the s t i n g i n t o A l a i n F i n k i e l k r a u t ' s La Defaite

de la pensee,

the n e w

philosopher's

a n g u i s h e d a c c o u n t of the d e f e a t of F r e n c h - c e n t r e d " u n i v e r s a l " v a l u e s at the hands of a v a s t n u m b e r of m u l t i - c u l t u r a l

v i l l a i n s who

justify

their

adaptations

of

reversion

to

barbarism

with

cynical

the

p a r t i c u l a r i s t i d e a s of J o h a n n G o t t f r i e d von H e r d e r and A i m e C e s a i r e . " D i e u e s t m o r t , " the a u t h o r s n e e r s , " m a i s l e Volksgeist (Finkielkraut

est

fort"

143.) A g a i n s t the c l a i m s of the T h i r d W o r l d n a t i o n a l i s t s ,

m i n d l e s s young p e o p l e , and pop c u l t u r a l P h i l i s t i n e s who have s e e m i n g l y i n h e r i t e d the e a r t h , the p h i l o s o p h e r a d v a n c e s the w a r n i n g t h a t , " L a liberte

est

impossible

a

l'ignorant"

(Finkielkraut

168)

Most

e x a s p e r a t i n g of a l l , " L e s i n t e l l e c t u e l s ne se s e n t e n t p l u s c o n c e r n e s p a r l a s u r v i e de l a c u l t u r e " ( F i n k i e l k r a u t 163). What i s p e r h a p s m o s t f a s c i n a t i n g f o r n o n - F r e n c h r e a d e r s of t h i s book i s the i n e s c a p a b l e f a c t t h a t i t s a u t h o r , a " u n i v e r s a l " c h a m p i o n who a t t a c k s p e t t y n a t i o n a l i s m s on e v e r y f r o n t , i s s e e m i n g l y o b l i v i o u s to the o b v i o u s o b j e c t i o n t h a t w h a t h e ' s r e a l l y d o i n g i s d e f e n d i n g one f o r m of r e g i o n a l i s m - t h a t

of h i s h o m e l a n d , F r a n c e , the c r a d l e of

the

F r e n c h R e v o l u t i o n and i t s a v a t a r N a p o l e o n - a g a i n s t a l l the o t h e r s . He t h i n k s l i k e a s e c o n d c e n t u r y B.C. A t h e n i a n c o w e d by the

competing

s h a d o w s of R o m e , S p a r t a , and Macedon. He l i t e r a l l y c a n ' t s e e t h a t the " t r e e " he d e f e n d s i s j u s t a n o t h e r p a r t of the " f o r e s t " he c o n d e m n s . If t h i s s e e m s s e l f - e v i d e n t to A n g l o - C a n a d i a n - A m e r i c a n r e a d e r s , w e s h o u l d p e r h a p s b e a r in m i n d t h a t , as a group, w e are e q u a l l y prone to

252 making

universalis!:

claims

of

equivalent

self-centeredness.

For

m o n o l i n g u a l a n g l o p h o n e s , the w o r l d s p e a k s E n g l i s h and E n g l i s h o n l y . To be m u l t i l i n g u a l , i n s u c h c i r c l e s , i s to s t a n d o u t , to be e l i i t i s t , to deny the u n i f y i n g p r i m a c y of the w o r l d ' s l a t e s t l i n g u a f r a n c a - i n e f f e c t , s p e a k one of the s o c i a l l y d i v i s i v e t o n g u e s d e v i s e d by S a t a n a f t e r fall

of

the

proponent powerful

Tower

of

Babel. Although

it

is

currently

the

the

loudest

of E u r o p e a n u n i t y , of the Old W o r l d ' s need f o r a n e w and polyglot

s t a t e , F r a n c e in many w a y s m i r r o r s

these A n g l o -

A m e r i c a n s e n t i m e n t s . T h e m e m o r y of F r e n c h as the e d u c a t e d lingua franca is s t i l l national

to

tongue's

very much a l i v i n g memory

subsequent

replacement

world's

i n P a r i s , and

the

by J o h n n y - C o m e - L a t e l y

E n g l i s h i s both r e m e m b e r e d and r e s e n t e d . Indeed, i f F r a n c e , E n g l a n d , and the U n i t e d S t a t e s did not c o n t a i n s u c h t e t c h y , e a s i l y - b r u i s e d e g o s , the age-old

dance

of

Anglo/French

and

Franco-American

love/hate

r e a c t i o n s c o u l d n e v e r have t a k e n p l a c e . A s La R o c h e f o u c a u l d so a p t l y put i t , " N o s e n n e m i s a p p r o c h e n t p l u s de l a v e r i t e dans l e s

jugements

q u ' i l s f o n t que nous n'en a p p r o c h o n s n o u s - m e m e s " (La R o c h e f o u c a u l d 18). B e f o r e t r a v e l l i n g any f u r t h e r in t h i s d i r e c t i o n , i t w o u l d p r o b a b l y be b e s t to r e t u r n to the p r e c i s e p o i n t w h e r e w e d e c a m p e d at the end of C h a p t e r One. A s the r e a d e r may r e c a l l , we ended t h a t s e g m e n t w i t h a b r i e f c o n s i d e r a t i o n of Mobile and 6 810

OOO litres

d'eau par

t w o of M i c h e l B u t o r ' s e a r l i e r etudes stereophoniques, to a day i n the l i f e of e a c h of A m e r i c a ' s c o n s t i t u e n t

seconde,

the f i r s t d e v o t e d s t a t e s , and the

s e c o n d to a y e a r i n the l i f e of N i a g a r a F a l l s . D e s p i t e t h e i r e x p e r i m e n t a l literary inherited

f o r m a t , many of the i d e a s c o n t a i n e d i n t h o s e t e x t s from

previous

generations

of

French literary

were

travellers

253 exploring

the

mysteries

of

the

New W o r l d . The g h o s t l y

voices

of

m a r t y r e d , m y s t i c a l Indians and o p p r e s s e d , m a r g i n a l l y - e m p l o y e d B l a c k s o w e d as m u c h to a g e - o l d P a r i s i a n p r e s u p p o s i t i o n s about A m e r i c a as t h e y d i d to the New W o r l d ' s i n d i s p u t a b l y ugly r a c i a l h i s t o r y . c e l e b r a t i o n of A m e r i c a n o p u l e n c e and v a r i e t y , of a m a t e r i a l

Butor's

plenitude

t h a t w a s as d e p r e s s i n g l y r e p e t i t i o u s as i t w a s s e n s u a l l y e x h i l a r a t i n g , was chronologically

f a r more s p e c i f i c , harking

back to the

French

t r a v e l l e r s of the l a t e 1 9 4 0 s , the s t a r v e d p i l g r i m s who f l e d d e f e a t e d , r a t i o n - r i d d e n F r a n c e to f e e d off the f l e s h p o t s of New Vork. D e s p i t e h i s c o n n e c t i o n to the nouveaux romanciers,

B u t o r ' s books f i t p e r f e c t l y

into

the t i m e - h o n o u r e d c h a i n of F r a n c o - A m e r i c a n t r a v e l j o u r n a l s . La Brume a Santa Barbara w a s s o m e w h a t d i f f e r e n t . F o r one t h i n g , the a u t h o r a p p e a r s not as an e n l i g h t e n e d v i s i t o r but as a g u e s t w o r k e r . F o r a n o t h e r , the s t o r y u n f o l d s e n t i r e l y in S o u t h e r n C a l i f o r n i a , f a r f r o m the t r a d i t i o n a l author

t o u r i s t c e n t r e s of C h i c a g o and N e w Vork. W h i l e

i s t e a c h i n g at the U n i v e r s i t y

c a m p u s , a bomb goes o f f , m o r t a l l y

the

of C a l i f o r n i a ' s S a n t a B a r b a r a

wounding a night w a t c h m a n : " L e

g a r d i e n e s t m o r t deux j o u r s p l u s t a r d s a n s a v o i r r e p r i s c o n n a i s s a n c e . . . L ' a f f a i r e devenant m e u r t r e , le FBI v i n t e n q u e t e r " (Ou: La genie du l i e u 2 95.) N e e d l e s s to s a y , J . E d g a r H o o v e r ' s a g e n t s " f i t

p e s e r des s o u p c o n s

s u r l e s o r g a n i s a t i o n s de gauche, c e l l e s des N o i r s en p a r t i c u l i e r " (Ou: La g e n i e du l i e u 2 9 5 ) . T h u s , the s n a k e s l i t h e r e d i n t o p a r a d i s e , " e t comprenions

qu'on

eut

pu

nommer

Pacifique

cet

Ocean

nous

fameux

a u j o u r d ' h u i p a r l e s f u r e u r s . L e s v a g u e s , l e s o i s e a u x , l e s b r a n c h e s " (Ou: La genie du l i e u 2 9 9 ) . T h i s b r i e f w o r k i s e s s e n t i a l f o r a n u m b e r of h i s t o r i c a l r e a s o n s . F o r one t h i n g , i t

i s among the v e r y f i r s t F r e n c h t e x t s

to be s e t

in

254 S o u t h e r n C a l i f o r n i a , to use the " f l a k y " s t a t e as a p a r a d i g m f o r A m e r i c a tout court. F o r a n o t h e r i t s e p a r a t e s i t s e l f f r o m the s l i g h t l y

patronizing

a t t i t u d e t o w a r d s A m e r i c a n B l a c k people t h a t even J e a n - P a u l S a r t r e f e l l p r e y to in La Putain

respectueuse.

Although they cannot " p a s s "

for

w h i t e l i k e the v i n d i c t i v e m u l a t t o hero of B o r i s V i a n ' s J'irai

cracher

sur

vos

against

the

tombes,

dark-skinned rebels s t i l l

s y s t e m , using their

off-centre

manage to r e v o l t

stage obscurity

as a d e a d l y

weapon

i n s t e a d of a s e n t i m e n t a l p l a y f o r f o r e i g n e r s ' p i t y . La Brume a Barbara

l a p s a g a i n s t none of the t r a d i t i o n a l

Chateaubriand

l a n d s c a p e s c h e r i s h e d by

and de T o c q u e v i l l e . B u t o r ' s

Americans

are

i m m a n e n t , e x i s t i n g in a rapidly changing present, c o m p l e t e l y from

Europeans

and

yet

still

somehow

Santa

caught

up

in

totally different

the

same

c o n v u l s i o n s t h a t g r i p p e d F r a n c e , I t a l y , and G e r m a n y i n May of

1968.

A f t e r B u t o r , the U n i t e d S t a t e s w i l l n e v e r be s e e n t h r o u g h F r e n c h e y e s in q u i t e the s a m e w a y a g a i n . J e a n F r a n c o i s L y o t a r d ' s Le Mur du Pacifique, the s a m e t i m e as La Brume a Santa Barbara,

a p p e a r e d at r o u g h l y

and w e n t o v e r m u c h the

s a m e ground. T h i s t e x t i s a l l e g e d l y w r i t t e n by e i t h e r M e r l i n V a c l e z o r M i c h e l V a c l a y , a w o u l d - b e i n s t r u c t o r at yet a n o t h e r of the U n i v e r s i t y of C a l i f o r n i a ' s ubiquitous campuses: " L e s V i s i t i n g P r o f e s s e u r s europeens s u r l e s c a m p u s s o n t l e s p r e c e p t e u r s g r e c s . . . . " (Le Mur du P a c i f i o u e 2 0 ) . F o r h i m , the F r a n c o - A m e r i c a n p a r a l l e l s b e t w e e n Rome and G r e e c e are now

complete:

"Les

presidents

americains

sont

des

empereurs,

Washington est Rome, les E t a t s - U n i s d'Amerique sont l ' l t a l i e ,

1'Europe

est

is

leur

Grece"

(Le

Mur

du

Pacifioue

19).

If

California

now

e m b l e m a t i c of the e n t i r e U.S.A., t h i s i s b e c a u s e t h a t f o r m e r l y S p a n i s h speaking

region

is-Hawaii

being

summarily

excluded

from

255 c o n s i d e r a t i o n on the grounds t h a t the h i s t o r y of t h i s f o r m e r P o l y n e s i a n k i n g d o m c a n be b e t t e r u n d e r s t o o d w i t h i n a N o r t h / S o u t h most

westerly

U.S. s t a t e : " C ' e t a i t

context-the

TOuest absolu: Les moyens

du

c a p i t a l i s m e a m e r i c a i n , c ' e s t - a - d i r e le p o u v o i r r o m a i n ; l a b e a u t e des c o r p s c o u r a n t s u r l e s plages.... (Le Mur du P a c i f i o u e 41.) L y o t a r d ' s v i s i o n of A m e r i c a n i m p e r i a l s p l e n d o u r r e a d s l i k e a c r o s s b e t w e e n a D a v i d Hockney p a i n t i n g and an e p i s o d e of Baywatch:

" L ' O u e s t a b s o l u n ' e s t que

v i l l e s , j a r d i n s i r r i g u e s , p l a g e s et d e s e r t s , en c e l a t o u t c o n f o r m e au P r o c h e - O r i e n t " (Le N u r du P a c i f i a u e 18). T h i s n o t i o n of C a l i f o r n i a as the new s e a t of the P a x A m e r i c a n a w o u l d be e c h o e d , in d i v e r s e w a y s , by I t a l i a n as w e l l as F r e n c h w r i t e r s , f o r the r e s t of the 2 0 t h c e n t u r y . F o r , d e s p i t e t h e i r i n c r e a s e d i n t e r e s t i n the q u o t i d i a n r e a l i t i e s of the U.S.A., B u t o r and L y o t a r d w e r e

ultimately

m o r e i n t e r e s t e d in r e - r o u t i n g the Myth of A m e r i c a than in d e s t r o y i n g . i t a l t o g e t h e r . T h i s w a s in p a r t a r e f l e c t i o n of r e a l i t y . S i n c e the

early

1 9 6 0 s , A m e r i c a n w e a l t h and i n d u s t r y have t r a v e l l e d in a S o u t h w e s t e r l y d i r e c t i o n , l e a v i n g the N o r t h e r n i n d u s t r i a l s t a t e s s o m e w h a t b e r e f t . Even New Y o r k , s t i l l u n c h a l l e n g e d as the hub and a x i s of A m e r i c a n high a r t , had

been r e n d e r e d

an e c o n o m i c

b a s k e t c a s e by

radical

shifts

in

e c o n o m i c s as w e l l as d e m o g r a p h i c s . If W a s h i n g t o n w a s R o m e , then L o s A n g e l e s w a s C o n s t a n t i n o p l e , the c a p i t a l of a s e c o n d Roman E m p i r e t h a t w o u l d l o n g o u t l i v e the f i r s t . Much of Le Mur du Pacifique

w a s t a k e n up w i t h m e d i t a t i o n s on

the n a t u r e of the B l a c k m a l e p s y c h e , the angry l i b i d o t h a t i n c e s s a n t l y s u f f e r e d in the s o c i o - p s y c h o l o g i c a l m a z e of W h i t e c a p i t a l i s m . A g r e a t many of t h e s e p r o n o u n c e m e n t s s e e m to have been i n s p i r e d by p r i m a r i l y Black

literary

s o u r c e s , in p a r t i c u l a r

Richard Wright's

Black

Boy,

256 E l d r i d g e C l e a v e r ' s Soul on Ice, and

R a l p h E l l i s o n ' s Invisible

Man.

If

" V o t r e v e r g e e s t n o i r e , done vous n ' e x i s t e z p a s , le b l a n c s e u l e x i s t e " (Le Mur du P a c i f i o u e 3 2 ) . In t h i s s i t u a t i o n , " L a peau b l a n c h e s o u l e v e le d e s i r meteque

comme l ' i n t e r i e u r appelle l'exterieur...."

(Le M u r du

P a c i f i o u e 19). The n a t u r e of t h i s hunger i s u n a v o i d a b l y ugly: " C o m m e n t s i t u o n s - n o u s le d e s i r de v i o l e r qui naTt dans l a verge m e t e q u e ? " (Le Mur du P a c i f i o u e 3 4 ) . F r o m A f r i c a n - A m e r i c a n a n g s t , i t ' s a s h o r t j o u r n e y

to

F r a n t z F a n o n ' s m o d e l of the c o l o n i z e d m i n d : " C ' e s t Rome qui le rend a i n s i : La C e s a r e b l a n c h e s u s c i t e l e s m a s q u e s a s a p e r i p h e r i e , e l l e f a i t l e v e r des e p a i s s e u r s , e l l e s ' e n t o u r e de s i g n e s , de s i n g e s , de f o u s , de n e g r e s , de g r e c s , de j u i f s , d ' a r a b e s , de c h i n o i s , de r i t a l s , t o u t b a s a n e s " (Le Mur du P a c i f i o u e 3 5 ) . S i n c e the n a r r a t o r has a l r e a d y l i n k e d

visiting

E u r o p e a n p r o f e s s o r s to the c o n c e p t of Greek t u t o r s under Roman r u l e , L y o t a r d has e s s e n t i a l l y p l a c e d F r e n c h m e n on the s a m e l e v e l as B l a c k s in the A m e r i c a n s c h e m e of t h i n g s . T h i s r e s u l t s in an i d e n t i c a l i r e : " L e m e t e q u e e s t c r i t i q u e e v i d e m m e n t p a r c o n s t i t u t i o n , p u i s q u ' i l n ' e s t pas c i t o y e n a m e r i c a i n - r o m a i n " (Le Mur du P a c i f i o u e 3 9 ) . W h i l e J e a n Genet did not c o n c e r n h i m s e l f unduly w i t h the

reality

of " R o m a n " A m e r i c a - t h a t i d e a w o u l d not become une idee fixe u n t i l the 1980s-he

was

very

much

attracted

to

the

popular

image

of

the

A m e r i c a n B l a c k as s o c i o s e x u a l o u t s i d e r . I n i t i a l l y h i s i n t e r e s t in ( m a l e ) Africans

was twigged

c o n v i c t s , an e r o t i c

by h i s e a r l y

fascination

with

dark-skinned

obsession which acquired a political

w h e n p l a c e d i n the c o n t e x t

dimension

of E u r o p e a n c o l o n i a l i s m . T h i s w a s

the

i m p e t u s behind Les Negres, one of h i s g r e a t e s t p l a y s . T h i s e x p e r i m e n t a l d r a m a d e a l t w i t h "[!_'] A f r i q u e aux m i l l i o n s d ' e s c l a v e s r o y a u x , A f r i q u e deportee, continent a la derive...." (Oeuvres c o m p l e t e s

125). In o t h e r

257 w o r d s , A m e r i c a ' s h i s t o r i c a l c o n t r i b u t i o n to the h i s t o r y of s l a v e r y w a s i m p l i e d r a t h e r than e x p l i c i t , an unnamed c h o r a l p a r t f o r a c h o i r of p a l e skinned exploiters. It w a s only a f t e r the a u t h o r d e v e l o p e d an a c t i v e i n t e r e s t in the B l a c k P a n t h e r m o v e m e n t d u r i n g the l a t e emphasis started

to s h i f t .

1 9 6 0 s , t h a t the

continental

He began to b r e a k b r e a d w i t h

African-

A m e r i c a n m i l i t a n t s , j u s t as he w o u l d l a t e r e s t a b l i s h s o c i a l c o n t a c t s w i t h a r m e d m e m b e r s of the P L O . In b o t h i n s t a n c e s , he w a s a s k e d to p a r t i c i p a t e : " J ' a i ete i n v i t e par deux m o u v e m e n t s r e v o l u t i o n n a i r e s , p a r le m o u v e m e n t

des B l a c k s P a n t h e r s , des P a n t h e r e s N o i r e s , et

des

P a l e s t i n i e n s " ( D i a l o g u e s 2 5 ) . When a s k e d i f he f e l t at home w i t h the first

of

these

two

"Immediatement...pendant

groups,

the

author

responded,

deux m o i s j ' e t a i s tous s e u l au m i l i e u d ' e u x "

( D i a l o g u e s 17). L i k e the P L O , the P a n t h e r s h e l d f o r Genet " u n e c h a r g e e r o t i q u e t r e s f o r t e " ( D i a l o g u e s 2 6 ) . The h o m o s e x u a l i t y t h a t s e p a r a t e d h i m f r o m t h e s e m a i n l y h e t e r o s e x u a l r a d i c a l s c l e a r l y only i n c r e a s e d h i s d e s i r e . He d e l i g h t e d i n the f a c t t h a t h i s r e p u t a t i o n c o u l d daunt e v e n a r m e d r e v o l u t i o n a r i e s b r a n d i s h i n g guns: " J ' a i r e v u A n g e l a D a v i s , e l l e me dit: ' M a i s , nous a u s s i , on a peur de v o u s ' " ( D i a l o g u e s 17). M i c h e l F o u c a u l t ' s i n t e r e s t i n the U n i t e d S t a t e s w a s m o r e a c t i v e l y gay t h e n G e n e t ' s . Many of h i s n o t i o n s of f r e e d o m w e r e r e v i s e d by h i s e x p e r i e n c e of San F r a n c i s c o b a t h h o u s e s and s a d o m a s o c h i s t i c b a r s : " J e crois

qu'il

est

politiquement

important

que

la

sexualite

puisse

f o n c t i o n n e r c o m m e e l l e f o n c t i o n n e dans l e s s a u n a s , ou, s a n s que T o n s o i t e m p r i s o n n e dans s a p r o p r e i d e n t i t e , T o n r e n c o n t r e des gens qui s o n t pour vous c o m m e on e s t pour eux: r i e n d ' a u t r e que des c o r p s a v e c lesquels

d e s c o m b i n a i s o n s , des f a b r i c a t i o n s

de p l a i s i r

vont

etre

258 p o s s i b l e " (La V o l o n t e de s a v o i r 9 4 ) . S t i l l , d e l i g h t e d though he w a s by the s e x u a l e x p e r i e n c e of A m e r i c a - e v e n though i t w a s t h r o u g h

these

anonymous

which

eventually

pleasures

that

he

contracted

k i l l e d h i m - F o u c a u l t ' s specific

the

AIDS

virus

r e f e r e n c e s to A m e r i c a and

A m e r i c a n c u l t u r e are as r a r e in h i s books as they are in t h o s e of h i s contemporaries

R o l a n d B a r t h e s , J a c q u e s L a c a n , L o u i s A l t h u s s e r , and

J a c q u e s D e r r i d a . If h i s l i b i d o c e a s e l e s s l y s o u g h t to e s c a p e f r o m s o c i a l and s e x u a l r e s t r a i n t s i d e a s w i t h an a l m o s t

of Old E u r o p a , h i s s u p e r - e g o

the

constructed

e x c l u s i v e l y E u r o p e a n a u d i e n c e in m i n d . U n l i k e

G e n e t , he c o u l d n e v e r s a y , " L a p o l i t i q u e f r a n c a i s e , j e m'en f o u s , c a ne m ' i n t e r e s s e p a s " ( D i a l o g u e s 56). Of c o u r s e , f o r some F r e n c h w r i t e r s and i n t e l l e c t u a l s , of

the

U.S. d i d n ' t

scathing

change much

jeremiad-"Derisoire

premedi tee/Tout

est

faux

doute/Simplement

la lumiere

o v e r the erreur

dans

ce

perceptions

years. Jacques

Prevert's

j udi c i ai r e / O f f i c i el 1 e m e n t proces/Pas

Tombre

de T i n n o c e n c e . . . " ( O e u v r e s

d'un

completes.

T o m e 11 8 1 2 ) — l i n e s w r i t t e n in the e a r l y 1 9 5 0 s on b e h a l f of the a c c u s e d A m e r i c a n s p i e s J u l i u s and E t h e l R o s e n b e r g , do not d i f f e r g r e a t l y

from

" S a t e t e , s a j o l i e t e t e e t a i t m i s e a p r i s aux e n c h e r e s du m a l h e u r , du grand

malheur

d e o - l e g a l , dei

dollar,

haineux, raciste...."

(Oeuvres

c o m p l e t e s . T o m e 11 3 4 8 ) , w o r d s c o m p o s e d a l m o s t t w e n t y y e a r s l a t e r in support

of

another

American political

prisoner,

the

Black

Marxist

c o l l e g e i n s t r u c t o r and c o m r a d e - i n - a r m s of Bobby S e a l e and J e a n G e n e t , A n g e l a D a v i s . J e a n C a u , m e a n w h i l e , s e e m e d d e t e r m i n e d to put a 1 9 7 0 s s t y l e s l a n t on the d i s d a i n f u l o b s e r v a t i o n s of the a r c h - A m e r i c a n o p h o b e , G e o r g e s D u h a m e l : " L e s USA...ont l e u r s e u i l de d e c a d e n c e : l e s a r s e n a u x a t o m i q u e s a v e c l e s q u e l s , j ' e n j u r e , on ne c o n s t r u i r a pas des s a l l e s de

259 c o n c e r t s " (Cau 5 1 ) . W i t h O l y m p i a n a p l o m b , he s n e e r s at

teenagers,

B l a c k s , and e v e r y o n e e l s e w i t h o u t a v e s t e d i n t e r e s t i n the Old Europe w h i c h no l o n g e r e x i s t s . L i k e h i s 1 9 3 0 s p r e d e c e s s o r , Cau i s a d e p t

at

beating

of

the

left

conservative

with

the

traditionalists.

arms

of

the

left

for

the

benefit

Thus, we hear that A m e r i c a n

student

a c t i v i s t s are c o w a r d l y as w e l l s t u p i d and p r i m i t i v e : " N o u v e a u b a r b a r e s , des j e u n e s p e u v e n t s a c c a g e r des b a n c s et des p u p i t r e s d'uni v e r s i t e s , mais i l s n'approcheront

pas des s i l o s de f u s e e s , et l e s a r i s t o c r a t e s de

l a t e r r e u r ne l a i s s e r o n t pas l e s b a b b a r e s de l a c o n t r e - c u l t u r e

casser

l e s o r d i n a t e u r s " (Cau 51 - 5 2 ) . A t t e m p t i n g to f e l l t w o i d e o l o g i c a l f o e s w i t h a s i n g l e b l o w , Cau c o n t e n d s t h a t the Red b o u r g e o i s i e

resembles

"la

acultures,

bourgeoisie

reprochent

noire

americaine

dont l e s f i l s ,

aux p e r e s l e u r t r a h i s o n

et v e u l e n t

un j o u r revenir

n o i r e s d'une ame c o m m u n e et d'un d e s t i n c o l l e c t i f " particularly

aux

sources

(Cau 163). In a

n a s t y b i t of w o u l d - b e r e - v a l o r i z a t i o n , the a u t h o r

argues

t h a t the s t r u g g l e b e t w e e n A m e r i c a n s l a v e s and A m e r i c a n s l a v e o w n e r s a p p r e c i a b l y w o r s e n e d on the day w h e n " l e B l a n c e s t devenu

hontueux.

A l o r s , en un p r e m i e r t e m p s , l e s N o i r s ont r e c l a m e l ' e g a l i t e , m a i s au f u r et

a

mesure

naturellement-le

que

celle-ci

leur

etait

p r o c e s s u s e s t toujours

c e u x qui l e u r o u v r a i e n t

accordee,

totalement

ils

ont

tout

le m e m e - m e p r i s e

l e s p o r t e s de l e u r monde et en un d e u x i e m e

t e m p s , i l s ne v e u l e n t pas e t r e l e s egaux de ceux a l ' e g a r d d e s q u e l s i l s n ' e p r o u v e n t que m e p r i s . . . . " (Cau 133). In C a u ' s n e o - f e u d a l u n i v e r s e , " U n e s o c i e t e s a n s e s p e r a n c e et s a n s f o i d e v i e n t f a t a l e m e n t

une s o c i e t e de

t o l e r a n c e " (Cau 7 3 ) . U n s u r p r i s i n g l y , the only " R o m a n " c o m p a r i s o n

the

a u t h o r m a k e s in c o n n e c t i o n w i t h the U n i t e d S t a t e s c o n c e r n s the

new

260 e m p i r e ' s i n e v i t a b l e f a l l ; about i t s heyday and r i s e he has v e r y l i t t l e to say. As

mentioned

in

Chapter

One, m o s t

of

the

pro-American

p r o p a g a n d a to f l o w f r o m F r e n c h pens d u r i n g the 1 9 7 0 s w a s d i p p e d i n the

Atlanticist

i n k w e l l . R a y m o n d A r o n and o t h e r

"objective"

pro-

G a u l l i s t i n t e l l e c t u a l s defended the U n i t e d S t a t e s on the grounds t h a t i t w a s the one d e p e n d a b l e b a s t i o n a g a i n s t t o t a l i t a r i a n i n c u r s i o n s

from

the S o v i e t U n i o n . To o u t s i d e r s , s u c h v o i c e s s e e m e d to be f e w and f a r b e t w e e n , s h o u t e d d o w n and d r o w n e d out by the much l o u d e r r h e t o r i c of the l e f t . Of c o u r s e , to o u t s i d e e y e s , t h i n g s l o o k e d q u i t e s i m i l a r in the 1 9 2 0 s . To a New Vork a c a d e m i c s c r i b b l i n g in h i s C a m b r i d g e s t u d y , P a r i s was

the

home

anarchists,

of

of

Surrealists

hard

drinkers,

and drug

D a d a i s t s , of addicts,

and

Communists sex

fiends.

o v e r w e e n i n g C a t h o l i c i n f l u e n c e on i n t e r - w a r F r e n c h i n t e l l e c t u a l

and The life,

of w h i c h A n d r e Gide c o m p l a i n e d so o f t e n in h i s j o u r n a l s , w a s l a r g e l y l o s t on the o v e r s e a s o b s e r v e r . O u t s i d e r s m i g h t be a w a r e of the

works

of G e o r g e s B e r n a n o s , F r a n c o i s M a u r i a c , and S i m o n e W e i l , but the v a s t g a l a x y of m i n o r p o e t s , n o v e l i s t s , and j o u r n a l i s t s w h o s u p p o r t e d t h e s e s t a r s of the F r e n c h C a t h o l i c i n t e l l i g e n t s i a w e n t l a r g e l y u n n o t i c e d . The overall effect

w a s not d i s s i m i l a r to j u d g i n g an o c e a n s o l e l y on the

b a s i s of i t s w h a l e s and s h a r k s . W h i l e i t i s by no m e a n s c e r t a i n t h a t the A t l a n t i c i s t s of the e a r l y 1 9 7 0 s d o m i n a t e d t h e i r M a o - i n s p i r e d l e f t - w i n g p e e r s i n the s a m e w a y t h a t C h a r l e s M a u r r a s ' s d i s c i p l e s o v e r w h e l m e d the B o l s h e v i k o p p o s i t i o n f o r t y y e a r s e a r l i e r , they w e r e u n q u e s t i o n a b l y s t r o n g e r than m o s t s o c i a l h i s t o r i e s s u g g e s t . N e v e r t h e l e s s , s i n c e t h i s i n t e l l e c t u a l d i s p u t e w a s m o r e of an i n t e r n a l c u l t u r a l s t r u g g l e than

it

261 was a reflection

of c o n c r e t e F r a n c o - A m e r i c a n r e l a t i o n s , i t s

further

c o n s i d e r a t i o n c l e a r l y f a l l s o u t s i d e the p a r a m e t e r s of t h i s s t u d y . France's

late

' 6 0 s , early

'70s flirtation

with

Maoism

ended

a l m o s t as s u d d e n l y as i t began. The r e s u l t of the s a m e h i s t o r i c a l f o r c e s which

gave b i r t h to

Situationism

a d e c a d e e a r l i e r , the

movement

r e f l e c t e d i n t e l l e c t u a l d i s e n c h a n t m e n t w i t h the e s t a b l i s h e d C o m m u n i s t p a r t i e s of the S o v i e t v a r i e t y . The h e r o e s of the O c t o b e r R e v o l u t i o n , G a l l i c t h i n k e r s b e l i e v e d , had d e g e n e r a t e d i n t o m e r e s o c i a l i m p e r i a l i s t s . C h i n e s e s o c i a l i s m w a s s e e n as the m o r e a u t h e n t i c p a t h to f o l l o w , one that

had not

been c o - o p t e d

by too

many

y e a r s of

self-interested

f i n a g l i n g and bad f a i t h . Even s o , the S o v i e t Union n e v e r a c h i e v e d the E v i l E m p i r e s t a t u s in F r a n c e w h i c h i t

e n j o y e d in the U n i t e d

States

a l m o s t f r o m the day w h e n the R o m a n o v s w e r e s e c r e t l y s h o t and b u r i e d in a b a s e m e n t ( t h i s s t i g m a only r e a l l y l i f t e d in the y e a r s 1 9 4 2 - 1 9 4 5 , w h e n M o s c o w w a s W a s h i n g t o n ' s i n d i s p e n s a b l e a l l y in the w a r a g a i n s t the T h i r d R e i c h ) . A s F r e d e r i c J a m e s o n put i t in h i s r e v i e w of the h i s t o r y c u t t i n g edge F r e n c h j o u r n a l special

i s s u e on t h e

Tel

United

Quel, " . . . t h e r e

the

c a m e an e n t h u s i a s t i c

S t a t e s ; an a p p a r e n t l y

e x p e r i e n c e of S o l z e n i t s y n ' s Gulag Archipelago

of

mind-blowing

( p u b l i s h e d in F r e n c h in

1 9 7 4 ) , l e a d i n g to the d i s c o v e r y of ' t o t a l i t a r i a n i s m ' and the of the d i s s i d e n t . . . . " ( J a m e s o n 6). F r o m t h i s r a d i c a l s h i f t i n

revelation political

e m p h a s i s s p r a n g the c l a s s of d i s a f f e c t e d f o r m e r M a o i s t s s o o n dubbed les nouvelles

philosophes.

T h e i r best known text, Bernard-Henri Levy's

La Barbarie

a visage humaine, w a s a s y s t e m a t i c r e p u d i a t i o n of F r a n c e ' s

long-term

r o m a n c e w i t h M a r x i s t - L e n i n i s m . Levy r e j e c t e d B o l s h e v i s m

w i t h a d i s m i s s i v e c o m p l e t e n e s s t h a t w a s f a r m o r e d o g m a t i c than the

262 m o r e m o d e s t s e p a r a t i o n w h i c h A l b e r t C a m u s had a d v o c a t e d a q u a r t e r c e n t u r y e a r l i e r i n L'Homme revolte.

Unlike Camus, however, Levy w a s

not r e v i l e d f o r h i s " d e f e c t i o n " b e c a u s e the mood of F r e n c h t h i n k e r s w a s then m o v i n g in an i n c r e a s i n g l y p r o - A m e r i c a n d i r e c t i o n . S t a t e m e n t s t h a t w o u l d once have been condemned as r e a c t i o n a r y now r e c e i v e d a i l but

unanimous

nods

e x p r e s s i n g the Zeitgeist

of

approval.

Tzvetan

Todorov

was

merely

when he w r o t e , " C a r l a d i g n i t e e s t t o u j o u r s

s e u l e m e n t c e l l e d'un i n d i v i d u , non c e l l e d'un groupe ou d'une

et

nation"

(Face a l ' e x t r e m e 3 5 ) . P l e n t i f u l e v i d e n c e of t h i s a l t e r e d p e r s p e c t i v e may be f o u n d P h i l i p p e S o l l e r s ' s Femmes and J u l i a K r i s t e v a ' s Les Sarnourais, romans

a clefs

in

two

by the m a r r i e d " s u c c e s s o r s " to J e a n - P a u l S a r t r e and

S i m o n e de B e a u v o i r . Of t h e s e t w o w o r k s , K r i s t e v a ' s n o v e l , w i t h

its

metaphorical association with a proverbial Asian elite, was obviously the m o s t b e h o l d e n to Les

Mandarins,

de B e a u v o i r ' s P r i x

Goncourt-

w i n n i n g , s e m i - a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l p r e s e n t a t i o n of the l o r d s and l a d i e s of S t . G e r m a i n - d e s - p r e s ' s p o s t w a r E n l i g h t e n m e n t . In K r i s t e v a ' s

fictional

u n i v e r s e , the l e a d i n g l i g h t s of p o s t - s t r u c t u r a l i s m have s u p p l a n t e d the s t a r s of e x i s t e n t i a l i s m . W h i l e S o l l e r s ' s book c o v e r e d m u c h the s a m e t e r r i t o r y , i t s s t y l i s t i c i n d e b t e d n e s s to C e l i n e , as w e l l as i t s s e x u a l b r a v a d o and t e a s i n g corrida

with feminist

orthodoxy, turned

Femmes

i n t o a s o m e w h a t o b l i q u e homage to de B e a u v o i r ' s book. A t one p o i n t d u r i n g the n o v e l , J e r r y S a l t z m a n , an A m e r i c a n f r i e n d of Herve S i n t e u i l and Olga M o r e n a , the n e w l y - c r o w n e d k i n g and queen of intellectual Paris,

r h e t o r i c a l l y a s k s , " Q a v i e n t d'Anne D u b r e u i l ? " ( L e s

S a r n o u r a i s 3 5 4 ) . S i n c e Anne D u b r e u i l , g i v e o r t a k e a l e t t e r (h, to be p r e c i s e ) , i s the name of de B e a u v o i r ' s a l t e r ego in Les Mandarins,

this

263 b i t of l i t e r a r y l a r c e n y l e a v e s the r e a d e r i n no doubt as to the a u t h o r ' s real

intentions.

fictional

Kristeva

is

insinuating

her

rival/predecessor's

p e r s o n a i n t o the t e x t . T h i s j e s t i s r e n d e r e d even r i c h e r , even

m o r e c o m p l e x by S a l t z m a n ' s next s e n t e n c e : " D e l ' A c a d e m i e f r a n c a i s e ? " (Les S a m o u r a i s 3 5 4 ) . In the 1 9 8 0 s , the f i r s t and only w o m a n to have been e l e c t e d t o t h e F r e n c h A c a d e m y w a s , of c o u r s e , not S i m o n e de B e a u v o i r , but M a r g u e r i t e Samourais,

Yourcenar, the " h e r m i t "

of M a i n e . In

Les

one w i l l d i s c o v e r t h i n l y v e i l e d pen p o r t r a i t s of C l a u d e L e v i -

S t r a u s s , R o l a n d B a r t h e s , J a c q u e s L a c a n , M i c h e l F o u c a u l t , and the r e s t of the Tel Quel crew,

j u s t a s one f i n d s , i n de B e a u v o i r ' s s o u r c e

text,

f i c t i o n a l r i f f s on A l b e r t C a m u s , A r t h u r K o e s t l e r , and the o t h e r

literary

satellites

and de

who once

orbited

Les

Temps

tiodernes,

Sartre

B e a u v o i r ' s i n f l u e n t i a l m o n t h l y m a g a z i n e , during the l a t e 1 9 4 0 s . Like intellectual

Anne

Dubreuihl,

Olga

Morena

acquires

an

American

l o v e r w h i l e in the U n i t e d S t a t e s . T h i s i n d i v i d u a l , l i k e so

many of the c h a r a c t e r s i n t h i s m o c k - r o m a n a c l e f , b e a r s a name h e a v i l y f r e i g h t e d w i t h m o d e r n i s t r e s o n a n c e . J u s t as O l g a ' s husband c a r r i e s the Proustian

moniker

Herve S i n t e u i l , her l o v e r

is saddled

with

the

W o o l f i a n f a m i l y name, Dalloway. Olga's a f f a i r w i t h Edward i s c l e a r l y meant

to p a r a l l e l

Anne D u b r e u i h l ' s

trans-Atlantic

dalliance

with

" L e w i s B r o g a n , " de B e a u v o i r ' s f i c t i o n a l i z e d p o r t r a i t of N e l s o n A l g r e n (at t h i s p o i n t i n t i m e , I w o u l d not c a r e to h a z a r d a g u e s s a s t o w h e t h e r Edward Dalloway historical century,

w a s , in f a c t , m o d e l l e d a f t e r

an e q u a l l y

concrete

p e r s o n a g e ) . A d d i n g r e f e r e n c e to r e f e r e n c e , and c e n t u r y

to

O l g a / J u l i a o c c a s i o n a l l y r e f e r s to h e r a m o r o u s A m e r i c a n as " l e

p a s t e u r B o v a r y , " a f a c t w h i c h p e r h a p s e x p l a i n s w h y E d w a r d - y o k e d to the m e m o r y of n i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u r y

literature's most famous c u c k o l d - i s

264 less central storyline

to the p l o t

of

Les

coincidental d'histoires

that

of Les

Mandarins the

novel

Samourais

(Les

than

L e w i s w a s to

S a m o u r a i s 306).

b e g i n s w i t h the

It

the

is

hardly

w o r d s , " / / n'y

a plus

d'amour" (Les S a m o u r a i s 9).

K r i s t e v a ' s t o n e i s c o o l e r t h a n de B e a u v o i r ' s : l e s s p a s s i o n a t e ; more elegant. Her B u l g a r i a n c o n n e c t i o n s more or l e s s guarantee she w i l l have d i f f i c u l t y

f u n c t i o n i n g as a l e f t i s t m i l i t a n t ,

even at the

b e s t of t i m e s : " ' C ' e s t l a l u t t e f i n a l e , ' entonne O l g a , c a r e l l e tous

l e s c o u p l e t s de ce c h a n t

depuis l'age

de s i x

that

connait

a n s , quand

les

d o m i n i c a i n e s f r a n c a i s e s qui d i r i g a i e n t l a m a t e r n e l l e f u r e n t e x p u l s e e s et que des m a t t r e s s e s nomine par le gouvernment r e m p l a c e r e n t ' M i n u i t ,

Chretiens, c'est

l'heure

s o l e n n e l l e . . . ' par ' D e b o u t

l e s d a m n e s de l a

t e r r e . . . . " ( L e s S a m o u r a i s 1 18). W h i l e she i s as s o l i c i t o u s of S o l l e r s ' s reputation

a s de B e a u v o i r w a s of S a r t r e ' s , s h e c e l e b r a t e s i t

in a

p a r t i c u l a r l y S o l l e r s i a n w a y , p u t t i n g w o r d s of a l m o s t M e p h i s t o p h e l e a n iconoclasm

into

Herve's

France's intellectual

sarcastic

mouth.

Indeed,

when

mocking

s t a r s of the 1 9 8 0 s , H e r v e / P h i l i p p e s o u n d s m o r e

than a l i t t l e l i k e C a m i l l e P a g l i a : " - D e s i m p o s t e u r s ! P r o d u i t s bons p o u r l ' e x p o r t a t i o n ! Japon,

en

Afrique,

frelates

On l e s v e n d , et t r e s c h e r , en A m e r i q u e , au

bientot

en

Russie"

(Kristeva

352).

In

this

d e s a t u r a t e d , e f f e c t l e s s t i m e p e r i o d , c u l t u r a l m o n u m e n t s are as r a r e as l o v e s t o r i e s . Olga t r a v e l s to A m e r i c a and C h i n a , j u s t as s h e o r i g i n a l l y journeyed

to

France. Epiphanic s u r p r i s e s , it

s e e m s , c a n be

found

n o w h e r e : " A l ' h o t e l A l g o n q u i n d e s c e n d a i e n t des F r a n g a i s p r e t e n t i e u x a l a r e c h e r c h e des I n d i e n s d ' o r i g i n e , ou s i m p l e m e n t New-Yorkais

spirituels

des

annees

vingt.

Ronde...n'avaient s u r v e c u " (Les S a m o u r a i s 5 0 0 ) .

n o s t a l g i q u e s des Helas!

La

Table

265 Life

i s not

only

elsewhere

in t h i s

narrative;

it

is

literally

nowhere. In

Femmes,

m o s t of the n a r r a t o r ' s j o u r n e y s are m o t i v a t e d by h i s

p e r i p a t e t i c phallus. His g i r l f r i e n d s include Chinese, A m e r i c a n , Spanish, and I t a l i a n w o m e n , and t h i s g i v e s h i m a m p l e o p p o r t u n i t y

to t r a v e l

to

t h e i r r e s p e c t i v e h o m e l a n d s on q u e s t s t h a t are as m u c h e r o t i c as t h e y a r e c u l t u r a l . T o muddy

the

waters,

Philippe Sollers

i n s c r i b e s himself into two separate literary journalist

symbolically

p e r s o n a e : the A m e r i c a n

around w h o m the a c t i o n r e v o l v e s , and S , the F r e n c h w r i t e r

w i t h w h o m he c o l l a b o r a t e s . A b o v e a l l t h e r e are w o m e n : s e d u c t i v e , b e a u t i f u l , o m n i p r e s e n t , but a l w a y s a pain. If the a u t h o r i s a m i s o g y n i s t , h i s h a t r e d of w o m e n i s a l t e r n a t e l y p a s s i v e and m a n i p u l a t i v e , the

best

of

bad s i t u a t i o n s

while

cynically

bowing

to

n e c e s s i t y . T h e f o l l o w i n g p a s s a g e i s p r o t o t y p i c a l : " L e monde

making

historical appartient

aux f e m m e s . C ' e s t - a - d i r e a l a m o r t " ( S o l l e r s 12). W r i t t e n i n a p s e u d o C e l i n e a n s t y l e , t o p - h e a v y w i t h e l l i p s e s , the n a r r a t o r does e v e r y t h i n g in his

power

to

draw

t e c h n i q u e s : " L e mot

the

reader's

'roman'

est

attention

to

his

meta-fictional

m a g i q u e . Et un r o m a n

A m e r i c a i n ? F i t z g e r a l d ? B e l l o w ? R o t h ? M a i l e r ? Ou p l o t o t policiere, relating

mafia,

drogue, d o l l a r s ? " ( S o l l e r s

his s t o r i e s through

comment? atmosphere

78). His reasons

the m e d i u m of an e x p e r i m e n t a l

for

Gallic

a u t h o r are e q u a l l y a r t i f i c i a l : " J ' a i demande s i m p l e m e n t a l ' e c r i v a i n qui s i g n e r a ce l i v r e , de d i s c u t e r avec moi c e r t a i n s points... P o u r q u i j e

l'ai

c h o i s i , l u i ? P a r c e q u ' i l e t a i t h a l " ( S o l l e r 12). The s a m e a p p l i e s to h i s c h o i c e of the F r e n c h l a n g u a g e : " P o u r q u o i en f r a n c a i s ? Q u e s t i o n de tradition...

Les F r a n c a i s , c e r t a i n s

F r a n c a i s , en s a v e n t

davantage,

266 f i n a l e m e n t , s u r l e t h e a t r e que j ' a i i n t e n t i o n de d e c r i r e . . . " ( S o l l e r s 12 13). The n a r r a t o r , and i d e o l o g i c a l agent

like S o l l e r s h i m s e l f , changes p o l i t i c a l ,

affiliations

provocateur,

religious

the w a y m o s t p e o p l e c h a n g e s h i r t s .

he o u t d o e s

even H e n r i

Sinteuil

in

An

intellectual

i n s o l e n c e . S ( f o r s e x e , p e r h a p s , or s o p h i s t e , as w e l l as S o l l e r s ? ) s t a n d s in

perpetual

awe

of

novelty

and c h a n g e . T h u s ,

c e l e b r a t e s i s the New York t h a t a r o s e after literary

pilgrimage:

postgothique, computer

"La

nuit

de

New

the

New

York

the g r e a t age of F r e n c h

York,

verticale,

empilee,

p e r p a n t e , c u b i q u e . . . Le W o r l d T r a d e C e n t e r c o m m e

lumineux,

a v e c s e s deux

tours

he

comme

de l o n g s

v i s u e l s . . . E t , au bout de l a rue ou j ' h a b i t e , le m o u v e m e n t e n t r e p o t s , l e s c a m i o n s . . . Le m a g a s i n de Delikatessen

un

micros

du p o r t . . . l e s

ouvert

jusqu'a

deux h e u r e s l e s m a t i n s . . . Le b a r des P o r t o r i c a i n s . . . N e w York e s t a u s s i une

ville

espagnol..."

(Sollers

161).

The

narrator's

American

e n t h u s i a s m s - w h i c h range f r o m M e l v i l l e ' s Moby Dick to the p a i n t i n g s of " B i l l " de K o o n i n g , f r o m W i l l i a m S t y r o n ' s b e s t s e l l e r s to J o h n M c E n r o e ' s b a c k h a n d - a r e s e l d o m r e c i p r o c a t e d by the many w o m e n i n h i s l i f e , m o s t of w h o m he s l y l y m o c k s as u n w i t t i n g P h i l i s t i n e s and p a r l o r r a d i c a l s . Of one m i s t r e s s , he c o m p l a i n s : " E l l e n ' a i m e pas l ' A m e r i q u e . . . E l l e

trouve

que New York e s t une v i l l e n e o g o t h i q u e s a n s i n t e r e t . . . E l l e s c o m m e l e s p r o g r e s s i s t e s du monde e n t i e r ; c o m m e tous ceux qui sont v i s c e r a l e m e n t et p r o v i n c i a l e m e n t

a t t a c h e s aux g r a n d e s i d e e s s i m p l e s du XIXe s i e c l e ,

i n c a p a b l e s d ' a p p r e c i e r l a n o u v e l l e beaute de l a - b a s . . . s a s o u p l e s s e , s o n e n e r g i e . . . . " ( S o l l e r s 199 - 2 0 0 ) . The n a r r a t o r ' s

sudden i n t e r e s t

i n the

B i b l e , I s r a e l , and r e l i g i o u s c o n v e r s i o n s i t s no m o r e c o m f o r t a b l y his

former

peers

than

do

his

views

on

women,

America,

with and

267 h o m o s e x u a l s . P e r h a p s t h i s i s why he f e e l s the need to d i v i d e the g u i l t , i n v e n t i n g an A m e r i c a n s e l f f o r the s u p e r f i c i a l l y s e l f - e f f a c i n g S: - J e ne s u i s pas r e e l l e m e n t e c r i v a i n , d i s - j e , C ' e s t vous qui e t e s mon double au pays des d o u b l e s ! - J e me demande qui e s t l ' e c r i v a i n de n o u s , d i t - i l , s o n g e u r (Sollers 659).

Of c o u r s e , d e s p i t e the n a r r a t o r ' s e l a b o r a t e l i t e r a r y d i s g u i s e , he i s still

s u r r o u n d e d by v e i l e d p o r t r a i t s of Tel

Quel's

intellectual

B e i n g m a l e , h o w e v e r , and m u c h m o r e p r o m i s c u o u s

stars.

than e i t h e r

Olga

M o r e n a o r A n n e D u b r e u i h l , he d e v i s e s a m o r e p i c a r e s q u e c a r e e r

for

h i m s e l f , a r a n d i e r j o u r n e y . D e s p i t e i t s C e l i n e a n s t y l e , Femmes can even be r e a d as Les Mandarins

updated not by S i m o n e de B e a u v o i r ' s

spiritual

h e i r , but by J e a n - P a u l S a r t r e ' s - o r i s i t N e l s o n A l g r e n ' s ? The a b s u r d hubris

of

this

a p p r o a c h adds c o n s i d e r a b l y

to the

novel's

sardonic,

m e a n - s p i r i t e d c h a r m . A t t i m e s i t ' s d i f f i c u l t to t e l l w h e r e the p r e e n i n g self-flagellation

s t o p s and the s e l f - i n c r i m i n a t i n g

any c a s e , i t i s not the s o r t of s t r a t e g y American

b o a s t i n g b e g i n s . In

one i s a c c u s t o m e d to f i n d i n

novels.

Being

the

beneficiaries

of

relatively

cheap jet

K r i s t e v a and S o l l e r s take A m e r i c a n l i f e much more

travel,

both

matter-of-factly

than did t h e i r p r e d e c e s s o r s . V o y a g i n g to A m e r i c a does not m a k e t h e m f e e l l i k e C h r i s t o p h e r C o l u m b u s o r V a s c o da Gama. T h e y are

treading

well-charted

younger

t u r f and t h e y k n o w i t . S o m e of t h e i r s l i g h t l y

c o n t e m p o r a r i e s k n o w i t even b e t t e r . Indeed, t h e i r r e l a t i o n s h i p to t h a t of

the

New W o r l d , being more

closely approximates

complete

and l o n g e r - l a s t i n g ,

more

the p e r s p e c t i v e of a J o h n C r e v e c o u r t t h a n

an

268 A l e x i s de T o c q u e v i l l e . F o r t h e m , A m e r i c a i s m o r e t h a n j u s t a h a l f t h r e a t e n i n g , h a l f - s e d u c t i v e , f a n t a s t i c a l l y r i c h , q u a s i - b a r b a r i c p l a c e to v i s i t . It i s , r a t h e r , the l o c u s of a l l m o d e r n l i v i n g , a m i n d s c a p e t h a t young E u r o p e a n s c o u l d n ' t e s c a p e even i f they w a n t e d to. This

changed

reality

is

m e m o i r i s t i c n o v e l , L'Occupation

at

the

core

americaine.

of

Pascal

Quignard's

I n i t i a l l y the n a r r a t o r i s

q u i t e s a n g u i n e about t h i s t u r n of e v e n t s : " L ' O r l e a n a i s f u t o c c u p e p a r l e s C e l t e s , p a r l e s G e r m a i n s , p a r l e s R o m a i n s et l e u r douze d i e u x

durant

c i n q s i e c l e s , p a r l e s F r a n c s , par l e s N o r m a n d s , p a r l e s A n g l a i s , p a r l e s A l l e m a n d s , p a r l e s A m e r i c a i n s " (Quignard 9). A l t h o u g h the l a s t of t h e s e o c c u p a t i o n s i s the m o s t p l e a s a n t , i t i s a l s o the m o s t i n s i d i o u s . P a t r i c k C a r r i o n and h i s f r i e n d s are f a s c i n a t e d by t h e s e f o r e i g n e r s i n midst, high-living

GIs i n

1950s France, all

blithely

their

unaware

that

G e n e r a l C h a r l e s de G a u l l e w o u l d s h o r t l y r e - i n t e r p r e t the n a t i o n ' s NATO c o m m i t m e n t s to the p o i n t w h e r e the Yanks and t h e i r t a n k s w o u l d be o b l i g e d to w i t h d r a w . Even the young C o m m u n i s t s in O r l e a n s , d i s d a i n f u l though they are of A m e r i c a n c u l t u r e in g e n e r a l , are f r a n k l y e n a m o u r e d of the s e p i a - t o n e d u n d e r b e l l y of the i m p e r i a l i s t b e a s t . T V , t h e y can r e s i s t , but j a z z , r o c k ' n ' r o l l , and r h y t h m and b l u e s l e a v e s t h e m

totally

d e f e n c e l e s s . F r a n c o i s - M a r i e R i d e l s k y , the m o s t m i l i t a n t of the l o c a l B o l s h e v i k s , i s r e - b o r n as " R y d e l l . " A l t h o u g h h i s a n t i - A m e r i c a n r a n t s are both

p a s s i o n a t e and p r o l o n g e d — ' " J e c h i e s u r l a c o n q u e t e

de

l ' O u e s t . . . s u r l a bombe L i t t l e B o y , s u r l e s F o r d s et l e s C h e v r o l e t s , s u r l e r a c i s m e , s u r le W a l l S t r e e t , s u r l e s b u i l d i n g s " (Quignard

108)--nothing

can change the f a c t t h a t " S o n dieu e t a i t Monk. S e s a p o t r e s a v a i e n t nom C h a r l i e P a r k e r et M i l e s D a v i s " (Quignard 6 2 ) . The U.S. o c c u p a t i o n c a s t s a s h a d o w on e v e r y t h i n g , i n c l u d i n g l o v e , the p r e v i o u s r o m a n c e b e t w e e n

269 the n a r r a t o r and M a r i e - J o s e being s e r i o u s l y d i s r u p t e d by t h e a r r i v a l of o v e r s e a s o b j e c t s of d e s i r e . Of a l l the l i n e s i n Q u i g n a r d ' s t e x t , t h e f o l l o w i n g i s the m o s t i r o n i c a l l y untrue: " L e 2 7 a v r i l 1 9 6 7 , l e t e r r i t o i r e f u t e n t i e r e m e n t l i b e r e " (Quignard 2 0 9 ) . T h e A m e r i c a n s m i g h t be gone, but they a r e c e r t a i n l y not f o r g o t t e n . Many of Q u i g n a r d ' s t h e m e s w o u l d be i n c o r p o r a t e d in C l a i r e D e n i s ' s 1 9 9 4 f e a t u r e , U.S. Go Home. C o - s c r i p t e d by Anne W i a z e m s k y , J e a n - L u c G o d a r d ' s s e c o n d w i f e and one of the l e g e n d a r y d i v a s of m o r e t h a n one E u r o p e a n N e w Wave m o v e m e n t , t h i s s h a r p l y o b s e r v e d , c h r o n o l o g i c a l l y s e n s i t i v e , and s u r p r i s i n g l y g e n t l e c o m i n g - o f - a g e c o m e d y c e n t r e s on a 1965 vintage party

after

w h i c h teenaged Martine ( A l i c e Houri), her

p o p u l a r f r i e n d M a r l e n e ( J e s s i c a T h a r a u d ) , and M a r t i n e t s o l d e r

brother

A l a i n ( G r e g o i r e C o l i n ) f i r s t dance to A m e r i c a n m u s i c , then get p i c k e d up by an A m e r i c a n A r m y o f f i c e r ( V i n c e n t G a l l o ) in a j e e p . A s i d e o l o g y b a t t l e s d e s i r e , and c o n s u m e r i s m s u c c e s s f u l l y c o - o p t s i d e o l o g y , t h e "battle honours" ultimately

go to the A m e r i c a n , w h o i s as w i l l i n g l y

k i n d as he i s a t t r a c t i v e l y n a i v e . P h i l i p p e L a b r o ' s L'Etudiant

etranger

i s even m o r e

definitively

c a s t i n the C r e v e c o u r t i a n m o l d of a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l o b s e r v a t i o n . U n l i k e P a s c a l Q u i g n a r d , Labro a c t u a l l y l i v e d in the U n i t e d S t a t e s f o r a n u m b e r of y e a r s , s t u d y i n g at a c o n s e r v a t i v e S o u t h e r n u n i v e r s i t y

during the

McCarthyite

among h i s

1950s. The author

describes a conformism

f e l l o w c l a s s m a t e s t h a t one o r d i n a r i l y a s s o c i a t e s only w i t h Red G u a r d s d u r i n g C h i n a ' s C u l t u r a l R e v o l u t i o n : " D e t o u t e l a r a n g e e , Buck e s t l e s e u l a n ' a v o i r p a s l e s c h e v e u x en b r o s s e , l a crewcut...."

(Labro

18). T h e i r

g a r m e n t s a r e as u n i n d i v i d u a t e d as t h e i r h a i r : " I l s s o n t t o u t h a b i l l e s de l a m e m e f a c o n , on c r o i r a i t

p r e s q u e en u n i f o r m e : c o l de c h e m i s e a

270 p o i n t e s b o u t o n e e s , c r a v a t e s a r a y u n e s , tweed jackets b l a z e r s o m b r e " (Labro

18). A l l t h i s p r o v i n c i a l b r o w n - n o s i n g f a i l s

s o l i c i t the s o p h i s t i c a t e d s n e e r of c o n t e m p t from

a Jean-Paul

a c h e v r o n s ou

Sartre

or

w h i c h one w o u l d

to

expect

a S i m o n e de B e a u v o i r : " J e v e u x

me

c o n f o r m e r . J e veux e t r e a m e r i c a i n c o m m e eux...." (Labro 2 7 ) . T h e young Labro i s l e s s i n t r i g u e d by the i n h a b i t a n t s of F a u l k n e r ' s V o k n a p a t a w p h a C o u n t y t h a n he i s by the c h a r a c t e r s i n C h a r l e s S c h u l t z ' s c o m i c s t r i p , Peanuts.

then-new

W i t h l i t t l e c o m p l a i n t , he a c c e p t s the

puritan

r e s t r a i n t s of Deep S o u t h d a t i n g r i t u a l s : "...il n'y a pas de p u t a i n dans l a v a l l e e de V i r g i n i e " (Labro 3 4 ) . F o r a w h i l e , the c a l l o w n a r r a t o r d a t e s a black school teacher, until " B i g J i m M c L a i n " - a Southern sheriff

whose

name q u i t e f i t t i n g l y , i s i d e n t i c a l to t h a t of an e p o n y m o u s J o h n Wayne r o l e in a p e r i o d a n t i - C o m m u n i s t C o l d W a r a g i t p r o p d r a m a - w a r n s

him

off. A f t e r t h i s t h i n l y v e i l e d t h r e a t , our n o m i n a l hero p u r s u e s a S o u t h e r n b e l l e i n a m o r e c o n v e n t i o n a l m a n n e r . H e ' s a t t r a c t e d to B l a c k c u l t u r e , f e r r e t i n g out R & B r e c o r d s on the f o r b i d d e n " d a r k s i d e " of t o w n , but he i s s t i l l a s t r a n g e r , and not a p a r t i c u l a r l y c o u r a g e o u s one at t h a t . A s he h i m s e l f a d m i t s , " J e ne s a i s r i e n des N o i r s . A c e t t e epoque, l a V i r g i n i e t e l l e que j e l ' a i d e c o u v e r t e , e s t t o t a l e m e n t s e g r e g a t i o n i s t e . . . I c i , c ' e s t le s u d " (Labro 8 6 ) . T h e c o n t e m p o r a r y F r e n c h w r i t e r who i s m o s t s t r o n g l y a s s o c i a t e d w i t h p r o - A m e r i c a n p o s i t i o n s , though, is unquestionably P h i l i p p e Djian. Aside from Louis-Ferdinand Celine, virtually

a l l of D j i a n ' s

cultural

i n f l u e n c e s are U.S. in o r i g i n . A s one of h i s b i o g r a p h e r s w r o t e , " A v i n g t ans...a c e t t e epoque...il h a i t l a c u l t u r e . . . D y l a n et Cohen s o n t l e s d i e u x

271 vivants"

(Boudjedra

8 -

9).

2

Djian worked

for six months

at the

R o c k e f e l l e r C e n t r e in 1 9 6 8 , t r a v e l l e d throughout L a t i n A m e r i c a w i t h an a v a n t - g a r d e t h e a t r e troupe s h o r t l y t h e r e a f t e r , and s e t t l e d h i s f a m i l y i n M a r t h a ' s V i n e y a r d a f t e r t u r n i n g 4 0 . W h i l e the a u t h o r does not f o r g e t to pay t h e o b l i g a t o r y

G a l l i c homage to E r n e s t H e m i n g w a y and W i l l i a m

F a u l k n e r , he h a s been f a r m o r e marginal writings

profoundly

affected

by t h e

more

of Henry M i l l e r and R i c h a r d B r a u t i g a n . " H e n r i , " a s

Mohamed B o u d j e d r a p o i n t s o u t , i s the m o s t r e c u r r e n t g i v e n name among D j i a n ' s f i c t i o n a l p r o t a g o n i s t s . Above a l l , though, t h e r e i s B r a u t i g a n , the U.S. h i p p i e m o v e m e n t ' s c l o s e s t e q u i v a l e n t to a l i t e r a r y f i g u r e of m a j o r "beat" status: "Brautigan, l'instinctif, l'ambivalent Richard Brautigan est

la premiere

figure,

figure

recurrente

puisqu'il

revient

dans

p l u s i e u r s r o m a n s , q u ' i l e s t a l u i s e u l l e s u j e t de l a n o u v e l l e Une raison d'aimer

la vie..."

( B o u d j e d r a 8 9 ) . In Maudit manege, the n a r a t o r / a l t e r

ego r e c o r d s t h a t " C ' e s t l e j o u r ou j ' a i tape l a d e r n i e r e page qu'on a a p p r i s l a m o r t de R i c h a r d B r a u t i g a n , et le s o i r j e me s u i s s a o u l e c o m m e j e l ' a v a i s e n c o r e j a m a i s f a i t de ma v i e et j e s u i s r e s t e un l o n g m o m e n t c o u c h e en t r a v e r s du t a p i s a e c o u t e r l e s gens c h i a l e r dans l a r u e " ( M a u d i t m a n e g e 5 1 ) . W i t h i n the p a r a m e t e r s of the a u t h o r ' s hip u n i v e r s e , t h i s k i n d of m o u r n i n g i s as h e a r t - f e l t

tragically

and p r o f o u n d as a

f u l l - s c a l e V i k i n g funeral. Djian i s equally taken w i t h A n g l o - A m e r i c a n n i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u r y a u t h o r s and l a t e t w e n t i e t h - c e n t u r y

rock ' n ' r o l l e r s :

" A p r e m i e r e v u e , une c o n s t a t a t i o n s ' i m p o s e : peu d ' e c r i v a i n s f r a n c a i s dans c e t t e

e c u r i e " ( B o u d j e d r a 8 8 ) . Only i n one r e s p e c t i s he t r u l y

t r a d i t i o n a l : "11 y a c h e z c e t a u t e u r un r a p p o r t s i n g u l i e r au t e r r i t o i r e ,

L e o n a r d C o h e n , t h e m o s t c r i t i c a l l y r e v e r e d of a l l C a n a d i a n t r o u b a d o r s , i s d e s c r i b e d as " A m e r i c a n " i n F r e n c h p e r i o d i c a l s .

2

often

272 une c o n n i v e n c e s e c r e t e , p o u r le r o m a n t i c i s m e f a c o n C h a t e a u b r i a n d , epoque Natchez..."

(Boudjedra 91).

A m e r i c a n i n f l u e n c e on the a u t h o r can be f e l t even in t h o s e n o v e l s and t a l e s w h e r e New W o r l d geography i s n o t a b l y a b s e n t . In h i s r e v i e w of J e a n - J a c q u e s B e i n e i x ' s s c r e e n v e r s i o n of J 7 o 2 le matin,

a French

f i l m c r i t i c c o m p l a i n e d t h a t " P h i l i p p e D j i a n , [le c o m p e r e du r e a l i s a t e u r ] , qui a e c r i t le l i v r e , e s t t r o p envoute p a r l ' A m e r i q u e pour e t r e s i n c e r e , et c o n f o n d a v e c une c e r t a i n e d e l e c t a t i o n de s o l i t u d e et e g o t i s i n e " ( " L e s o r i p e a u x du l o o k " 79). If P a r i s i a n c r i t i c s have l o n g r a i l e d a g a i n s t the r e l a t i v e l y

mild

" l i b e r t i e s " w h i c h D j i a n t a k e s w i t h the F r e n c h l a n g u a g e , i t i s a l m o s t c e r t a i n l y b e c a u s e they s u s p e c t t h i s f r e e d o m s t e m s f r o m Nexus, and not Voyage au bout de la nuit. T h i s d e f e n s i v e h o s t i l i t y

i s at l e a s t

partly

m o t i v a t e d by the u n c e r t a i n t y g e n e r a t e d by F r a n c e ' s d e c l i n i n g c u l t u r a l r o l e on the g l o b a l s c a l e . A s D j i a n h i m s e l f w o u l d have i t , " ' A P a r i s , on croit

que l a l i t t e r a t u r e f r a n c a i s e e s t e n c o r e en t r a i n d ' i l l u m i n e r

m o n d e , en f a i t l e s gens r i g o l e n t . L e s e d i t e u r s a m e r i c a i n s

le

n'achetent

j a m a i s un r o m a n f r a n c a i s , l e s E s p a g n o l s et l e s I t a l i e n s un p a r - c i p a r la...." ( R o b i t a i l l e 2 0 2 ) . Even s o , D j i a n i s not as s e a m l e s s l y w e l d e d to the

American

m a i n f r a m e as h i s d e t r a c t o r s c o n t e n d . A s he h i m s e l f a d m i t s , " ' B r e f , j e p a r l e l ' a n g l a i s . . . c o m m e un F r a n c a i s . . . . " ( R o b i t a i l l e 2 0 4 ) . He h a s , s e e m s , no i n t e r e s t

it

i n h o b n o b b i n g w i t h h i s A m e r i c a n p e e r s : "11 y ' a

q u e l q u e s a n n e e s quand i l

habitait

Cape C o d , W i l l i a m

Styron,

qu'il

l ' a d m i r e , n ' h a b i t a i t pas t r e s l o i n : ' J ' e t a i s c o n t e n t q u ' i l s o i t l a , m a i s j e ne l u i ai j a m a i s p a r l e . En l i s a n t s e s o e u v r e s , j ' a v a i s eu le m e i l l e u r de lui m e m e ' " (Robitaille 201).

273 Henri-John narrator/hero

(again

that

Milleresque

given

name!),

the

of Lent dehors, i s a F r e n c h p r o f e s s o r w h o m o p e s around

Cape Cod a f t e r h i s w r i t e r w i f e l e a v e s h i m . New England i s l e s s a p l a c e f o r h i m to l i v e than i t i s the i d e a l l o c a t i o n to b r o o d i n g l y r e f l e c t on h i s (Gallic)

past.

Not

for

this

melancholic

the

solace

of

political

e n g a g e m e n t : " J e p e n s a i s que l e s R u s s e s et l e s A m e r i c a i n s m e t t r a i e n t b i e n t o t un p o i n t f i n a l e a nos p r o b l e m e s , a u s s i ne v o y a i s - j e pas d ' u t i l i t e a me m e l e r de s e s c h o s e s " ( D j i a n

382). S i g n i f i c a n t l y ,

Henri-John's

A m e r i c a n o p h i l i a p r e - d a t e s h i s h a n d s - o n A m e r i c a n e x p e r i e n c e . In

the

m i d - 1 9 6 0 s , his friend Meryl looked a f t e r his overseas education: " E l l e me f i t d e c o u v r i r - c e r t a i n s paquets a r r i v a i e n t e x p r e s pour moi des U S A q u e l q u e s j e u n e s a u t e u r s c o m m e C a r v e r ou H a r r i s o n a l o r s que j ' e n e t a i s e n c o r e a K e r o u a c ou S a r o y a n , et j e f u m a i s des W i n s t o n s

d'importation,

j ' e n r e c e v a i s d e s c a r t o u c h e s e n t i e r e s " ( D j i a n 4 1 8 ) . When r e a d i n g

the

p r e v i o u s p a s s a g e , one s h o u l d b e a r in m i n d t h a t blond t o b a c c o w a s once as hard a s e l l in F r a n c e as w e r e w h i s k y and b o u r b o n ; the e c o n o m i c s u c c e s s of t h e s e s t i m u l a n t s r e c o g n i z e d as c i r c u m s t a n t i a l

subsequent

in F r a n c e s h o u l d t h e r e f o r e

e v i d e n c e of a f u n d a m e n t a l

be

change

in

D j i a n has begun

to

n a t i o n a l t a s t e s , not as a m e r e e x p a n s i o n . Starting

w i t h his

1994 novel

Assassins,

e x p l o r e an A m e r i c a t h a t i s even m o r e a m o r p h o u s t h a n i t w a s One assumes

before.

t h a t the a c t i o n s d e s c r i b e d t a k e p l a c e in the New W o r l d ,

but one can n e v e r be e n t i r e l y s u r e . A t t i m e s , i t s e e m s as i f the a u t h o r ' s v i s i o n of H e n o c h v i l l e - a name w h i c h in and of i t s e l f s u g g e s t s s o m e s o r t of u n i o n b e t w e e n New England and Old F r a n c e - o c c u p i e s an half-world

where

imaginary

F r e n c h and A m e r i c a n l a n d s c a p e s and m o r e s

have

b e c o m e h o p e l e s s l y i n t e r t w i n e d . To quote one o u t s i d e o b s e r v e r , t h i s New

274 World

belongs

to

imaginaire...cree

an

"Amerique

de t o u t e s

jamais

i d e n t i f iee...un

pieces" (Robitaille).

territoire

T h e end r e s u l t

is

u n p r e c e d e n t e d : as s h a r p l y o b s e r v e d as de T o c q u e v i l l e ' s A m e r i c a , as r o m a t i c i z e d as de B e a u v o i r ' s , and as d e r a c i n a t e d as K a f k a ' s . In F r a n c e , as in the r e s t of E u r o p e , the w i d e s p r e a d a d a p t a t i o n American

technology

and

practices

has

led

to

a

de

of

facto

A m e r i c a n i z a t i o n of the p o p u l a c e . C r o w d s f l o c k to M c D o n a l d ' s i n P a r i s , the c i t y of haute c u i s i n e . The m o d e r n i z a t i o n of the C i t y of L i g h t i n s p i r e d J e a n - L u c G o d a r d ' s AlphavilJe provincial

cities.

3

Without

can now be f o u n d in

that

remote

i r o n y , the P a r i s - b a s e d J u l i o C o r t a z a r , a

l e f t - w i n g m a g i c r e a l i s t , can e n t h u s e , " P o u r n o u s , P a r k i n g l a n d e s t une terme

de l i b e r t e "

( C o r t a z a r and Dunlop 9 6 ) . In 1 9 9 7 , a

Situationist

c o n d u c t i n g a derive through even the o l d e s t , m o s t i n d i g e n o u s s t r e e t s of the

French

capital

would

find

no q u a r t e r

untouched

by

changing

p s y c h o g e o g r a p h y ; the o l e a g i n o u s s t r a i n s of M i c h a e l J a c k s o n b o o m b o x i n g f r o m a Sony W a l k m a n i s now more than enough to s c a t t e r the s h a d e s of V o l t a i r e , V e r l a i n e , and V i l l o n . C l a u d e M i l l e r ' s

cringing

expressed

d e s i r e to c o n s t r u c t "un u n i v e r s qui r e n v o i e a m e s r e v e s de c i n e m a , des s o u v e n i r s m a g n i f i e s de f i l m s a m e r i c a i n s vus l e s s a m e d i s s o i r s dans mon e n f a n c e " ( C u r c o l 107) now s e e m s q u a i n t l y a n a c h r o n i s t i c . More than 7 0 y e a r s ago, D.H. L a w r e n c e w r o t e t h a t " a l l t h a t i s v i s i b l e to the naked European e y e , in A m e r i c a , i s a s o r t of r e c r e a n t E u r o p e a n " ( L a w r e n c e 3). Nowadays

one

contemporary

could

say

the

E u r o p e a n s . What

same

thing

today

once s e e m e d m o s t

in

reverse

about

eccentric

about

Although, of course, the most famous Russian Communist paper, and the leading French conservative paper, have not yet fused into Figaro-Pravda, as Godard predicted. S t i l l , when you consider the other media mergers that have taken place, one can hardly accuse the Franco-Swiss filmmaker of shoddy prescience.

3

275 Lawrence's

literary

study

prescient: "The furthest reached

the p i t c h

of

of t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s n o w a p p e a r s

most

f r e n z i e s of F r e n c h m o d e r n i s m . . . h a v e not y e t extreme

consciousness that

Poe, Melville,

H a w t h o r n e , W h i t m a n r e a c h e d . T h e European m o d e r n s are a l l trying to be extreme. The great A m e r i c a n s I mention j u s t were i t " (Lawrence 4). The p r e v i o u s s t a t e m e n t

r i n g s even t r u e r

when you p l a c e the w o r d

" p o s t " b e f o r e the w o r d " m o d e r n " . S t i l l , i f t h e F r e n c h o f t e n s e e m angry a t , and unhappy w i t h , U.S. cultural

i n v a s i o n s of t h e u n c o n t r o l l e d

variety,

they

still

derive a

m e a s u r e of p r i d e f r o m t h e i r c h a m p i o n s h i p of u n d e r v a l u e d A m e r i c a n a r t i s t i c a s s e t s , a p r i d e t h a t i s s u r e l y not u n c o n n e c t e d to t h e i r unvanquished belief in superior G a l l i c s e n s i b i l i t y . in A m e r i c a n h a r d b o i l e d n o v e l s c o n t i n u e d disparate

filmmakers

the a l t e r e d

national

Francois Truffaut

que je

and A l a i n C o r n e a u (Serie

c i r c u m s t a n c e s of t h e s e

a d a p t a t i o n s , they w e r e s c r i p t e d in a s p i r i t

interest

unabated, inspiring

a s C l a u d e M i l l e r (Dites-lui

B e r t r a n d T a v e r n i e r (Coup du torchon), Despite

Cinematic

still

such

1'airne), noire).

wide-screen

very c l o s e to r e v e r e n c e .

w a s f a i r l y t y p i c a l w h e n he e x p l a i n e d t h a t , a p r o p o s

the w o r k s of W i l l i a m I r i s h , " q u a n d j e d e v a i s a f f r o n t e r

un ' p r o b l e m e

I r i s h ' , j ' a v a i s des c h a n c e s de t r o u v e r l a ' s o l u t i o n I r i s h ' " ( G i l l a i n 2 4 4 ) . In

1 9 9 6 , C l a u d e M e s p l e d e and J e a n - J a c q u e s S c h l e r e t

published a

m a s s i v e b i o g r a p h i c a l d i c t i o n a r y / b i b l i o g r a p h y / b i o g r a p h y of t h e m a i n l y A m e r i c a n a u t h o r s w h o s u p p l y the r a w m a t e r i a l f o r La S e r i e n o i r e . T o d a t e , no p u b l i s h e r i n A m e r i c a has seen f i t to t r e a t n a t i v e c r i m e w r i t e r s w i t h the s a m e s c r u p u l o u s r e s p e c t . In t h e U n i t e d

S t a t e s , by f a r t h e m o s t

contentious

Franco-

A m e r i c a n e n t h u s i a s m i s t h e one c o n n e c t e d to J e r r y L e w i s . In h e r

276 February

1 9 8 9 " l e t t r e de N e w Y o r k / ' B e r e n i c e R e y n a u d p u b l i s h e d an

extremely

f u n n y and p r e s c i e n t a r t i c l e e n t i t l e d

" Q u i a P e u r de J e r r y

L e w i s ? P a s N o u s , pas n o u s . " To the h a c k n e y e d q u e s t i o n " W h y do t h e F r e n c h l o v e J e r r y L e w i s / ' Reynaud posed a c o u n t e r - q u e s t i o n ' " P o u r q u o i l e s A m e r i c a i n s p e n s e n t - i l s que l e s F r a n c a i s a i m e n t J e r r y

Lewis?'"

( R e y n a u d V l l l ) . T h e e n s u i n g a n s w e r s to the l a s t q u e s t i o n p r o d u c e d a sort

of

Rorschach blot

contemptuous attitudes two

nations

enemies.

portrait

of t h e a l t e r n a t e l y

underlying cultural

who are s i m u l t a n e o u s l y

admiring

relations between

wary

friends

and

and these

friendly

4

L i t m u s t e s t p s y c h o l o g y a s i d e , h o w e v e r , J e r r y L e w i s does have h i s c r i t i c a l c h a m p i o n s in F r a n c e , f i l m . t h e o r i s t s w h o w o u l d s e r i o u s l y c l a i m that their

i d o l i s as w o r t h y

underappreciated

Alfred

of s e r i o u s r e s p e c t as w e r e t h e o n c e -

Hitchcock

and H o w a r d

H a w k s . Of

these

d e f e n d e r s , by f a r the m o s t e f f u s i v e w a s the r e c e n t l y d e c e a s e d R o b e r t Benayoun.

A

fluent

translator

of

anglophone,

Edward

magazine revelled

last

generation

Lear's limericks,

in " c e 'tour

d'esprit'

F r a n c a i s ont t o u j o u r s t a n t de d i f f i c u l t y

this tres

Surrealist,

stalwart

of

and Positif

a n g l o - s a x o n que l e s

a s a i s i r " ( J o u b e r t 6 6 ) . In the

w o r d s of l o n g - t i m e c o l l e a g u e M i c h e l C i m e n t , " i l etait...un s o r c i e r c a r , non c o n t e n t

de nous t r a n s p o r t e r

d'une r i v e a l ' a u t r e ,

il fut le plus

s o u v e n t en a m a n t du f l e u v e , d e c o u v r i r a u s s i b i e n l e C i n e m a Novo e t G l a u b e r R o c h a , l e s i n d e p e n d e n t s n e w - y o r k a i s , l e s c o u r t s m e t r a g e s de R e s n a i s , J e r r y L e w i s ou l e s c o m i q u e s j u i f s du Borscht B r o o k s a Woody A l l e n " ( B e n a y o u n l e dandy l i t t e r a i r e though 4

not

as high

profile

on t h e i n t e r n a t i o n a l

F o r a c o m p l e t e t r a n s c r i p t of t h i s a r t i c l e , p l e a s e see Appendix 3.

Belt,

de Mel

63). Benayoun, circuit

as the

277 c i n e a s t e / c r i t i c s of Cahiers they for

re-setting

du cinema,

the p a r a m e t e r s

w a s at l e a s t as r e s p o n s i b l e as of F r e n c h t a s t e . H i s e a r l y

and

e x t r a v a g a n t e n t h u s i a s m f o r Night of the Hunter, C h a r l e s L a u g h t o n ' s only m o t i o n p i c t u r e in the c a p a c i t y of d i r e c t o r , u n q u e s t i o n a b l y to the f a c t t h a t Studio premiere

magazine awarded that

p l a c e de c l a s s e m e n t " in i t s

contributed

1955 production

r a n k i n g of " l e s 5 0

"la

meilleurs

f i l m s - c u l t e s " ( 7 7 ) . B e n a y o u n ' s m a g a z i n e w r i t i n g o w e d l i t t l e to

the

i d e o l o g i c a l l y - d r i v e n c r i t i c i s m of the 1 9 7 0 s and ' 8 0 s . A s he h i m s e l f put i t , " J ' a i t o u j o u r s pense que la critique

devait

etre poetique,

meme si

e l l e s ' a p p l i q u e a un f i l m i m p a r f a i t , ce a T i n v e r s e de c e r t a i n s de m e s a m i s qui c r o y a i e n t a l a p o s s i b i l i t y d'une p o e t i q u e d e l i b e r e e on ne d e c i d e p a s , p a r e x e m p l e , qu'on f e r a un f i l m s u r r e a l i s t e , on e s t s u r r e a l i s t e ou on ne T e s t p a s " ("Le c i n e m a et n o u s " 4 8 ) . B e n a y o u n ' s d e d i c a t i o n to Bonjour,

Mr. Lewis,

the a u t h o r ' s

best

k n o w n - s o m e w o u l d say h i s m o s t n o t o r i o u s b o o k - b e g i n s w i t h a c u r i o u s dedication:

"A

ANDREW

SARRIS,

le

Spiro

Agnew

de

la

critique

a m e r i c a i n e . " ( B o n j o u r . Mr. L e w i s 6) S a r r i s , i t s h o u l d be r e c a l l e d , w a s the A m e r i c a n r e v i e w e r who f i r s t i n t r o d u c e d F r e n c h - s t y l e criticism Cahiers

i n t o the U n i t e d S t a t e s , a d a p t i n g i t

du Cinema's

downplaying

the

in a w a y t h a t

pro-Hollywood enthusiasms while magazine's

equally

n e o r e a l i s m and F r e n c h realisme p o i n t e d o u t , w a s at c r i t i c a l

strong

poetique.

auteurist

simultaneously

advocacy

Positif,

exalted

of

Italian

i t s h o u l d a l s o be

and i d e o l o g i c a l odds w i t h t h e

Cahiers

c r o w d , so A n d r e w S a r r i s ' a p p r o a c h c o u l d not help but be s c r u t i n i z e d w i t h double s u s p i c i o n . T h i s p a r t i a l l y

e x p l a i n s the c r i t i c s

insulting

bracketing w i t h Richard Nixon's disgraced, philistine Vice President, but not e n t i r e l y . Benayoun was a S u r r e a l i s t p o e t , a f t e r a l l ; c o n c e i v a b l y ,

278 h i s Bonjour

d e d i c a t i o n c o u l d , i f one i n s i s t s , be r e a d as an e x t r e m e l y

obscure compliment. O r i g i n a l l y , Benayoun w a n t e d to w r i t e a book c a l l e d Les Jokers,

a

w o r k t h a t w o u l d have e n c o m p a s s e d the c a r e e r s of W.C. F i e l d s , B u s t e r K e a t o n , Groucho M a r x , T o t o , A l b e r t o S o r d i , and The B e a t l e s , as w e l l as Jerry

L e w i s . F o r the

author,

these a r t i s t s

"etaient

a la f o i s

les

b o u f f o n s , l e s d a n d y s , l e s e x c e n t r i q u e s de l e u r t e m p s ' " ( B o n j o u r .

Mr.

L e w i s 1 1). If B e n a y o u n ' s book can be read as a p a n e g y r i c o r h a g i o g r a p h y , i t i s at t i m e s c u r i o u s l y u n f l a t t e r i n g to i t s s u b j e c t . When c o n s i d e r i n g the n a t u r e of L e w i s ' s p a r t n e r s h i p w i t h the h a n d s o m e Dean M a r t i n , f o r i n s t a n c e , the a u t h o r w r i t e s , " D ' a u t r e p a r t se p r e s e n t J e r r y L e w i s , un a v o r t o n s i m i e s q u e et j u v e n i l e , c o i f f e c o m m e s a b r o s s e a d e n t s , qui ne s a i t ni c h a n t e r ni d a n s e r m a i s s ' o b s t i s e a le f a i r e , et q u i , r e f u s a n t t o u t p u b e r t e , se l a i s s e c a l i n e r par des dames o p u l e n t e s au s e i n p l e i n de l a i t , ou p r e f e r a b l e m e n t par son i d o l e m a s c u l i n e , Dean M a r t i n " ( B o n j o u r . MrLewis

21). Benayoun d e s c r i b e s J e r r y

as b o t h " l ' a n t i - J a m e s

Dean"

( B o n j o u r . Mr. L e w i s 19) and as an a d u l t who a d o r e s a l l c h i l d r e n b e c a u s e " [ i l s ont] de son a g e " ( B o n j o u r . Mr. L e w i s 41). A g a i n and a g a i n , B e n a y o u n r e f e r s to h i s s u b j e c t ' s o n s c r e e n w e a k n e s s , e f f e m i n a c y ,

immaturity,

i n e p t i t u d e w i t h w o m e n . F o r the a u t h o r , L e w i s ' s w i l l i n g n e s s to e x p l o r e e m o t i o n s and m o d e s of being w h i c h m o s t p e o p l e w o u l d be a s h a m e d to a d m i t i s w h a t m a k e s h i m a g r e a t a r t i s t . It i s on the s t r e n g t h of volition

that

he m a k e s h i g h - f l o w n

claims

s u c h as t h e

this

following:

" C o m m e c e l l e de B u n u e l (et l a r a s s e m b l a n c e a r r e t e l a ) , l ' o e u v r e

de

J e r r y L e w i s e s t basee s u r des s o u v e n i r s d ' e n f a n c e " ( B o n j o u r . Mr. L e w i s 3 3 9 ) . T h i s , in B e n a y o u n ' s e y e s , m a k e s h i s s u b j e c t a c u l t u r a l

incendiary:

" P o u r t a n t i l r e s t e un p e r s o n n a g e s u b v e r s i f . II e s t le s a t i r i s t e l e p l u s

279 f e r o c e , le plus

disent

des r e g i m e s

johnsoniens

et

n i x o n i e n s . Son

p a c i f i s m e e s t m i l i t a n t . II ne c r a i n t pas d ' a t t a q u e r l a guerre du V i e t n a m , de donner l e p a r t b e l l e aux n o i r s " ( B o n j o u r . Mr. L e w i s 147). Pacifist; pro-Black; anti-establishment:

these three

c o u l d not help but e n d e a r t h e m s e l v e s to l e f t - w i n g

qualities

European c r i t i c s . In

E u r o p e , the c o m m e r c i a l or c r i t i c a l f a i l u r e of m a j o r A m e r i c a n m o v i e s i s o f t e n a t t r i b u t e d to p o l i t i c a l f a c t o r s . By i m p l i c a t i o n , Heaven's Gate d i e d at the b o x - o f f i c e not b e c a u s e i t w a s a s t r u c t u r a l m e s s but b e c a u s e i t s u n d e r l y i n g m e s s a g e about the c l o s i n g of the W e s t w a s u n c o n g e n i a l to M i d d l e A m e r i c a n v i e w e r s . T h e r e i s m o r e than a l i t t l e t r u t h to t h e s e charges. Much of Bonjour, fir. feelings

of

gratitude

Lewis

for

his

i s t a k e n up w i t h the continental

actor/director's

acceptance. At

a press

c o n f e r e n c e , he s a y s , " - E n F r a n c e , on r e c o i s l e s f i l m s d i f f e r e m m e n t , meme

en

Italie,

en A n g l e t e r r e ,

en A l l e m a g n e

de

ou en E s p a g n e . Le

c i n e p h i l i e europeen e x a m i n e l e s f i l m s , et se p r e o c c u p e m o i n s de T a n g l e c o m i q u e que de s a m o t i v a t i o n . II se s o u c i e de l ' e c r i t u r e , du m o n t a g e , de l a p h o t o , de l a m i s e en s c e n e , et i l e s t i n t r i g u e p a r I'homme... Aux U.S.A. l e s i n t e l l e c t u e l s n'ont pas l e t e m p s pour c e s c h o s e s - l a , i l s s o n t t r o p o c c u p e s a q u i t t e r l a s a l 1 e avant meme de s ' a s s e o i r " ( B o n j o u r . Mr. L e w i s 161).

Most

gratifying

of

a l l , "Nous

avons

la-bas

une

categorie

d ' i n d i v i d u s que nous a p p e l o n s (par d e r i s i o n ) c r i t i q u e s . En F r a n c e vous a v e z des a n a l y s t e s " ( B o n j o u r . Mr. L e w i s 161). More r e c e n t l y , Woody A l l e n has been g e t t i n g treatment

in F r a n c e . A s the a c t o r / d i r e c t o r

the J e r r y

t o l d Cahiers

du

Lewis Cinema,

" C ' e s t une h i s t o i r e qui a c o m m e n c e avec Edgar P o e , p u i s a c o n t i n u e a v e c F a u l k n e r et t a n t d ' a u t r e s . T o u t l e monde s a i t aux E t a t s - U n i s que l a

280 France

a la

reputation

de d e c o u v r i r

et

de c e l e b r e r

les

artistes

a m e r i c a i n s qui s o n t i g n o r e s dans l e u r p a y s . II y a q u e l q u e s a n n e e s , l e New

Yorker a p u b l i e un d e s s i n ou T o n v o y a i t un r o i s u r s o n t r o n e qui

d i s a i t du b o u f f o n a s s i s a s e s p i e d s : 'lei, France on considere

il n'est pas etre drole, mais en

que c est un genie!' C ' e s t un a t t i t u d e J

typiquement

a m e r i c a i n " ( C i m e n t and T o b i n 14). J u s t a s , s o m e m i g h t add, r o l l i n g

out the r e d c a r p e t to o s t e n t a t i o u s l y

honour

neglected

A m e r i c a n a r t i s t s i s t y p i c a l l y F r e n c h . A s Mia F a r r o w p o i n t e d out in h e r m e m o i r s , " P a r i s i a n s are a l o t n i c e r i f y o u ' r e w i t h Woody A l l e n " (Farrow 242). The l i s t of s i m i l a r l y p r i v i l e g e d A m e r i c a n c u l t u r a l c e l e b r i t i e s i s very

long indeed. C u r r e n t l y , they

include Clint

Eastwood, Michael

C i m i n o , S a m F u l l e r , T i m B u r t o n , J o h n C a r p e n t e r , and Monte H e l l m a n . T h e s e N e w W o r l d h e r o e s are m o r e o r l e s s e v e n l y d i v i d e d t a l e n t e d m o n e y - m a k e r s qui sont meprises

par

between

leurs concitoyens,

and

m a r g i n a l f i g u r e s w h o s e c a r e e r s have been d r o w n e d i n the H o l l y w o o d f a c t o r y s y s t e m . A t p r e s e n t , m o s t U.S. l i o n s in F r a n c e are c o n n e c t e d i n some

way

with

the

cinema; forty

years

a g o , the

majority

were

a f f i l i a t e d w i t h j a z z . W i t h the n o t a b l e e x c e p t i o n s of E d g a r A l l a n Poe (a w r i t e r who i s o f t e n p e r c e i v e d as more F r e n c h than A m e r i c a n , a n y w a y ) , H e r m a n M e l v i l l e ( F r e n c h c r i t i c s adore h i m a l m o s t as much as do t h e i r Italian counterparts), cultural

William

F a u l k n e r (now

c o m m o d i t y ) , Ernest Hemingway (highly

an a l m o s t

universal

prized for his lean,

s p a r e s t y l e ) , and v i r t u a l l y a l l U.S. m a s t e r s , m a j o r or m i n o r , of le roman noir, a u t h o r s are s e l d o m so p r i v i l e g e d . The s h o r t r o s t e r above w a s r e c e n t l y expanded to i n c l u d e a n o t h e r l i t e r a r y c e l e b r i t y : W i l l i a m S t y r o n . P h i l i p p e D j i a n , as w e have a l r e a d y

281 s e e n , r e g a r d s t h i s man as an i d o l ( a l b e i t one he'd p r e f e r not to w o r s h i p in the f l e s h ) . M i c h e l B u t o r , a n o t h e r G a l l i c a d m i r e r , w r o t e the p r e f a c e to the F r e n c h l a n g u a g e e d i t i o n

of Set

This House on Fire.

In M e l v i n J .

F r i e d m a n ' s o p i n i o n , t h i s phenomenon can be e x p l a i n e d p r i m a r i l y

as an

e x t e n s i o n of the l o n g - e s t a b l i s h e d F r e n c h l o v e of W i l l i a m F a u l k n e r : " H e w a s t a k e n up v i g o r o u s l y and c r e a t i v e l y by the F r e n c h - e v e n b e f o r e he w a s p r o p e r l y a p p r e c i a t e d in h i s n a t i v e c o u n t r y - a n d , on o c c a s i o n , w a s d e e m e d to be the i n h e r i t o r of the F r e n c h s y m b o l i s t s " (Kolb and N o a k e s 123) . F r i e d m a n r e m i n d s us t h a t " A l m o s t t w o d e c a d e s ago the S o r b o n n e p r o f e s s o r R o g e r A s s e l i n e a u e d i t e d an i n f l u e n t i a l March

by

speaking

of

its

author

as

'un

e s s a y on The

ecrivain

plus

Long

francais

q u ' a m e r i c a i n ' " ( K o l b and N o a k e s 123). In the s a m e v e i n , he p r o p o s e s t h a t " S t y r o n s e e m s to be f o l l o w i n g in a l i n e of m e m o i r i s t s of d e c i d e d l y French temperament

w h i c h began w i t h M o n t a i g n e and c a r r i e d

S a i n t - S i m o n and R o u s s e a u d o w n to S a r t r e Noakes

through

and M a l r a u x " ( K o l b

and

1 2 3 ) . In the p r o c e s s , " S t y r o n s e e m s to have j o i n e d P o e and

F a u l k n e r in the e n v i a b l e p r o c e s s of being G a l l i c i z e d " (Kolb and N o a k e s 124) . One a s p e c t of t h i s phenomenon w h i c h F r i e d m a n does not deal w i t h at s u f f i c i e n t

l e n g t h i s the g r a c e f u l e a s e w i t h w h i c h S t y r o n ' s p r o s e

t a k e s to F r e n c h t r a n s l a t i o n . To c i t e language r e n d e r i n g of Sophie's

just

one e x a m p l e , the

French

Choice e n d o w s t h a t t e x t w i t h an e l e g a i c

m e l a n c h o l y t h a t i s in s o m e w a y s r i c h e r and m o r e r e s o n a n t t h a n

the

s a d n e s s to be f o u n d in the E n g l i s h o r i g i n a l . L i k e P o e , F a u l k n e r , J i m Thompson, William

I r i s h , and P a t r i c i a H i g h s m i t h , S t y r o n

w h e n p l a n t e d in F r e n c h s o i l . T h e s a m e c a n n o t be s a i d f o r

flourishes Gertrude

S t e i n , E z r a P o u n d , e.e. c u m m i n g s , or a hundred o t h e r w r i t e r s of g r e a t e r

282 or equal w o r t h . F o r an A m e r i c a n " g r a f t " to t a k e , in o t h e r w o r d s , i t m u s t be j o i n e d to a p l a n t of s i m i l a r s p e c i e s t h a t has long been i n d i g e n o u s to F r e n c h s o i l . W h i l e t h e r e are o b v i o u s l y s o m e m a j o r e x c e p t i o n s to rule (rock V

r o l l i s p r o b a b l y the m o s t e g r e g i o u s e x a m p l e ) , i n

i n s t a n c e s it

h o l d s t r u e . W h a t ' s m o r e , as one a s c e n d s f r o m

this most

popular

c u l t u r e to high a r t (pace, d e c o n s t r u c t i o n i s t s ) , t h i s t h e o r y b e c o m e s v e r y c l o s e to a l a w . A s the o l d c h e s t n u t w o u l d have i t , h o w e v e r , i m i t a t i o n i s s t i l l

the

s i n c e r e s t f o r m of f l a t t e r y . J a c q u e s Demy t r i e d to b u i l d an e n t i r e c a r e e r on the b a s i s of h i s l o v e f o r 1 9 5 0 s ' - v i n t a g e H o l l y w o o d m u s i c a l s , o n l y o c c a s i o n a l l y r e f e r r i n g to the s t y l i s t i c s of Rene C l a i r ' s e a r l y m u s i c a l c o m e d i e s and the much o l d e r n a t i v e t r a d i t i o n of l i g h t - h e a r t e d Interestingly,

operetta.

e n o u g h , The Model Shop, the one f i l m he made i n

the

p r o m i s e d l a n d of S o u t h e r n C a l i f o r n i a , w a s not o n l y n o n - m u s i c a l

but

d e c i d e d l y d o w n b e a t . By g e t t i n g too c l o s e to the t i m e l e s s f a n t a s y , he s u c c e e d e d only in t u r n i n g i t i n t o h a r s h q u o t i d i a n r e a l i t y . M u l t i p l e d i s i l l u s i o n m e n t s are a l s o at the r o o t of A l a i n R e s n a i s ' s little-seen

1989 feature,

playwright/cartoonist

/ Want to Go Home. S c r i p t e d i n E n g l i s h by

Jules

Feiffer

(although

most

francophone

a u d i e n c e s s a w i t in a v e r s i o n w h i c h , w i t h the e x c e p t i o n of one key and rather

p e r p l e x i n g s e q u e n c e , had been dubbed i n t o F r e n c h ) , the

film

d e s c r i b e d the r e t u r n of one p a r t i c u l a r A m e r i c a n to P a r i s . J o e y W e l l m a n ( A d o l p h G r e e n , the c o - a u t h o r in r e a l l i f e of a dozen MGM m u s i c a l s ) i s a f o r m e r G l - t u r n e d - s u c c e s s f u l - c a r t o o n i s t who f l i e s to F r a n c e to r e c e i v e a p r i z e f o r h i s w o r k and p a t c h up h i s r e l a t i o n s h i p w i t h h i s

expatriate

d a u g h t e r . W e l l m a n ' s c o m i c s t r i p " H e p C a t " i s a l l the rage i n

bandes

dessinees

by h i s

c i r c l e s , and the a r t i s t / a u t h o r

is initially

gratified

283 r e c e p t i o n in a c o u n t r y w h i c h he f i r s t s a w through the s i g h t s of h i s M-1 c a r b i n e . M o s t of the A m e r i c a n s he m e e t s are e x t r a o r d i n a r i l y

boorish

and a n n o y i n g . One l u n k - h e a d e d d i r e c t o r g r u n t s , " L ' A m e r i q u e e s t

fait

p o u r l e v i o l , p e u t - e t r e , m a i s pas pour l ' a m o u r " - a s e n t i m e n t one c o u l d m o r e e a s i l y i m a g i n e a F r e n c h m a n e x p r e s s i n g than an A m e r i c a n . D u r i n g the

movie,

Wellman/Green

finds

himself

caught

in

the

p r e d i c a m e n t t h a t one w o u l d e x p e c t to b e f a l l Gene K e l l y in An in

Paris.

More s p e c i f i c a l l y , he s t u m b l e s

sort

of

American

into a French bistro

and

m y s t e r i o u s l y l o s e s h i s a b i l i t y to speak the l o c a l language (the p e c u l i a r l i n g u i s t i c a l l u s i o n I r e f e r r e d to e a r l i e r v i s - a - v i s the dubbed v e r s i o n ) , and m u s t use pad and p e n c i l to make h i m s e l f u n d e r s t o o d - l i k e good c a r t o o n i s t , one m i g h t add. In h e r r e v i e w

of t h i s f i l m ,

every Colette

M a z a b r a r d w r o t e , " L ' A m e r i c a i n , c a r i c a t u r a l , r e p r e s e n t e un f a n t a s m e de l ' A m e r i q u e on n'ose p l u s en f a i r e . T o u t c o m m e l e s l i e u x de F r a n c e s o n t l a c a r i c a t u r e des f a n t a s m e s a m e r i c a i n s . La F r a n c e e s t r e d u i t e a P a r i s (et P a r i s a l a S o r b o n n e , un h o t e l , une g a l e r i e d ' a r t , un b u r e a u de l a S o r b o n n e ) , et l a N o r m a n d i e ( d e b a r q u e m e n t

oblige)" (Mazabrard

54).

R e f e r r i n g to the f i l m ' s o r i g i n a l r e l e a s e p r i n t , she a d d s , " C e t t e F r a n c e p o u r nous d e v i e n t t e r r e e t r a n g e r e ( t o u t le f i l m e s t en a n g l a i s , s o u s t i t r e en f r a n c a i s ) " ( M a z a b r a r d 55). / Want to Go Home l e a v e s us hanging " E n t r e deux p a y s , e g a r e , e n t r e deux e p o q u e s , a v e c s a t r i s t e f i g u r e ,

il

i n c a r n e l ' e r r a n c e du h e r o s de l a m o d e r n i t e , un peu m o r t - v i v a n t , un peu relique...et ' s i t r i s t e , s i t r i s t e ' " ( M a z a b r a r d 5 6 ) . F o r our p u r p o s e s , " L a m o d e r n i t e d ' e t r e v i e i l l o t " c r o s s - r e f e r e n c e s a n u m b e r of i n t e r e s t i n g c h a r a c t e r s and m o t i f s . D i r e c t e d by an a g i n g member

of

la

Nouvelle

Vague ( s o m e

critics

might

dispute

this

d e s i g n a t i o n , but to me i t s e e m s s o u n d ) , and s t a r r i n g one of the grand

284 o l d men of the H o l l y w o o d m u s i c a l , / Want to Go Home d e s c r i b e s a cultural

conflict

t h a t a p p e a r s p r e p a r e d to m u t a t e

if

not,

s p e a k i n g , to die out. R e s n a i s , F e i f f e r and G r e e n , though s t i l l

strictly

creatively

p r o d u c t i v e , knew a l l too w e l l t h a t they w e r e in f a c t r e p r e s e n t a t i v e s of a cultural cultural

ancien

regime

t h a t w a s f a t e d to die w i t h t h e m . F o r the

c o n s u m e r s of the 2 1st C e n t u r y , the G r e a t W a r , the R o a r i n g

Twenties,

the

L i b e r a t i o n , the

Postwar Existential

B o o m , and

the

R a d i c a l S i x t i e s w i l l j u s t be p h r a s e s as i n n o c e n t of e m o t i o n a l r e s o n a n c e as the t r e a t y of N a n t e s or the R i s e of the J a n s e n i s t s . If the o l d w a r were

to

go on at

a l l , it

will

inevitably

be f o u g h t

with

different

w e a p o n s , and f o r d i f f e r e n t ends. To a l a r g e d e g r e e , one a l r e a d y s e e s t h i s h a p p e n i n g in the F r e n c h movie industry. For several years now, governmental funding agencies have made a p o i n t of d i s t i n g u i s h i n g b e t w e e n F r e n c h p r o d u c t i o n s t h a t are s h o t i n t h e i r n a t i v e tongue and t h o s e t h a t are s h o t i n E n g l i s h , r e w a r d i n g the f o r m e r e c o n o m i c a l l y , and p u n i s h i n g the l a t t e r . m o s t G a l l i c f e a t u r e s are s t i l l s h o t in F r e n c h , the n a t i o n ' s t i n y

While handful

of " m e g a - p r o d u c t i o n s " a r e , w i t h i n c r e a s i n g r e g u l a r i t y , w r i t t e n and r e l e a s e d in E n g l i s h . To d a t e , Luc B e s s o n ' s The Fifth Element ( 1 9 9 7 ) , i s the m o s t e g r e g i o u s e x a m p l e of t h i s t r e n d . The m o s t e x p e n s i v e m o v i e e v e r to be made o u t s i d e the s t a t e - s u b s i d i z e d S o v i e t o r c o r p o r a t e l y c o n t r o l l e d A m e r i c a n s t u d i o s y s t e m s , Le Cinqieme

element

t i t l e ! ) f o l l o w s hard on the h e e l s of The Professional/Leon bleu/The

(its

dubbed

and Le Grand

Big Blue, t w o of the d i r e c t o r ' s e a r l i e r f e a t u r e s , the f i r s t of

w h i c h w a s s h o t in New Vork w i t h m a i n l y A n g l o - A m e r i c a n a c t o r s , w h i l e the s e c o n d w a s l e n s e d i n E n g l i s h w i t h a U.S. f e m a l e l e a d . E v e n Femme

Nikita,

La

the one F r e n c h l a n g u a g e , F r e n c h - t h e m e d L u c B e s s o n

285 p i c t u r e of the p a s t d e c a d e — s t y l i s t i c a l l y i t o w e d m o r e to J e a n - P i e r r e M e l v i l l e than to any H o l l y w o o d f i l m m a k e r - w a s l a t e r r e - m a d e f i r s t as an A m e r i c a n f e a t u r e , then as an A m e r i c a n T V s e r i e s . If B e s s o n ' s i s s t i l l a s o m e w h a t e x t r e m e c a s e , i t i s n o n e t h e l e s s t r u e t h a t H o l l y w o o d i n c r e a s i n g l y l o o k s at the F r e n c h f i l m i n d u s t r y as a s o u r c e of r a w c u l t u r a l DNA. Ignoring a l l but a f e w of the h u n d r e d s of a d m i r a b l e F r e n c h d r a m a s t h a t have been made o v e r the y e a r s , the U.S. m o t i o n p i c t u r e i n d u s t r y g e n e r a l l y p r e f e r s to z e r o in on the French comedies, awkwardly Things

critics

r e - d r a p i n g them in Anglo Saxon " d r a g " .

have p r o g r e s s e d so f a r

commercially-minded-some now

actually

light-weight

down this

might

s e e m to

say

welcome

sad road that

the

more

culturally-colonized-film this

state

of

affairs.

For

i n s t a n c e , i n a r e c e n t a r t i c l e , Studio c r i t i c A l a i n K r u g e r w a s d e l i g h t e d by the f a c t t h a t t w o F r e n c h p r o d u c e r s w o u l d have a hand in the r e - m a k e of the G a l l i c f a r c e , Un indien dans la ville,

enthusiastically declaring,

"11 f a u t e s p e r e r que l e s t a l e n t s et T e n e r g i e des p r o d u c t e u r s Lhermitte

et L o u i s B e c k e r s u f f i r o n t

Thierry

a c o n v a i n c r e D i s n e y de s o r t i r

f i l m a v e c l e s v r a i s m o y e n s " ( K r u g e r 1 1). P e r h a p s the m o s t

le

frightening

e l e m e n t i n t h i s e q u a t i o n i s the i m p l i c i t b e l i e f t h a t budget i s the o n l y thing

that

makes

commercial

movies

different,

not

national

t e m p e r a m e n t . Once upon a t i m e , s u c h an a t t i t u d e w o u l d have p r o m p t e d d e m o n s t r a t o r s to m a r c h through the s t r e e t s . It w o u l d be r e a s s u r i n g to t h i n k t h a t t h i s a t t i t u d e is only h e l d by the m a s s m a r k e t F r e n c h f i l m c r i t i c s and d i r e c t o r s , but s u c h i s not the c a s e . Even B a r b e t S c h r o e d e r , one of the unsung " s a i n t s " of i n d e p e n d e n t French f i l m

production, is anything

but

deaf

to the s i r e n s o n g

S o u t h e r n C a l i f o r n i a . A s w e read in a 1991 e d i t i o n of Cahiers

du

of

cinema,

286 " D i r i g e a n t la son t r o i s i e m e f i l m a m e r i c a i n , Barbet Schroeder est ravi du t r a v a i l d e s a c t e u r s a m e r i c a i n s - ' / 7 s se donnent vraiment

a

fond'-et

des l u x u e u s e s c o n d i t i o n s de p r o d u c t i o n a H o l l y w o o d , qui l u i ont p e r m i s

d ' a u d i t i o n e r 'cinquante Posit/T-backed

acteurs pour chaque role du film.'"

(Krohn 7).

w r i t e r s and c r i t i c s a r e no m o r e i m m u n e to t h i s

t e m p t a t i o n than are t h e i r Cahiers-bQsed a s s e s s m e n t of Atlantic

r i v a l s . C o n s i d e r the f o l l o w i n g

City. " L ' u n des m e i l l e u r s f i l m s e t r a n g e r s de l a

r e n t r e e t o u c h e de p r e s le c i n e m a f r a n c a i s , i l e s t de L o u i s M a l l e . T o u r n e en a n g l a i s

aux U S A et a M o n t r e a l

a v e c de l ' a r g e n t

canadien

(il

r e p r e s e n t e m e m e l e Canada au F e s t i v a l de V e n i s e ) pendant l e boom d e s t a x - s h e l t e r s , q u ' i l a su c o n t o u r n e r avec m a e s t r i a , Atlantic

City e s t en

f a i t un t h r i l l e r A m e r i c a i n digne de l a grande epoque, aux a b o r d s de W.R. B u r n e t t et de N e l s o n A l g r e n , m a i s vu d'un o e i l u n a n i m i s t e , p a r m o m e n t a l t m a n i e n " ("Atlantic C i t y " 69). For late t w e n t i e t h - c e n t u r y

F r e n c h i n t e l l e c t u a l s , t h i s d i l u t i o n of

F r e n c h c i n e m a w i t h A m e r i c a n t h e m e s , m o d e l s , and p r o d u c t i o n

methods

i s p e r c e i v e d as p a r t of a l a r g e r p r o b l e m . A s w e s a w i n the Le Monde articles

c i t e d e a r l i e r , European unity i s being urged as a p o s i t i v e

antidote

to

economic

and c u l t u r a l

submission

to U . S . / J a p a n e s e

hegemony. Even the t i t l e s of s o m e of t h e s e t h i n k p i e c e s a r e r e f l e c t i v e of o l d G a l l i c t h i n k i n g being poured i n t o n e w u n i o n i s t m o l d s . C o n s i d e r the

following

controlent

h e a d l i n e f o r i n s t a n c e : " L e s deux c e n t s s o c i e t e s qui

le monde" (16). C l e a r l y , in this context

societes" (multinational

" l e s deux

c o r p o r a t i o n s ) have e f f e c t i v e l y

cents

replaced " l e s

deux c e n t s f a m i l l e s " - t h e w e a l t h y a r i s t o c r a t i c and haut bourgeois c l a n s w h o w e r e once s a i d to c o n t r o l the

200 families

supplanted

1 9 t h c e n t u r y F r a n c e - a s e f f e c t i v e l y as the shadowy

union

of F r e e m a s o n s ,

287 P r o t e s t a n t s , and J e w s who c o m p r i s e d the " u n h o l y " c o n t r o l l i n g

trinity

m o s t d r e a d e d by c o n s e r v a t i v e F r e n c h C a t h o l i c s f r o m the r i s e of M a r t i n L u t h e r to the f a l l of M a r s h a l P h i l i p p e P e t a i n . F r o m the a c c o m p a n y i n g charts

we

learn

that

62

of

these

globe-spanning

companies

c o n t r o l l e d by the J a p a n e s e and 5 5 by the A m e r i c a n s . If w e look closely, however,

we

discover that

6 5 of

the

world's

are more

wealthiest

c o r p o r a t i o n s are o w n e d and o p e r a t e d by EEC m e m b e r s , w h i l e

another

nine are o w n e d by n o n - a l i g n e d W e s t e r n E u r o p e a n s . In o t h e r w o r d s , a unified

Europe w o u l d r e p r e s e n t

a more potent economic f o r c e

than

e i t h e r the U n i t e d S t a t e s or the Land of the R i s i n g Sun. If Europe i s e v e r to r e g a i n i t s ( d o m i n a n t )

p l a c e in w o r l d a f f a i r s , the n e w

Atlanticists

b e l i e v e , i t can only be as a c o n t i n e n t , not as an a s s e m b l a g e of m i d d l e ranking powers. France, therefore, g r e a t n e s s o n l y as an i n t e g r a l hopes

to

play

the

most

can r e a s o n a b l y e x p e c t to

attain

p a r t of a l a r g e r c o l l e c t i v e in w h i c h

important

cultural

and the

second

i m p o r t a n t e c o n o m i c r o l e . T o w a r d s t h i s e n d , c e r t a i n s i g n s of

it

most

national

d i s t i n c t n e s s (the f r a n c ; a g r i c u l t u r a l p o l i c i e s ) m u s t be m o d i f i e d o r done away

w i t h altogether.

French thinkers

are p a i n f u l l y

aware

of

the

damage done to European c u l t u r e as a r e s u l t of the l a c k of g o v e r n m e n t a l protection accorded i t s constituent parts. As J e a n - P a u l Bourget w r o t e in a s p e c i a l i s s u e of Cahiers de Cinema d e v o t e d to European c i n e m a , " A quelques nuances pres, il

y a r a c c o r d s u r le c o n s t a t : H o l l y w o o d a

t o u j o u r s su ' c a n n a b a l i s e r ' non s e u l e m e n t l e s t a l e n t s , m a i s a u s s i l e s s innovations

europeen"

(Bourget

81).

What

Bourget

says

A m e r i c a n s i s p r e c i s e l y w h a t the A m e r i c a n s s a y of t h e although

the

latter

charge

is

made

with

far

less

of

the

Japanese-

justice.

Such

hardheaded t h i n k i n g w o u l d do c r e d i t to a M e t t e r n i c h or a T a l l e y r a n d .

288 A s w e have s e e n f r o m our e a r l i e r r e a d i n g s of B a u d r i l l a r d and B u t o r , h o w e v e r , t h i s Realpolitik French

writers,

r e s p o n s e i s a n y t h i n g but u n i v e r s a l .

intellectuals,

A m e r i c a n i z a t i o n of the w o r l d

and

filmmakers

with everything

from

approach

the

a c c e p t a n c e to

h a t r e d , f r o m e x c i t e m e n t to f e a r . Of c o u r s e , w i t h the p o s t - w a r r i s e of A s i a n e c o n o m i c g i a n t s , i t c o u l d f a i r l y be s a i d t h a t g l o b a l i z a t i o n and Americanization

have c e a s e d to

be r e a s o n a b l y s p e c i f i c s y n o n y m s .

J a p a n , a f t e r a l l , b o a s t s s e v e n m o r e Top 2 0 0 m u l t i n a t i o n a l s t h a n d o e s the U n i t e d S t a t e s , c o r p o r a t i o n s t h a t are even m o r e t i g h t l y

controlled

than t h e i r A m e r i c a n c o u n t e r p a r t s , a s w e p r e v i o u s l y s a w in F r e d e r i c C l a i r m o n t ' s Old T e s t a m e n t w a r n i n g of the g r o w i n g p o w e r of t h a t f i v e fingered corporate giant, Mitsubishi. In l i t e r a t u r e , t h i s b l u r r i n g of n a t i o n a l d i s t i n c t i o n s can s o m e t i m e s c r e a t e s o m e odd e f f e c t s . When r e a d i n g Le Vieil

homme et le loup, f o r

e x a m p l e , J u l i a K r i s t e v a ' s s e c o n d n o v e l , the r e a d e r i s apt to a s s u m e at first

t h a t the

fictitious

r e p u b l i c in an a l t e r n a t e

nation

of

Santa Barbara is a Californian

u n i v e r s e w h e r e the R o m a n E m p i r e ' s p o w e r

s t r e t c h e d to the New W o r l d ; a l i t t l e l a t e r on, he o r she i s l i k e l y

to

g u e s s t h a t the a c t i o n i s s e t in s o m e i m a g i n a r y " b a n a n a r e p u b l i c " i n C e n t r a l A m e r i c a . In f a c t , one has to plunge q u i t e d e e p l y i n t o the book before d i s c o v e r i n g that Santa Barbara's real l i f e model is B u l g a r i a , the p e o p l e ' s r e p u b l i c f r o m

w h i c h the a u t h o r

actually

permanently

e m i g r a t e d in the m i d - 1 9 6 0 s . A s the n a r r a t o r v e r y p r o p e r l y c o m p l a i n s , " S a n t a B a r b a r a ne m'a pas l i v r e s e s s e c r e t s " (Le V i e l homme et le IOUD 2 6 8 ) . A n d , even more a p t l y , " S a n t a B a r b a r a e s t p a r t o u t " homme et l e loup 2 6 8 ) .

(Le

Vieil

289 I r o n i c a l l y , i t i s in the f i e l d of c u l t u r a l c r i t i c i s m and p h i l o s o p h y , one of the f e w a r e a s of modern l i f e in w h i c h the F r e n c h s t i l l h o l d the u p p e r h a n d , t h a t the G a l l i c r e s p o n s e i s m o r e e m o t i o n a l t h a n l o g i c a l , more paranoid than p r a c t i c a l . For North A m e r i c a n s , these o f t e n make f o r c o m i c a l reading. A case in point i s the

disputes epistolary

d i s p u t e t h a t broke out b e t w e e n " D e r r i d i a n s " and " a n t i - D e r r i d i a n s " the

p a g e s of

The

New

York Review

of

Books

several

years

in

ago.

D e c o n s t r u c t i o n i s t s defended t h e i r b e l i e f s w i t h a p r o t e c t i v e f e r v o r t h a t s u g g e s t e d dogma r a t h e r than i d e o l o g y ; t h e i r opponents (if s u c h they can be p r o p e r l y

called) responded w i t h a sort

Despite its

double-sided secular nature,

strongly

r e s e m b l e d an a r g u m e n t

of a m a z e d this

bemusement.

intellectual

dispute

b e t w e e n a c o l y t e s and

freethinkers,

b e t w e e n b e l i e v e r s in the t r u t h and c o n f u s e d f o l l o w e r s

of B a a l . T h e

unintentional

c o m e d y of

the

situation

stemmed

directly

from

the

p a r t i c i p a n t s ' i n a b i l i t y to r e c o g n i z e a t e m p e s t in a t e a c u p w h i l e s a i l i n g t h r o u g h one. D i d i e r E r i b o n ' s d e f e n s e of M i c h e l F o u c a u l t f r o m h i s A n g l o - S a x o n critics

w a s , if

a n y t h i n g , even more

passionate. Eribon, Foucault's

F r e n c h b i o g r a p h e r , c o m p l a i n e d e q u a l l y of the s a l a c i o u s a t t e m p t s

of

J a m e s M i l l e r , F o u c a u l t ' s A m e r i c a n b i o g r a p h e r , to drum up i n t e r e s t

in

his

book

by d r a w i n g

undue

attention

to

s e x u a l i t y , and of h i s s u b s e q u e n t f a i l u r e

his

subject's

"perverse"

to d e l i v e r on t h i s

p r o m i s e b e c a u s e not enough h a r d i n f o r m a t i o n

tawdry

w a s a v a i l a b l e . F o r the

F r e n c h s c h o l a r , h i s A m e r i c a n c o u n t e r p a r t w a s n o t h i n g but a s h a m e f u l r e d u c t i o n i s t , a l a z y , sex-maddened puritan who, through ignorance or n e g l e c t , f a i l e d to e x p l o r e the m o r e r e l e v a n t

s o u r c e s of

Foucault's

p h i l o s o p h i c a l i n s p i r a t i o n . To E r i b o n , M i l l e r i s a c o m r a d e - i n - a r m s

of

290 b o t h C a m i l l e P a g l i a and T o n y J u d t , the a u t h o r of the f i e r c e l y

anti-

C o m m u n i s t p o l e m i c , Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals,

1956.

He

writes:

rnouvement

"D'autres

phenomenes

de r e a c t i o n

attestent

anti-francaise.

la

1944 -

profondeur

On p o u v a i t

voir

de

dans

ce les

l i b r a i r i e s , i l n'y a pas s i l o n g t e m p s , des p i l e s du l i v r e s de C a m i l l e P a g l i a , qui s ' e n p r e n d a v e c une v i o l e n c e inoui'e a F o u c a u l t , D e r r i d a , L a c a n , e t c " ( E r i b o n 70). F o r h i m , the " a t t a c k s " a g a i n s t J a c q u e s D e r r i d a in the pages of The New York Review

of Books are no j o k e , s i n c e t h e y

were

includes

launched

by

a cabal

which

c o n s e r v a t e u r s et de l a d r o i t e

"a

la

fois

des

neo-

r e a g a n i e n n e , m a i s a u s s i de l a g a u c h e

t r a d i t i o n e l l e " ( E r i b o n 71 - 7 2 ) . T h i s New W o r l d h o s t i l i t y , i t s e e m s , i s not u n m i x e d w i t h c o n t e m p t : " M e m e s i e l l e n ' e s t pas t o u j o u r s

formulee

en t e r m e s a u s s i e x t r e m i s t e s que ceux de C a m i l l e P a g l i a ou de J a m e s M i l l e r , on r e n c o n t r e f r e q u e m m e n t

l ' i d e e qu'au fond l e s F r a n c a i s s o n t

des gens un peu b i z a r r e " (Eribon 72). To be s u r e t h e r e i s much a n t i - F r e n c h s e n t i m e n t in c o n t e m p o r a r y A m e r i c a n l i f e , but

it

i s the l a c k of c o n t e x t

which makes Eribon's

c o m p l a i n t s sound s o m e w h a t s i l l y and even f a n t a s t i c . F r a n c e ' s s t u b b o r n refusal

to

submit

completely

to

American tastes

in the

m a t t e r s of p o p u l a r m u s i c and m o v i e s - a b o u t a t h i r d of t h o s e

cultural markets

are s t i l l " h o m e - g r o w n " - h a s a r o u s e d the i r e of W a s h i n g t o n , H o l l y w o o d , and W a l l S t r e e t ; i t r e m a i n s a p e r e n n i a l bone of c o n t e n t i o n in a l l G A T T t a l k s . T h e r e i s a l s o , on a l e s s e l e v a t e d l e v e l , a k n o w - n o t h i n g ,

knee-jerk

r e s p o n s e a g a i n s t a n a t i o n t h a t i s s e e n as p o m p o u s , o v e r - i n t e l l e c t u a l , and m i l i t a r i l y

ineffective.

Queenan's The Unkindest

The " b o t t o m

line" film

Cut: How a Hatchet flan Critic

$7,000 Movie and Put it All

t e a c h e r in J o e

Made His Own

on His Credit Card i s f a i r l y t y p i c a l w h e n he

291 r e a s s u r e s a E u r o c e n t r i c s t u d e n t w i t h the w o r d s , " R i g h t n o w , e v e r y o n e in

this

room

is

better

than

80

percent

of

f i l m m a k e r s . . . O w r c r a p i s t w e n t y t i m e s betterthtm

those

French

t h e i r c r a p " (Queenan

4 5 ) . What i s " t y p i c a l " about t h i s c h a u v i n i s t r e p l y i s i t s assumptions:

"Of

course,

we're

better.

froggy

Who

needs

self-evident proof?

Or

c o m p a r a t i v e d a t a ? Don't b o t h e r me w i t h the f a c t s ; my m i n d ' s made up." It i s p r e c i s e l y t h i s s o r t of u n c r i t i c a l c o m p l a c e n c y t h a t has a l l o w e d A m e r i c a n s o c i a l s e r v i c e s to s i n k u n i m p e d e d to the b o t t o m r u n g s of the a d v a n c e d d e m o c r a c i e s ; the u n w i l l i n g n e s s to c o m p a r e , the c e r t a i n t y

of

p e r f e c t i o n , a c t s d e c i s i v e l y a g a i n s t the p o s s i b i l i t y of c r o s s - r e f e r e n t i a l i m p r o v e m e n t . What E r i b o n s e e m i n g l y f a i l s to u n d e r s t a n d i s t h a t

this

a t t i t u d e e n c o m p a s s e s not j u s t F r a n c o - A m e r i c a n c u l t u r a l r e l a t i o n s , but e v e r y a s p e c t of m a t e r i a l l i f e ; i t i s not an e x c e p t i o n or a b e r r a t i o n , but a universal American g i v e n - l i k e gravity. One s h o u l d a l s o b e a r in m i n d t h a t A m e r i c a n s , l i k e E n g l i s h m e n and C a n a d i a n s , are s t i l l v a g u e l y i r k e d by the f a c t t h a t F r e n c h c i t i z e n s s e e m to f e e l no g r a t i t u d e f o r t h e i r l i b e r a t i o n f r o m G e r m a n o c c u p a t i o n d u r i n g the S e c o n d W o r l d War. Even a w r i t e r as E u r o p e a n i z e d as Gore V i d a l i s c a p a b l e of w r i t i n g

in h i s m e m o i r s " w e h a d - a l l of u s - w o n the

great

i m p e r i a l w a r , and t h a n k s to u s , the w h o l e w o r l d w a s b r i e f l y A m e r i c a n " ( V i d a l 101). H y p o c r i s y i s a v i c e o f t e n a t t r i b u t e d by A m e r i c a n s to the F r e n c h . Their ability

to r a i l a g a i n s t the " m o t e " of A m e r i c a n r a c i s m

while

r e m a i n i n g s m u g l y b l i n d to the " b e a m " in t h e i r o w n s o c i a l a t t i t u d e s often

is

r e m a r k e d upon by s c h o l a r s and t r a v e l l e r s : " T h e F r e n c h a r e

e n t i r e l y f r a n k in e x p r e s s i n g t h e i r r a c i s m . I w o n d e r e d w h e t h e r t h i s l a c k of d e l i c a c y , i n d e e d s t u p i d i t y , w a s an a b s e n c e or i n h i b i t i o n o r s i m p l y

292 arrogance.

Their

public

offensiveness

ranged

from

smoking

in

r e s t a u r a n t s to t e s t i n g n u c l e a r b o m b s i n t h e P a c i f i c . P e r h a p s t h e y d i d not k n o w t h a t the w o r l d had moved o n , o r p e r h a p s they d i d not c a r e ; o r , m o r e l i k e l y , they d e l i g h t e d i n being o b n o x i o u s " (Theroux 9 1 ) . It w a s not P a u l T h e r o u x w h o w a s t h e p r i n c i p a l o b j e c t of D i d i e r E r i b o n ' s w r a t h , h o w e v e r , but C a m i l l e P a g l i a . " F r e n c h t h e o r y " h a s been d e s c r i b e d by t h a t w o u l d - b e i c o n o c l a s t as an " e p i d e m i c " ( P a g l i a 1 0 1 ) , while

J a c q u e s L a c a n h a s been w r i t t e n

off

as " b o r i n g ,

pompous,

i m p r e c i s e , and a h i s t o r i c a l " ( P a g l i a 2 3 2 ) . Of a l l p e r f i d i o u s t h i n k e r s , t h o u g h , h e r bete noire

French

is unquestionably "Foucault, a glib

g a m e - p l a y e r w h o took v e r y l i t t l e r e s e a r c h a v e r y l o n g w a y , [and] w a s e s p e c i a l l y a t t r a c t i v e to l i t e r a r y a c a d e m i c s in s e a r c h of a s h o r t c u t to understanding

world

history,

anthropology

and p o l i t i c a l

economy"

( P a g l i a 9 9 ) . I n s t e a d of f o l l o w i n g t h e s e f a l s e f o r e i g n s a g e s , " O u r g u i d e s h o u l d be n o t t h e f r i g i d ,

head-tripping

n e r d M i c h e l F o u c a u l t , but

p r o p h e t i c A l l e n G i n s b e r g , w h o f u s e d H i n d u i s m w i t h W a l t W h i t m a n to give

us a r a d i c a l

vision

of

energy,

passion

and s e n s u a l i t y - o f

h o m o s e x u a l i t y grounded i n the a m o r a l r h y t h m s of n a t u r e " ( P a g l i a 1 0 5 ) . In A m e r i c a n t e r m s , t h e r e f o r e , C a m i l l e P a g l i a c a n be s e e n as s o m e o n e w h o w a n t s to r e t u r n to the f o r e s t , s o m e o n e w h o w a n t s to e s c a p e f r o m the ( e x c e s s i v e l y E u r o p e a n i z e d ) p r o b l e m s of the c i t y . She i s a n a t i v i s t i n e a r l y 1 9 t h c e n t u r y t e r m s , not a c u l t u r a l of t h e J a c k V a l e n t i v a r i e t y . S h e , t o o , i s a f f l i c t e d

imperialist with

perceptual

p r o b l e m s of s c a l e , f a i l i n g to s e e h o w l i t t l e i m p a c t the F r e n c h a c o l y t e s she d e t e s t s have had on any p a r t of h e r c o u n t r y outside This

difficulty

h a s been e x a c e r b a t e d both

the academy.

by t h e g e n e r a l

l a c k of

s u c c e s s and r e c o g n i t i o n w h i c h the a u t h o r has been a c c o r d e d w i t h i n t h e

293 c o n f i n e s of the u n i v e r s i t y , and by the o p e n - a r m e d e m b r a c e she has r e c e i v e d f r o m the m a s s m e d i a w h i c h , f o r a t i m e , c o u l d not get enough of h e r b y t e - s i z e d p r o n o u n c e m e n t s i m p o t e n c e of the i n t e l l e c t u a l

on the f r i v o l i t y , m e n d a c i t y ,

and

world.

A l t h o u g h i t l a c k e d the e r u d i t i o n of E r i b o n ' s j e r e m i a d , the open l e t t e r s e n t by the d e s c e n d a n t s of V i c t o r Hugo to the P a r i s i a n d a i l y Liberation

d e a l t w i t h a f a r m o r e s e r i o u s c u l t u r a l p r o b l e m . W r i t t e n in

r e s p o n s e to The Hunchback

of Notre Dame, the a n i m a t e d t r a v e s t y

of

t h e i r a n c e s t o r ' s novel w h i c h D i s n e y S t u d i o s had c u l l e d f r o m Notre Dame de Paris,

t h e s e l a t t e r day Hugos p r o t e s t e d a g a i n s t the e x p r o p r i a t i o n of

a r t by m a s s m e d i a and a d v e r t i s i n g , m a k i n g a c a s e f o r R a v e l ' s Bolero and V e r m e e r ' s La Laitiere

as w e l l as the Saga of Q u a s i m o d o , C l a u d e F r o l l o ,

P i e r r e G r i n g o i r e , and E s m e r a l d a . R h e t o r i c a l l y they a s k e d , " L e s a u t o r i t e s culturelles

de n o t r e p a y s ne d e v r a i e n t - e l l e s

pas r e a g i r

devant

p i l l a g e c o m m e r c i a l de p a t r i m o i n e et r a p p e l e r que l ' u n i v e r s a l i t e

ce

d'une

g e n i e e s t d'une a u t r e n a t u r e que c e t t e ' m o n d i a l i s a t i o n ' v u l g a i r e

des

m a r c h a n d s s a n s s c r u p l e s ? " ( " H a l t du p i l l a g e D i s n e y " 8). The f a c t

that

the

preceding

editorial's

headline

included

an

a n g l i c i s m ( " H a l t " ) adds to the poignancy of the s i t u a t i o n . A s w e have a l r e a d y s e e n , H o l l y w o o d has s t r i p m i n e d F r e n c h c i n e m a in s e a r c h of ( r e m a k e ) i n s p i r a t i o n , e v e n as i t

systematically

shut

out

the

original

p r o d u c t f r o m i t s home s h o r e s . T h e H u g o s ' " u n i v e r s a l i s m " i s f a r l e s s c h a u v i n i s t i c a l l y F r e n c h than i s A l a i n F i n k i e l k r a u t ' s appropriation

of the t e r m . It i s a ch

1789-dependent

de coeur w h i c h

enjoys

equal

r e s o n a n c e in a l l but a f e w c u l t u r a l l y p r i v i l e g e d e n c l a v e s in A s i a ( C h i n a ; I n d i a ; Hong Kong) w h e r e the m a s s m e d i a has not y e t infected

by A m e r i c a n c u l t u r a l

b i a s e s nor d o m i n a t e d

been by

fatally American

294 e c o n o m i c i n t e r e s t s . If not f o r the a s - y e t u n d e t e r m i n e d f i n a l i m p a c t of Japan's massive contribution word

to the p r o c e s s , the n e o - l i b e r a l

" g l o b a l i z a t i o n " w o u l d be a v i r t u a l

catch-

s y n o n y m f o r the f a r

more

ominous " A m e r i c a n i z a t i o n " . I t a l y , n e e d l e s s to s a y , i s not among the happy g l o b a l e x c e p t i o n s to cultural

domination

c i t e d a b o v e . A s w e s a w in C h a p t e r T h r e e ,

the

n a t i o n ' s unique c o n t r i b u t i o n s to the h i s t o r y of a r t - n o o t h e r c o u n t r y has contributed

so m u c h f o r

so l o n g i n so many

different

p a r a d o x i c a l l y not r e s u l t e d in a s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t

ways-have

popular c u l t u r e . The

i n h e r i t o r s of Rome and the R e n a i s s a n c e c o n t i n u e to be net i m p o r t e r s of Top 4 0 m u s i c , m u r d e r m y s t e r i e s , T V s e r i a l s , and m o t i o n p i c t u r e s . Even the " d a m a g e c o n t r o l " t h a t r e h a b i l i t a t e d the c o m m e r c i a l f i l m i n the

industry

1 9 5 0 s , ' 6 0 s , and e a r l y ' 7 0 s has been l a r g e l y undone by m a r k e t

and o t h e r f o r c e s . C u l t u r a l l y s p e a k i n g , I t a l y h a s , i n many w a y s , r e v e r t e d to the ground z e r o w a s t e l a n d of w h i c h G r a m s c i so b i t t e r l y c o m p l a i n e d . Once a g a i n , I t a l i a n c o h e s i o n has s e e m i n g l y been r e d u c e d to the unique n a t u r e of i t s i n s o l u b l e p r o b l e m s . S t i l l , d e s p i t e t h i s r e t u r n to w h a t w o u l d s e e m to be a p a r t i c u l a r l y d e p r e s s i n g f o r m of " n o r m a l i t y " ,

Italian attitudes

t o w a r d s the U n i t e d

S t a t e s have not r e g a i n e d t h e i r f a s c i s t - e r a r o s y g l o w . W h i l e one

still

does not e n c o u n t e r the u n i f i e d , w e l l - r e a s o n e d r e s e n t m e n t of the F r e n c h i n t e l l i g e n t s i a , c r i t i c i s m s of the U n i t e d S t a t e s are f r e q u e n t , e v e n i f they l a c k i d e o l o g i c a l f e r v o r . E v e r s i n c e M i c h e l a n g e l o s e t the tone 2 7 years ago w i t h

Point,

I t a l i a n movies made i n the

Zabriskie

United S t a t e s are anything

but

a d m i r i n g portraits of (Henry) F o r d i a n Utopias. F o r one t h i n g , most of

them deal w i t h c r i m e - n o t a l l of i t of the I t a l o - A m e r i c a n variety (a

295 c r i t i c i s m o f t e n l e v e l l e d a g a i n s t Once Upon a Time in America, L e o n e ' s e p i c s t u d y of Jewish

m o b s t e r s d u r i n g the P r o h i b i t i o n e r a ) . In

a d d i t i o n to F r a n c e s c o R o s i ' s A proposito Palermo

w a s shot from

Lucky Luciano

and To

Forget

an E n g l i s h l a n g u a g e s c r i p t

by G o r e

V i d a l ) , t h i s u n f l a t t e r i n g l i s t i n c l u d e s M a r c o F e r r e r i ' s Tales of

Ordinary

Madness

(which

Sergio

and Ciao

Monkey,

as w e l l

as G i u l i a n o M o n t a l d o ' s Sacco

e

Vanzetti. The s o c i a l c r i t i c i s m i m p l i c i t in P a o l o and V i t t o r i o T a v i a n i ' s Good Morning, follows

Babylonia

i s more s u b t l e than most. T h i s

the a d v e n t u r e s of t w o

Southern California from

their

1987 mock epic

stonemason brothers native

who t r a v e l

to

I t a l y i n s e a r c h of f a m e

and

f o r t u n e i m m e d i a t e l y b e f o r e the outbreak of W o r l d W a r One. S c i o n s of a very t r a d i t i o n a l

family-their

a n c e s t o r s e a r n e d t h e i r d a i l y b r e a d by

b u i l d i n g and r e s t o r i n g c h u r c h e s f o r as long as anyone c o u l d r e r n e m b e r t h e s e Old W o r l d i m m i g r a n t s

find t h e i r new " m a e s t r o " - t h e i r

former

m a s t e r h a v i n g been an e x c e p t i o n a l l y d o m i n e e r i n g f a t h e r - i n the f o r m of D.W. G r i f f i t h ,

the

singlehandedly commercial

immensely

invented

motion

or

talented

revised

American

most

of

the

p i c t u r e . A t the t i m e , G r i f f i t h

h i m s e l f by m a k i n g Intolerance

filmmaker "laws" was

who

of

the

bankrupting

( 1 9 1 6 ) , h i s m o s t g r a n d i o s e p r o j e c t , and

h i s n e w I t a l i a n c o l l a b o r a t o r s are c o n s e q u e n t l y a s k e d to c o n t r i b u t e t h i s a r t i s t i c e x c e s s / e c o n o m i c f o l l y by s c u l p t i n g a b r a c e of

to

dancing

e l e p h a n t s w h i c h w i l l be used to d e c o r a t e B e l s h a z a a r ' s p a l a c e d u r i n g the film's

ruinously

exact

Fall

of

Babylon sequence. Eventually,

they

s u c c e e d , i n the p r o c e s s a d d i n g to the g r a n d e u r not o n l y of the d o o m e d B a b y l o n i a n e m p e r o r , but to h i s e q u a l l y v u l n e r a b l e r e - a n i m a t o r as w e l l .

296 E a r l y on i n t h e f i l m , w e c a t c h G r i f f i t h s c o p i n g e x c e r p t s f r o m t h e e a r l y I t a l i a n e p i c s Quo Vadis and Cabiria,

d e r i v i n g i n s p i r a t i o n f r o m the

w o r l d ' s f i r s t f e a t u r e f i l m s . His d i s c o v e r y , i n o t h e r w o r d s , i s r e a l l y an Italian

d i s c o v e r y , j u s t as the h u s h e d , s h a r e d s e n s e of a w e p r o d u c e d by

the m o t i o n - p i c t u r e v i e w i n g e x p e r i e n c e i s a d i r e c t echo of s i l e n t p r a y e r in v a s t c o n t i n e n t a l

c a t h e d r a l s . When s p e a k i n g to t h e I t a l i a n

boys'

s u s p i c i o u s p a t r i a r c h , G r i f f i t h c o m e s p e r i l o u s l y c l o s e to s a y i n g so i n a s many w o r d s . Movies are a m u t a t i o n

of R o m a n C a t h o l i c i s m , j u s t a s

A m e r i c a n popular culture i s built w i t h E u r o p e a n - o r perhaps we should

say

Italian-bricks. F e d e r i c o F e l l i n i a t t e m p t e d an even m o r e o b l i q u e c r i t i q u e of t h e

U.S. i n Intervista

(1989).

favourite

filmmaker,

foreign

In h i s p e n u l t i m a t e

feature,

the European d i r e c t o r

Hollywood's

who won more

O s c a r s than any o t h e r , r e s o r t e d to a t r i c k he f i r s t t r i e d in 8 / / 2 ( 1 9 6 3 ) . In t h i s , h i s s e c o n d a t t e m p t at m a k i n g a f e a t u r e on t h e s u b j e c t of h i s c h r o n i c i n a b i l i t y to b r i n g s u c h a p r o j e c t to c o m p l e t i o n , t h e a m b i e n c e of the n e v e r to be s t a r t e d f i l m - w i t h - a - f i l m

i s not s c i e n c e f i c t i o n a l but

K a f k a e s q u e . A s F r a n k B u r k e put i t

i n Fellini's

I ntervi

the

sta's

citation

of Amerika,

Films,

"Through

postmodern/postcolonial

p e r m u t a t i o n s b e c o m e e l a b o r a t e and q u i t e c o m i c a l : a C z e c h J e w w r i t e s about A m e r i c a i n G e r m a n and has h i s w o r k a d a p t e d by an I t a l i a n w h o s t a g e s i t as p a r t of an i n t e r v i e w f o r the J a p a n e s e " (Burke 2 8 1 ) . P e r h a p s b e c a u s e he w a s t r e a t e d so w e l l i n A m e r i c a - h i s

films

s o m e t i m e s a c c o m p l i s h e d t h e r a r e m i r a c l e of m a k i n g money i n t h e N e w W o r l d , even a s they g a r n e r e d the u s u a l c r i t i c a l h o n o u r s - F e l l i n i ' s s a t i r e w a s m o r e t h a n a l i t t l e s h o r t on f e r o c i t y . M a r c o F e r r e r i , a f i r s t

rate

I t a l i a n f i l m m a k e r w h o w a s not so f e t e d , d i d not s u f f e r f r o m t h e s a m e

297 r e s t r a i n t s . W h i l e h i s m o v i e s tend not to deal w i t h A m e r i c a they

are ever w a t c h f u l

of the a l l - b u t - i n v i s i b l e

social

directly,

subversions

u s h e r e d in by the ongoing p r o c e s s of g l o b a l i z a t i o n . In i n t e r v i e w s , he i s f a r m o r e e x p l i c i t than he i s o n s c r e e n , c o m p l a i n i n g t h a t " E n I t a l i e , l e s intellectuels l'Amerique"

sont

presque

("Entretien

intellectuels

tous

lies

a une

avec Marco F e r r e r i "

europeens

n'aiment

pas

le

vision

fascinee

de

3 5 ) . Even w o r s e , " L e s

cinema

europeen,

il

ne

c o n s i d e r a i t pas l e u r c i n e m a . Ils s o n t v o i r l e s f i l m s a m e r i c a i n s p a r c e que

c'est

l'Amerique,

l'idee

du v o y a g e . . . . " ( " E n t r e t i e n

avec

Marco

F e r r e r i " 3 5 ) . H o l l y w o o d ' s " n o - b r a i n e r " p o l i c i e s have r e s u l t e d i n f i s c a l s u c c e s s a l l o v e r the globe: " A p a r t le c i n e m a a m e r i c a i n , t o u s l e s a u t r e s c i n e m a s sont e l i t a i r e s , comme l ' e t a i t le t h e a t r e "

("Entretien

avec

M a r c o F e r r e r i " 3 5 ) . The tone of c i n e m a t i c d e b a t e , he c o n t i n u e s , has been r e l e n t l e s s l y debased by m a n a g e r i a l p r e s s u r e : " C ' e s t ce que j e d i s a c e r t a i n s c r i t i q u e s i t a l i e n s : vous p a r l e z de nos f i l m s , m a i s v o s p a t r o n s , l e s d i r e c t e u r s des j o u r n a u x , vous i m p o s e n t d ' e c r i r e s u r S h a r o n S t o n e " ("Entretien

a v e c M a r c o F e r r e r i " 3 6 ) . S a d d e s t of a l l , "11 f a u t d i r e a u s s i

que l e p u b l i c

qui va v o i r l e s f i l m s

americains deteste

le

cinema"

( " E n t r e t i e n avec Marco F e r r e r i " 3 6 ) . F r o m the l a t e 1 9 7 0 s o n w a r d s , the I t a l i a n f i l m i n d u s t r y has c o m e to o c c u p y an i n c r e a s i n g l y m a r g i n a l i z e d p o s i t i o n i n the c i n e m a t i c

food

c h a i n . The d e a t h of a g e n e r a t i o n of g e n i u s ( R o b e r t o R o s s e l l i n i ; L u c h i n o V i s c o n t i ; P i e r P a o l o P a s o l i n i ; V i t t o r i o de S i c a ; F e d e r i c o F e l l i n i ) has not been e a s i l y r e p l a c e d , d e s p i t e the b e s t e f f o r t s of Nanni M o r e t t i

and

Gianni

the

Amelio.

Similarly,

international popularity

the

only

recent

actor

to

rival

of S o p h i a L o r e n , M a r c e l l o M a s t r o i a n n i , G i n a

L o l l o b r i g i d a , and A n n a Magnani i s the m a d c a p c o m i c R o b e r t o B e n i g n i .

298 W h a t ' s m o r e , the c o l o n i z a t i o n of I t a l y by c a b l e T V had a d e l e t e r i o u s e f f e c t on the q u a l i t y of the n a t i o n a l f i l m i n d u s t r y . Even m o r e t h a n i n m o s t p a r t s of the w o r l d , i t tended to dumb t h i n g s d o w n . Even s o , i n c r e a s i n g l y t h e r e are s i g n s t h a t I t a l i a n s w i l l no l o n g e r s u f f e r t h e s e i n d i g n i t i e s in s i l e n c e . A r e c e n t a r t i c l e i n Corriere

della

Sera, f o r e x a m p l e , f u l m i n a t e d a g a i n s t A m e r i c a n c r i t i c R i c h a r d C o r l i s s ' s c o n c l u s i o n t h a t a m e a n i n g f u l I t a l i a n c i n e m a no l o n g e r e x i s t e d : "11 f a t t o e che da un po' di t e m p o c i r c o l a a l i v e l l o i n t e r n a z i o n a l e , s o s t e n u t a da una q u i n t a c o l o n n a di a u t o l e s i o n i s t i n o s t r a m i , un i n s i s t e n t e c a m p a g n a denigratoria

contro

il

cinema italiano, accusato d'esser caduto

grande a l t e z z e a grado z e r o . T a l e v a l u t a z i o n e non ha f o n d a m e n t o r e a l i t a . S a p p i a m o bene che in t u t t i i c a m p i d e l l a c r e a t i v i t a

da

nella

(cinema,

l e t t e r a t u r a , p i t t u r a e m u s i c a ) non s t i a m o v i v e n d o un m o m e n t o m a g i c o c o m e i l v e n t e n n i o s e g u i t o a l i a f i n e d e l l a g u e r r a , ma c o s e buone ed o t t i m e c o n t i n u a n o ad e s s e r c i ed anche a r t i s t i

veteran! o giovani

di

t u t t o r i s p e t t o . Chi a f f e r m a i l c o n t r a r i o e s c i o c c a m e n t e p r e v e n u t o , o c o m e i l c r i t i c o di Time, poco i n f o r m a t o " ( K e z i c h 2 0 ) . One f i n d s s i m i l a r disenchantment p u b l i s h e d in

in

a February

La Repubblica.

12,

1997

article

which

was

first

In t h i s c a s e , the v i l l a i n of the p i e c e i s not

k n o w - n o t h i n g A m e r i c a n c r i t i c s at C a n n e s , but k n o w - n o t h i n g

American

v o t e r s c h a r g e d w i t h the r e s p o n s i b i l i t y of c h o o s i n g 1 9 9 7 ' s A c a d e m y A w a r d s . S i l v i a B i z i o s e e m s to t a k e

it

as a p e r s o n a l

M a d o n n a , of s e l f - c o n s c i o u s l y I t a l o - A m e r i c a n

affront

that

d e s c e n t , w a s not

even

n o m i n a t e d i n the B e s t A c t r e s s c a t e g o r y . In s i m i l a r v e i n , she

attributes

M i n a S o r v i n o ' s n o m i n a t i o n as B e s t S u p p o r t i n g A c t r e s s to the f a c t t h a t the p e r f o r m e r w a s then engaged to A c a d e m y p r e s i d e n t , A r t h u r Most

galling

of

a l l , " I n f i n e , una s o l a p r e s e n z a i t a l i a n a , i l

Hiller. corto

299 m e t r a g g i o Senza Parole

di A n t o n e l l a de L e o , p r o d o t t o d e l l a F i l m T r u s t

I t a l i a e g i a u s c i t o s u g l i s c h e r m i i t a l i a n i ; del r e s t o , e r a p a r s o c h i a r o a t u t t i che l a s c e l t a i t a l i a n a d e l l a Mia

Generazione

come m i g l i o r

film

s t r a n i e r o e r a f a l 1 i t a in p a r t e n z a " ( " L ' O s c a r v e r s o L o n d r a " 3 9 ) . R e m a r k a b l y , d e s p i t e i t s s e e m i n g l y e n d l e s s s e r i e s of s e t b a c k s , no major

I t a l i a n d i r e c t o r has y e t s e t up p e r m a n e n t shop i n t h e

United

S t a t e s of A m e r i c a . To be s u r e , B e r n a r d o B e r t o l u c c i w o r k e d

almost

e x c l u s i v e l y f o r New W o r l d c o m p a n i e s b e t w e e n 1981 and 1 9 9 5 , but even he has m o v e d back to I t a l y . W h a t ' s m o r e , the m o v i e s t h a t he d i d m a k e i n E n g l i s h f o r A n g l o - A m e r i c a n s t u d i o s (The Last Emperor, The Sky; Little

Sheltering

Buddha) w e r e r e s p e c t i v e l y s e t in C h i n a , N o r t h A f r i c a , and

( a n c i e n t and m o d e r n ) India. T h e one A m e r i c a n p r o j e c t he had r e a l l y s e t h i s h e a r t on (a s c r e e n v e r s i o n of Red Harvest, the m o s t e x p l i c i t l y capitalist

of

Dashiell

Hammett's

hardboiled

novels)

was

g r e e n l i g h t e d by any H o l l y w o o d s t u d i o . B e r t o l u c c i m i g h t have

antinever

"flirted"

w i t h A m e r i c a , but a r t i s t i c n u p t i a l s w e r e n e v e r f i n a l i z e d . I n t e r e s t i n g l y e n o u g h , the H o l l y w o o d

incursion which

Italians

s e e m to r e s e n t the least i s the m a d e - i n - U S A M a f i a m o v i e . A s w e r e a d i n The

Godfather

Legacy,

the o f f i c i a l

production

diary

which

was

p u b l i s h e d to c e l e b r a t e the 2 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y of the r e l e a s e of the f i r s t part

of

F r a n c i s Ford Coppola's Cosa Nostra t r i l o g y , " W h i l e

Americans Godfather, recipient

of

I t a l i a n d e s c e n t may

have h e l d g r u d g e s

some

against

The

I t a l i a n s in I t a l y did not. In J u l y 1 9 7 3 , A l Ruddy w a s n a m e d of

the

1973 David Donatello

award

as the

best

foreign

p r o d u c e r of the year... P a c i n o a l s o w o n the D o n a t e l l o a w a r d f o r p e r f o r m a n c e " (Lebo 29).

his

300 In I t a l i a n n e w s p a p e r s , much of the c o m m e n t a r y on the d o i n g s of A m e r i c a n s - m o r e s p e c i f i c a l l y , on the doings of A m e r i c a n n e i t h e r s y c o p h a n t i c nor m a l i c i o u s , but p l a y f u l l y

celebrities-is

lubricious.

Corriere

della Sera w a s c h e e r f u l l y c h a r t i n g the c o u r s e of Mia F a r r o w ' s a l l e g e d a f f a i r w i t h V a c l a v Havel at a t i m e w h e n m o s t A m e r i c a n g o s s i p s h e e t s w e r e u n a w a r e t h a t the a c t r e s s had g o t t e n i n v o l v e d w i t h , n e v e r separated

from,

journalistically

Philip

Roth. P e r c e i v e d

American

mind

puritanism

is

pursued w i t h s p e c i a l enthusiasm. Thus, A l e s s a n d r a

Farkas solemnly

informs

h e r r e a d e r s t h a t U.S. porno

u s e r s on

the

I n t e r n e t m i g h t soon be in f o r a rude c o m e - u p p a n c e : " C o n l a nuova l e g g e , i n v e c e , chiunque t r a f f i c h i v i a I n t e r n e t con i m m a g i n i o p a r o l e ' i n d e c e n t i ' r i s c h i a 2 anni di p r i g i o n e e 2 5 0 m i l a d o l l a r i I n t e r n e t , U s a in g u e r r a " identical

tone

of

problems

of the l a t e s t

di m u l t a " ( " C e n s u r a su

10). S c a r c e l y a m o n t h e a r l i e r , in an a l m o s t

v o i c e , S i l v i a B i z i o had e x p l a i n e d s c r e e n v e r s i o n of Lolita,

the

censorship

pointing

out

that

" M o l t o probabilmente saranno gli europei, e forse proprio gli i t a l i a n i , i p r i m i a v e d e r e i l c o n t r o v e r s o quanto a t t e s o f i l m di A d r i a n L y n e , (Bizio

39).

department, book/film

Not

to

be

outdone

in

the

Lolita"

America-the-straitlaced

Ennio C a r e t t e , i n h i s c o v e r a g e of R o b e r t H u g h e s ' s s e r i e s on the

evolution

of

American

art,

new

p l a y e d up

its

" b l u e n o s e d " a s p e c t s to the h i l t : " L a t e s i e p r o v o c a n t e : p e r c o l p a d e l l e sue p r o f o n d e r a d i c i p u r i t a n e , l ' A m e r i c a non ha m a i e s p r e s s o un grande p i t t o r e del n u d o " ( C a r e t t e 20). T h i s i s b e c a u s e s e x u a l r e p r e s s i o n i s at the h e a r t

of A m e r i c a n e v i l : " Q u e s t a s a r e b b e anche l a m a t r i c e

della

v i o l e n z a nel 1 a s o c i e t a U S A " ( C a r e t e 20). More r a r e l y , I t a l i a n j o u r n a l i s t s poke fun at A m e r i c a n p o l i t i c s and p o l i t i c i a n s . T h i s tendency i s p a r t i c u l a r l y pronounced in a r t i c l e s s u c h as

301 ' " V o g l i a m o J o h n Wayne p r e s i d e n t e ' " , a Corriere think-pieces

that

first

a p p e a r e d on A u g u s t

della

21,

Sera s u i t e

of

1996. A l e s s a n d r a

F a r k a s ' s a p p r o a c h w a s the m o s t t o n g u e - i n - c h e e k , d e s c r i b i n g the " D u k e " as the " m u s a di R i c h a r d N i x o n , eroe di R o n a l d Reagan e i n s p i r a t o r e

di

N e w t G i n g r i c h e Bob D o l e " ( " ' V o g l i a m o J o h n Wayne p r e s i d e n t e ' " 9). F o r M a r c e l l o V e n e z i a n o , on the o t h e r hand, the r u g g e d - l o o k i n g c o w b o y a c t o r is a more almost

s e r i o u s phenomenon, radiating

strength

and r e a c t i o n

in

e q u a l m e a s u r e : "'11 m i t o di J o h n W a y n e ? ' L a d e s t r a U s a lo

alimenta

perche

e il

coagulo

di

tutte

le

culture

conservatrici

a m e r i c a n e . S i c o n t r a p p o n e al m i t o p r o g r e s s i s t a d e l l ' e m a n c i p a z i o n e rappresentato

da

Martin

Luther

King'"

("Intervista

a

Marcello

V e n e z i a n i " 9). On the o t h e r hand, r e a c t i o n a r y though i t i s , t h i s

right-

w i n g m y t h m i g h t a c t u a l l y be of s o m e use to I t a l y : ' " N o n a b b i a m o n u l l a del

genere. La morte

della patria, prima

di

diventare

materia

di

d i b a t t i t o c u l t u r a l e e p o l i t i c o , era g i a n e l l ' i m m a g i n a r i o c o l l e t i v o . Non a c a s o i l n o s t r o c i n e m a non ha p r o d o t t o

grandi eroi p o s i t i v i

alia John

W a y n e ' " ( " I n t e r v i s t a a M a r c e l l o V e n e z i a n i " 9). In p l a c e of the

multi-

f a c e t e d A m e r i c a n m y t h of the opening of the f r o n t i e r , of the t a m i n g of the W e s t , I t a l i a n r e a d e r s and v i e w e r s m u s t c o n t e n t t h e m s e l v e s w i t h the l e s s c o n c l u s i v e , more d i v i s i v e m y t h

of the R i s o r g i m e n t o : ' " L a

n o s t r a f o n d a z i o n e ha a v u t o una s o l a grande r a p p r e n t a z i o n e l e t t e r a r i a e cinematografica,

// Gattopardo,

che pero e l ' e s a t t o

contrario

e p i c a , p e r c h e e l ' e s a l t a z i o n e del d i s i n c a n t o nei c o n f r o n t i

di u n '

del n e o n a t o

s t a t o u n i t a r i o ' " ( " I n t e r v i s t a a M a r c e l l o V e n e z i a n i " 9). W h a t the p r e v i o u s q u o t a t i o n s s u g g e s t i s a v e r y s l i g h t s h i f t

in

e m p h a s i s . W h i l e I t a l y s t i l l f e e l s in s o m e w a y s i n f e r i o r to the U n i t e d S t a t e s in i t s c a p a c i t y as an i n t e g r a l n a t i o n - s t a t e , i t s s o c i o l o g y in s o m e

302 w a y s n o w a p p e a r s s u p e r i o r . To t a k e j u s t one e x a m p l e , r e s p e c t culture

i s c l e a r l y g r e a t e r in M i l a n t h a n i t

i s i n C h i c a g o . In

for

racial

m a t t e r s , I t a l i a n s l i k e w i s e s e e t h e m s e l v e s as m o r e t o l e r a n t t h a n t h e i r U.S. c o u n t e r p a r t s . W h i l e the p r e v i o u s s t a t e m e n t i s only p a r t i a l l y t r u e , i t i s , in any event, far cultural

truer

t h a n the

nearly

identical

c l a i m s m a d e by F r e n c h

c o m m e n t a t o r s . D e s p i t e the a r t i s t i c a l l y

negritude,

liberating spirit

of

and d e s p i t e the p r o m i n e n t p o s i t i o n s of p o w e r a t t a i n e d by a

t i n y h a n d f u l of n o n - w h i t e f r a n c o p h o n e c o l o n i a l s , the s i t u a t i o n of the a v e r a g e d a r k - s k i n n e d F r e n c h c i t i z e n i s now p r o b a b l y w o r s e than t h a t of the a v e r a g e A f r i c a n - A m e r i c a n . A s w e s a w in C h a p t e r T h r e e , even m o s t fascist

I t a l i a n s d i d e v e r y t h i n g i n t h e i r p o w e r to s a v e t h e i r J e w i s h

f e l l o w c i t i z e n s f r o m the d e a t h - c a m p s of the N a z i s ; w e a l s o s a w how the p e o p l e v o t e d e n t h u s i a s t i c a l l y f o r " M i s s N e r a , " the D o m i n i c a n - b o r n M i s s I t a l y , even i f a n u m b e r of p r o m i n e n t j o u r n a l i s t s w e r e d i s p l e a s e d by

the

fact

that

a non-Tuscan, non-Sicilian, was

symbolically

r e p r e s e n t i n g the c o u n t r y in i n t e r n a t i o n a l beauty p a g e a n t s . J o u r n a l i s t i c a m e n d s , h a p p i l y , w e r e s o o n made: "11 c o n c e t t o che i c i t t a d i n i

di uno

s t a t o debbano e s s e r e n e c e s s a r i a m e n t e m e m b r i di uno s t a t o s t i r p e , di un e t n i a , non e

a p p l i c a b i l e ad uno s t a t o m o d e r n o . " ( " L a m i s s di c o l o r e "

12). N e v e r t h e l e s s , d e s p i t e the " h a p p y e n d i n g " to the Denny M e n d e z s t o r y , o f f i c i a l I t a l y ' s i n i t i a l r e a c t i o n to her beauty queen c l e a r l y l e f t a s c a r i n the n a t i o n a l c o n s c i o u s n e s s . It i s a v i r t u a l

a r t i c l e of f a i t h i n

I t a l y t h a t i n d i g e n o u s h a t r e d s are r e g i o n a l , not i n t e r n a t i o n a l (hence the d e s i r e of La Lega del Nord to r e p l a c e T u s c a n I t a l i a n w i t h a b e w i l d e r i n g v a r i e t y of l o c a l d i a l e c t s - i n c l u d i n g b r e s c i a n o , u d i n e s e , e t c . - e m p l o y i n g

303 f o r e i g n t o n g u e s s u c h as E n g l i s h f o r i n t e r n a l c o m m u n i c a t i o n s

between

p r o v i n c e s and c i t i e s ) . A t t e m p t s to s a l v e the p o p u l a r c o n s c i e n c e have c o m e in a n u m b e r of w a y s , m o s t c o m m o n l y in the p h r a s i n g of

interview

q u e s t i o n s . If not f o r the " M i s s N e r a " i n c i d e n t , f o r e x a m p l e , i t s e e m s m o s t u n l i k e l y t h a t the A f r i c a n s u p e r m o d e l Iman w o u l d have been c o a x e d to p r o v i d e the f o l l o w i n g a n s w e r s . When A l e s s a n d r a F a r k a s a s k e d the world-famous

mannequin

S t a t e s , she p r o m p t l y

if

she e x p e r i e n c e d r a c i s m

in the

United

r e p l i e d " Q u o t i d i a n a m e n t e , " p r i o r to p r o v i d i n g a

l o n g l i s t of e v e r y d a y e x a m p l e s ( " I m a n : 'Io e B o w i e p r o n t i a c a m b i a r e v i t a p e r un f i g l i o ' " 2 2 ) . When, h o w e v e r , she w a s a s k e d about m o d e l l i n g o p p o r t u n i t i e s f o r n o n - w h i t e s in I t a l y , Iman e n t h u s e d : ' " G l i i t a l i a n i sono s e m p r e s t a t i a l l ' a v a n g u a r d i a n e l l ' a p p r e z z a r e le donne n e r e . In n e s s u n a l t r o P a e s e o c c i d e n t a l e c o s i t a n t e m o d e l l e di c o l o r e f i n i s c o n o s u l l a c o p e r t i n a del 1 e r i v i s t e . P e r i v o s t r i u o m i n i l a b e l l e z z a non ha c o l o r e ' " ( " I m a n : 'Io e B o w i e p r o n t i a c a m b i a r e v i t a p e r un f i g l i o ' " 2 2 ) . A l l t h i s s h o u l d not, of c o u r s e , delude the r e a d e r i n t o t h i n k i n g t h a t I t a l y i s an e n t i r e l y

classless, colour-blind

society. As we saw

in

C h a p t e r T h r e e , the s o c i a l s t r i c t u r e s k e e p i n g p e o p l e i n t h e i r p l a c e are firmly

f i x e d , even if

the

same s t r i c t u r e s

are r a r e l y

imposed

on

f o r e i g n e r s . T h e i r f r e e d o m f r o m the p r e s s u r e to c o n f o r m , h o w e v e r , i s a c c o m p a n i e d by an u n a v o i d a b l e s o c i a l p r i c e t a g . P a u l T h e r o u x made t h i s d i s c o v e r y i n I t a l y , h i s f a v o u r i t e c o u n t r y in E u r o p e , a f t e r v i s i t i n g

the

v i l l a g e w h e r e C a r l o L e v i had been i m p r i s o n e d under M u s s o l i n i . T h e r o u x w a s s h o c k e d to d i s c o v e r t h a t many v i l l a g e r s did not c o n s i d e r the a u t h o r of Cristo

si e fermato

a Eboli to be I t a l i a n : " T h e man who had s u f f e r e d

e x i l e and made A l i a n o f a m o u s in t h i s w o n d e r f u l book w a s not an I t a l i a n , a f t e r a l l , but j u s t a J e w . . . T h e s e t w o men w e r e not a n t i - s e m i t e s . T h e y

304 w e r e v i l l a g e r s . E v e r y o n e who v i s i t e d w a s m e a s u r e d by the s t a n d a r d s of the v i l l a g e , and w h e n i t c a m e to n a t i o n a l i t y the s t a n d a r d s had s t r i c t l i m i t s " ( T h e r o u x 199). M i s s N e r a m i g h t be M i s s I t a l y , i n o t h e r w o r d s , but at s o m e l e v e l she i s s t i l l M i s s Nera. In f i l m and j o u r n a l i s m , t h e r e f o r e , w e can c l e a r l y s e e n e w

Italian

t r e n d s d e v e l o p i n g in r e g a r d to A m e r i c a , t r e n d s t h a t are much c l o s e r to contemporary

French parabolas

than

were

their

p r e d e c e s s o r s . In

l i t e r a t u r e , h o w e v e r , the p e r s p e c t i v e i s q u i t e d i f f e r e n t . In the books and e s s a y s of U m b e r t o Eco and I t a l o C a l v i n o one no l o n g e r e n c o u n t e r s , i n s y m b o l i c f o r m , r e p r e s e n t a t i v e s of a c h a o t i c y o u n g e r r e p u b l i c p a y i n g tribute

to

a larger, more

s u c c e s s f u l d e m o c r a c y , in the

hopes

of

d i s c o v e r i n g s o m e t h i n g l o c a l l y u s e f u l , but, r a t h e r , a s c h o o l of w i s e and w o r l d l y " G r e e k s " a t t e m p t i n g to e x p l a i n the w o r l d to a r i s i n g r a c e of young " R o m a n s " w h o s e s u r f e i t of b r a w n i s m a t c h e d o n l y by t h e i r l a c k of

tact

and

sophistication.

If

this

description

sounds

a

tad

c o n d e s c e n d i n g , the r e a d e r s h o u l d b e a r in m i n d t h a t , 2 , 0 0 0 y e a r s a g o , I t a l y w a s i t s e l f the rude s u p e r p o w e r i n need of i n s t r u c t i o n f r o m a m o r e cultivated

but l e s s p o t e n t

civilization. Thus, contemporary

i n t e l l e c t u a l s are p a r t i c u l a r l y s e n s i t i v e to the n u a n c e s of p o w e r , w a y s in w h i c h a c o u n t r y can s h i f t f r o m one r o l e to these

latterday

inevitably

"Greeks"

are w r i t i n g

at

the

end of

Italian to the

the o t h e r . T h a t a

millennium

adds e x t r a f u e l to t h e i r p r o g n o s t i c a t i o n s . T h e c o u r s e of

W e s t e r n h i s t o r y (the r i s e and f a l l of G r e e c e and R o m e ; the a s c e n s i o n of C h r i s t i a n i t y ) endows their texts w i t h a certain authority

t h a t i s as

m u c h c i r c u m s t a n t i a l as i t i s d i e g e t i c . U m b e r t o E c o ' s Dalla perifera

delllmpero

these rather mournful, w o r l d - w e a r y

w a s one of the f i r s t of

m e d i t a t i o n s . T h i s mock Roman

305 " h i s t o r y " i n c l u d e s the L a t i n d e d i c a t i o n , " A d G e r a l d u m F o r d u m B a l b u l u m F o e d e r a t e r u m I n d i a g r u m ad O c c a s u m V e r g e n t i u m C i v i t a t e m P r i n c i p e m " ( D a l l a o e r i f e r a d e l l ' I m o e r o 107).

T h e e m p i r e the a u t h o r s u r v e y s i s

a l r e a d y i n a s e v e r e s t a t e of d e c l i n e , s l i d i n g f r o m i m p e r i a l g r a n d e u r to m e d i e v a l decay: " D ' a l t r a p a r t e l a grande c i t t a , che oggi non e i n v a s a da b a r b a r i b e l l i g e r a n t i e d e v a s t a t a da i n c e n d i , s o f f r e di s c a r s i t a di a c q u a , c r i s i d e l T e n e r g i a e l e t t r i c a d i s p o n i b i l e , p a r a l i s i del t r a f f i c o "

(Dalla

o e r i f e r a d e l l ' Imoero 199). F o r E c o , A m e r i c a i s no l o n g e r the n u t s and b o l t s , n o - n o n s e n s e l a n d of Henry F o r d , but a r a t h e r e f f e t e r e f u g e langorous fantasy: " G l i europei

colti

e gli

americani

p e n s a n o a g l i S t a t i U n i t i c o m e a l i a p a t r i a dei g r a t t a c i e l i

of

europeizzati di v e s t r i e

a c c l a i o , e d e l l ' e s p r e s s i o n i s m o a s t r a t t o . Ma g l i S t a t i U n i t i sono anche l a p a t r i a di S u p e r m a n . . . . " ( D a l l a o e r i f e r a d e l l ' l m p e r o America

primarily

as a land

of

m u s e u m s , of

14). Eco t h i n k s which

of

Superman's

i m a g i n a r y F o r t r e s s of S o l i t u d e - w h i c h i n c l u d e s , a m o n g o t h e r

things,

r e l i c s and m o d e l s of h i s l o s t home w o r l d , K r y p t o n - a s the m o s t

perfect

e x a m p l e of t h i s phenomenon. E c o ' s tone i s l i g h t , f u n n y , t h o u g h t f u l , and d e t a c h e d t h r o u g h o u t . He i s a c o m p l e t e s t r a n g e r to the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s b r i l l i a n c e and c o m p l a c e n t d e s p a i r of, s a y , J e a n B a u d r i l l a r d . He s p e a k s w i t h the v o i c e of a p e o p l e t h a t l o s t c o n t r o l of the r u d d e r of the so l o n g a g o , i t

now e x i s t s s o l e l y as a v a g u e , v e s t i g i a l

world

m e m o r y . He

t h i n k s l i k e a T h i r d - C e n t u r y A t h e n i a n in the Rome of C o n s t a n t i n e . When w r i t i n g about A m e r i c a , E c o , good p o s t m o d e r n i s t t h a t he i s , m a k e s a p o i n t of t r e a t i n g e v e r y t h i n g w i t h the s a m e d e g r e e of m i r t h and s e r i o u s n e s s . T h u s , the e m o t i o n a l Peanuts

interdynamics

of the c o m i c

a r e t r e a t e d w i t h the s a m e c l e a r - e y e d s o b r i e t y w i t h

international

strip which

p o l i t i c s are d i s s e c t e d : " L a t r a g e d i a e che C h a r l i e B r o w n

306 non e i n f e r i o r e .

Peggio: e assolutamente

normale.

E come

tutti"

( A p o c a l i t t i c i e integrati 269). L i k e E c o , h i s n e a r - c o n t e m p o r a r y , I t a l o C a l v i n o t e n d e d to l o o k at the U n i t e d S t a t e s not so m u c h as a n e w , but as a p r e m a t u r e l y

aged,

w o r l d . In the p u b l i s h e d t e x t of the s i x N o r t o n l e c t u r e s he d e l i v e r e d i n t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s , one f i n d s p r e c i o u s f e w writers

and l i t e r a t u r e .

Although

r e f e r e n c e s to

he w a s t e c h n i c a l l y

American

born i n

Cuba,

C a l v i n o ' s e d u c a t i o n and thought p r o c e s s e s w e r e i n t e n s e l y E u r o c e n t r i c . W h a t he l i k e s m o s t thoroughgoing

in A n g l o - S a x o n w r i t i n g i s w h a t r e m i n d s

avant-guardist

that

he i s - m o s t

of

his

him-

continent's

c l a s s i c a l p a s t : " C o m ' e p r o v a t o p r o p r i o dai due g r a n d i a u t o r i del n o s t r o s e c o l o che p i u s i r i c h i a m a n o al M e d i o e v o , T . S . E l i o t e J a m e s J o y c e , e n t r a m b i con una f o r t e c o n s a p e v o l e z z a t e o l o g i c a ( s i a pur con d i v e r s e i n t e n z i o n i ) " ( L e z i o n e A m e r i c a n e 1 13). Unlike

Cesare

Pavese

and A n t o n i o

Gramsci,

Eco and

Calvino

a c t u a l l y got to v i s i t the U n i t e d S t a t e s . T h e i r d e s i r e and need to do s o , h o w e v e r , w e r e n o w h e r e n e a r as g r e a t . T h e i r a t t i t u d e s t o w a r d s the New W o r l d w e r e i n s p i r e d not by hopes and d r e a m s , but by d i r e c t o b s e r v a t i o n . Even s o , the v a n i s h e d A m e r i c a of P a v e s e , C e c c h i , and V i t t o r i n i i s s t i l l s o m e t i m e s invoked for ironic effect. For example, this c h e e k n o s t a l g i a i s the n a r r a t i v e

engine p r o p e l l i n g

tongue-in-

"Henry Ford," a

f i c t i t i o u s i n t e r v i e w w i t h the g r e a t A m e r i c a n a u t o m o b i l e

manufacturer,

w h i c h a p p e a r e d in a p o s t h u m o u s l y - p u b l i s h e d c o l l e c t i o n of C a l v i n o ' s short

s t o r i e s and n o v e l l a s . When the Y a n k e e p r a g m a t i s t ' s

unnamed

i n t e r l o c u t o r a s k s , " C h i piu di Henry F o r d ha dato f o r m a al n o s t r o modo di v i v e r e ? " ( R o m a n z i e r a c c o n t i

1 9 8 ) , F o r d r u d e l y a n n o u n c e s t h a t he

w o u l d p r e f e r to speak about n o t h i n g but b i r d s . Even a f t e r the

inventor

307 f i n a l l y g e t s the b e t t e r of h i s o w n p e r v e r s i t y , he c o n t i n u e s to s p e a k to h i s I t a l i a n v i s i t o r as i f the g u l f b e t w e e n Old W o r l d and New w e r e of inter-planetary

d i m e n s i o n s - w h i c h , i n a s e n s e , t h e y a r e . One c o u l d

h a r d l y i m a g i n e an I t a l i a n f r a m i n g the f o l l o w i n g s e n t e n c e : " L a m o d a e una del 1 e f o r m e di s p r e c o che io d e t e s t o " ( R o m a n z i e r a c c o n t i E l s e w h e r e , Ford trumpets

the

dated

cliches which

201).

once s t r u c k

a

r e s p o n s i v e c o r d in T u s c a n s and S i c i l i a n s of a l l p o l i t i c a l p e r s u a s i o n s : " L a gente che f a c e v a l a coda al n o s t r o u f f i c i o d e l l e a s s u n z i o n i e r a una f o l i a di i t a l i a n i , di g r e c i , di p o l a c c h i , di u c r a i n i , e m i g r a n t i da t u t t e l e province

dell'

impero

russo

e dell'

impero

austro-ungarico,

che

parlavano lingue e d i a l e t t i i n c o m p r e n s i b i l i " (Romanzi e racconti 203). T o each of t h e s e w r e t c h e d and h o m e l e s s w a n d e r e r s , a s l i c e of " A m e r i c a p i e " w a s served: "Ho f a t t o i m p a r a r e loro l ' i n g l e s e e i v a l o r i nostra

morale...

f amiglie...."

Sono d i v e n t a t i

(Romanzi e racconti

cittadini

americani,

2 0 3 ) . S o m e of the

loro

della e

loro

"crackerbarrel

p h i l o s o p h e r ' s " h o m e s p u n h o m i l i e s are t r a n s l a t e d l i t e r a l l y

for

comic

e f f e c t : "11 t e m p o e d e n a r o " ( R o m a n z i e r a c c o n t i 2 0 7 ) . Indeed, m a k e s t h i s s a t i r i c a l p i e c e so w i c k e d l y funny i s i t s b r i l l i a n t

what

conflation

of F o r d ' s s e l f - e v a l u a t i o n w i t h the e n v i o u s I t a l i a n a p p r a i s a l s of

the

1930s. Calvino's imaginary

six

transcript

wittily

s p a n s at

least

d e c a d e s of m u t a t i n g i d e a s . Younger I t a l i a n w r i t e r s , c o n v e r s e l y , tend to t r e a t A m e r i c a m o r e m a t t e r - o f - f a c t l y . The n a r r a t o r of Treno di panna, f o r i n s t a n c e , does not f l y to A m e r i c a to pay homage at the g r a v e s i d e s of E d g a r A l l a n P o e , H e r m a n M e l v i l l e , and W i l l i a m F a u l k n e r . L i k e young p e o p l e on b o t h s i d e s of the A t l a n t i c n o w a d a y s , he i s s o m e w h a t d e r a c i n a t e d , a b i t of a d r i f t e r . He o b s e r v e s the q u o t i d i a n m i n u t i a e of C a l i f o r n i a n l i f e w i t h the

308 a f f e c t l e s s c a l m of a s u r v e i l l a n c e c a m e r a : Guardavo T r a c y n e l l a l u c e di neon: l a s u a f a c c i a m a r c a t a

di r a g a z z a c a l i f o r n i a n a ,

i tratti

cosi

e s p l i c i t i del 1 e s o p r a c c i g l i a e del n a s o ; g l i o c c h i r a p i d i " (De C a r l o 5). Initially, his friends

are m a i n l y

Italian,

and t h e n t h e y a r e not. T h e

n a r r a t o r s e e m i n g l y has v e r y l i t t l e t o l e r a n c e f o r e m i g r e E u r o p e a n s w h o fail

to a d a p t to c h a n g e d s u r r o u n d i n g s : " P a r l a v a i n g l e s e m o l t o

s e n z a r i u s c i r e ad a r t i c o l a r e i s u o n i g i u s t i "

male,

(De C a r l o 4 7 ) . So f a r as

c u l t u r e i s c o n c e r n e d , he i s as blank as the m o s t b l i s s e d - o u t s u r f e r boy: " U n m i n u t o dopo m i ha c h i e s t o ' C o m e m a i s e i venuto a L o s A n g e l e s ? ' Non s a p e v o c o s a r i s p o n d e r e ; ero i m b a r r a z a t o e s t a n c e Ho d e t t o ' P e r i l s u c c e s s o ' . L e i mi guardava di l a t a , con a r i a p e r p l e s s a . Mi ha c h i e s t o " M a s u c c e s s o in c o s a ? ' S e m b r a v o in q u a l c h e modo a n s i o s a . Ho d e t t o 'Non lo s o ' " (De C a r l o 7 2 ) . Up u n t i l n o w , w e have m a i n l y c o n s i d e r e d the c r i t i c a l r e a c t i o n s of F r e n c h and I t a l i a n i n t e l l e c t u a l s to le defi americain.

A s the r e a d e r has

been f o r e w a r n e d s e v e r a l t i m e s a l r e a d y t h r o u g h o u t the c o u r s e of

this

d e b a t e , w e have r e a c h e d the p o i n t i n o u r d i s c o u r s e w h e n a f o u r t h c u l t u r a l a c t o r m u s t be p e r m i t t e d to a s c e n d the t h e o r e t i c a l

stage. For

r e a s o n s of b a l a n c e and p e r s p e c t i v e , we m u s t now s h i f t our a t t e n t i o n to a g e o g r a p h i c a l " b r i d g e " w h i c h w a s once p a r t of the F r e n c h E m p i r e and which

is

currently

one

of

"Uncle

Sam's"

closest

geographical

n e i g h b o u r s . I am r e f e r r i n g , of c o u r s e , to the p r o v i n c e of Q u e b e c , the f o r m e r F r e n c h c o l o n y w h i c h w a s a n n e x e d by the B r i t i s h i n t e r m s of l a t e t w e n t i e t h - c e n t u r y region tends common

to

to r e f l e c t the

struggle

most for

1 7 6 1 . In

globalization, Canada's most of the

s t r e s s e s and s t r a i n s

cultural

identity

at

the

distinct that

end

of

are the

m i l l e n n i u m . W h i l e , as w e have s e e n , a n a t i o n s u c h as I t a l y m i g h t no

309 l o n g e r be a g l o b a l p l a y e r w h e n i t c o m e s to s h a p i n g u n i v e r s a l

attitudes

and t h o u g h t s , in many w a y s i t r e m a i n s s t r o n g enough to p r o t e c t i t s o w n i n t e g r a l b o r d e r s . So much cannot be s a i d f o r m o s t s m a l l e r n a t i o n s and e t h n i c e n c l a v e s . A l l too o f t e n , they f i n d t h e m s e l v e s b l o w n to and f r o by cultural

winds

over which

they

exercise little

c o n t r o l . Even

more

g a l l i n g to t h o s e i n v o l v e d , they are f r e q u e n t l y not even n o t i c e d by the larger

political

entities

which

see l i t t l e

besides their

principal

o p p o n e n t s i n the s t r u g g l e f o r g l o b a l p o w e r . To c a l c u l a t e the m o r e ranging i m p l i c a t i o n s intellectuals

for

of the l o n g - t e r m

cultural

struggle

h e g e m o n y , the

far-

of F r a n c o - A m e r i c a n

history

of

the

Quebecois

p r o v i d e s an a l m o s t p e r f e c t p a r a d i g m . ( W h a t ' s m o r e , s i n c e Q u e b e c o i s c o m m e n t a t o r s on F r a n c o - A m e r i c a n r e l a t i o n s have been m a k i n g c a m e o a p p e a r a n c e s s i n c e the Barbarians,"

this

early

shift

p a g e s of

in

" A m o n g the

emphasis

should

not

(More

Avanced)

prove

unduly

disorienting). A s w e s a w i n C h a p t e r One, the B o u r b o n m o n a r c h y a c c e p t e d the l o s s of m o s t of New F r a n c e as a m i n o r s e t b a c k o c c u r r i n g w i t h i n the g l o b a l c o n t e x t of the Seven Y e a r s ' War. P e r h a p s i n f l u e n c e d by V o l t a i r e ' s f a m o u s d i s m i s s a l of h i s n a t i o n ' s n o r t h e r n m o s t d i d v e r y l i t t l e to p r o t e c t

i t s arpents

possession, Versailles

de neiges.

W h i l e Quebec w a s

m i l i t a r i l y c o n q u e r e d by the a r m i e s of the B r i t i s h E m p i r e , y e a r s of F r e n c h n e g l e c t w e r e p r i m a r i l y r e s p o n s i b l e f o r the c o l o n y ' s d e f e a t . New F r a n c e had e f f e c t i v e l y been abandoned by one European s u p e r - p o w e r a c e n t u r y b e f o r e i t w a s a b s o r b e d by another. F o r our p u r p o s e s , t h i s has r e s u l t e d in a v e r y i n t e r e s t i n g As

we

saw

experienced

earlier, strong

French pangs

of

readers

of

nostalgia

the when

early

situation.

19th

reading

century

about

the

310 territories

they

had so r e c e n t l y

Chateaubriand's popularity

lost.

It

w a s no c o i n c i d e n c e

that

p e a k e d a r o u n d the t i m e of the L o u i s i a n a

P u r c h a s e , the r e a l e s t a t e deal t h a t p e r m a n e n t l y cut the u m b i l i c a l c o r d b e t w e e n F r a n c e and the New W o r l d . W i t h the r i s e of the U n i t e d S t a t e s as

a major

e c o n o m i c p l a y e r and p o t e n t i a l

military

giant,

Gallic

a t t i t u d e s changed once a g a i n . By r e v o l t i n g a g a i n s t the B r i t i s h C r o w n , the n e w n a t i o n of A m e r i c a had b e c o m e s o m e t h i n g n e w and u n s e t t l i n g , an e n t i t y made up e q u a l l y of hope f o r the f u t u r e and i m p l i c i t t h r e a t to E u r o p e a n h e g e m o n y ; at one and the s a m e t i m e , i t

was a welcoming

enemy and a d i s q u i e t i n g f r i e n d . B e c a u s e the v e r y e x i s t e n c e of the young r e p u b l i c t h r e a t e n e d u n d e r m i n e the f o u n d a t i o n s of F r e n c h amour propre,

it

to

understandably

d r e w the l i o n ' s s h a r e of c r i t i c a l a t t e n t i o n . F r o m A l e x i s de T o c q u e v i l l e to S i m o n e de B e a u v o i r , the p r o v i n c e of Quebec f i g u r e d m a i n l y as a s a d footnote

to

the

g r a n d e u r of

France's imperial

p a s t , as a d o o m e d

a n o m a l y w i t h i n the anglophone v a s t n e s s of the U.S. I m p e r i u m . In many c a s e s , i t f u n c t i o n e d p r i m a r i l y as a g i a n t B e r l i t z s c h o o l , a p l a c e f o r f r a n c o p h o n e w r i t e r s to p e r f e c t t h e i r E n g l i s h w h i l e c o n t i n u i n g to o r d e r t a x i r i d e s and d i n n e r s en francais.

G e o r g e s S i m e n o n began h i s

t e n - y e a r s o j o u r n in N o r t h A m e r i c a in p r e c i s e l y t h i s f a s h i o n , p r e p a r i n g f o r h i s j o u r n e y s o u t h i n f r a n c o p h o n e M o n t r e a l . O r i g i n a l l y , he had m e r e l y been a s k e d to e s t a b l i s h c o n t a c t s w i t h Q u e b e c o i s p u b l i s h e r s : " ' Q u e diriez-vous

d'une

mission

aupres

des

editeurs

anglo-saxons

et

c a n a d i e n s ? . . . L e s C a n a d i e n s s o n t i m p o r t a n t s , c a r on p a r l e f r a n g a i s au Quebec'"

(Memoires

intimes

125). A f t e r a f e w m o n t h s i n la

belle

province,

the B e l g i a n c r i m e n o v e l i s t s e t up s t a k e s i n t h e A m e r i c a n

h e a r t l a n d f o r a s o l i d d e c a d e . D e s p i t e the e a s e of c o m m u n i c a t i o n ,

it

31 1 w o u l d s e e m t h a t Quebec did not r e a l l y speak to the w e l l s p r i n g s of h i s creative imagination. • n e r e a s o n f o r t h i s w a s , p e r h a p s , h i s i n a b i l i t y to s e e beyond the d i s t o r t i n g m i r r o r of Maria Chapdelaine. by

French

globe-trotter

Louis

That early 20th century novel,

Hemon,

had

created

Quebecois

s t e r e o t y p e s as c l o y i n g l y i n d e l i b l e as H a r r i e t B e e c h e r S t o w e ' s A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n s l a v e s . W h i l e to s o m e e x t e n t H e m o n ' s n a r r a t i v e p e r i o d f a c t - s o , f o r t h a t m a t t e r , d i d Uncle unfortunate

effect

of t u r n i n g

shifting

Tom's

reflected

Cabin\-it

social mores into

had the permanent

a r c h e t y p e s . In H e m o n ' s u n i v e r s e , F r e n c h C a n a d i a n s w e r e s o n s of the s o i l the w a y t h a t r o b i n s w e r e b i r d s of the t r e e s ; they w e r e r u r a l p a t r i a r c h s who took o r d e r s f r o m t h e i r w i v e s in p r i v a t e , and l i v e d in t e r r o r of the p a r i s h p r i e s t . A b o v e a l l , they w e r e k e e p e r s of the flame, traditional

p e o p l e w h o w o u l d i g n o r e the

English-dominated

c i t i e s and p r o t e c t t h e i r f a r m s . A t one p o i n t in Maria

Chapdelaine,

the e p o n y m o u s h e r o i n e

is

t e m p t e d to move s o u t h . W h i l e l i s t e n i n g to a s w e e t - t a l k i n g U . S . - b a s e d suitor,

Maria's

mind

wanders,

"en

songeant

aux

grandes

cites

a m e r i c a i n e s " (Hemon 191). T h e n she h e a r s a n o t h e r i n n e r v o i c e " [ q u i ] s ' e l e v a c o m m e un r e p o n s e . L a - b a s s ' e t a i t autre

race parlant

d'autre

T e t r a n g e r : des gens d'une

c h o s e dans une a u t r e

langue,

chantant

d ' a u t r e s c h a n s o n s . . . . " (Hemon 191). T h i s s i r e n song c a r r i e s g r e a t w e i g h t w i t h M a r i a C h a p d e l a i n e : " [ e l l e ] s o r t i t de son r e v e et s o n g e a : ' A l o r s j e v a i s r e s t e r i c i ...de m e m e " (Hemon 195). F o r a l l t h e i r r u s t i c

charm,

H e m o n ' s paisans are t h o r o u g h - g o i n g xenophobes: " L o r s q u e l e s C a n a d i e n s f r a n c a i s parlent d'eux-memes, i l s disent toujours Canadien, sans plus; et a t o u t e s l e s a u t r e s r a c e s qui ont d e r r i e r e eux peuple l e p a y s j u s q u ' a u

312 P a c i f i q u e , i l s ont garde pour p a r l e r d ' e l l e s l e u r s a p p e l l a t i o n s d ' o r i g i n e : A n g l a i s , I r l a n d a i s , P o l o n a i s , ou R u s s e , s a n s a d m e t t r e un s e u l

instant

que l e u r s f i l s , m e m e nes dans l e p a y s , p u i s s e n t p r e t e n d r e a u s s i au nom de C a n a d i e n s " (Hemon 71 - 7 2 ) . S t i l l , even i f L o u i s H e m o n ' s o u t s i d e o b s e r v a t i o n s did e v e n t u a l l y o s s i f y i n t o a c o l l e c t i o n of c l i c h e s , at l e a s t he t o o k t h e t r o u b l e

to

i n t e r e s t h i m s e l f in the l i v e s of the Q u e b e c o i s . T h i s i s s o m e t h i n g t h a t F r e n c h i n t e l l e c t u a l s have t r a d i t i o n a l l y f a i l e d to do. On the o t h e r h a n d , the m y t h of M a r i a C h a p d e l a i n e u n q u e s t i o n a b l y had a p a r a l y z i n g e f f e c t on Q u e b e c o i s c u l t u r e u n t i l w e l l i n t o the 1 9 5 0 s . T h e r u r a l v a l u e s of the nineteenth-century

c o n t i n u e d to be p i o u s l y p r e a c h e d l o n g a f t e r

the

m a j o r i t y of F r e n c h C a n a d i a n s had b e c o m e urban d w e l l e r s . T h i s f o r m u l a a l l o w e d f o r l i t t l e beyond h e r o i c b a t t l e s b e t w e e n the e a r l y s e t t l e r s and les affreux

sauvages

and s t o i c t a l e s of s i m p l e f a r m e r s who r e m a i n e d

r o o t e d to the s o i l and t h e i r old w a y s no m a t t e r w h a t . M o s t of the e a r l y Quebecois motion

p i c t u r e s - t h a n k s to o b d u r a t e o p p o s i t i o n f r o m

Roman C a t h o l i c C h u r c h , Quebec's f i r s t true f i c t i o n released until

feature was

the not

1 9 4 3 - a n d r a d i o r o m a n s w e r e f i r m l y r o o t e d in t h i s e t h o s .

W h i l e a n u m b e r of p o e t s , s u c h as the h a l f - I r i s h

E m i l e N e l l i g a n , did

manage to e s c a p e f r o m t h i s s t u l t i f y i n g r e l i g i o - c u l t u r a l e m b r a c e , m o s t narrative

fiction

was inertly

i m m u r e d i n i t . Up u n t i l

1960,

c h a n g e d m o r e s l o w l y i n Quebec t h a n t h e y d i d i n t h e r e s t of

things North

A m e r i c a . A f t e r t h a t d a t e , they changed w i t h s u c h b l i n d i n g s p e e d t h a t i n t e r e s t e d p a r t i e s are s t i l l s t r u g g l i n g to c a t c h up. The Q u i e t and t h e n the Not So Q u i e t R e v o l u t i o n s e a r n e d b i g d i v i d e n d s i n t e r m s of n o v e l s , m o v i e s , and p l a y s t h a t l o o k e d at l o c a l l i f e i n n e w and ways.

U n s u r p r i s i n g l y , many

of

these

works

were

invigorating

concerned

with

313 s i t u a t i n g t h e Q u e b e c o i s i n a l a r g e r w o r l d w h e r e they d i d n o t , a s a r u l e , f e e l at home. T h e f i r s t and m o s t b a s i c c u l t u r a l change c a m e w i t h t h e d e c i s i o n to w o r k i n joual. B e g i n n i n g w i t h M i c h e l T r e m b l a y ' s e a r l y p l a y s , s u c h a s Les Belles

soeurs,

and t h e u n s c r i p t e d NFB F r e n c h u n i t d o c u m e n t a r i e s

s h o t i n the e a r l y ' 6 0 s s t y l e k n o w n a s cinema direct,

t h e language of t h e

p e o p l e began to r e p l a c e f o r m a l P a r i s i a n F r e n c h i n a r t i s t i c d i s c o u r s e . Un joualanais,

sa joualanie,

an e a r l y M a r i e - C l a i r e B l a i s n o v e l , d e a l t w i t h

t w i n s o l i t u d e s o t h e r than t h e i n f a m o u s ones b e t w e e n E n g l i s h - and F r e n c h - s p e a k i n g Q u e b e c e r s . I n s t e a d , s h e c h o s e to f o c u s on t h e r i f t b e t w e e n s p e a k e r s of " e d u c a t e d " and " u n e d u c a t e d " F r e n c h . A s w e s a w in C h a p t e r One, t h i s c o n f l i c t i s m o r e c o m p l i c a t e d than at f i r s t i t m i g h t a p p e a r . Q u e b e c e r s v i s i b l y p r e e n w h e n e v e r P a r i s i a n s c o m p l i m e n t t h e m on t h e i r s p o k e n F r e n c h , nodding t h e i r heads e a g e r l y w h e n t h e i r d i s t a n t European r e l a t i o n s n o s t a l g i c a l l y s i g h t h a t here at l e a s t , a p u r e , p r e - R e v o l u t i o n a r y F r e n c h c o n t i n u e s to be e m p l o y e d l o n g a f t e r i t h a s d i e d out on t h e m a i n l a n d . On t h e o t h e r h a n d , i t i s by no means c e r t a i n that the d i a l e c t spoken i n , s a y , a G i l l e s C a r l e or Andre F o r c i e r m o v i e i s i d e n t i c a l to t h e F r e n c h t h a t w a s s p o k e n on t h e P l a i n s of A b r a h a m i n 1 7 5 9 ; n e i t h e r i s i t c e r t a i n t h a t i t i s t h e s a m e t o n g u e t h a t m o v e d A l e x i s de T o c q u e v i l l e to e p i s t o l a r y a d m i r a t i o n 7 0 y e a r s l a t e r . Indeed, i t w o u l d p r o b a b l y be f a i r to s a y t h a t the o r d i n a r y F r a n c o Quebecois l i n g u i s t i c admiration

society

e x c h a n g e i s t h e e x a c t o p p o s i t e of t h e m u t u a l which

the printed

record s u g g e s t s . A s Edmond

W i l s o n put i t , " T h e French Canadians...have s o m e t h i n g against

F r a n c e ; a n d , on t h e i r

snobbish in matters

s i d e , the French are

of l a n g u a g e

of a g r u d g e imperturbably

and s p e e c h . E v e n t h e s c r i p t s

of

314 Canadian documentary

films

have s o m e t i m e s been put i n t o P a r i s i a n

F r e n c h b e f o r e they c a n be s h o w n i n F r a n c e , and a young C a n a d i a n t o l d me t h a t on one o c c a s i o n - t h o u g h he w a s w o r k i n g on t h e E n c y c l o p e d i e L a r o u s s e - a F r e n c h m a n he had m e t i n P a r i s s u g g e s t e d t h a t t h e y

might

b e t t e r speak i n E n g l i s h , s i n c e the P a r i s i a n w o u l d no doubt not be able to u n d e r s t a n d t h e C a n a d i a n ' s F r e n c h " ( W i l s o n 172 - 1 7 3 ) . C o m p l a i n t s of t h i s v a r i e t y are v e r y c o m m o n . Due to i t s c l o s e p r o x i m i t y to both E n g l i s h Canada and t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s , joual i n e v i t a b l y i n c l u d e s a l a r g e r n u m b e r of a n g l i c i s m s than does francais in v i r t u a l

isolation from

actuel. W h a t ' s m o r e , joual

developed

mainland French f o r several c e n t u r i e s , a

c i r c u m s t a n c e r e s u l t i n g i n a l a r g e n u m b e r of l o c a l " p e c u l i a r i t i e s " . T o complicate

things

still

f u r t h e r , joual

itself

i s not a homogeneous

tongue. W h i l e s o m e f o r m s of u n d e r - p r i v i l e g e d w o r k i n g - c l a s s s p e e c h c a n b e s t be d e s c r i b e d a s patois,

in la Gaspesie

many p e o p l e s t i l l s p e a k a

F r e n c h pure and a n t i q u e enough to a w e even the m o s t d e m a n d i n g G a l l i c intellectual. Politically, scarcely

relations

less contentious

between

these l i n g u i s t i c

than are t h e i r

linguistic

r e l a t i v e s are differences.

If

m o d e r n - d a y s e p a r a t i s t s , p o s t - C h a r l e s de G a u l l e , r e l y on t h e F r e n c h nation

to supply

the putative

nation

of Quebec w i t h

international

l e g i t i m a c y , t h e i r p a r e n t s w e r e e d u c a t e d by t e a c h e r s w h o s a w P a r i s a s B a b y l o n and F r a n c e a s t h e f o n t of a l l e v i l . U n t o u c h e d by t h e s o c i a l l i b e r a l i z a t i o n and i n t e r n a t i o n a l i s m of t h e F r e n c h R e v o l u t i o n , i n w a r d l o o k i n g Quebec m a i n t a i n e d the p i o u s t r a d i t i o n s of s e v e n t e e n t h p e a s a n t s . N e w F r a n c e ' s r u l i n g c l a s s had t r a d i t i o n a l l y mainland,

returning

home

after

their

tour

century

come f r o m the

was through-a

major

d i f f e r e n c e b e t w e e n i t and the T h i r t e e n C o l o n i e s w h i c h w o u l d l a t e r f o r m

315 the U n i t e d S t a t e s - s o Quebec w a s l e f t v i r t u a l l y

leaderless

following

t h e i r p e r m a n e n t d e p a r t u r e i n the 1 7 6 0 s . Indigenous p o l i t i c a l such

as it

was, resided primarily

in the p r i e s t h o o d ,

power,

in the f e w

s u r v i v i n g s e i g n e u r i a l f a m i l i e s , and in the s m a l l urban c l a s s of c o l l e g e educated p r o f e s s i o n a l s . Economic l i f e w a s l e f t almost e x c l u s i v e l y in a n g l o p h o n e hands. I n e v i t a b l y , affairs

the c u l t u r e e n s u i n g f r o m t h i s s t a t e of

w a s r e v a n c h i s t , b a c k w a r d - l o o k i n g , p r i e s t - r i d d e n , and a n t i -

m o d e r n i n tone and i n t e n t . If, on the p l u s s i d e , t h e s e a t t i t u d e s French culture guaranteed

allowed

to s u r v i v e i n N o r t h A m e r i c a , on t h e d o w n s i d e , t h e y

the i m p o v e r i s h m e n t

and p o w e r l e s s n e s s of m o s t

of

its

m e m b e r s . D e s p i t e t h e r a d i c a l c h a n g e s w h i c h have o v e r t a k e n Quebec d u r i n g t h e p a s t t h i r t y - f i v e y e a r s , t h e s e p r o b l e m s a r e by no m e a n s resolved. One of t h e f i r s t t h i n g s t h a t s t r i k e s o u t s i d e r e a d e r s of Q u e b e c o i s f i c t i o n and v i e w e r s of Q u e b e c o i s f i l m s i s the a l m o s t t o t a l a b s e n c e of non-pure

laine

c h a r a c t e r s . S t i l l , if the " o t h e r "

is often

physically

a b s e n t f r o m t h e s e w o r k s , h i s o f f - s t a g e p r e s e n c e m o s t d e f i n i t e l y i s not. Margaret Atwood's contention

that Canadian l i t e r a t u r e

is

primarily

about s u r v i v a l a p p l i e s w i t h d o u b l e , i f not t r i p l e , f o r c e i n t h e c a s e of Quebec. In the Q u e b e c o i s i m a g i n a t i o n , the " R e s t of C a n a d a " i s s e e m i n g l y an O n t a r i o t h a t n e v e r ends. One s e e s t h i s i n p o p u l a r c o m e d i e s s u c h as D e n i s H e r o u x ' s J'ai

mon voyage ( 1 9 7 4 ) , a f a r c e " q u i r a c o n t e T o d y s e e

d un couple...et s e s e n f a n t s , de M o n t r e a l a V a n c o u v e r , ou i l s s o n t de p u r s J

etrangers"

( C o l o m b e and J e a n 4 7 7 ) . T h e huge s i g h of r e l i e f

these

t r a v e l l e r s c o l l e c t i v e l y heave upon r e t u r n i n g to la belle province

after

t h e i r p r o l o n g e d s o j o u r n among l e s tetes carries

w a s o f t e n e c h o e d by

316 the a u d i e n c e . A l l the q u i r k s and e c c e n t r i c i t i e s t h a t d i f f e r e n t i a t e

Cape

Bretoners

from

from

Albertans,

British

Columbian

naturopaths

S a s k a t c h e w a n w h e a t f a r m e r s , w e r e n o t a b l y l a c k i n g i n t h i s f i l m . What w e s a w in e s s e n c e w a s Upper Canada w r i t l a r g e , an Orange O n t a r i o t h a t occupied

every

contemporary

square

inch

of

land

where

French Canadian thought,

at

Quebec least

in

was the

not.

In

camp

of

c o n v i n c e d n a t i o n a l i s t s , Canada i s s t i l l a n a t i o n of t w o , not f o u r

and

c e r t a i n l y not t e n n a t i o n s ; the d e m o g r a p h i c c h a n g e s of the p a s t

150

y e a r s are e i t h e r i g n o r e d or e x p l a i n e d a w a y as i r r e l e v a n t . If to o u t s i d e r s t h i s looks l i k e w i l l f u l b l i n d n e s s - t h e l e s s tolerant might say m a d n e s s to p a t r i o t i c i n s i d e r s i t l o o k s l i k e an i n d i s p e n s a b l e s u r v i v a l t o o l . In Q u e b e c o i s f i c t i o n , A m e r i c a i s a l s o a f a i r l y h o m o g e n e o u s p l a c e . M o n t r e a l - b a s e d i n t e l l e c t u a l s do not s h a r e t h e i r P a r i s i a n c o u n t e r p a r t s ' m a n i a f o r s e e i n g as much of the U n i t e d S t a t e s as h u m a n l y p o s s i b l e . I n s t e a d , t h e y t e n d to f o c u s on the p l a c e s w h e r e the Q u e b e c o i s have traditionally

gone i n s e a r c h of w o r k - s o m e t i m e s

voluntarily,

more

o f t e n i n v o l u n t a r i l y - s u c h as New H a m p s h i r e and L o u i s i a n a , o r the p l a c e s w h e r e t h e y have m o r e r e c e n t l y gone to p l a y , s u c h as M i a m i B e a c h or C a l i f o r n i a . S o m e w h a t s u r p r i s i n g l y , the U n i t e d S t a t e s i s s e l d o m t r e a t e d l i k e the G r e a t S a t a n . A n d r e F o r c i e r ' s i m m e n s e l y p o p u l a r T V m i n i - s e r i e s Les

Tisserands

between century

du pouvoir

Quebecois mill

might

workers

N e w E n g l a n d , but i t

have d e a l t

with

and Y a n k e e m i l l

class

struggles

owners

w a s e x c e p t i o n a l in t h i s

in

19th

r e s p e c t . More

c o m m o n l y , A m e r i c a n s are d e p i c t e d as f a i r l y b e n i g n and r e m a r k a b l y s p a r s e i n a l a n d t h a t s e e m s to c o n s i s t of l i t t l e b e s i d e s Q u e b e c o i s t o u r i s t s and e m i g r e s . A n g l o p h o n e Q u e b e c e r s a r e , i f a n y t h i n g , even m o r e r a r e , but t h e y are n o w h e r e n e a r as o b l i g i n g . A b j e c t v i l l a i n y

is

the

317 attribute

most

commonly

demonstrated

during

their

brief

cameo

appearances. A l l of t h e s e p r e s u p p o s i t i o n s are p r e s e n t in V i c t o r L e v y - B e a u l i e u ' s p o s t m o d e r n i s t n o v e l , Oh Miami Miami Miami ( 1 9 7 3 ) - w i t h one e x c e p t i o n . B e a u l i e u ' s A m e r i c a n s are a t a d n a s t i e r t h a n u s u a l . He

deliberately

e x o t i c i z e s F l o r i d a , m a k i n g i t s e e m l i k e some f r i g h t e n i n g o u t c r o p p i n g of Hollywood

jungle,

Canadian dramatis

even

as he

deromanticizes

his

mainly

French

p e r s o n a e . T h u s , " M i a m i e s t une a c c o u t u m a n c e , un

f a b u l e u x voyage dont on ne r e v i e n n e n t j a m a i s " (Oh M i a m i M i a m i M i a m i 173).

In t h i s

favourite

Quebecois t o u r i s t ' s

port-of-call,

"Tous

le

t e r r i t o i r e de l a F l o r i d e g r o u i l l e de c r o c o d i l e s aux d e n t s l u i s a n t e s , de s e r p e n t s a s o n n e t t e s dont l e s f i n e s l a n g u e s e m p o i s o n e e s s o n t c o m m e le deroulement

de p e t i t s

t a p i s r o u g e s . . . . " (Qh M i a m i M i a m i M i a m i

132).

A l t h o u g h they don't a c t u a l l y meet many A m e r i c a n s , p r e f e r r i n g to spend most

of t h e i r t i m e i n bed w i t h e a c h o t h e r o r e l s e g u z z l i n g b e e r i n

F l o r i d a b a r s , B e a u l i e u ' s c h a r a c t e r s d o n ' t have much good to s a y about t h e i r h o s t s . The p o l i c e in p a r t i c u l a r c o m e in f o r a s e v e r e s h e l l a c k i n g : " ' D a n s c ' t e p a y s , s i tu f a i s pas a t t e n t i o n a t e s a f f a i r e s , t ' e s un h o m m e m o r t . La p o l i c e , s o i s - t u c o m m e n t e l l e e s t a M i a m i ? E l l e te t r o u v e dans une r u e l l e a v e c un p o i g n a r d dans le dos et e l l e t ' a c c u s e de p o r t d ' a r m e i l l e g a l ' " (Qh M i a m i M i a m i M i a m i 2 2 4 ) . A n g l o s w i t h the name " P h i l " are particularly

a b h o r r e n t . " L e v i e u x P h i l F l a n a g a n de S h a w i n i g a n "

(who

c o u l d , i t m u s t be a d m i t t e d , be f r a n c o p h o n e , d e s p i t e h i s n a m e , a l t h o u g h o b v i o u s l y not pure laine)

t a k e s s e x u a l a d v a n t a g e of a d r u n k e n

male

e m p l o y e e d u r i n g the b o o k ' s f i r s t f i f t y p a g e s , w h i l e " l e v i e u x P h i l de C h i c a g o " made a not e n t i r e l y

h o n o u r a b l e f o r t u n e out of an " I n v e n t i o n

dument p a t e n t e e s u r l a p e n i c i l l i n e " (Qh M i a m i M i a m i M i a m i

180).

318 On the p l u s s i d e / F l o r i d a did s e r v e as the l a s t r e f u g e f o r the m o s t c e l e b r a t e d of a l l Q u e b e c o i s w r i t e r s - i n - e x i l e :

" E s t - c e que tu ne r e n d s

pas c o m p t e que j a m a i s j e ne s e r a i s venu i c i s i j e n ' a v a i s pas

Tidiote

i d e e d ' e c r i r e ce l i v r e s u r J a c k K e r o u a c . . . " (Oh M i a m i M i a m i M i a m i 2 8 5 ) . T h e , in t h i s

i n s t a n c e at l e a s t , i m p l i c i t l y

autobiographical

narrator

( B e a u l i e u d i d i n d e e d p u b l i s h a book about h i s a d m i r a t i o n f o r the

man

who w r o t e On the Road), goes to v i s i t " l e j o l i b u n g a l o w des K e r o u a c ou rn'attendaient

M e m e r e , et N i n , et S t e l l a , et l e s s c r a p b o o k s p l e i n e des

p h o t o s j a u n i e s , de s o u v e n i r s et de m a u v a i s e s n o u v e l l e s " (Oh Miami Miami 286). Beaulieu eventually

c o m e s to s e e the e n t i r e

W o r l d as a m a g i c a l Q u e b e c o i s / N a t i v e A m e r i c a n c o n s t r u c t : n'etait

qu'une

vaste

toile

Miami

d'araignee...

Indien

sans

New

"L'Amerique

doute,

Indien

s u r e m e n t , m a i s s i peu Q u e b e c o i s a l o r s q u ' i l s a u r a i e n t du e t r e l e s deux en m e m e t e m p s e t , l ' e t a n t , beaucoup p l u s que S a u v a g e et Q u e b e c o i s " (Oh M i a m i M i a m i M i a m i 323.) T h i s v i s i o n l e a d s to the f o l l o w i n g c o n c l u s i o n : "Quel grand reve

que c e l u i de c e t t e

A m e r i q u e f r a n c a i s e ! De

cette

A m e r i q u e m e t i s s e l . . . Momo, M i a m i ce n ' e s t qu'une b a n l i e u e de M o n t r e a l " (Oh M i a m i M i a m i M i a m i 3 2 5 ) . 5 A l t h o u g h l e s s a r t i s t i c a l l y a m b i t i o u s than B e a u l i e u ' s s t y l i s t i c a l l y c o m p l e x n o v e l , the S o u t h e r n U.S. s t a t e of G e o r g e M i h a l k a ' s Quebecois America.

c o m e d y , La Florida Inspired

"snowbirds"-

by s l u r s

(1993)

i n the

Canadian t o u r i s t s

populist

i s no l e s s a d r e a m of

local

p r e s s about

who p o l l u t e d

the

French

so-called

Florida beaches

with

T h i s d e s c r i p t i o n i s l e s s pi xi 11 a t e d than i t a p p e a r s . A s J o e l G a r r e a u p o i n t e d out in The Nine Nations of North America, an i n n o v a t i v e look at New W o r l d r e g i o n a l i s m , " A t i t s h e i g h t . . . t h e F r e n c h E m p i r e in ' A m e r i q u e ' c o v e r e d a l m o s t a l l the c o n t i n e n t w i t h the e x c e p t i o n of F l o r i d a and M e x i c o , w h i c h w e r e o c c u p i e d by the S p a n i s h . A s f o r the E n g l i s h , they hugged only the A t l a n t i c c o a s t south of the Gaspe P e n i n s u l a . " (Garreau 3 6 7 - 3 6 8 )

5

319 their

incomprehensible

language, obscene s w i m s u i t s

d i s p l a y e d p o t b e l l i e s - L a Florida

and

brazenly

d e s c r i b e s the a d v e n t u r e s of a f a m i l y of

w o r k i n g c l a s s Q u e b e c o i s who abandon the s n o w s of M o n t r e a l in f a v o u r of the s a n d s of the C a r i b b e a n . To pay f o r t h e i r e n d l e s s h o l i d a y , open a r e s o r t h o t e l t h a t c a t e r s a l m o s t e x c l u s i v e l y to f e l l o w

they

French

C a n a d i a n s . Even the t w o A m e r i c a n c i t i z e n s who t r y to c a u s e t r o u b l e these ex-Montrealers

t u r n out

to have Q u e b e c o i s r o o t s .

In

for

Suzette

C o u t u r e and P i e r r e S a r r a z i n ' s s c r i p t , t h e r e are even f e w e r a n g l o p h o n e s than in Oh Miami Miami. T h i n g s are m u c h the s a m e in Vves B e a u c h e m i n ' s b e s t s e l l i n g n o v e l , Le Matou ( 1 9 8 3 ) . A t one p o i n t d u r i n g the n o v e l , F l o r e n t B o i s s o n n e a u l t , the b o o k ' s H o r a t i o A l g e r - l i k e h e r o , v a c a t i o n s in F l o r i d a to e s c a p e f r o m p e r s e c u t i o n at the hands of the m y s t e r i o u s - a n d i n e f f a b l y

foreign-Egon

R a t a b l a v a s k y . A s u s u a l the Q u e b e c o i s v i s i t o r s t e n d to hang out

with

l o n g - e s t a b l i s h e d " s n o w b i r d s " ; F l o r e n t c o n s i d e r s s t a y i n g t h e r e as w e l l . In t h i s t e x t , A m e r i c a n s e x i s t p r i m a r i l y

as f r i e n d l y

background noise.

T h e y are f o r e v e r s a y i n g c h e e r y t h i n g s s u c h a s , "Good evening, Looking

for

something?"

folks?

( B e a u c h e m i n 2 6 2 ) . I n e v i t a b l y , of c o u r s e , one

f i n d s a d a r k e r s i d e to t h i s g e n i a l i t y . A t one p o i n t , a B l a c k

Floridian

announces " / keep away from smart guys like hell and always

deal with

French Canadians... They're sweet like corn syrup..."

(Beauchemin 2 7 4 -

2 7 5 ) . When F l o r e n t r e s p o n d s to t h i s a d m i s s i o n w i t h a g l a c i a l g l a r e , h i s American acquaintance immediately

tries

don't

le

get

angry

for

that,

protesta

to m a k e a m e n d s :

Noir,

/

was

only

"--Now kidding"

( B e a u c h e m i n 2 7 5 ) . The p r o b l e m i s he w a s n ' t , and e v e r y b o d y k n o w s it. The idea that a l l anglophones regard a l l French C a n a d i a n s as inferior

i n s o m e w a y i s a n o t i o n t h a t runs r i g h t t h r o u g h

Le

Matou.

320 P o p u l i s t to the c o r e , the novel w o r k s on the a s s u m p t i o n t h a t les et

les etrangers

enjoy

unspecified historical

autres

advantages over the

Quebecois hero, Florent Boissonneault. This perception

occasionally

erupts into outright b i g o t r y - e s p e c i a l l y against the J e w s . A t t i m e s , it even

manages

to

conflate

its

prejudices,

as i t

does

when

the

p r e s u m a b l y J e w i s h anglophone v i l l a i n

L e o n a r d S l i p s k i n m a r r i e s an

attractive

church. Such a l i g n m e n t s are

Quebecoise in a P r o t e s t a n t

s u s p i c i o u s l y s i m i l a r to the J e w i s h / P r o t e s t a n t / F r e e m a s o n t r i n i t y of e v i l that has a n i m a t e d u l t r a m o n t a n e

French C a t h o l i c i s m f o r the past

2 0 0 y e a r s . It i s a l s o a c u r i o u s l y a n t i q u e f o r m of r a c i s m t h a t p r e - d a t e s the m o d e r n w o r l d . L i k e so many of the deep s t r u c t u r e s of Q u e b e c o i s society,

both

good

and b a d , t o

outsiders

it

seems

curiously

a n a c h r o n i s t i c . It i s a l s o r e m i n i s c e n t of the a t t i t u d e s d e s c r i b e d by L o u i s Hemon. A s o m e w h a t d i f f e r e n t m e l a n g e of p a s t and p r e s e n t a t t i t u d e s may be found i n Pelagie-la-Charette.

The w i n n e r of the 1 9 7 9 P r i x G o n c o u r t ,

A n t o n i n e riai 1 l e t ' s novel i s n o t a b l e f o r a n u m b e r of r e a s o n s . F o r one thing, s t r i c t l y descendant

s p e a k i n g M a i l l e t i s not a Q u e b e c o i s e but an A c a d i a n , a

of t h e Nova S c o t i a and N e w B r u n s w i c k - b a s e d

French

c o m m u n i t y w h i c h w a s f o r c i b l y t r a n s p o r t e d to the A m e r i c a n S o u t h i n the m i d d l e of the 1 8 t h c e n t u r y . T o d a y , t h a t c o m m u n i t y i s d i v i d e d m o r e or-less

equally

between

1'Acadie

in the M a r i t i m e s

and t h e C a j u n

c o m m u n i t i e s of L o u i s i a n a . W h i l e l i p s e r v i c e i s s o m e t i m e s p a i d t o t h e i r misfortunes

by Q u e b e c o i s i n t e l l e c t u a l s , Q u e b e c o i s p o l i t i c i a n s

have

done, and c o n t i n u e to do, v e r y l i t t l e on t h e i r b e h a l f . A c a d i a ' s s u r v i v a l , t h e r e f o r e , i s f a r more m i r a c u l o u s than Q u e b e c ' s .

321 P e r h a p s f o r t h i s r e a s o n , Pelagie-la-Charette wonder

tale. The book's eponymous

heroine

often reads like a i s an A c a d i a n

Harriet

T u b m a n w h o l e a d s h e r p e o p l e on a t e n - y e a r t r e k a c r o s s t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s back to t h e i r a n c e s t r a l h o m e s i n A t l a n t i c C a n a d a . P r o g r e s s i s s l o w and o f t e n b i t t e r , but t h e c a r a v a n n e v e r f u l l y s t o p s : " L ' A c a d i e a v a n c a i t au pas des b o e u f s " (Mai 11 et 2 0 1 ) . When t h e y ' r e n o t i c e d at a l l , the

b i r t h pangs of the United

distorting

S t a t e s are seen through

a

distant

m i r r o r : " D e p l u s , i l f a l l a i t c o m p t e r a v e c l a g u e r r e qui en

e t a i t a s o n p l u s f o r t en c e t t e f i n 1 7 7 5 " (Mai 11 et 2 0 4 ) . No m a t t e r

what

happens, a t t e n t i o n i s a l w a y s i n w a r d l y f o c u s s e d . The others a r e , w e l l , other. "...Des E s p a g n o l s , des P o r t u g a i s , des C a t a l a n s . . . B a l t i m o r e e t a i t l e c a r r e f o u r du m o n d e " (Mai 11 et 168). M o r a l e i s m a i n t a i n e d w i t h a s e r i e s of s e l f - r e - a f f i r m i n g ,

enemy-mocking

toasts:

"'Pelagie-la-Charrette

v i v r a t o u j o u r s . Et m e r d e au r o i d ' A n g l e t e r r e ! ' " ( M a i n e t

149) Wherever

p o s s i b l e , a n a l o g i e s a r e made b e t w e e n B l a c k s l a v e s and A c a d i a n e x i l e s . T h u s , P e l a g i e ' s c o m p a n i o n s " [ s o n t ] d e p o r t e s s u r l e Black Face" (Mai 11 et 4 5 ) , a s h i p w h o s e name b e t r a y s i t s u s u a l p u r p o s e . Upon

completing

t h e i r j o u r n e y h o m e w a r d s , the n e w " I s r a e l i t e s " d i s c o v e r t h a t e v e r y t h i n g has been r e - n a m e d : " S u r l e s r i v e s de l a b a i e F r a n p a i s e , d i t e s Fundy...." (Maillet

320).

6

A s i d e f r o m i t s i n t r i n s i c v a l u e as f i r s t - r a t e h i s t o r i c a l Mail l e t ' s

w r i t i n g i s of i n t e r e s t

literature,

f o r w h a t i t h a s to s a y a b o u t

North

A m e r i c a ' s other F r e n c h f a c t . B e c a u s e of t h e i r r e v e r e n c e f o r t h e p a s t , Acadians would

s e e m to have an e v e n s t r o n g e r

p r o v i n c i a l m o t t o , "je me souviens,"

claim

than do the Q u e b e c o i s t h e m s e l v e s .

IHere M a i l l e t ' s n o v e l i s r e m i n i s c e n t of B r i a n F r i e T s Translations, a n g l i c i z a t i o n of G a e l i c place names in 19th century Ireland. 6

to Q u e b e c ' s

a p l a y about t h e

322 As

chanteuse

collection

of

Edith

Butler

mainly

wrote

traditional

in

L'Acadie

sans

frontieres,

songs, "J'appartiens

a

Tancienne

A c a d i e et a T A c a d i e moderne. J e veux v i v r e l e s deux a l a f o i s . " 15) Many of the chansons

a

i n c l u d e d in t h i s a n t h o l o g y r e f l e c t

(Butler

the s a m e

e v e n t s t h a t i n s p i r e d A n t o n i n e M a i l l e t : " C o n d a m n e s a v i v r e , / C o m m e des juifs

errants/lls

revenir,/Dans

ont

marches

longtemps,/Qu'ils

( B u t l e r 7 6 ) . Les

ont

fini

par

Anglais,

in s o m e of

t h e s e l y r i c s , are even m o r e f a c e l e s s than t h e y w e r e i n

Pelagie-la-

Charette:

le p a y s d ' a v a n t "

si

" R e v e i l l e r e v e i l l e c ' e s t l e s g o d d a m s qui v i e n n e n t , / B r u 1 e r

recolte/Reveille

reveille

hommes a c a d i e n s / P o u r s a u v e r le

la

village"

( B u t l e r 78). Ironically,

d e s p i t e the f a c t t h a t the A c a d i a n s w e r e t r e a t e d

far

m o r e b r u t a l l y by the B r i t i s h E m p i r e than w e r e t h e i r Q u e b e c o i s c o u s i n s , the d e s c e n d a n t s of t h e s e o p p r e s s e d e x i l e s are f a r m o r e c o m m i t t e d

to

the

is

idea

of

a unified

Canada.

Even more

surprisingly,

there

c o n s i d e r a b l e e n m i t y b e t w e e n t h e s e t w o m a j o r b r a n c h e s of F r e n c h N o r t h A m e r i c a . In 1 9 6 3 , Edmund W i l s o n w r o t e , " A n A c a d i a n , I w a s t o l d , w o u l d not w o r k f o r a Q u e b e c o i s F r e n c h f a m i l y " ( W i l s o n 4 3 ) . Even i f one t a k e s t h a t c l a i m w i t h a g r a i n of s a l t , i n g r a i n e d h o s t i l i t i e s b e t w e e n t h e s e t w o francophone communities unquestionably

exist.

W h i l e many of Edmond W i l s o n ' s p r o n o u n c e m e n t s y e a r s ago are s t i l l

of

thirty-four

v e r y c u r r e n t , one at l e a s t has been s u p e r s e d e d .

7

In 0 Canada! An American's Notes on Canadian Culture ( 1 9 6 3 ) , many of the a u t h o r ' s o b s e r v a t i o n s are a l m o s t f r i g h t e n i n g l y u p - t o - d a t e . One r e a d s , f o r i n s t a n c e , t h a t " C a n a d i a n p u b l i s h e r s have the s e r i o u s g r i e v a n c e t h a t by b r i n g i n g out s p e c i a l Canadian e d i t i o n s , s u c h p e r i o d i c a l s a s Time and The Reader's Digest d i v e r t f r o m the C a n a d i a n m a g a z i n e s a good p a r t of the n a t i o n a l a d v e r t i s i n g , w i t h o u t w h i c h i t i s i m p o s s i b l e f o r t h e m to get along...." ( W i l s o n 6 2 ) E l s e w h e r e , the A m e r i c a n c r i t i c r e f l e c t s , " o n e even f i n d s F r a n c o p h i l e E n g l i s h C a n a d i a n s who adore the French of F r a n c e - - p a i n t i n g , l i t e r a t u r e , c h a t e a u x , c u i s i n e and a l l

7

323 T h i s d a t e d c l a i m r e a d s as f o l l o w s : " F r e n c h C a n a d i a n s have not yet been a b l e to i m p o s e on a w i d e r a u d i e n c e - a s the A m e r i c a n s have to s o m e extent d o n e - a literary Scots-flavoured

language of t h e i r o w n . " ( W i l s o n 173) Now t h a t

translations

of M i c h e l T r e m b l a y ' s

;'owa/-drenched

d r a m a s p l a y r e g u l a r l y to c a p a c i t y h o u s e s in G l a s g o w and E d i n b u r g h , i t is probably

s a f e to s a y t h a t Quebec has c r e a t e d a l i t e r a r y

w h i c h , under o p t i m u m

c o n d i t i o n s , can p r o f i t a b l y

language

be a d a p t e d to

p o l i t i c a l s i t u a t i o n s and a r g o t - h e a v y m o t h e r t o n g u e s .

other

8

In C a n a d i a n w r i t e r s , h o w e v e r , i t s e e m s t h a t w h a t Edmund W i l s o n sought

was

not

so m u c h

c o n n e c t i o n to the d o m i n a n t

a new

language

as i t

was

an

idiomatic

s t y l e of the 2 0 t h c e n t u r y . T h u s , the

authors

he s i n g l e d out f o r s p e c i a l p r a i s e w e r e

Toronto

native

whose stripped-down

Morley

two

Callaghan-a

s t y l e had d e v e l o p e d

alongside

t h o s e of F. S c o t t F i t z g e r a l d and E r n e s t H e m i n g w a y in e m i g r e P a r i s - a n d M a r i e - C l a i r e B l a i s , a r g u a b l y the l e a s t p r o v i n c i a l

w r i t e r this

country

has e v e r p r o d u c e d . C o n s i d e r i n g the c r i t i c ' s d e e p , p e r s o n a l t i e s to so many of the f o u n d e r s of l i t e r a r y surprise

modernism, this predilection

nobody. Even s o , W i l s o n s h o w e d r e m a r k a b l e

should

prescience

in

r e c o g n i z i n g B l a i s ' s t a l e n t so e a r l y in h e r c a r e e r . When the n o v e l i s t w a s barely

i n t o h e r 2 0 s , the doyen of A m e r i c a n c r i t i c s , w h o w a s

then

the r e s t - - b u t are c o n t e m p t u o u s of the F r e n c h of F r e n c h C a n a d a , a c o u n t r y t h e y s e e m h a r d l y to have v i s i t e d " ( W i l s o n 2 0 8 ) . F o r a l l h i s s y m p a t h y f o r and u n d e r s t a n d i n g of C a n a d i a n c u l t u r e , i t s e e m s m o s t u n l i k e l y t h a t the great A m e r i c a n c r i t i c w o u l d have been i m p r e s s e d by the once v i b r a n t , now f a d i n g joual r e v o l u t i o n . H i s s y m p a t h y f o r Q u e b e c o i s l i t e r a t u r e w a s i n s e p a r a b l e f r o m h i s f r a n c o p h i l i a , a union w h i c h h i s s u m m a t i o n of the a r t i s t i c value of E m i l e N e l l i g a n tends to u n d e r s c o r e : " T h i s poet i s at once the R i m b a u d and the G e r a r d de N e r v a l of F r e n c h C a n a d a , and he s e e m s to me to be the only r e a l l y f i r s t - r a t e Canadian poet, F r e n c h or E n g l i s h , t h a t I have y e t r e a d . " ( W i l s o n 9 7 ) 8

324 n o t o r i o u s f o r h i s d i s l i k e of new t a l e n t , e n t h u s e d , " M i l e . B l a i s i s a t r u e p h e n o m e n o n ; she may p o s s i b l y be a g e n i u s " ( W i l s o n 148). Phenomenal M a r i e - C l a i r e B l a i s certainly most

recent

novel

and the w i n n e r

of

the

w a s - a n d i s . Soifs,

1995

her

Governor-General's

A w a r d f o r F r e n c h - l a n g u a g e f i c t i o n , i s u n a s h a m e d l y m o d e r n i s t in s t y l e , f i l l e d w i t h s e n t e n c e s t h a t run on f o r t w e l v e pages or m o r e , c h a n g i n g narrators

w i t h o u t w a r n i n g in a s t r e a m - o f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s c a t a r a c t

imagined

sensibilities.

B e c a u s e she has l i v e d so m u c h of h e r

abroad, B l a i s is a consummate literary Soifs,

of life

c o s m o p o l i t a n . The s e t t i n g

of

f o r e x a m p l e , i s a C a r i b b e a n i s l a n d w h e r e people f r o m a l l o v e r the

world

try

and

fail

to

shut

the

modern

world-with

its

Bosnian

m a s s a c r e s and s e x u a l e p i d e m i c s - o u t of s i g h t and out of m i n d . C e r t a i n motifs

keep r e c u r r i n g . The f o l l o w i n g

i s p r o b a b l y the m o s t o b s e s s i v e .

W h i l e s o a k i n g up the s u n , a p r i v i l e g e d m i d d l e - c l a s s w o m a n c a n ' t herself

from thinking

about " l ' e x e c u t i o n

stop

d'un n o i r i n c o n n u dans une

p r i s o n du T e x a s , l a m o r t p a r i n j e c t i o n l e t a l e , une m o r t v i o l e e , d i s c r e t e c a r e l l e ne f a i s a i t

aucun b r u i t , une m o r t l i q u i d e i n t r a v e i n e u s e ,

d'une

e f f i c a c i t e e x e m p l a i r e p u i s q u e le condamne p o u v a i t se l ' i n f l i g e r a l u i m e m e dans l e s p r e m i e r s r a y o n s de l'aube...." ( S o i f s 13 - 14). H i s t o r i c a l v i c t i m s of r a c i a l o p p r e s s i o n are c i t e d w i t h the s a m e c a d e n c e d f l a t n e s s with which

Michel Butor introduced

m e s s i a h s in Mobile:

a s u c c e s s i o n of d o o m e d

Indian

" N i n a Mae M c K i n n e y , p r e m i e r e a c t r i c e n o i r e dans

l e s t h e a t r e s du New Vork, d ' l d a G r a y , p r e m i e r e f e m m e c h i r u g i e n d e n t a l e noire a Cincinnati...." ( S o i f s l'abolition

1 5 0 ) ; " M a r y M c l e o d B e t h u n e , nee a p r e s

de l ' e s c l a v a g e . . . f o n d a i t l a p r e m i e r e

n o i r e en F l o r i d e . . . . " ( S o i f s 2 4 8 ) .

ecole pour l e s

filles

325

In h e r m e m o i r Parcours n o v e l Un liaison literary

parisienne,

d'un ecrivain:

Notes americaines

and h e r

B l a i s p r o v e s to be e q u a l l y at home in the

m i l i e u s of New England and F r a n c e . In the f i r s t of t h e s e

b o o k s ( w h i c h w a s not p u b l i s h e d u n t i l 1 9 9 3 , a l t h o u g h the f i r s t entry

is

dated

thirty

years

earlier),

the

author

two

journal

describes

her

a p p r e n t i c e s h i p y e a r s as an a u t h o r in A m e r i c a . Edmund W i l s o n h i m s e l f a p p e a r s i n t h i s t e x t , s i t t i n g on a park b e n c h , s p e a k i n g " a v e c T e t e n d u e de s a v a s t e c u l t u r e , i l me t r a c e un p o r t r a i t d e t a i l l e de V i r g i n i a W o o l f , de s a v i e , de son o e u v r e " ( N o t e s

americaines

18). W i l s o n , i t

a p p e a r , w a s u n c o m m o n l y s y m p a t h e t i c to w o m e n w r i t e r s

would

f o r a man of

h i s g e n e r a t i o n , but even so M a r i e - C l a i r e B l a i s w a s c l e a r l y not

content

to s i t at h i s f e e t in the c a p a c i t y of b l i s s f u l a c o l y t e : " E t d e v a n t t a n t d ' e r u d i t i o n , moi qui ne s u i s pas un e s p r i t c u l t i v e , dans l a v i e l i t t e r a i r e n'en qu'a s e s d e b u t s , j e d o i s me t a i r e . M a i s j ' a i d e j a e p r o u v e l a m e m e i r r i t a t i o n ou l a m e m e gene en l i s a n t des b i o g r a p h e s de S i m o n e W e i l e c r i t e p a r des h o m m e s , j e n'ai j a m a i s a i m e ce ton de p r o p r i e t e r i g i d e et c o n f i n e qui e s t le t o n , dans l e s annees s o i x a n t e , des c r i t i q u e ou des b i o g r a p h i e s l o r s q u ' i l p r e s e n t e n t ou e t u d i e n t l e s o e u v r e s e c r i t e s p a r des f e m m e s " ( N o t e s a m e r i c a i n e s 19). A s i d e f r o m W i l s o n , B l a i s made the a c q u a i n t a n c e of R o b e r t L o w e l l , Mary M c C a r t h y , E l i z a b e t h

Hardwick,

J o h n H e r s e y , M a r g u e r i t e Y o u r c e n a r , and V l a d i m i r Nabokov d u r i n g course

of

h e r N e w E n g l a n d s o j o u r n . She w a s , h o w e v e r ,

the

primarily

i n f l u e n c e d by the m o d e r n i s m e m b o d i e d in the n o v e l s of V i r g i n i a W o o l f and the p o e m s of E l i z a b e t h B i s h o p and M a r i a n n e M o o r e , as w e l l as the A f r i c a n - A m e r i c a n w r i t e r s who w e r e b e g i n n i n g to c o m e i n t o t h e i r o w n : "Pendant

cet

ete-la...je

lis James Baldwin, Richard Wright,

Ralph

326 E l l i s o n , et j e p r e n d s c o n s c i e n c e de l a p l u s h o n t e u s e r e p r e s s i o n de T h i s t o i r e " (Notes a m e r i c a i n e s 1 4 - 1 5 ) . This identification already

been

w i t h the A m e r i c a n s of the n o n - w h i t e s

commented

on

in

connection

with

French

has

literary

t r a v e l l e r s . F o r a v a r i e t y of r e a s o n s , t h e i r Q u e b e c o i s c o m p a t r i o t s

push

t h i s l i n e of thought s t i l l f u r t h e r . F o r t h e m , A m e r i c a n r a c i s m i s not j u s t a convenient

c u d g e l w i t h w h i c h to b l u d g e o n the the h e a d s of

their

b o o r i s h h o s t s ; i t i s , r a t h e r , e m b l e m a t i c of t h e i r o w n s o c i a l w o u n d s . In t h e i r s t r u g g l e s w i t h w h a t are s o m e t i m e s s e e n as o m n i p o t e n t Quebecois a r t i s t s

identify strongly

anglos,

w i t h the w r e t c h e d of the

earth:

w i t h B l a c k s , N a t i v e A m e r i c a n s - s o m e t i m e s even P a l e s t i n i a n s . It i s not coincidental Negres blancs

t h a t the b e s t k n o w n s e p a r a t i s t de l'Amerique.

text was entitled

Les

In the s a m e v e i n , the m o s t h a t e d A n g l o

taunt w a s a l w a y s "Speak White!" N e e d l e s s to s a y , B l a i s i s too s o p h i s t i c a t e d and w o r l d l y an a r t i s t to f a l l i n t o one of t h e s e m o n o c h r o m a t i c p o l i t i c a l p o s i t i o n s . A l s o , h e r e x p e r i e n c e of the U n i t e d S t a t e s i n c l u d e s as many p l e a s a n t

personal

m e m o r i e s as i t does i d e o l o g i c a l r e s e r v a t i o n s . N e i t h e r a h a g i o g r a p h e r nor a d e m o n o l o g i s t , h e r v i s i o n i s a l w a y s a d m i r a b l y b i n o c u l a r . A l t h o u g h i t ' s w i t t i e r , d r i e r , and m o r e p l a y f u l , B l a i s ' s s k e w e r i n g of

French literary

pretensions

is

actually

more

d e f l a t i o n of A m e r i c a n c u l t u r a l b a l l o o n s . Une liaison

deadly parisienne

than

her

(1975)

d e s c r i b e s the a d v e n t u r e s of a Q u e b e c o i s w h o t r a v e l s to F r a n c e on a Canada C o u n c i l g r a n t , hoping to make a name f o r h i m s e l f in the C i t y of L i g h t . Once t h e r e , he d i s c o v e r s t h a t the l i t e r a r y s a l o n s and j o u r n a l i s t i c p o l i t i c s w h i c h B a l z a c s a t i r i z e d so p i t i l e s s l y in Illusions

perdus

still

delights

very

much in f o r c e . The haughty

Madame A r g e n t i

are in

327 p u t t i n g M a t h i e u L e l i e v r e in h i s p r o v i n c i a l p l a c e : " ' Q u i e t e s - v o u s , dans nos L e t t r e s F r a n c a i s e s ? Un s i m p l e e t r a n g e r , un a d o l e s c e n t . . . . " (Une liaison

parisienne

135).

Parisian critics

prove

to

be

equally

c o n d e s c e n d i n g : ' " Q u i e s t ce f a u x C a n d i d e , c e t t e ame p r o u s t i e n n e en v i s i t e a P a r i s . . . . " (Une l i a i s o n p a r i s i e n n e 143). The L u c i e n de R u b e m p r e s of the t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y , i t w o u l d s e e m , no l o n g e r c o m e j u s t f r o m the French provinces. The hero of J e a n - P i e r r e L e f e b v r e ' s 1 9 7 7 f e a t u r e , Le Vieux pays ou Rimbaud "Abel

est

mort, had a s o m e w h a t d i f f e r e n t e x p e r i e n c e : In t h i s

( w h o had e a r l i e r w i s t f u l l y

film

w i s h e d ' t o be a b l e to c h a n g e the

c o u r s e of e v e n t s ' ) r e t u r n s to the land of h i s a n c e s t o r s only to d i s c o v e r t h a t the F r a n c e in w h i c h he had been taught to b e l i e v e no l o n g e r e x i s t s that it

e x i s t s (as J a n D a w s o n w r o t e ) ' o n l y in m u s e u m s and i n

his

i m a g i n a t i o n ' . . . . " ( M o r r i s 31 1). O t h e r f i l m m a k e r s a p p r o a c h e d the s e m i l e g e n d a r y e n c l a v e of t h e i r f o n d e s t hopes and the home of t h e i r loved

betrayers

documentarist

with

almost

Richard Lavoie, for

ethnographic

best-

objectivity.

example, went

to B r i t t a n y ,

NFB the

F r e n c h p r o v i n c e f r o m w h i c h m o s t p r o t o - Q u e b e c o i s e m i g r a t e d , to s h o o t Voyage en Bretagne

interieure

( 1 9 7 8 ) , " o u i l s ' i n t e r e s s e aux m o e u r s et

c o u t u m e s de c e t t e r e g i o n " ( C o l o m b e and J e a n 3 2 2 ) . One of the more i n t r i g u i n g r e c e n t f i l m s on the s u b j e c t of Q u e b e c ' s relationship

to

documentary, writer/director f e a t u r e Alias

the

Le Sort

outside de

world

l'Amerique.

is

Jacques

This is material

which

1996 the

has m i n e d many t i m e s b e f o r e . In h i s 1 9 8 9 n o n - f i c t i o n Will James,

Godbout c h r o n i c l e d the c a r e e r of the

d e r a c i n a t e d Q u e b e c o i s c e l e b r i t y of them a l l , a habitant himself

Godbout's

most

who r e - i n v e n t e d

as a n a t i v e - b o r n T e x a s r a n c h hand p r i o r to c a r v i n g out a

328 successful histoire

career for

americaine,

himself

as a c o w b o y

writer/artist.

a novel p u b l i s h e d in 1 9 8 5 , the a u t h o r

In

Une

recounted

the a d v e n t u r e s of a m i d d l e - a g e d Q u e b e c o i s p r o f e s s o r who s p e n d s a y e a r in

Southern

California,

encountering

many

of

the

same

cultural

b o o n d o g g l e s d e s c r i b e d by M i c h e l B u t o r , A n d r e a De C a r l o , and writers

from Europe's " l a t i n quarter".

meditation straight

on n a t i o n a l

to

l'Amerique

the

heart

identity, of

In h i s m o s t r e c e n t

however,

Quebec's

Godbout

ongoing

other

cinematic

decided

dilemma.

Le

to

go

Sort

de

a p p r o a c h e s the t r a u m a of 1 7 5 9 f r o m a v e r t i g i n o u s

variety

of a n g l e s . A l t h o u g h , s t r i c t l y s p e a k i n g , the f i l m m u s t be c l a s s i f i e d as a documentary, objective

it

i s not w i t h o u t i t s

reporter

fictional

e l e m e n t s . Godbout

shares screen time w i t h playwright

the

Rene-Daniel

D u b o i s , a Q u e b e c o i s p l a y w r i g h t who has been c o m m i s s i o n e d to w r i t e an i m a g i n a t i v e s c e n a r i o on the e v e n t s t h a t l e d up to the c l i m a c t i c on

battle

the P l a i n s of A b r a h a m . He has been a s k e d to do so by a H o l l y w o o d

s t u d i o : " J ' e c r i s un f i l m pour l e s A m e r i c a i n s s u r ce que s i g n i f i e

pour

nous l a j o u r n e e l a p l u s i m p o r t a n t e de l ' h i s t o i r e a nous...." A s he t a l k s to Godbout, his friend

and de f a c t o

collaborator,

Dubois a s s u m e s

the

p e r i o d d r e s s of the h i s t o r i c a l c h a r a c t e r s he i m p e r s o n a t e s , at one p o i n t conducting a lively conversation w i t h himself

in the d o u b l e g u i s e of

V o l t a i r e and L o u i s X V - a p e r f e c t m e t a p h o r f o r the s c h i z o p h r e n i c n a t u r e of t h i s d e b a t e . E l s e w h e r e , the f i l m m a k e r s

visit

the d e s c e n d a n t s

of

G e n e r a l s W o l f e and M o n t c a l m , the s l a i n m i l i t a r y l e a d e r s w h o s e a r m i e s d e c i d e d the

f a t e of

filmmakers

track

French North down

bilingual, left-leaning spare

time.

In

the

General

A m e r i c a in Wolfe's

BBC j o u r n a l i s t

1 7 5 9 . In L o n d o n ,

descendant,

a

the

fluently

w h o f r o n t s a b l u e s band i n h i s

French countryside,

meanwhile,

the

Baron

de

329 M o n t c a l m t u r n s out to be an u n r e c o n s t r u c t e d l e g i t i m i s t w h o s e s o l e goal in l i f e

i s to c o m p l e t e l y

rebuild

the r u i n e d f a m i l y

a p o l o g y , he e x p l a i n s , " M o n f a m i l i e

a toujours

castle.

Without

servis les Bourbons."

R e t u r n i n g to Quebec to p u r s u e t h e i r r e s e a r c h e s , Godbout and D u b o i s d i s c o v e r m o r e t h r e a d s t h a t l e a d n o w h e r e . F i n d i n g the p r o p e r r e c o r d s p r o v e s to be a K a f k a e s q u e n i g h t m a r e

as the men w a n d e r

fruitlessly

f r o m a r c h i v e to a r c h i v e . Even w o r s e , the h i s t o r i c a l r e c o r d i s c o n s t a n t l y b e i n g o v e r s h a d o w e d by f o l k m e m o r y . T h e d i r e c t o r r e c a l l s h i s

father

s a y i n g , " N ' o u b l i e p a s , J a c q u e s , que l e s A n g l a i s ont b r u l e s nos m a i s o n s . " E l s e w h e r e , p o l i t i c a l pundit L a u r i e r L a p i e r r e o p i n e s , " N o u s a v o n s deux e n n e m i s aux P l a i n e s d ' A b r a h a m . Ils s o n t l e s A n g l a i s et l e s F r a n c a i s . " It i s a l s o s u g g e s t e d t h a t the u l t i m a t e b e n e f i c i a r i e s of t h i s b a t t l e the

A m e r i c a n s , the m a s t e r s of the

world

who

have

were

commissioned

Dubois to r e c o n s t r u c t h i s t r a u m a f o r t h e i r c o m m e r c i a l p l e a s u r e . In both h i s l i t e r a r y and h i s f i l m w o r k , J a c q u e s Godbout m a n a g e s to e n c o m p a s s t w o d i c h o t o m o u s t r e n d s in Q u e b e c ' s c u l t u r a l

make-up,

two centrifugal

f o r c e s t h a t c e a s e l e s s l y t h r e a t e n to u p s e t i t s

equilibrium.

Philippe

finalement

In

Gajan's words,

"L'art

fragile

de G o d b o u t ,

de r e p o s e r l e s q u e s t i o n s t o u t en e v a c u a n t l e s f a u x

c'est pistes

(Qui e s t l e t r a i t r e ? ) et l e s f a u s s e s c e r t i t u d e s (Qui e s t l e v a i n q u e u r de l a b a t a i l l e ? p a r e x e m p l e " ( G a j a n 8 4 ) . On the one hand, the p r o v i n c e i s p o s s i b l y the m o s t c o s m o p o l i t a n p l a c e on the c o n t i n e n t , e v i n c i n g t a s t e s t h a t d i f f e r m a r k e d l y f r o m the N o r t h A m e r i c a n n o r m . On the o t h e r hand, i t i s one of the m o s t i n s u l a r , n o u r i s h i n g an a l m o s t p a r a n o i d f e a r of n a t i o n a l i m m o l a t i o n in the s u r g i n g s e a of a n g l o p h o n e s t h a t s u r r o u n d it. To a c e r t a i n e x t e n t

this reflects

the d i f f e r e n c e

between town

and

330 c o u n t r y . If M o n t r e a l i s N o r t h A m e r i c a ' s P a r i s , then r u r a l Quebec i s i t s Gal w a y . T h i s t e n s i o n r e s u l t s in an a m b i v a l e n t a t t i t u d e t o w a r d s Q u e b e c o i s w h o have made good a b r o a d . W h i l e o v e r s e a s r e c o g n i t i o n

i s seen as

g e n e r a l l y good, i t i s also fraught w i t h p e r i l . M a r i e - C l a i r e B l a i s , f o r example, obviously f e l t some e l u s i v e , i l l - d e f i n e d uneasiness when she m e t a f e m a l e p r o f e s s o r of F r e n c h l i t e r a t u r e w h o e n t h u s e d , " a H a r v a r d , nous c o n n a i s s o n s A n n e H e b e r t , A n t o n i n e

Mail let,

Michel

Tremblay,

R e j e a n Ducharme...que de t e m p s , nous a i m e r o n s de p l u s en p l u s de v o s a u t e u r s i c i . . . . " ( N o t e s a m e r i c a i n e s 2 4 ) . It s h o u l d be e m p h a s i z e d here t h a t t h e u n c e r t a i n t y i n q u e s t i o n w a s f e l t by the m o s t c o s m o p o l i t a n of Quebecois

writers,

a peripatetic

literary

pilgrim.

F o r the Vves

B e a u c h e m i n s of Q u e b e c , t h e s i t u a t i o n s e e m s m o r e s i n i s t e r s t i l l . F o r t h e m , anyone w h o m o v e s a w a y t h r e a t e n s to b e c o m e a W i l l J a m e s . • ne of t h e v e r y f e w e x c e p t i o n s to t h i s

rule i s Jack Kerouac.

A l t h o u g h he w a s born i n t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s and s p e n t p r e c i o u s t i m e i n la belle province,

little

s i n c e the e a r l y 1 9 7 0 s t h e B e a t n o v e l i s t h a s

been a Q u e b e c o i s i c o n , h i s p o s i t i o n c a n o n i z e d by n o v e l i s t / s c r e e n w r i t e r V i c t o r - L e v y Beaulieu who c e a s e l e s s l y r e i t e r a t e d " c e t t e passion f o l l e pour K e r o u a c . "

9

In 1 9 8 9 , R e g i n a l d M a r t e l and Yves B o i s v e r t p u b l i s h e d a

s l i m v o l u m e c a l l e d Quebec Kerouac

Blues,

a c e l e b r a t i o n i n p r o s e and

v e r s e of t h e m a n f r o m " L o w e l l ! V i l l e de m e s a n c e t r e s ! C a n a d i e n f r a n c a i s ! " ( M a r t e l and B o i s v e r t 2 1 ) .

It i s i n t e r e s t i n g to note that B e a u l i e u , l i k e so many French and I t a l i a n w r i t e r s , both past and p r e s e n t , i s a l s o a g r e a t a d m i r e r of H e r m a n M e l v i l l e . He w r o t e , " c e que M e l v i l l e a e t e , c ' e s t c e que j e v o u d r a i s e t r e . " ( M o n s i e u r M e l v i l l e 1 2 3 ) F o r h i m , t h e A m e r i c a n n o v e l i s t i s one of V i c t o r Hugo's s p i r i t u a l b r o t h e r s : " L ' u n a v a i t e c r i t Moby Dick e t T a u t r e Les Travailleurs de la mer, l e s deux grands l i v r e s du XIXe s i e c l e s u r l e o c e a n ! " ( M o n s i e u r Melville 1 30)

9

331 Of c o u r s e , J a c k K e r o u a c c o n t r i b u t e d to t h i s t r i b u t e by h i s r e f u s a l to d i s p a r a g e h i s Q u e b e c o i s r o o t s . P a u l T h e r o u x ' s f a t h e r , f o r i n s t a n c e , w a s of F r a n c o - A m e r i c a n s t o c k , b u t , a s w e have a l r e a d y novelist/travel ancestors

writer's

are almost

indifference

comments

universally

to t h e u n i q u e l y

on t h e n a t u r e hostile. Thanks

seen, the

of h i s

distant

to h i s s i n g u l a r

" C a n u c k " a s p e c t s of h i s N e w E n g l a n d

c h i l d h o o d - a s i n of o m i s s i o n w h i c h m u s t be added to t h e i d e o l o g i c a l b o n f i r e of h i s o u t s p o k e n f r a n c o p h o b i a - t h e odds of P a u l T h e r o u x e v e r b e i n g a d o p t e d by M o n t r e a l ' s l i t e r a r y j o u r n a l i s t s a s a long l o s t fils pays

are v i r t u a l l y

n i l . In Satori

in Paris,

du

conversely, Jack/Jacques

audibly r e j o i c e d in h i s c u l t u r a l heritage. F a r from being d e f e n s i v e in F r a n c e , he p r a c t i c e d a f o r m of a g g r e s s i v e f r a n c o p h i l i s m , a t a c t i c w h i c h e m p h a s i z e d the i m m e m o r i a l

F r e n c h n e s s of le peuple

Quebecois:

"A

m a r v e l l o u s m a n , and J e w i s h , and w e have o u r c o n v e r s a t i o n i n F r e n c h , and I even t e l l h i m t h a t I r o l l my ' r ' s ' on my tongue and not i n my t h r o a t b e c a u s e I c o m e f r o m M e d i e v a l F r e n c h Q u e b e c - v i a - B r i t t a n y s t o c k , and he agrees, admitting

t h a t m o d e r n P a r i s i a n F r e n c h , tho dandy, has r e a l l y

been c h a n g e d by t h e i n f l u x of G e r m a n s , J e w s and A r a b s f o r a l l t h e s e t w o c e n t u r i e s and not to m e n t i o n the i n f l u e n c e of the f o p s i n t h e c o u r t of L o u i s the F o u r t e e n t h w h i c h r e a l l y s t a r t e d i t , and I a l s o r e m i n d e d h i m t h a t F r a n c o i s V i l l o n ' s r e a l name w a s p r o n o u n c e d ' V i l l e O n ' and n o t ' V i y o n ' ( w h i c h i s a c o r r u p t i o n ) and t h a t in t h o s e days you s a i d not ' t o i ' o r ' m o i ' but l i k e ' t o u e ' o r ' m o u e ' (as w e s t i l l do i n Quebec and i n t w o days I heard i t i n B r i t t a n y ) . . . . " ( K e r o u a c 4 5 - 4 6 ) . It i s i n s t r u c t i v e to n o t e , in the p r e c e d i n g p a r a g r a p h , h o w many of the

articles

of

the

Quebecois

catechism

survived

Kerouac's

M a s s a c h u s s e t t s u p b r i n g i n g . One f i n d s both the i n s i s t e n c e t h a t joual i s

332 the

true

French,

conversationalist

the

authentic

who

accepts

French,

this

view.

and

the

One a l s o

French finds

coclear

d i s t i n c t i o n s b e t w e e n " u s " and " t h e m " , the " r e a l " F r e n c h m e n and the J e w i s h , G e r m a n , and A r a b i m m i g r a n t s who have so s a d l y c o r r u p t e d the tongue

of

R a b e l a i s and V i l l o n . F a r f r o m b e i n g a s s i m i l a t e d by

A m e r i c a n D r e a m , i n the K e r o u a c - o r p e r h a p s I s h o u l d s a y h o u s e h o l d , the Q u e b e c o i s Zeitgeist

survived virtually

the

Kerouac-

intact.

A f t e r the " Q u i e t R e v o l u t i o n " of the 1 9 6 0 s and e a r l y 1 9 7 0 s , the s o c i a l m o v e m e n t t h a t d i d so m u c h to d i s p e l the s t r i c t u r e s of Q u e b e c ' s p a r o c h i a l p u r i t a n i s m , F r e n c h c h a r a c t e r s w e r e o c c a s i o n a l l y s h o w n in a better

l i g h t . No l o n g e r w e r e

inheritors

of

1 7 8 9 o r the

they

simply

obliging

the

tourists

sinful who

and

atheistic

p r a i s e d joual

as

e f f u s i v e l y i n f i c t i o n as they d i s p a r a g e d i t in r e a l l i f e . Now they c o u l d sometimes function

as a c o u n t e r w e i g h t

to A n g l o - A m e r i c a n

cultural

d o m i n a t i o n , as a m o r e c o n g e n i a l s o u r c e of m o d e r n i s m and savoir T h u s , the G a l l i c cook i n Le flatou novelist

Vves B e a u c h e m i n than

i s treated f a r more favourably any of

the

quasi-Satanic

" a n g l o s " . L i k e w i s e , i n P i e r r e G a n g ' s f i r s t f e a t u r e Sous-sol sexual coming-of-age

story

faire.

set mainly

in the l a t e

by

Montreal (1996), a

1 9 6 0 s , a young

F r e n c h t o u r i s t i s p r e s e n t e d as a l i b e r a t i n g w i n d w h i c h h e l p s to

blow

a w a y the l i n g e r i n g c l o u d s of C h u r c h - g e n e r a t e d s e x u a l r e p r e s s i o n . A n o t h e r change u s h e r e d in by the

1990s w a s a new

cinematic

a w a r e n e s s of M o n t r e a l ' s s o - c a l l e d " a l l o p h o n e " c o m m u n i t i e s .

Latin

A m e r i c a n p o l i t i c a l r e f u g e e s began to f i g u r e p r o m i n e n t l y in f i l m s s u c h as M i c h e l B r a u l t ' s Les Noces de papier ( 1 9 8 9 ) . A r o u n d the s a m e t i m e , f r o m w i t h i n the h e a r t of M o n t r e a l ' s I t a l i a n c o m m u n i t y , a l o c a l boy began to e s t a b l i s h h i s r e p u t a t i o n

as one of the p r o v i n c e ' s

foremost

333 filmmakers.

Paul Tana's medium-length

1 0

"[raconta] l'itineraire

Caffe

Italia

Montreal

de t r o i s g e n e r a t i o n s peu h a b i t u e e au p h e n o m e n e

de T i m m i g r a t i o n en m a s s e " ( C o l o m b e and J e a n 5 0 8 - 5 0 9 ) He f o l l o w e d t h i s up w i t h La Sarrasine

( 1 9 9 1 ) , a s t u d y of e t h n i c c o n f l i c t

between

I t a l i a n i m m i g r a n t s and Q u e b e c o i s urban d w e l l e r s at the t u r n of

this

c e n t u r y . I n t r i g u i n g l y , the f i l m ' s e p o n y m o u s S a r a c e n r e f e r s to a s t r i n g borne f i g u r e in an I t a l i a n m a r i o n e t t e s h o w . T h i s d a r k - s k i n n e d puppet s e r v e s the s a m e n a r r a t i v e R o s s e l l i n i ' s Paisa, subject

to

f u n c t i o n as the w o o d e n M o o r i n R o b e r t o

a d e t a i l w h i c h s u g g e s t s t h a t I t a l o - Q u e b e c e r s are as

motherland

influence

as

are

their

French-speaking

neighbours. In the i n t e r e s t s of f a i r n e s s , i t s h o u l d p r o b a b l y be p o i n t e d out t h a t French i n t e l l e c t u a l s backwater.

no l o n g e r l o o k at Quebec p u r e l y as a

B o t h F e l i x L e c l e r c and R o b e r t

Charlebois

cultural

rejuvenated

p o p u l a r F r e n c h m u s i c in the 1 9 6 0 s , and P a r i s i a n c r i t i c s w e r e p r o p e r l y appreciative. truly

1

1

A t t i m e s , i t c o u l d f a i r l y be s a i d , they w e r e more than

appreciative-on

conciliatory-attempting

behalf

of

their

to be m o r e

fellow

countrymen,

almost

Q u e b e c o i s t h a n the Q u e b e c o i s

themselves.

M o n t r e a l e r s of I t a l i a n d e s c e n t are a l m o s t c e r t a i n l y the a l l o p h o n e c o m m u n i t y w h i c h i s m o s t a s s i d u o u s l y c o u r t e d by Q u e b e c ' s f e d e r a l i s t and n a t i o n a l i s t c a m p s . A s n o n - n a t i v e E n g l i s h s p e a k e r s t h e y w e r e , p r i o r to the p a r t i Q u e b e c o i s ' s f i r s t e l e c t o r a l v i c t o r y i n 1 9 7 6 , l a r g e l y a s s i m i l a t e d i n t o M o n t r e a l ' s anglophone c o m m u n i t y , d e s p i t e t h e i r C a t h o l i c f a i t h . F o l l o w i n g changes to the p r o v i n c e ' s e d u c a t i o n a l l a w s , m o s t of t h e i r c h i l d r e n w e r e s u b s e q u e n t l y c h a n n e l l e d i n t o M o n t r e a l ' s F r e n c h l a n g u a g e s c h o o l s y s t e m , but t h i s s e e m i n g l y had l i t t l e e f f e c t on t h e i r p o l i t i c a l l o y a l t i e s . G e n e r a l l y popular in both l i n g u i s t i c c a m p s , they tend to s l i d e b e t w e e n M o n t r e a l ' s e t h n i c c o m m u n i t i e s w i t h g r e a t e r ease than m o s t . T h e c u l t u r a l u n i q u e n e s s w h i c h has a l w a y s p r e v e n t e d m u c h - c o n q u e r e d I t a l y f r o m b e i n g r e - m a d e i n a n o t h e r c o u n t r y ' s i m a g e s e e m s to h o l d t r u e i n Q u e b e c ' s I t a l i a n neighbourhoods as w e l l . 1 0

1 1

One of L e c l e r c ' s s o n g s p l a y s a p i v o t a l r o l e in F r a n c o i s T r u f f a u t ' s

Tirez sur le pianists.

1960 m a s t e r p i e c e ,

334 J a c q u e s B e r t i n ' s Felix Leclerc: To

underscore

his

subject's

Le Roi heureux i s a c a s e i n p o i n t .

importance,

this

rather

sycophantic

b i o g r a p h e r w r i t e r s , "11 e s t le s e u l C a n a d i e n - o u i , le s e u l - d o n t le nom s o i t connu p a r t o u s - t o u s - l e s F r a n c a i s " ( B e r t i n 7). C o n t i n u i n g on in the same francocentric Canada.

Du

vieux

v e i n , B e r t i n m a r v e l s t h a t "11 v i e n t Canada

francais:

pas

de

de l o i n : du

litterature,

pas

d ' i n t e l l i g e n t z i a , pas de t r a d i t i o n s c u l t u r e l l e s , pas de C a f e de F l o r e , p a s de M o n t p a r n a s s e . . . p a s de r e v u e s , pas de t h e a t r e , pas d ' e r u d i t i o n , pas des s p e c t a t e u r s e c l a i r e s " ( B e r t i n 8 - 9). B e h i n d t h i s d e p r i v e d

lumberjack

w o r l d , of c o u r s e , o u t s i d e f o r c e s l u r k e d - a l l of t h e m s p e a k i n g E n g l i s h : " ' A u x a n g l a i s l ' a r g e n t , l e s a f f a i r e s . A n o u s , l e s a m e s . Et l a m i s e r e ' " ( B e r t i n 2 9 ) . T h e n , t o o , t h e r e w a s the C h u r c h . A c c o r d i n g to B e r t i n , in 1 8 9 9 , Q u e b e c ' s 2 0 0 c i v i l s e r v a n t s had to engage in unequal c o m b a t w i t h no f e w e r than 1 0 , 0 0 0 p a r i s h p r i e s t s . W h a t ' s m o r e , the

layman/priest

r a t i o of 5 7 6 - 1 w a s the m o s t V a t i c a n - f r i e n d l y in the w o r l d : " P o u r un p r e t r e , l e Quebec de 1 9 0 0 p e u t , en e f f e t , r e s s e m b l e r a un p a r a d i s t e r r e s t r e : t o u t y e s t dans l a m a i n de l ' e g l i s e " ( B e r t i n 4 9 ) . A s L e c l e r c himself

r e c a l l e d , ' " C ' e s t g r a c e aux p r e t r e s que nous p a r l o n s

francais. Mais helas! il

faut bien dire

encore

t o u t e l a v e r i t e . Le c l e r g e a

c o n t r i b u e a nous m a i n t e n i r dans une c e r t a i n e n u i t de l ' e s p r i t ' "

(Bertin

5 3 ) . When he t a l k s about the r o l e of a n g l o p h o n e s i n Q u e b e c , the a u t h o r assumes

the

xenophobic

tones

of

L o u i s H e m o n ' s habitants.

When

c o n s i d e r i n g p o p u l a t i o n s h i f t s in Quebec C i t y , f o r i n s t a n c e , he w r i t e s , " E n 1 8 6 1 , i l y ' a a v a i t q u a r a n t e pour c e n t d ' a n g l o p h o n e s dans l a v i l l e . Et pas t o u s des r i c h e s . Des I r l a n d a i s , c a t h o l i q u e s c o m m e l e s c a n a d i e n s f r a n c a i s m a i s . . . a n g l o p h o n e s avant t o u t " ( B e r t i n 7 0 ) . When s p e a k i n g of Quebec's somewhat

ambivalent

relationship

to F r a n c e , c o n v e r s e l y ,

335 B e r t i n ' s e m p h a s i s s h i f t s e v e r so s l i g h t l y f r o m P e q u i s t e o r t h o d o x y P a r i s i a n snobbery:

to

" P a r l e r f r a n p a i s - e t un f r a n c a i s ' a n c i e n ' , p r e s q u e

d e n a t u r e - p a f a i t h a b i t a n t . II y ' a d'un c o t e l a F r a n c e , t e r r e des a r t s , des a r m e s et des l o i s qui f a s c i n e et qui f a i t peur, le pays de l a c u l t u r e et du p e c h e . E t , de l ' a u t r e ,

les Anglais, les patrons,

m e i l l e u r s " (Bertin 8 8 ) .

1 2

les

gagneurs,

les

A c c o r d i n g to B e r t i n , F e l i x L e c l e r c s u f f e r e d

a b o m i n a b l y w h e n he m o v e d f r o m Quebec C i t y to M o n t r e a l : " L e c e n t r e v i l l e de Quebec e s t europeen... M o n t r e a l e s t une c i t e a m e r i c a i n e (Bertin

111).

1 5

Modifying his i n i t i a l

somewhat contradictorily,

"

sneer somewhat, Bertin a d d s -

one m i g h t s a y , under the c i r c u m s t a n c e s -

t h a t "11 n'y a que dans le c e n t r e , v e r s l a p l a c e d ' a r m e s et 1 ' H o t e l de V i l l e que s u b s i s t e n t q u e l q u e s v e s t i g e s du r e g i m e f r a n p a i s , m i l e s aux c o n s t r u c t i o n s v a n i t e u s e s du c a p i t a l i s m e a n g l o - a m e r i c a i n , p o i n t

toutes

l a i d e s d ' a i l l e u r s " ( B e r t i n 1 12). U s i n g M o n t r e a l and E n g l i s h Canada as a p r e t e x t , J a c q u e s B e r t i n f i n d s the p e r f e c t o p p o r t u n i t y sixty-year-old

to r e p r i s e

s l u r s of G e o r g e s D u h a m e l i n a n e w c o n t e x t ; i n

the this

r e s p e c t , at l e a s t , one c o u l d say t h a t n o t h i n g at a l l had c h a n g e d i n the French l i t e r a r y t r a v e l l e r ' s psyche. What i s d i f f e r e n t

i s the d e t e r m i n a t i o n

Quebec i n an e q u a l l y good l i g h t . T h i s s l i g h t

to c a s t both F r a n c e and change in

journalistic

a t t i t u d e i s p r o b a b l y not u n c o n n e c t e d to s h i f t s in F r e n c h f o r e i g n p o l i c y since

the

end of

the

Second World

War. W i t h

its

defeat

in

1940

T h e n o n - Q u e b e c o i s w o r d in t h i s G a l l i c s u m m a t i o n of Q u e b e c ' s t a k e on F r a n c e and the A n g l o S a x o n w o r l d i s of c o u r s e " a r m e s " . In the s c o r e s of Q u e b e c o i s f i l m s w h i c h I have s e e n , and the h u n d r e d s of Q u e b e c o i s b o o k s and m a g a z i n e s w h i c h I have r e a d , I c a n n o t r e c a l l a s i n g l e o c c a s i o n in w h i c h a Quebecois poet, n o v e l i s t , j o u r n a l i s t , or f i l m m a k e r e x p r e s s e d the s l i g h t e s t a w e o r a d m i r a t i o n f o r F r e n c h m i l i t a r y p r o w e s s . T h i s i s one d i r e c t i o n , i t w o u l d s e e m , in w h i c h ethnic s e l f - i d e n t i f i c a t i o n cannot be pushed. 1 2

I w o n d e r how many o t h e r A m e r i c a n c i t i e s can b o a s t of so m u c h a u t h e n t i c l a t e c e n t u r y and e a r l y 18th c e n t u r y F r e n c h a r c h i t e c t u r e ? 1 3

17th

336 c o m p o u n d e d by the l o s s of i t s A f r i c a n and A s i a n c o l o n i e s , F r a n c e ' s c l a i m to b e i n g c o n s i d e r e d a g r e a t m i l i t a r y and p o l i t i c a l p o w e r s e e m e d less

credible

all

prestige, efforts

the

t i m e . To c o m p e n s a t e f o r

this

lack

of

global

w e r e made in the E l y s e e P a l a c e to e s t a b l i s h

the

n a t i o n as the c e n t r e of a w o r l d w i d e f r a n c o p h o n e c o m m u n i t y w h i c h w a s f i v e o r s i x t i m e s as l a r g e as F r a n c e i t s e l f . P a r a l l e l to t h i s p o l i c y ran the g o v e r n m e n t ' s a l r e a d y d i s c u s s e d a t t e m p t s to a s s u m e one of the key roles

in a United Europe s t r o n g

enough to c o m p e t e

w i t h both

the

A m e r i c a n s and the J a p a n e s e on t h e i r o w n t e r m s . S t e e p e d as a l w a y s in the t e n e t s of Realpolitik, gloire

F r e n c h p o l i t i c i a n s s a w q u i t e c l e a r l y t h a t i f Ja

w a s e v e r to r e t u r n to the banks of the S e i n e i t w o u l d c o m e in the

f o r m of a c o n f e d e r a t e d , not a n a t i o n a l , package. In t e r m s of w a l k i n g t h i s n e w double l i n e , J a c q u e s B e r t i n i s a c o n s u m m a t e m a s t e r . When he w r i t e s ,

for instance, "Parlons Joual!

V o i l a l a r e p o n s e au f a m e u x ' s p e a k w h i t e ! ' " ( B e r t i n 2 5 9 ) he m a k e s a c a s e f o r the l o c a l d i a l e c t w i t h o u t i n any w a y i m p u g n i n g the p u r i t y of Parisian

i d e a l . Joual

exists

exclusively

thanks

E n g l i s h . T h u s , the F r a n c o - Q u e b e c o i s l i n g u i s t i c

to

the

the

oppressive

confrontation

is

left

e n t i r e l y out of the loop. L e o n a r d C o h e n , on the o t h e r hand, M o n t r e a l ' s best-known

anglophone p o e t / s o n g w r i t e r - a n d

p o p u l a r i n P a r i s , by the w a y - i s

not l e t

off

one w h o i s

extremely

so e a s i l y : "11 p a r l e

en

f r a n c a i s . B o n , i l a un a c c e n t qui le t r a h i r a i t s ' i l l u i f a i s a i t c o n f i a n c e et parlait

l e dos t o u r n e . M a i s i l p a r l e l e n t e m e n t ,

L'accent

ajoute

mollification

of

au

charme"

that

final

(Bertin

289).

sentence,

the

sans elever la Despite

French

of

the

voix.

partial

Montreal's

anglophone c o m m u n i t y i s c l e a r l y not g r a n t e d the s a m e i m m u n i t y

which

B e r t i n a c c o r d s to h i s pure laine f r i e n d s . It i s no e x a g g e r a t i o n to s t a t e

337 t h a t at t i m e s the b i o g r a p h e r ' s w i l l i n g n e s s to c u r r y Q u e b e c o i s f a v o u r f r e q u e n t l y b o r d e r s on the r i d i c u l o u s . C o n s i d e r the f o l l o w i n g

summary

of the f i r s t FLQ m a n i f e s t o : " L e t e x t e p r e s e n t e un m e r i t e p l u t o t r a r e . II s e m b l e a v o i r ete e c r i t

p a r un v r a i l i t t e r a t e u r .

II o b t i e n d r a un v r a i

s u c c e s p o p u l a i r e " ( B e r t i n 2 6 0 ) . Only once does the a u t h o r a d m i t

what

h e ' s r e a l l y up to: " J " e c r i r a i une s o r t e de r o m a n h i s t o r i q u e s u r l a n a t i o n quebecoise" (Bertin

313). That

what

B e r t i n has w r i t t e n i s

r a t h e r than h i s t o r y i s a f a i r l y generous i n t e r p r e t a t i o n

fiction

of t h i s

book;

t h o s e l e s s w e l l - d i s p o s e d t o w a r d s the a u t h o r m i g h t argue i n s t e a d t h a t w h a t he has w h i p p e d up i s l i t t l e b e t t e r than s e c o n d - h a n d n a t i o n a l i s t p r o p a g a n d a , a b o r r o w e d p o l i c y p o s i t i o n w h i c h l a c k s the

emotional

v a l i d a t i o n of p e r s o n a l g r i e v a n c e . Happily, afflicted

not

all

French t r a v e l l e r s

w i t h nostalgie

des

colonies

in

Quebec are

as

fatally

as i s F e l i x L e c l e r c ' s F r e n c h

b i o g r a p h e r . W h i l e f i l m m a k e r M i c h e l M o r e a u , in h i s

autobiographical

documentary

the

Le Pays

reve

(1996),

does

make

occasional

B e r t i n e s q u e a s i d e - " M o n t r e a l a t t r a p e le v i r u s des E t a t s - U n i s " b e i n g p e r h a p s the m o s t a s t r i n g e n t - i n g e n e r a l h i s c o m m e n t s are f a r m o r e l o w key. D e s p i t e h i s f o n d n e s s f o r C h a r l e s T r e n e t s o n g s and the w r i t i n g s

of

C o l e t t e , w h o w a s b o r n , he a n n o u n c e s p r o u d l y " 3 0 k i l o m e t r e s de c h e z n o u s , " he w o u l d w i n d up in 7a belle province

in 1 9 6 0 at l e a s t

partially

as a r e s u l t of h i s d i s g u s t o v e r the c o l o n i a l w a r w h i c h F r a n c e w a s then w a g i n g in A l g e r i a . Many of the e i g h t y n o n - f i c t i o n f i l m s he s u b s e q u e n t l y made d e a l t

with

the

problems

of

immigrants

adjusting

e n v i r o n m e n t . A b o u t Quebec i t s e l f he s a y s r e l a t i v e l y

to

a new

little/expressing

g r a t i t u d e f o r the good t h i n g s w h i c h F r e n c h N o r t h A m e r i c a b r o u g h t

to

338 h i s l i f e , but w i t h o u t e v e r r e s o r t i n g to a r r o g a n t o v e r - s i m p l i f i c a t i o n s of the J a c q u e s B e r t i n v a r i e t y . Somewhat

surprisingly,

at

least

one

American

has

j o u r n a l i s t i c a l l y bashed the U S A f r o m a p u t a t i v e Q u e b e c o i s p e r s p e c t i v e . A V i e t n a m War vintage

draft-dodger,

Robert Dole a c q u i r e d

foreign

l a n g u a g e s in Europe p r i o r to a s s u m i n g a c a d e m i c r e s p o n s i b i l i t i e s at the U n i v e r s i t e du Quebec a T r o i s R i v i e r e s . Le Cauchemar

pamphletaire actuelle

sur

les

vestiges

du puhtanisme

americain:

dans

la

Essai

mentalite

i s the a u t h o r ' s r e s p o n s e to a n a t i o n a l h e r i t a g e w h i c h c a u s e s

h i m c o n s i d e r a b l e u n e a s e . The book i s d e d i c a t e d to Mark F r e c h e t t e , an A m e r i c a n a c t o r of Q u e b e c o i s d e s c e n t who s t a r r e d in Zabriskie

Point,

M i c h e l a n g e l o A n t o n i o n i ' s l a t e ' 6 0 s ode to r a d i c a l A m e r i c a , p r i o r becoming a revolutionary

to

in h i s o w n r i g h t , and d y i n g i n p r i s o n u n d e r

m y s t e r i o u s c i r c u m s t a n c e s . Dole w r i t e s , " V o i c i mon h y p o t h e s e : A T i n s u des

A m e r i c a i n s , il

existe

un c a r a c t e r e

a m e r i c a i n e , un c o m p o r t e m e n t

a m e r i c a i n , une

a m e r i c a i n qui s o n t

propre

mentalite au p e u p l e

a m e r i c a i n et qui le d i s t i n g u e n t d ' a u t r e s n a t i o n a l i t e s " (Dole 12). L i k e Le Monde's f r o n t - p a g e e d i t o r i a l i s t s , he b e l i e v e s t h a t " D e p u i s l a c h u t e du s o c i a l i s m e en Europe et a i l l e u r s , p l u s r i e n n'empeche

l'americanisation

de l a p l a n e t e " (Dole 13). S e e k i n g to e x p l a i n h i s m o t i v a t i o n s m o r e

fully,

the a u t h o r c o n f e s s e s , " L a t r i p l e p e r s p e c t i v e a m e r i c a i n e - e u r o p e e n e q u e b e c o i s e va donner a mes r e f l e x i o n s des t o u r n u r e s o r i g i n a l e s , p a r f o i s peut-etre Corriere

e x c e n t r i q u e s " (Dole 16). L i k e the c u l t u r a l

of

della Sera, Dole a t t r i b u t e s the i l l s of A m e r i c a n - s t y l e p o l i t i c a l

c o r r e c t n e s s to the l i n g e r i n g century

page w r i t e r s

effects

puritanism: " S i l'individu

deprivation

dans

sa vie

of d e t e r m i n i s t i c

faisait

personnelle,

seventeenth-

p r e u v e de f a i b l e s s e ou de

ses voisins

sauraient

qu'il

339 n'appartenait

pas au groupe des e l u s " (Dole 2 4 ) . A s r e a d e r s of C h a p t e r

T h r e e w i l l r e m e m b e r , t h i s i s p r e c i s e l y the s o r t of New W o r l d m i n d s e t w h i c h A n t o n i o G r a m s c i w i s h e d on h i s f e l l o w I t a l i a n s as an i n t e r i m p r e s o c i a l i s t m e a s u r e . C l a i m s are made in Le Cauchemar one c a n o n l y

americain

hope a r e e x a g g e r a t e d : " L e s A m e r i c a i n s

which

construisent

a c t u e l l e m e n t p l u s de p r i s o n s que d ' e c o l e s " (Dole 4 2 ) . The Land of the ( U n ) f r e e , a l a s , i s s e e m i n g l y not c o n t e n t w i t h t u r n i n g i t s o w n

terrain

into a m a s s i v e prison yard: " C ' e s t precisement la c o n v i c t i o n q u ' i l s sont le peuple e l u de Dieu qui p r o c u r e aux A m e r i c a i n s le s e n t i m e n t de d e v o i r j o u e r le r o l e de gendarme r n o n d i a l e " (Dole 47). S i m i l a r l y - a l t h o u g h , Dole would

contend, with

feministe

americaine

greater

justice

a introduit

on i t s

encore

une

side-"Le autre

mouvement

vision

de

la

p r e d e s t i n a t i o n : e l u e s s o n t l e s f e m m e s et l e s n o n - e l u s , l e s h o m m e s " (Dole 5 5 ) . L i k e D.H. L a w r e n c e , R o b e r t Dole s e e s c r u e l t y as an i n t e g r a l p a r t of the A m e r i c a n c h a r a c t e r : " L e l i e u t e n a n t G a l l e y d e v i n t un h e r o s a m e r i c a i n " (Dole 6 8 ) . L i k e S i m o n e de B e a u v o i r , the a u t h o r b e l i e v e s t h a t B l a c k s have a much g r e a t e r u n d e r s t a n d i n g of W h i t e s than W h i t e s do of t h e m s e l v e s : " S e l o n B a l d w i n , l a s o u r c e du p o u v o i r des N o i r s d o i t

etre

l e u r c o n n a i s s a n c e des B l a n c s , qui e s t s u p e r i e u r e a c e t t e que l e s B l a n c s ont

d'eux

memes"

(Dole

111).

Being i n c o r r i g i b l y

A m e r i c a n p e o p l e are i n c a p a b l e of r e s o r t i n g

capitalist,

the

to the one s y s t e m

that

m i g h t s a v e t h e m : s o c i a l i s m . In D o l e ' s w o r d s , " L e peuple a m e r i c a i n e s t v r a i m e n t m a l h e u r e u x , m a i s 1 ' i d e e de b l a m e le s y s t e m e s o c i o e c o n o m i q u e du p a y s p o u r ce m a l h e u r e s t i n c o n c e v a b l e " (Dole 101). More b l u n t l y , he w r i t e s " L ' e x p e r i e n c e a m e r i c a i n e s t un e c h e c " (Dole 128). C o n s e q u e n t l y , the

author's

"participation

a l a l u t t e p o u r un Q u e b e c

independent

c o n s t i t u e un r e a c t i o n a l a m e n a c e d ' h o m o g e n e i s a t i o n a l ' a m e r i c a i n e de

340 n o t r e p e t i t e p l a n e t e " (Dole 120). Of l i t e r a r y c r i t i c s of A m e r i c a , Dole s o m e w h a t too s i m p l i s t i c a l l y c l a i m s t h a t " L e s a u t e u r s qui a n a l y s e l a mentalite

a m e r i c a i n e se d i v i s e n t f a c i l e m e n t

en deux g r o u p e s : c e u x

d ' a v a n t l e XXe s i e c l e et ceux de XXe s i e c l e . Chez ceux du p r e m i e r g r o u p e , Toptimisme

et

Tadmiration

a l'endroit

du p e u p l e a m e r i c a i n

sont

p r e s q u e u n a n i m e s . Ceux du d e u x i e m e groupe, p a r c o n t r e , e x p r i m e n t a peu p r e s un c e r t a i n d e s e n c h a n t e m e n t (Dole 1 2 0 ) . " A b o v e a l l e l s e , Le Cauchemar

americain

1 4

i s an i n t e r e s t i n g e x a m p l e

of c o n s t r u c t e d i d e n t i t y . D e s p i t e the a u t h o r ' s a i l - A m e r i c a n o r i g i n s - a t the v e r y end of t h i s ch is

one

of

passionately

those

de coeur, Dole r u e f u l l y a d m i t s t h a t he h i m s e l f

fierce,

warning

his

inward-looking readers

puritans

against-his

he

social

has

been

situation-

e m b a t t l e d s o c i a l i s t ; Q u e b e c o i s n a t i o n a l i s t ; f r a n c o p h o n e a u t h o r ; enemy of p o l i t i c a l c o r r e c t n e s s ; d i s b e l i e v e r in P e n t a g o n / W a l l S t r e e t

myths-

m a k e s h i m r a t h e r m o r e than j u s t a c o m r a d e - i n - a r m s of Le

Monde's

g l o b a l e c o n o m i s t s , Corhere

della

Sera's

p o p u l a r c u l t u r e p u n d i t s , and

Jacques B e r t i n - s t y l e Quebecois wanna-bes. Because his v i e w s coincide so e x a c t l y w i t h t h o s e of h i s n a t u r a l a l l i e s , h i s b r o a d s i d e s are of m o r e v a l u e t h a n t h o s e of Quebecois i n t e l l e c t u a l s cultural

a mere insider. For French,

a f r a i d of d r o w n i n g

influence, Dole's testimony

Italian,

far and

i n a v u l g a r s e a of U.S.

i s as i d e o l o g i c a l l y v a l u a b l e as

a n t i - Z i o n i s t p r o n o u n c e m e n t s f r o m Orthodox r a b b i s w o u l d be i n r a d i c a l

A s w e s a w i n C h a p t e r T h r e e , the I t a l i a n c u l t u r a l a n a l y s t s of the 1 9 3 0 s w e r e f a r m o r e s y m p a t h e t i c t o w a r d s the United S t a t e s of A m e r i c a than w e r e A l e x i s de T o c q u e v i l l e and J . H e c t o r S t . J o h n de C r e v e c o u r t , the t w o b e s t - i n t e n t i o n e d F r e n c h l i t e r a r y t r a v e l l e r s of the 19th c e n t u r y . D o l e ' s g e n e r a l i z a t i o n i s f u r t h e r h u r t by i t s f a i l u r e to e x p l a i n the e x i s t e n c e of p o s t w a r F r e n c h A t l a n t i c i s t s , and by i t s de f a c t o e l i m i n a t i o n of E n g l i s h t r a v e l w r i t e r s , m o t h e r l a n d s c r i b e s w h o w e r e g e n e r a l l y k i n d e r to the r e v o l t e d " 1 3 c o l o n i e s " i n t h i s c e n t u r y than they w e r e in the l a s t . 1 4

341 P a l e s t i n i a n c i r c l e s . In both c a s e s , u n i v e r s a l l e g i t i m a c y i s b r o u g h t

to

r e g i o n a l c o n c e r n s v i a the t e s t i m o n y of h i g h - p r o f i l e " a p o s t a t e s " . Of c o u r s e , in the f i n a l d e c a d e s of the 2 0 t h c e n t u r y , an i n c r e a s i n g n u m b e r of E u r o p e a n i n t e l l e c t u a l s are t a k i n g U.S. h e g e m o n y

more-or-

l e s s f o r g r a n t e d . We have a l r e a d y s e e n how U m b e r t o Eco w r i t e s from

the

America's

p e r s p e c t i v e of rise

both

Rome but

the

conquest

from and

t h a t of

not

Athens, seeing

transmission

of

the

in old

" H e l l e n i s m " w h i c h he r e p r e s e n t s . I r o n i c a l l y , one of the m o s t b r i l l i a n t style

i s not

Arcand's

an Old W o r l d m a s t e r but

1986 feature

Roman f r o n t i e r

Le Declin

i n h e r i t o r s of t h i s a s s u m e d

a New W o r l d u p s t a r t .

de 1'Empire americain

Denys

i s s e t on a

t h a t i n c l u d e s M o n t r e a l and G e o r g e v i l l e , Q u e b e c .

Its

d r a m a t i s p e r s o n a e c o n s i s t a l m o s t e x c l u s i v e l y of l i b i d i n a l l y - o b s e s s e d history

p r o f e s s o r s w h o d e c i d e to s p e n d a w e e k e n d t o g e t h e r

in

the

c o u n t r y . W h i l e m o s t of t h e i r c o n v e r s a t i o n i s d e v o t e d to g a s t r o n o m y and s e x , w h e n e v e r they do t u r n t h e i r t h o u g h t s t o w a r d s t h e i r m e t i e r , speak w i t h a b i t t e r s w e e t

they

r e s i g n a t i o n t h a t w o u l d not have s e e m e d out

of p l a c e i n the age of J u l i a n the A p o s t a t e . Remy, for instance, believes that history is really a question n u m b e r s : " Q a , pa v e u t d i r e p a r e x e m p l e que l e s N o i r s finiront certainement americains n'arriveront

of,

sud-africains

un j o u r p a r g a g n e r , a l o r s que l e s N o i r s n o r d j a m a i s a s ' e n s o r t i r . Ca v e u t d i r e a u s s i que

l ' h i s t o i r e n ' e s t pas une s c i e n c e m o r a l e . Le bon d r o i t , l a c o m p a s s i o n , l a j u s t i c e s o n t des n o t i o n s e t r a n g e r e s a l ' h i s t o i r e " ( A r c a n d 1 1). A l t h o u g h h e r p r i o r i t i e s are s l i g h t l y d i f f e r e n t , Diane i s v e r y m u c h in a c c o r d w i t h R e m y : " V o y e z - v o u s on p o s s e d e p l u s de d o c u m e n t s s u r l e s E g y p t i e n s que s u r l e s N u b i e n s , beaucoup p l u s de d o c u m e n t s s u r l e s E s p a g n o l s que s u r

342 l e s M a y a s , et b i e n s u r beaucoup p l u s de d o c u m e n t s s u r l e s h o m m e s que sur

les

f e m m e s . Et

d'ailleurs

c'est

une

limite

tres

certaine

de

l ' h i s t o i r e . M a i s i l y a p e u t - e t r e un e l e m e n t p s y c h o l o g i q u e : c ' e s t qu'au f o n d on a i m e beaucoup m i e u x e n t e n d r e p a r l e r des v a i n q u e u r s que des v a i n c u s " ( A r c a n d 1 1 1). F o r D a n i e l l e , m e a n w h i l e , E u r o p e ' s c o l o n i z a t i o n of

North

America-a

colonization

from

which

she

has

directly

b e n e f i t e d - " C ' e s t l a d e u x i e m e p l u s g r a n d e c a t a s t r o p h e de l ' h i s t o i r e d'humanite, vingtieme

apres la peste siecle,

c'est

noire

au m o y e n - a g e . C o m p a r e a c a , l e

du b o n b o n ! " ( A r c a n d

138). P i e r r e

agrees:

" L ' h i s t o i r e de l ' h u m a n i t e , c ' e s t une h i s t o i r e d ' h o r r e u r " ( A r c a n d

139).

F o r D o m i n i q u e , the s t i g m a t a of d e c l i n e are e v e r y w h e r e and u n a v o i d a b l e : "Les

s i g n e s du d e c l i n de l ' e m p i r e

sont

p a r t o u t . La p o p u l a t i o n

qui

m e p r i s e s e s p r o p r e s i n s t i t u t i o n s . La b a i s s e du taux de n a t a l i t e . Le r e f u s des

hommes

de s e r v i r

dans

l'armee.

incontrolable... Avec l'ecroulement

La d e t t e

nationale

devenue

du r e v e m a r x i s t e - l e n i n i s t e , on ne

peut p l u s c i t e r aucune m o d e l e de s o c i e t e dont on p o u r r a i t

dire: voila

c o m m e n t nous a i m e r o n s v i v r e " ( A r c a n d 143). S t i l l , t h e r e are

certain

a d v a n t a g e s to b e i n g a l i v e i n s u c h an age: " L e d e c l i n d'une c i v i l i s a t i o n e s t a u s s i i n e v i t a b l e que le v i e i l l i s s e m e n t des i n d i v i d u s . A u m i e u x , on peut e s p e r e r r e t a r d e r un peu le p r o c e s s u s . . . R e m a r q u o n s que n o u s , i c i , nous a v o n s l a c h a n c e de v i v r e en b o r d u r e de l ' e m p i r e . L e s c h o c s s o n t beaucoup m o i n s v i o l e n t s . II f a u t d i r e que l a p e r i o d e a c t u e l l e peut

etre

t r e s a g r e a b l e a v i v r e p a r c e r t a i n s c o t e s " ( A r c a n d 173). D e c l i n e i s not the s a m e t h i n g as d e m i s e , h o w e v e r . T h u s , w h e n P i e r r e o p i n e s " M o i , j ' a i l ' i m p r e s s i o n qu'on s a u r a j a m a i s v r a i m e n t le fond de l ' h i s t o i r e "

(Arcand

173), o p t i m i s m s t r u g g l e s w i t h f a t a l i s m . Under ordinary c i r c u m s t a n c e s , t h i n g s w o u l d be changed d r a m a t i c a l l y by the b a r b a r i a n s at the g a t e , by

343 the rude b r o o m f r o m the s t e p p e s t h a t s w e e p s the c u l t i v a t e d but

effete

dead w o o d of e s t a b l i s h e d c u l t u r e s i n t o the d u s t b i n of h i s t o r y . T h i s t i m e a r o u n d , h o w e v e r , the traditional

outriders

t a s k . T h e end r e s u l t

a r e too

weak

to

is a strange

accomplish

sort

of

their

stasis,

the

s e e m i n g l y e n d l e s s p r o l o n g a t i o n of a fin d'epoch w a i t i n g p e r i o d w h i c h i n the p a s t w o u l d have l o n g s i n c e been t e r m i n a t e d

by e n t r o p i c

social

f o r c e s . By a l l the l a w s of H e g e l , M a r x , S p e n g l e r , and T o y n b e e , the c i v i l i z a t i o n w e l i v e in s h o u l d have ended y e a r s ago, and yet i t has not. I n s t e a d of c h a n g i n g , i t m u t a t e s . What the f u t u r e h o l d s f o r t h i s o l d / n e w hybrid culture, this p o s t h i s t o r i c a l / a h i s t o r i c a l corporate c i v i l i z a t i o n , w i l l p r o b a b l y not be k n o w n u n t i l the next " m u t a t i o n " o c c u r s , s o m e t i m e d u r i n g the c o m i n g m i l l e n n i u m .

344

CONCLUSION

The r e f r a i n

f r o m one of G i l l e s V i g n e a u l t ' s m o s t p o p u l a r s o n g s

r e a d s as f o l l o w s : " M o n p a y s ce n ' e s t pas un p a y s c ' e s t

l'hiver/Mon

j a r d i n ce n ' e s t pas un j a r d i n c ' e s t l a p l a i n e / M o n c h e m i n ce n ' e s t pas un chemin c'est (Vigneault

l a n e i g e / M o n p a y s ce n ' e s t pas un p a y s c ' e s t

159).

Although

to

outsiders

these

lines

Thiver"

might

sound

p l e a s a n t l y p a s t o r a l , to Quebec n a t i o n a l i s t s they are a r a l l y i n g c r y and the u n o f f i c i a l

a n t h e m of the P a r t i Q u e b e c o i s . The g a r d e n s ,

winters,

p l a i n s , and s n o w r e f e r r e d to r e s i d e e x c l u s i v e l y w i t h i n the f r o n t i e r s la belle province;

they have n o t h i n g at a l l to do w i t h the v e r y

of

similar

phenomena found in R u s s i a , S c a n d i n a v i a , the n o r t h e r n h a l f of the U n i t e d S t a t e s , or even E n g l i s h - s p e a k i n g Canada. T h o s e in the k n o w w i l l get the p o i n t ; as f o r t h o s e o u t s i d e the l o o p , t h e i r

l a c k of u n d e r s t a n d i n g

is

w e l c o m e d , not r e s e n t e d . In o t h e r w o r d s , " M o n P a y s " i s the e x c l u s i v e p r o p e r t y of le quebecois

in the s a m e w a y t h a t T h o m a s M o o r e ' s Irish Melodies

of E r i n ' s n a t i o n a l p a t r i m o n y . surface effects

peuple

are p a r t

In both c a s e s , o u t s i d e r s m i g h t e n j o y

the

of t h e s e p o e m s , but t h e y w i l l n e v e r f u l l y g r a s p

the

s e l f - a b s o r b e d s u b t e x t s w h i c h speak to one a u d i e n c e and one a u d i e n c e only. T h i s i s n a t i o n a l l i t e r a t u r e t h a t s t a y s n a t i o n a l l i t e r a t u r e ; i t does not r e a l l y have an i n t e r n a t i o n a l

context.

If s u c h w o r k s are in s o m e w a y s at l e a s t i m p l i c i t l y

xenophobic,

t h e y do at l e a s t o f f e r a l a s t l i n e of d e f e n s e i n the c u r r e n t

struggle

a g a i n s t c u l t u r a l g l o b a l i z a t i o n . Though M i c k e y Mouse and Rambo speak

345 to e v e r y T o m , D i c k , and s u c k e r , l e s P l o u f f e and F i n n M c C o o l do

not.

1

T h e r e w i l l a l w a y s be some l o c a l t a s t e s w h i c h even the m o s t a s t u t e and merciless multinational

w i l l be unable to s a t i s f y . U n f o r t u n a t e l y

for

p l u r a l i s m , however, these highly s p e c i a l i z e d hungers seem fated

to

o c c u p y an e v e r s m a l l e r p r o p o r t i o n of the c u l t u r a l pie. F r a n c e , I t a l y , and Quebec have r e s p o n d e d to t h i s

challenge-a

c h a l l e n g e w h i c h , f o r a l l p r a c t i c a l p u r p o s e s , m i g h t as w e l l be c a l l e d

le

defi

to

americain-in

a variety

s u m m a r i z e them

of

different

w a y s . It

S t a t e s at

a pivotal

the

point in i t s

history.

potential

In the

t i m e w h e n the t h i n l y p o p u l a t e d

of

early

century,

during

Nouvelle

France w e r e f i r s t e s t a b l i s h e d , G a l l i c i n t e r e s t i n the

latitudes

time

briefly.

F r a n c e f i r s t b e c a m e a w a r e of the t r e m e n d o u s United

i s now

the 16th

c o l o n i e s of

of the New W o r l d w a s m i n i m a l . A s i d e f r o m i t s

p r o v i d e the m a i n l a n d w i t h f u r s , the e c o n o m i c p o t e n t i a l

la

northern

ability

to

of New F r a n c e

w a s s e r i o u s l y u n d e r v a l u e d . What V e r s a i l l e s r e a l l y w a n t e d w a s a c c e s s to

Indian and C a r i b b e a n s t o r e s of g o l d and s p i c e s , not

b e a v e r p e l t s . Quebec w a s u l t i m a t e l y imperialist

frost-bitten

l o s t to E n g l a n d i n w h a t w a s , to

E u r o p e a n s , l i t t l e m o r e than a m i n o r t h e a t r e

of the S e v e n

Y e a r s ' War. It w a s only a f t e r the l o s s of Quebec t h a t F r e n c h w r i t e r s r e a d e r s began to i n t e r e s t

and

themselves

in t h e i r l o n g - d e s p i s e d arpents de neiges. J o u r n a l i s t i c h i s t o r i e s , s u c h as The Jesuit

Relations

b e c a m e p o p u l a r , as d i d , a l i t t l e l a t e r o n , t h o s e

L e s P l o u f f e w e r e a p o p u l a r Q u e b e c o i s T V f a m i l y of the 1 9 5 0 s , a m e t a m o r p h o s i s t h a t f o l l o w e d t h e i r f i r s t a p p e a r a n c e in a novel by R o g e r L e m e l i n . G i l l e s C a r l e gave t h e m the w i d e s c r e e n t r e a t m e n t in 1 9 8 1 . A s f o r Finn M c C o o l , he i s the m o s t p a r o c h i a l of e p i c I r i s h h e r o e s , an u n g l a m o r o u s giant t o t a l l y l a c k i n g in the p r i m i t i v e a l l u r e of C u c h u l a i n n , Mdbh, and Conchobar. 1

346 C a t h o l i c - f l a v o u r e d f o r e s t f a n t a s i e s of Rene de C h a t e a u b r i a n d . By the early

19th century, when French a t t i t u d e s

t o w a r d s the r e s t of

the

w o r l d w e r e s t a r t i n g to change and the n a t i o n s of the N e a r and F a r E a s t which

until

that

i n a c c u r a t e but

time

morally

had

often

been

employed

admirable political

as

historically

models w i t h

c h a s t i z e the s o c i a l and i n t e l l e c t u a l s h o r t c o m i n g s of Vancien

which

to

regime-

were r e - i n v e n t e d as a s o r t of O r i e n t a l i s t t h e m e p a r k , a p p r e c i a t i o n of the U n i t e d S t a t e s began in e a r n e s t . W h i l e n o s t a l g i a f o r the l o s t f o r e s t s of

the

New World w a s r e l a t i v e l y

benign, interest

i n the

Thirteen

C o l o n i e s w a s v e r y g r e a t . The U n i t e d S t a t e s of A m e r i c a , a f t e r a l l , m i g h t n e v e r have c o m e i n t o e x i s t e n c e i n i t s p r e s e n t f o r m i f F r e n c h n a v a l a s s i s t a n c e had not t u r n e d the m i l i t a r y t i d e in f a v o u r of the c o l o n i a l i n s u r r e c t i o n a r i e s . A f t e r 1 7 8 9 , A m e r i c a w a s s e e n as a f e l l o w r e p u b l i c , still

a relative

r a r i t y i n an age of a b s o l u t e m o n a r c h y . A l t h o u g h

it

p r e c e d e d t h e i r s , F r e n c h d e m o c r a t s g e n e r a l l y took p r i d e i n the s u c c e s s of the A m e r i c a n R e v o l u t i o n . In 1 8 3 2 , the young V i c t o r Hugo w r o t e in h i s d i a r y , a p r o p o s of the l e g i s l a t o r s of h i s day, " M e s s i e u r s , p a r l o n s un peu m o i n s de R o b e s p i e r r e et un peu p l u s de W a s h i n g t o n " ( C h o s e s vues T o m e 1 1 2 0 ) . In t h a t s a m e d e c a d e , A l e x i s de T o c q u e v i l l e p u b l i s h e d De Ja democratie

en Amerique,

a v o l u m e w h i c h i s s t i l l r e g a r d e d , e v e n by

A m e r i c a n s , as the m o s t i n s i g h t f u l e v a l u a t i o n of the A m e r i c a n c h a r a c t e r e v e r c o m p i l e d . T h e c o n s t r u c t i o n of a s p e c i f i c a l l y F r e n c h " f a n t a s y " A m e r i c a w a s already w e l l advanced. N i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u r y G a l l i c v i e w s of the U n i t e d S t a t e s w e r e not a l l so c h a r i t a b l e , h o w e v e r . S h o r t l y a f t e r the b a t t l e of W a t e r l o o , S t e n d h a l worried

that

American economic power

might

soon dominate

the

d i s u n i t e d n a t i o n s of Europe. P r o t e c t e d by i t s u n i v e r s a l m i l i t i a s y s t e m -

347 a f o r m of s e l f - d e f e n c e w h i c h m o r e than made up f o r A m e r i c a ' s t h e n negligible intents

army-and

its

and p u r p o s e s

internal

affairs.

v a s t s p a c e s , the U n i t e d S t a t e s w a s to

impervious

Yankee w h a l e r s

to

European i n t e r v e n t i o n

and c l i p p e r

ships

made

in

all its

British

a d m i r a l s f e a r f o r t h e i r c o n t i n u e d c o n t r o l of the s e v e n s e a s . A m e r i c a n i n d u s t r y , though s t i l l p r i m i t i v e , a l r e a d y s h o w e d s i g n s of s u r p a s s i n g the factories

of

Hamburg

and

Liverpool.

Everything

about

America

s u g g e s t e d the w a x i n g of p o w e r , j u s t as e v e r y t h i n g about Europe i m p l i e d i t s wane. There

w a s a l s o , of

course, a wide-spread

fear

of

American

v u l g a r i t y . Even A l e x i s de T o c q u e v i l l e , a p h i l o - A m e r i c a n i f e v e r t h e r e w a s one, had a l o t to say on t h i s s c o r e . A m e r i c a n l i t e r a t u r e and a r t of the

early

19th

counterparts.

century Even

were

more

decidedly

worryingly,

inferior the

to

engine

their of

European

democratic

g o v e r n m e n t p a r a d o x i c a l l y s e e m e d to l e a d to a c o n s e n s u a l t h i n k i n g t h a t ultimately unknown

resulted

in a c o n f o r m i t y

in a b s o l u t i s t

of

opinion

E u r o p e . In m a t t e r s

of

the

that

was

entirely

mind, it

seemed,

d e m o c r a c y l e d to s l a v e r y , not f r e e d o m . T h i s paradox c a u s e d d i s c o m f o r t all

a c r o s s the

political

spectrum, affecting

left-

and

right-wing

w r i t e r s w i t h equal f o r c e . If A m e r i c a had s o m e t h i n g to t e a c h Europe i n t e r m s of e c o n o m i c s and p r a c t i c a l g o v e r n m e n t , the Old W o r l d had b e s t be c a r e f u l

that it

d i d not b e c o m e i n f e c t e d

with American

artistic

m e d i o c r i t y and u n i f o r m i t y of o p i n i o n . F o r F r e n c h i n t e l l e c t u a l s , A m e r i c a w a s not only a m o v e a b l e f e a s t , but a m o v e a b l e f a m i n e as w e l l . F o r t h e s e r e a s o n s , the d i s t i n c t i o n b e t w e e n 19th and 2 0 t h c e n t u r y French l i t e r a r y

travellers

in A m e r i c a i s n o w h e r e n e a r as s h a r p as

R o b e r t Dole w o u l d have us b e l i e v e . P r o and con f o r c e s s t r a d d l e d

not

348 only

c e n t u r i e s , but

Twentieth-century

individual

writers

as w e l l . G e o r g e s D u h a m e T s

complaints, for example, were predicated almost

e x c l u s i v e l y on n i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u r y c u l t u r a l s t a n d a r d s . A l t h o u g h - d e s p i t e h e r l e f t - w i n g l e a n i n g s - s h e s h a r e d s o m e of D u h a m e T s v i e w s , S i m o n e de Beauvoir's material

liking

for

the

United S t a t e s owed a great

d e a l to

the

w a n t and s o c i a l p a r a l y s i s she had r e c e n t l y e x p e r i e n c e d i n

P a r i s a f t e r l i v i n g through f o u r y e a r s of Nazi o c c u p a t i o n . R a y m o n d A r o n , m e a n w h i l e , p r a i s e d the U n i t e d S t a t e s p r i m a r i l y

because it

w a s an

i r r e p l a c e a b l e b u l w a r k a g a i n s t B o l s h e v i s m in the p o s t - 1 9 4 5 w o r l d . In m o r e r e c e n t d e c a d e s , one m i g h t

also take into account both F r e n c h

w o r l d - w e a r i n e s s - t h e b e l i e f t h a t the Old W o r l d i s e x p e r i e n c i n g at l e a s t a H e g e l i a n , i f not a S p e n g l e r i a n , end of t i m e - a n d F r e n c h c o r p o r a t i s m , the d e s i r e to a m a l g a m a t e the n a t i o n i n t o a u n i f i e d Europe w h i c h w o u l d once a g a i n be able to p l a y a m a j o r r o l e on the w o r l d s t a g e . T e m p o r a r y n e e d s ; 2

situational

h o p e s and f e a r s ; t i m e l e s s v a l u e s : a l l t h e s e t h i n g s

played a part

in d e t e r m i n i n g

French attitudes

towards

the

have

United

States. In t h i s s t u d y , w e have c o n s i d e r e d t h e s e s h i f t s in e m p h a s i s f r o m a v e r y l i m i t e d n u m b e r of p e r s p e c t i v e s , the m o s t i m p o r t a n t of w h i c h w e r e F r e n c h t r a v e l w r i t i n g f r o m the l a t e 18th c e n t u r y to the p r e s e n t d a y , and the e v o l u t i o n of F r e n c h c r i m e f i c t i o n d u r i n g m o r e - o r - l e s s the s a m e

F r e n c h i n t e r e s t i n the doomed c i v i l i z a t i o n s of M e s o a m e r i c a has been a c o n s t a n t in t h i s c e n t u r y , f r o m A n t o n i n A r t a u d on. A t t i m e s , i t s e e m s as i f the M a y a s , I n c a s , and A z t e c s f u n c t i o n as a s o r t of phoenix i m a g e f o r G a l l i c t h i n k e r s , a p r o m i s e of r e s u r r e c t i o n as w e l l as d e a t h , a r e m i n d e r t h a t u p s t a r t A m e r i c a i s b u i l t on v e r y o l d bones. T h i s s e n t i m e n t i s p a r t i c u l a r l y s t r o n g i n J.M.G. Le C l e z i o ' s i n t e r e s t i n g book, Le reve Mexicain (1988). The a u t h o r w r i t e s , " L ' u n i v e r s e s t f a i t de m o r t " (Le C l e z i o 9 2 ) , and " T o r i g i n e de l a c i v i l i s a t i o n e s t dans l a b a r b a r i e " (Le C l e z i o 112). S u c h s e n t i m e n t s are f a r m o r e r e l e v a n t to the age of J e a n B a u d r i l l a r d than they are to the b e t w e e n - w a r heyday of A n d r e Gide.

2

349 p e r i o d . T h i s l a t t e r c a t e g o r y w a s meant to s h o w the i n t e r r e l a t e d n e s s of F r a n c o - A m e r i c a n c u l t u r e , the w a y s in w h i c h the t w o s o c i e t i e s have s e q u e n t i a l l y played off,

irritated,

and i m i t a t e d

each other.

It

also

p r o v i d e d o p p o r t u n i t i e s to b r a n c h off i n t o s u c h r e l a t e d f i e l d s as l i t e r a r y a t t i t u d e s and the t r a n s - c u l t u r a l nature of f i l m p r o d u c t i o n . W h i l e o c c a s i o n a l r e f e r e n c e s w e r e made to the e v o l u t i o n of comic

strip

and the

popular song, all

such commentary

the

h a s been

d e l i b e r a t e l y r e l e g a t e d to the s t a t u s of i l l u s t r a t i v e a s i d e s . If one w e r e to e x a m i n e all the c o n n e c t i o n s b e t w e e n F r e n c h and A m e r i c a n c u l t u r e , a l l the w a y s in w h i c h F r e n c h i n t e l l e c t u a l s have r e c o n s t r u c t e d a fantasy A m e r i c a f o r t h e i r own s p e c i f i c purposes, t h i s book w o u l d , of n e c e s s i t y , be s e v e r a l t i m e s l o n g e r than i t i s . Though t h o r o u g h n e s s i s a p r i m e a c a d e m i c v i r t u e , so i s b r e v i t y . In o t h e r w o r d s , I have t r i e d to c o n t a i n my a r g u m e n t s w i t h i n m a n a g e a b l e l i m i t s . Unlike their French contemporaries, Italians

of the l a t e

18th

c e n t u r y w e r e not p r e d i s p o s e d to t a k e a n o s t a l g i c v i e w of the U n i t e d States because, s t r i c t l y

s p e a k i n g , I t a l y did not t h e n e x i s t . L i k e the

G e r m a n y of t h o s e y e a r s , I t a l i a w a s not a n a t i o n but a g e o g r a p h i c a l expression. Cobbled together

from

a c o l l e c t i o n of p e t t y

kingdoms,

f o r e i g n p r o t e c t o r a t e s , papal f i e f d o m s , and f a d e d c i t y s t a t e s , the n e w c o u n t r y w a s not f u l l y u n i f i e d u n t i l w e l l i n t o the n i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u r y . In 1 8 4 8 , G i u s e p p e M a z z i n i c o m p l a i n e d : ' " L ' l t a l i a del N o r d , l e t r e I t a l i e , le c i n q u e I t a l i e sono b e s t e m m i e di s o f i s t i ' " ( B e l a r d e l l i 2 4 ) .

Even a f t e r

the R i s o r g i m e n t o w a s r e a l i z e d , r e g i o n a l d i f f e r e n c e s w e r e so e x t r e m e they a s s u m e d a l m o s t i n t e r n a t i o n a l d i m e n s i o n s . L o m b a r d y d i f f e r e d Sicily

about

as m u c h as S w i t z e r l a n d d i f f e r e d

from

from

Crete. Tuscan

I t a l i a n , a l t h o u g h the m o s t l i t e r a r y of the n a t i o n ' s many d i a l e c t s , w a s

350 s p o k e n by only a m i n o r i t y of the p o p u l a t i o n . N o r t h / S o u t h d i s c r e p a n c i e s in w e a l t h w e r e e n o r m o u s . In I t a l y , t h e r e w a s no J u n k e r - s t y l e

ruling

c l a s s w i t h the i r o n d i s c i p l i n e needed to i m p o s e i t s w i l l on r e c a l c i t r a n t p r o v i n c e s . T u s c a n y t r i e d , but i t s s u c c e s s w a s a l w a y s i n c o m p l e t e . E a r l y a t t e m p t s at s o c i a l e n g i n e e r i n g " a l m o d e l l o i n g l e s e del self-government" were replaced, after

(Bellardelli

1 8 6 0 , w i t h an at t i m e s t y r a n n i c a l

state. S i c i l y was always turbulent,

while

today

24)

centralized

La L e g a del

Nord

t h r e a t e n s to s e c e d e f r o m the I t a l i a n u n i o n , a f a c t w h i c h , s o m e w h a t s u r p r i s i n g l y , has not r e s u l t e d in "un contrario"

( R u s s o 2 4 ) in the S o u t h , b u t , r a t h e r , "con

responsibility persino

separatismo

di

e di dignita razzismo"

blasphemies,"

alia campagna

(Russo

regional

24).

differences

Far in

incivile from Italy

[un]

uguale e senso

di denigrazione being are

as

di

e

"sophistical empirically

d e m o n s t r a b l e as the l a w s of t h e r m o d y n a m i c s . T h e y are as m u c h f a c t s of l i f e as i l l n e s s o r death. For

Italians,

therefore,

awareness

of

America

was

always

i n t i m a t e l y c o n n e c t e d to the n a t i o n ' s e n d l e s s s e a r c h f o r s o l u t i o n s to i t s s e e m i n g l y i n s o l u b l e p r o b l e m s . I n t e r e s t in C h r i s t o p h e r C o l u m b u s , f o r e x a m p l e , b e c a m e pronounced only a f t e r I t a l i a n s had begun to m i g r a t e to the U n i t e d S t a t e s in l a r g e n u m b e r s . F o r new i m m i g r a n t s u n s u r e of t h e i r E n g l i s h and t h e i r new s o c i a l s t a t u s , the k n o w l e d g e t h a t one of

their

c o u n t r y m e n had " d i s c o v e r e d " the New W o r l d w a s i m m e n s e l y r e a s s u r i n g . Queen I s a b e l l a ' s f a v o u r i t e p i l o t s e r v e d as an i d e a l c o u n t e r w e i g h t to the Black

Hand m o b s t e r s

with

whom

Italo-Americans

were

so

often

i d e n t i f i e d . He a l s o r e p r e s e n t e d the a m o r p h o u s I t a l i a n g e n i u s - e m b o d i e d i n D a n t e , G u g l i e l m o M a r c o n i , G a l i l e o , the m a s t e r s of the R e n a i s s a n c e ,

351 e t c . - w h i c h had c o n t r i b u t e d so m u c h to w o r l d c u l t u r e w i t h o u t

i n any

w a y s t r e n g t h e n i n g t h e i r h o m e l a n d ' s s e n s e of n a t i o n a l i d e n t i t y . T h u s , f o r many I t a l i a n s , t h e i r n a t i o n a l l e g a c y w a s not so much a found t r e a s u r e as i t w a s an i n h e r i t e d curse. In the e a r l y d e c a d e s of the t w e n t i e t h - c e n t u r y ,

the s e a r c h f o r

A m e r i c a n - s t y l e a n s w e r s g r e w s t r o n g e r . If, as the v e n e r a b l e d i p l o m a t M. de N o r p o i s c o n t e n d e d i n A la Recherche

du temps perdu, the m o t t o

the 19th c e n t u r y I t a l i a n n a t i o n a l i s t s had been '"L'ltalia

fara da se'"

of (Le

C o t e de G u e r m a n t e s 6 9 0 ) , t h i s m i l i t a n t s e l f - r e l i a n c e w a s not s h a r e d by their

descendants. Thus, e c o n o m i s t s sought

to

s o l v e the

nation's

e n d e m i c p o v e r t y by i m p o s i n g Henry F o r d ' s f a c t o r y s y s t e m on

Italy's

w o r k i n g and m a n a g e r i a l c l a s s e s . L e f t - w i n g i n t e l l e c t u a l s , m e a n w h i l e , opposed the b r a s h energy of the n e w A m e r i c a n l i t e r a t u r e to the s t u d i e d d e a d n e s s of n e o c l a s s i c a l and f r a n k l y

f a s c i s t texts. Because

Italy's

u n i q u e n e s s w a s m o r e - o r - l e s s g u a r a n t e e d by the u n i q u e n e s s of problems-the

nation

had, a f t e r

a l l , already

survived

its

countless

c e n t u r i e s of f o r e i g n o c c u p a t i o n - t h e r e w a s n e v e r any r e a l f e a r

that

Italy might become hopelessly A m e r i c a n i z e d . A l l that Antonio G r a m s c i and o t h e r p r o g r e s s i v e t h i n k e r s r e a l l y w a n t e d w a s f o r I t a l y to b e c o m e a l i t t l e more organized, a l i t t l e l e s s h e d o n i s t i c , a l i t t l e more modern, p u r i t a n , and P r o t e s t a n t . A f t e r t h a t i t w o u l d f i n a l l y be f r e e to f o l l o w

its

own guiding star. B e c a u s e of i t s unique s o c i a l d y s f u n c t i o n s , I t a l i a n c r i m e

fiction,

as w e s a w in C h a p t e r T w o , d i f f e r s m a r k e d l y f r o m both F r e n c h and A m e r i c a n d e t e c t i v e s t o r i e s . D e s p i t e t h e i r a p p r o a c h e s to the a r c h e t y p a l f i g u r e s of l a w m a n

somewhat

polars

different

352 and o u t l a w , A m e r i c a and F r a n c e are both s t r o n g , c e n t r a l i z e d s t a t e s i n w h i c h the f e d e r a l g o v e r n m e n t , even w h e n d e t e s t e d , i s a f u n d a m e n t a l , inescapable

fact

of

life.

In

I t a l y , on t h e

other

hand, t h i s

oddly

c o m f o r t i n g i l l u s i o n has n e v e r r e a l l y t a k e n r o o t . B e h i n d the p a r l i a m e n t t h a t s i t s in Rome are the c a b a l s t h a t r e a l l y run informal

things,

a l l i a n c e s made up of h i g h - r a n k i n g M a f i o s i , c l e r i c s , p o l i c e

i n s p e c t o r s , a r m y g e n e r a l s , c a p i t a l i s t s , m e d i a m a g n a t e s , CIA a g e n t s , j u d g e s , and p o l i t i c i a n s f r o m a l l p o l i t i c a l

p a r t i e s w i t h the p o s s i b l e

e x c e p t i o n of the C o m m u n i s t . I t a l y has been c o n q u e r e d so many t i m e s t h a t even d e m o c r a t i c a l l y e l e c t e d p a r l i a m e n t s are w i d e l y p e r c e i v e d as j u s t the l a t e s t o c c u p y i n g p o w e r . It has been c a l c u l a t e d t h a t i f

every

I t a l i a n p a i d ]QO% of h i s o r h e r t a x e s , the s u m s u r r e n d e r e d w o u l d e x c e e d the n a t i o n ' s g r o s s n a t i o n a l p r o d u c t . What t h i s m e a n s in p r a c t i c e i s t h a t e v e r y I t a l i a n , in o r d e r to s u r v i v e , m u s t to a g r e a t e r o r l e s s e r d e g r e e , b r e a k the l a w . T h i s has r e s u l t e d in a s o c i e t y w h e r e the

religious

p o l a r i t i e s of good and e v i l , at l e a s t i n s o f a r as t h e y a p p e r t a i n to the a c q u i s i t i o n of p r o p e r t y , on the d e e p e s t e m o t i o n a l l e v e l do not

really

a p p l y . In I t a l i a n c r i m e f i c t i o n , the l a w i s g e n e r a l l y so n e b u l o u s

it

t h r e a t e n s to d i s a p p e a r a l t o g e t h e r , w h i l e the o u t l a w i s a l m o s t a l w a y s s y m p a t h e t i c , the v i c t i m of f o r c e s o u t s i d e h i s or her c o n t r o l . No w o n d e r A m e r i c a n - s t y l e p u r i t a n i s m has n e v e r made i n r o a d s in I t a l y .

3

L i k e t h e i r F r e n c h c o e v a l s , young I t a l i a n s c u r r e n t l y t a k e A m e r i c a n c u l t u r e m u c h more m a t t e r - o f - f a c t l y

than t h e i r f a t h e r s and

It c o u l d be argued t h a t p u r i t a n i s m has n e v e r t a k e n r o o t i n F r a n c e e i t h e r , but c i r c u m s t a n c e s are s l i g h t l y d i f f e r e n t . T h e l i n g e r i n g a f t e r e f f e c t s of J a n s e n i s t c o u p l e d t o t h e m o d e l of J e s u i t p r a c t i c a l i t y , h a s r e s u l t e d i n a s o r t of " P r o t e s t a n t i s m , " a m e r c a n t i l e m i n d s e t w h e r e m o s t C a t h o l i c s think and a c t l i k e Huguenots.

3

t h e r e the theology, de f a c t o veritable

353 grandfathers militantly

ever did. While p o s t w a r

Italy

never manifested

a n t i - A m e r i c a n sentiments that were common

intellectual

c o i n i n s o m e q u a r t e r s of p o s t w a r F r a n c e - a c u r i o u s s t a t e of r e a l l y , s i n c e the

Italians

had f a r m o r e r e a s o n to t a k e

the

affairs,

umbrages-

A m e r i c a c e a s e d to be the o v e r r i d i n g o b s e s s i o n i t had once been. In the 1 9 4 0 s , ' 5 0 s , and ' 6 0 s , the I t a l i a n c i n e m a w a s e c o n o m i c a l l y h e a l t h y and f a r m o r e c r e a t i v e than i t s H o l l y w o o d c o u n t e r p a r t . W h a t ' s m o r e , n e w m e a n s of

industrial

production

began to s p r e a d w e a l t h

among

the

p e o p l e , p a r t i c u l a r l y in the n o r t h e r n and c e n t r a l r e g i o n s . I t a l i a n c l o t h e s , cars,

planes,

films-even

typewriters-set

new

standards

of

i n t e r n a t i o n a l s t y l e . C l e a r l y , the n a t i o n w a s no l o n g e r the s o c i o c u l t u r a l b a c k w a t e r i t had once been. On the o t h e r hand, t h i s p r o g r e s s had been a c h i e v e d w i t h o u t , m a d d e n i n g l y , a m e l i o r a t i n g any of the p r o b l e m s w h i c h had p l a g u e d the p e n i n s u l a f o r c e n t u r i e s . R e g i o n a l d i s h a r m o n y e c h o e d f r o m M i l a n to P a l e r m o ; p a r t i a l p r o s p e r i t y did n o t h i n g to s h r i n k the s i z e of the n a t i o n ' s b l a c k m a r k e t , a c l a n d e s t i n e e c o n o m y w h i c h m i g h t

well

be l a r g e r than i t s o f f i c i a l c o u n t e r p a r t . I t a l y , in o t h e r w o r d s , w a s s t i l l Italy. F o r c o n t e m p o r a r y I t a l i a n s , the A m e r i c a n e n t e r t a i n m e n t

industry

w o u l d s e e m to be the one a r e a of New W o r l d e n t e r p r i s e w h i c h i s s t i l l f o l l o w e d w i t h o b s e s s i v e i n t e r e s t . The a d v e n t u r e s and p e c c a d i l l o e s of Madonna and Woody A l l e n , of J u l i a R o b e r t s and R o b e r t De N i r o , are s e e m i n g l y i r r e s i s t i b l e to e v e r y o n e f r o m c u l t u r a l

A s w e s a w i n C h a p t e r T h r e e , the U.S. S t a t e D e p a r t m e n t and the C I A i n t e r f e r e d m o r e v i g o r o u s l y i n I t a l i a n p o l i t i c s than they did in the i n t e r n a l a f f a i r s of any o t h e r W e s t e r n nation.

4

354 journalists

to

Commissario Ambrosio, from

cafe

idlers

to

Nanni

M o r e t t i . F r e q u e n t l y , i n q u i r i e s i n t o the l i v e s of t h e s e U.S. c e l e b r i t i e s are p u r s u e d w i t h a l a c k of d e c o r u m w h i c h w o u l d not be t o l e r a t e d in N o r t h A m e r i c a n n e w s p a p e r s . In the s a m e v e i n , Roman and M i l a n e s e n e w s p a p e r regularly

s p e c u l a t e about the m o t i v e s b e h i n d A m e r i c a ' s b i - c o a s t a l

"rapper war" Anything

w i t h a candour that is utterly

touching

on A m e r i c a n h y p o c r i s y

u n k n o w n i n the U . S .

or s e x u a l r e p r e s s i o n

5

is

d i s c u s s e d w i t h p a r t i c u l a r r e l i s h . D e s p i t e G r a m s c i ' s a r g u m e n t s to the c o n t r a r y , in t o d a y ' s I t a l y the p o s i t i v e u s e s of p u r i t a n i s m are b e l i e v e d to be f e w and f a r b e t w e e n . A s we s a w in C h a p t e r Four, Italian

intellectual

leaders

a s s u m e an a l m o s t A t h e n i a n p e r s o n a w h e n g e n t l y a d m o n i s h i n g

now their

s t r o n g e r , m o r e v i t a l , but l e s s c u l t i v a t e d A m e r i c a n " c h i l d r e n " . T h i s m a n t l e i s w o r n l i g h t l y , w i t h o u t a r r o g a n c e , as b e f i t s a c u l t u r e t h a t w a s once c o n t e m p o r a n e o u s w i t h t h a t of the E t r u s c a n s . A n a t t r a c t i v e note of s e l f - m o c k e r y u n d e r s c o r e s m o s t of t h e s e e s s a y s - p a r t i c u l a r l y the ones w r i t t e n by U m b e r t o Eco. O c c a s i o n a l l y , of c o u r s e , I t a l i a n a r t i s t s s t i l l do s e e k i n s p i r a t i o n f r o m t h e i r w o r k in A m e r i c a n f i l m s . When F r a n c e s c o R o s i w a s a d a p t i n g one of P r i m o L e v i ' s H o l o c a u s t m e m o i r s f o r the s c r e e n , f o r i n s t a n c e , he t h o u g h t '"Chariot

soldato

i n c e s s e n t l y of C h a r l e y C h a p l i n ' s s i l e n t

classic

n e l l a g u e r r a ' 1 5 - 18, in cui c ' e r a l a d r a m m a t i c i t a di

t u t t i i f i l m di g u e r r a , ma l a l e v i t a , l a l e g g e r e z z a , l ' i r o n i a , i l g r o t t e s c o di C h a p l i n f i n i v a p e r e s s e r e una c r i t i c a p r e z i o s a e c o s t a n t e a q u a n t o accadevo interno a l u i ' " (Fusco 41). For Italians, therefore, A m e r i c a i s s t i l l a s o u r c e of i n s p i r a t i o n , but f o r now i t i s j u s t one of many. 5

A b o u t t h e i r o w n " s c a n d a l s " , h o w e v e r , they are c o n s i d e r a b l y m o r e coy.

355 Q u e b e c o i s m e d i t a t i o n s on the n a t u r e of l a t e 2 0 t h c e n t u r y e m p i r e are, conversely, generally fraught

w i t h s l i g h t l y dated f i n - d e - s i e c l e

a n g s t . N a t i o n a l i s t - m i n d e d M o n t r e a l - b a s e d i n t e l l e c t u a l s have m o r e i n c o m m o n w i t h Giuseppe M a z z i n i than they

do w i t h

sleight-of-hand

p o s t m o d e r n i s t s of the I t a l o C a l v i n o v a r i e t y . T h a n k s no doubt to

the

t e m p o r a l p a r a l y s i s t h a t t y p i c a l l y a c c o m p a n i e s the f o r c i b l e i n c l u s i o n of a conquered polity

into a m u l t i - n a t i o n a l

e m p i r e , la belle

province's

p o l i t i c a l m i n d s e t o w e s more to 1 7 6 3 and 1 8 3 7 than i t does to

1997.

6

Its a p p r e h e n s i o n of N o r t h A m e r i c a e n c o m p a s s e s L o w e r C a n a d a , U p p e r C a n a d a , and the U n i t e d S t a t e s . So f a r as the c o n t i n e n t ' s n o r t h e r n h a l f i s concerned, it

i s more or l e s s evenly divided b e t w e e n t w o

founding

"nations": Catholic, French-speaking Quebec and P r o t e s t a n t , anglophone O n t a r i o . S u c h l a t e r d e v e l o p m e n t s as C a n a d a ' s W e s t e r n and A t l a n t i c p r o v i n c e s are e i t h e r c o n f l a t e d w i t h the p r o v i n c e ' s i n c r e a s i n g l y m e g a l i t h i c p e r c e p t i o n of O n t a r i o or e l s e i g n o r e d a l t o g e t h e r . When s p e a k i n g of les Anglais

et

les

autres,

Quebec n a t i o n a l i s t s are r e f e r r i n g to e i t h e r A n g l o Q u e b e c e r s , E n g l i s h C a n a d i a n s , o r c i t i z e n s of the U n i t e d S t a t e s . discourse, these words f u l f i l l Anglo-Saxons

a function

7

In c o n t e m p o r a r y Q u e b e c o i s a n a l o g o u s to t h a t of

les

in 2 0 t h c e n t u r y F r e n c h c o m m e n t a r y . T h e y are l a c e d w i t h

From Rwanda to Russia, from Bosnia to Afghanistan, from India to Belgium, this is a process w h i c h is c u r r e n t l y being repeated a l l over the w o r l d . At a t i m e when international c o n f l i c t s number n i l , internecine feuds are counted by the dozen. Every single separated member of the former Soviet bloc, for instance, seems to be resuming independent political l i f e from the exact point where it left off decades or centuries ago. If the lessons of the late 20th century have taught us anything, it is surely that empires act primarily as freezing agents, entombing their constituent parts like insects in amber until such time as a political thaw permits them to resume their interrupted journey. Of n e c e s s i t y , in years past, these w i d e - r a n g i n g terms also embraced the United Kingdom, although, in the wake of the B r i t i s h Empire's effective dissolution, the spectre of rule by a foreign crown has long since receded from the forefront of n a t i o n a l i s t discontents.

6

7

356 the b i t t e r n e s s t h a t i n e v i t a b l y f o l l o w s i n the w a k e of nine c e n t u r i e s ' w o r t h of o v e r t

and c o v e r t

language groups. Sadly, it

warfare

between two mutually

seems most

unlikely

that

they

jealous will

be

" d e f a n g e d " i n the i m m e d i a t e f u t u r e . A s w e s a w i n C h a p t e r F o u r , the s o - c a l l e d R e s t of Canada p l a y s a very

minor

role

in the Quebecois f i c t i o n a l

u n i v e r s e . On t h e

rare

o c c a s i o n s w h e n they do a p p e a r , the p r i n c i p a l d r a m a t u r g i c a l f u n c t i o n of the

country's

a n g l o p h o n e p r o v i n c e s i s to r e m i n d

French Canadian

v i e w e r s / r e a d e r s of the l o s s of a u t h e n t i c i t y t h a t a u t o m a t i c a l l y e n s u e s w h e n one i s c u t o f f f r o m o n e ' s s o c i a l and e t h n i c r o o t s . T h e o v e r a l l e f f e c t i s a k i n to t h a t of e x a m i n g a s e v e n t e e n t h - c e n t u r y s u r v e y map of of c e n t r a l A f r i c a . In both c a s e s , m o s t of the t e r r a i n w o u l d have to be marked " T e r r a Incognita". America,

on t h e o t h e r

hand, i s s l i g h t l y

more

present

and

variegated. F l o r i d a , being a f a v o u r i t e Quebecois v a c a t i o n spot, appears f a i r l y o f t e n , even i f n a t i v e F l o r i d i a n s do not. F r e n c h C a n a d i a n w r i t e r s and f i l m m a k e r s a r e a l s o s t a r t i n g to e v i n c e t h e s a m e

half-horrified,

h a l f - e c s t a t i c f a s c i n a t i o n w i t h S o u t h e r n C a l i f o r n i a t h a t F r e n c h and I t a l i a n i n t e l l e c t u a l s have been r e f l e c t i n g f o r the p a s t - q u a r t e r c e n t u r y . New E n g l a n d , on the o t h e r h a n d , i s the l o c a t i o n of t h e d a r k , S a t a n i c mills

which

claimed

so many

unemployed

habitants

in the late

n i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u r y ; i t i s a l s o the a n c e s t r a l home of one of la province's

belle

very f e w U.S.-born l o c a l h e r o e s , J a c k K e r o u a c .

F o r o b v i o u s r e a s o n s , F r a n c e i s s o m e w h a t m o r e of a c o n c r e t e p r e s e n c e in the Quebecois i m a g i n a t i o n

t h a n i s any m e m b e r of t h e

A n g l o - S a x o n " c o n f e d e r a t i o n . " D e s p i t e t h e f e e l i n g s of b e t r a y a l and a b a n d o n m e n t w h i c h the B o u r b o n w i t h d r a w a l

of t h e 1 7 6 0 s

inevitably

357 e n g e n d e r e d , on a deep e m o t i o n a l l e v e l Quebec s t i l l

clearly wants

m a k e a f a v o u r a b l e i m p r e s s i o n on i t s d e l i n q u e n t " p a r e n t " .

to

Obviously,

t h i s i s w h a t l i e s behind so much of the n e v e r - e n d i n g d e b a t e o v e r w h i c h country

s p e a k s the

true,

the

original

F r e n c h . By the

same

token,

o v e r s e a s s u c c e s s in F r a n c e i s r e g a r d e d w i t h a s o m e w h a t w a r y

eye.

W h i l e n a t i o n a l p r i d e i s v i s i b l y t a k e n in the a c c l a i m w h i c h F e l i x L e c l e r c and R o b e r t C h a r l e b o i s r e c e i v e d in le vieux pays ou Rimabaud est mort (to quote the t i t l e of J e a n - P i e r r e L e f e b v r e ' s m e m o r a b l e m o v i e about a habitant

on p i l g r i m a g e in the land of h i s a n c e s t o r s )

the dubbing of ; ' o w s / - l a c e d f i l m s i n t o " s t a n d a r d " F r e n c h s t i l l

raises

nationalist hackles. On the o t h e r hand, when t a l k i n g about F r a n c e and the F r e n c h , s o m e Q u e b e c o i s c o m m e n t a t o r s , d e s p i t e t h e i r unhappy h i s t o r i c a l h e r i t a g e , are u n c o m m o n l y a b l e , u n b i a s e d and a s t u t e . P a r i s - b a s e d La Presse

c o r r e s p o n d e n t L o u i s - B e r t r a n d R o b i t a i l l e i s a p r i m e e x a m p l e of

t h i s c o s m o p o l i t a n type. In Et Dieu crea les Francais,

a c o l l e c t i o n of h i s

a r t i c l e s p u b l i s h e d in 1 9 9 5 , the a u t h o r pronounced f a i r l y and k n o w i n g l y on e v e r y t h i n g f r o m E u r o - D i s n e y to P h i l i p p e D j i a n ' s a w k w a r d p o s i t i o n i n the s o m e t i m e s s t u f f y

world

of P a r i s i a n l e t t e r s . On the s u b j e c t

of

A n g l o - F r e n c h r e l a t i o n s , he s h r e w d l y w r o t e , "11 n ' e s t pas i m p o s s i b l e que l e s F r a n g a i s et l e s A n g l a i s - e t e r n e l l e m e n t

et p a r f o i s

mechamment

r i v a u x - a i e n t en c o m m u n ce qu'on p o u r r a i t a p p e l e r b a n a l e m e n t un g r o s c o m p l e x e de s u p e r i o r i t e ,

qui se r e v e l e de m o i n s en m o i n s f o n d e a

m e s u r e que s ' e l o i g n e n t l e s s o u v e n i r s g l o r i e u x du G r a n d S i e c l e ou de l'Empire"

(Robitaille).

One

can

see

how

Robitaille's

Quebecois

background, w i t h i t s _/owa//anglais r i v a l r i e s - a p e r f e c t w o r k i n g

model

of the " 9 0 0 Y e a r s W a r " w r i t s m a l l - i d e a l l y f i t t e d h i m to make s u c h an

358 o b s e r v a t i o n . The a u t h o r s e e m s to a p p r o a c h h i s a n c e s t r a l h o m e l a n d w i t h n e i t h e r f e a r nor f a v o u r : " L e f a i t d ' e t r e Q u e b e c o i s n ' e s t p l u s ni un a t o u t ni

un o b s t a c l e . . . e t

l e s Q u e b e c o i s qui

debarquent

aujourd'hui

sont

s i m p l e m e n t c o n f r o n t e s , c o m m e t o u s l e s a u t r e s , venus de p r o v i n c e ou de S u i s s e , a un s y s t e m e c o m m e r c i a l qui a e t e n d u son e m p i r e s u r l a t o t a l i t e des v a r i e t e s . . . . " ( R o b i t a i l l e 2 7 9 - 2 8 0 ) . Fond as he i s of h i s n e w l o c a l e , the a u t h o r in no w a y t h i n k s of i t as " h o m e " : " . . . l a F r a n c e n ' e s t pas s e u l e m e n t d i f f e r e n t e

du Quebec ou de l ' A m e r i q u e du N o r d -

c ' e s t une a u t r e p l a n e t e . Q u i , dans l e s d o m a i n e s l e s p l u s i m p o r t a n t s de la vie quotidienne...fonctionne sur les c r i t e r e s completement

etrange.

N o t e z que s o u v e n t l e s F r a n c a i s pensent que c ' e s t l ' A m e r i q u e qui n ' e s t pas n o r m a l e " ( R o b i t a i l l e 6 0 - 6 1 ) . W h i l e he m i g h t not w r i t e as e l e g a n t l y about f o r e i g n l a n d s as do h i s n e a r - c o n t e m p o r a r i e s U m b e r t o Eco and J e a n B a u d r i l l a r d , L o u i s - B e r t r a n d R o b i t a i l l e i s at l e a s t as c l e a r eyed as t h e y . O f f h a n d , i t i s hard to t h i n k of a l i t e r a r y

traveller

who

s e e s t h i n g s l e s s " f a n t a s t i c a l l y " than he. N e v e r t h e l e s s , d e s p i t e R o b i t a i l l e ' s s p l e n d i d e x a m p l e , i t m u s t be admitted

that

filmmaking

the

is s t i l l

overwhelming

bulk

of

Quebecois f i c t i o n

intensely introspective, its

creators intent

and on

e x p l o r i n g l o c a l t h e m e s in l o c a l w a y s . F a r m o r e than the 19th c e n t u r y I t a l i a n n a t i o n a l i s t s who f i r s t f r a m e d the i d e a , they are t r u l y i n t e n t on doing t h i n g s t h e m s e l v e s . In many w a y s , " f a n t a s y A m e r i c a " i s b e c o m i n g a t h i n g of the p a s t . A s the w o r l d g r o w s e v e r m o r e c o l o n i z e d by H o l l y w o o d , T i n P a n A l l e y , and W a l l S t r e e t , the d i f f e r e n c e b e t w e e n S e l f and " O t h e r " b e c o m e s i n c r e a s i n g l y tenuous. Marlon Brando h i g h l i g h t e d t h i s f a c t in a r e c e n t i n t e r v i e w he gave to Studio m a g a z i n e : " J ' a d o r e l a F r a n c e p a r c e que pour

359 m o i c ' e t a i t un b a s t i o n de l i b e r t e a p r e s l a g u e r r e - T o u t c e l a a change m a i n t e n a n t . C ' e s t a m u s a n t p a r c e que l e s F r a n c a i s ont l o n g t e m p s t a q u i n e l e s A m e r i c a i n s en d i s a n t que nous v i v i o n s d a n s une s o c i e t e de t r u e s

e t de g a d g e t s . A u j o u r d ' h u i , c e s o n t l e s

F r a n c a i s qui v i v e n t de t r u e s et de gadgets...." ( D ' Y v o i r e 104). How t r u e . Of w h a t use i s the p a r a d i g m of a " f a n t a s y A m e r i c a " i n a Europe w h e r e antique

the t a l l e s t

architecture

s k y s c r a p e r in France emerges f r o m the

of M o n t p a r n a s s e , w h e r e

young p e o p l e

prefer

M i c h a e l J a c k s o n to E d i t h P i a f , w h e r e h o u s i n g e s t a t e s s u r r o u n d e v e r y m a j o r c i t y , w h e r e A m e r i c a n T V d o m i n a t e s e v e r y European n e t w o r k and H o l l y w o o d m e g a - p r o d u c t i o n s have f i r s t d i b s on e v e r y European s c r e e n , where

Asia's

rising

economic giants

are i n c r e a s i n g l y

s e e n to be

r e p l a c i n g the U.S. c o n g l o m e r a t e s of y o r e , w h e r e even the s i z e of c a r s no l o n g e r s e r v e s to m e a n i n g f u l l y d i f f e r e n t i a t e Old?

the New World f r o m the

It i s a d e r a c i n a t e d , c o s m o p o l i t a n w o r l d

w h e r e i n an E n g l i s h -

language P o l i s h w r i t e r l i k e J e r z y K o s i n s k i can p l a y a p r a c t i c a l j o k e (in the f o r m of a naughty c a m e o - a - c l e f i n Blind

Date) on a f r a n c o p h o n e

poet s u c h a s " P r e s i d e n t L e o p o l d S e d a r [Senghor] of S e n e g a l , w h o a l s o h a p p e n e d t o be K o s i n s k i ' s t r a n s l a t o r

in that c o u n t r y "

(Sloan 177).

T h a n k s to s u p e r s o n i c j e t t r a v e l , t h e f a x m a c h i n e , and t h e I n t e r n e t , l i t e r a r y t r a v e l l e r s c a n move a b r o a d a l m o s t i n s t a n t l y . Of w h a t u s e a r e s u c h o l d - f a s h i o n e d c o m m o d i t i e s as n a t i o n a l i d e n t i t y i n an a h i s t o r i c a l , t r a n s - n a t i o n a l u n i v e r s e ? Why not g i v e up t h e f i g h t i m m e d i a t e l y and a c c e p t the f a c t t h a t no c o u n t r y can r e a l i s t i c a l l y e x p e c t to be m o r e than a wholly

o w n e d s u b s i d i a r y of D i s n e y / T i m e / W a r n e r / M i t s u b i s h i ? A n d

how can a p l a c e o r r e g i o n

360 be c o n s i d e r e d r e a l o r f a n t a s t i c a l w h e n 99% of the t h i n g s a r e v i r t u a l r a t h e r than a c t u a l ? T h e r e are no e a s y a n s w e r s to t h e s e q u e s t i o n s . A s E r i c H o b s b a w n w r o t e i n the l a s t p a r a g r a p h of h i s h i s t o r y of the " s h o r t ' "

twentieth-

c e n t u r y , " W e do not k n o w w h e r e w e are g o i n g " ( H o b s b a w m 5 8 5 ) .

The

C o l d W a r i s o v e r , l e a v i n g only one m i l i t a r y s u p e r - p o w e r on the f i e l d , but

a host

of

economic

competitors.

Politically,

the

world

is

f r a c t u r i n g , even as h u m a n i t y ' s t r u e c e n t r e s of p o w e r d e v o l v e f r o m n a t i o n s t a t e s to m u l t i n a t i o n a l

corporations.

A r m e d c o n f l i c t i s now w a g e d a l m o s t e x c l u s i v e l y b e t w e e n r i v a l c i t i e s , t r i b e s and p r o v i n c e s , p r i m a r i l y b e c a u s e the very c o n c e p t of c o u n t r y has begun

to

seem irrelevant

on a p l a n e t

where

clan

loyalties

are

burgeoning everywhere. N e v e r t h e l e s s , as w e s a w e a r l i e r , c e r t a i n f o r m s of s e n t i m e n t and h u m o u r r e m a i n i n d e s t r u c t i b l y n a t i o n a l , so they w o u l d a p p e a r to p r o v i d e m o s t of the b e d r o c k f o r de f a c t o l o c a l r e s i s t a n c e to the interlinked

trends

" m a r r i a g e " , it

of

must

globalization

be a d m i t t e d ,

and

xenophobia

s i n c e the

curiously

(a

combination

bizarre strongly

i m p l i e s an unholy union b e t w e e n H e r d e r ' s c o n c e p t of a n c e s t r a l c u l t u r e and

Finkielkraut's

belief

in

universal

Enlightenment

truths;

the

c o n t r a d i c t i o n s of the m o d e r n w o r l d have r e s u l t e d in s o m e v e r y s t r a n g e b e d f e l l o w s ) . T h e r e a r e , h o w e v e r , m o r e s u b t l e s i g n s of

international

n o n - c o m p l i a n c e . In a 1997 a r t i c l e e n t i t l e d " D i x ans en c h i f f r e s " ,

Studio

m a g a z i n e u n d e r l i n e d s o m e of t h e s e d i f f e r e n c e s : " C i n q c o n t r e c i n q l e b o x - o f f i c e d e p u i s 1 9 8 7 , r e n v o i e dos a dos f i l m s f r a n c a i s et a m e r i c a i n s . M a i s , a y r e g a r d e r de p l u s p r e s , l e s g o u t s s ' a c c o r d e n t pas v r a i m e n t

du p u b l i c

francais

ne

361 a v e c ceux du p u b l i c a m e r i c a i n . Dans ce Top 10 F r a n c e , on ne que deux

films

presents

dans l e T o p

retrouve

10 E t a t s - U n i s s u r l a

meme

periode...." ( 1 1 9 ) . In o t h e r

w o r d s , even A m e r i c a n i z e d F r e n c h v i e w e r s

prefer

to

c o n s t r u c t an i m a g i n a r y A m e r i c a t h a t i s r a d i c a l l y d i f f e r e n t f r o m the one a c c e p t e d by t h e i r

U.S. c o n t e m p o r a r i e s .

What's more, it

is

entirely

p o s s i b l e t h a t U.S. c u l t u r a l i n f l u e n c e has a l r e a d y p e a k e d , and w i l l soon be c h a l l e n g e d on an i n c r e a s i n g n u m b e r of f r o n t s f o r c u l t u r a l When a l l t h e s e f a c t o r s

are borne i n m i n d , i t

seems

supremacy.

overwhelmingly

l i k e l y t h a t the A m e r i c a b e l i e v e d in by the a v e r a g e F r e n c h m a n ,

Italian,

and Q u e b e c o i s w i l l r e m a i n " f a n t a s t i c a l " , no m a t t e r how much a c c u r a t e d a t a i s o b t a i n e d , and no m a t t e r

how m u c h the t r a d i t i o n a l

paradigms

m i g h t change. It i s , a f t e r a l l , h i g h l y l i k e l y t h a t m o s t A m e r i c a n s l i v e i n a F a n t a s y A m e r i c a , j u s t as m o s t F r e n c h m e n o c c u p y a F a n t a s y F r a n c e , m o s t I t a l i a n s a F a n t a s y I t a l y , and m o s t Q u e b e c o i s a F a n t a s y France. History

In s p i t e of e v e r y t h i n g , F r a n c i s F u k u y a m a i s e m p i r i c a l l y will

p r o g r e s s , and s i n c e the

etymology

of

the

Nouvelle wrong.

world

also

i m p l i e s s t o r y , i t w i l l be i m a g i n a t i v e . F a n t a s y A m e r i c a - l i k e

Fantasy

E g y p t , F a n t a s y G r e c e , and F a n t a s y R o m e - w i l l a l m o s t c e r t a i n l y

survive

long a f t e r the n a t i o n i t s e l f has c e a s e d to be.

362

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Viviani, Christian. "Mars Attacks! Smallltown, USA." Positif 433 ( 1 9 9 6 ) : 6 - 7. W e i n e r , S e y m o u r S. F r a n c i s C a r c o : The C a r e e r of a L i t e r a r y B o h e m i a n New Vork: C o l u m b i a U.P., 1 9 8 2 . W e n d e r s , W i m . " L a t a c h e de s o l e i l se d e p l a c e . " P o s i t i f ( 1 9 9 6 ) : 148 - 151.

425/426

W i l l e i n e n , P a u l , ed. P i e r P a o l o P a s o l i n i . London: B F I , 1 9 7 7 . W i l l s , Gary. " A m e r i c a n A d a m . " New Vork R e v i e w of B o o k s 6 Mar. 1 9 9 7 : 3 0 - 3 3 . W i l s o n , C o l i n . A C r i m i n a l H i s t o r y of Mankind. London: G r a f t o n B o o k s , 1984. W i l s o n , Edmund. 0 Canada! An A m e r i c a n ' s N o t e s on C a n a d i a n C u l t u r e New Vork: F a r r a r , S t r a u s and G i r o u x , 1 9 6 5 . V o u r c e n a r , M a r g u e r i t e . E s s a i s et m e m o i r e s . P a r i s : G a l l i m a r d , 1 9 9 1 . — .

L e t t r e s a s e s a m i s et quelques a u t r e s . P a r i s : G a l l i m a r d , 1 9 9 5 .

d ' V v o i r e , C h r i s t o p h e . " B r a n d o p a r l e ! " SJjJdjo 120 ( 1 9 9 7 ) :

101 - 104.

Z a v a t t i n i , C e s a r e . Ooere 1931 - 1986. M i l a n : B o m p i a n i , 1 9 7 9 .

383

Z o l a , E m i l e . Le Roman e x p e r i m e n t a l . P a r i s : F r a n c o i s B e r n o u a u d , 1928. Zunino, G r e g o r i o . L ' i d e o l o g i a del f a s c i s m o : Mi t i . c r e d e n z i . v a l o r i n e l l a s t a b a l i z z o n i r e del r e g i m e . B o l o g n a : 11 M u l i n o , 1 9 8 5 .

384

Appendix

One:

Who's A f r a i d of J e r r y Not

us! Not

By B e r e n i c e

Lewis?

us!

Reynaud

T r a n s l a t e d bu Mark

Harris

B a c k e d by the A m e r i c a n Museum of the Moving Image (AMMI), New Vork f i l m p r o f e s s o r S c o t t B u k a t m a n f i n a l l y found the c o u r a g e to m o u n t a Jerry Lewis retrospective included

not

only

the

(November 1 1 - December 9, 1988)

films

about

b r o a d c a s t s , u n s e e n and u n s e e a b l e s e e m e d the

perfect

troubling cultural

opportunity

to

and by J e r r y , s i n c e the attempt

but

1940s to

also

which his

and ' 5 0 s .

resolve

TV This

one of

the

e n i g m a s of our t i m e s . E v e r s i n c e I m o v e d to

the

U n i t e d S t a t e s , t h e r e ' s a l w a y s been someone to ask s m i r k i n g l y , " W h y do the F r e n c h l o v e J e r r y L e w i s ? " I t h e r e f o r e i n v e r t e d asked a c r o s s - s e c t i o n

of

viewers

the q u e s t i o n , and

and n o n - v i e w e r s ,

"What

makes

A m e r i c a n s t h i n k t h a t the F r e n c h do l o v e J e r r y L e w i s ? " The a n s w e r s ran f r o m gags to p a r a n o i a , w i t h n e r v o u s a l l u s i o n s p a i d to the

"shameful

s e c r e t s " of the A m e r i c a n p s y c h e . " T h e F r e n c h m u s t l o v e i m p o t e n t men. Or e l s e t h e y ' r e a t t r a c t e d by h i s s e n s e of r h y t h m , h i s p h y s i c a l i t y . " (Filmmaker, "The

French

are

crazy

about

Jerry

female)

Lewis

because

B a r d o t ' s c a t w a t c h e s h i s f i l m s at b r e a k f a s t . " (Conceptual " B e c a u s e they l o v e Nana M o u s k o u r i . " (Archivist,

artist,

male)

Brigitte male)

385 " O n t e l e v i s i o n one n i g h t , t h e r e

was this comic who did Jerry

L e w i s i m i t a t i o n s , s a y i n g 'In F r a n c e , I am a god.' T h a t ' s the f i r s t t i m e I e v e r h e a r d t h a t . " (Viewer,

female)

" I n A m e r i c a , you g r o w

up k n o w i n g

L e w i s , but w h y ? It's an e n i g m a . " (Spectator, "It's

that the French love male)

b e c a u s e he does t h e s e c o m p l e t e l y loopy t h i n g s . T h e F r e n c h

have the s a m e n u t t y s e n s e of humour." (Projectionist, "It's

Jerry

b e c a u s e he r e p r e s e n t s t h e l i t t l e f e l l o w

female) i n a l l of u s , t h e

f e l l o w w h o s t r u g g l e s to s u r v i v e . H i s f i l m s are a l l about n i c e g u y s , not b a s t a r d s . " (Aging groupie,

female)

" F o r m e , h e ' s a l w a y s been t h e K i n g of C o m e d y . He does

these

s t r a n g e t h i n g s , e v e r y o n e i s s h o c k e d , but w h e n you look

more

really

c l o s e l y you r e a l i z e t h a t h e ' s the one w h o ' s n o r m a l . " (Museum

guard,

male) " N o A m e r i c a n o v e r the age of 14 c a n s t a n d a J e r r y L e w i s m o v i e . When I w a s i n P a r i s , e v e r y o n e I m e t h a t e d h i s g u t s . " (Film

student,

male) "I w a s r a i s e d by a f a t h e r w h o f o r b a d e us to w a t c h J e r r y L e w i s . Vears l a t e r

I b r o k e up w i t h a p a l w h o w a n t e d

to s p e n d L a b o u r Day

w e e k e n d w a t c h i n g the J e r r y L e w i s T e l e t h o n . " (Anthropology

student,

female) "He's

anti-culture,

intellectuals,

ugly

he p i c k s

on e a s y

targets

(professors,

people). His comedy i s a p e r v e r s i o n

of

genuine

s l a p s t i c k h u m o u r ( C h a p l i n , the Marx B r o t h e r s ) . Why do the F r e n c h l o v e h i m ? I t ' s one of t h o s e F r e n c h e c c e n t r i c i t i e s . " (Children's

author, male)

386 "In F r a n c e , a l l J e r r y L e w i s m o v i e s are dubbed. T h e y d o n ' t r e s p o n d to the s a m e f i l m s t h a t w e see here. P e r h a p s t h e y ' r e f u n n i e r . "

(Viewer,

male) "I

r e a d i n a m a g a z i n e t h a t F r e n c h m e n p r e f e r t h e i r a c t o r s to be

f a i r l y ugly, w i t h crooked mouths (Gabin, Belmondo, Depardieu). Perhaps they l i k e J e r r y L e w i s ' s f a c i a l e l a s t i c i t y . " (Translator, "It's

male)

one of t h o s e t h i n g s t h a t make us q u e s t i o n the m e n t a l

of E u r o p e a n s . T h e n a t i o n

that invented

brioche

s e n s i b l e o p i n i o n of J e r r y L e w i s . " (Video artist,

health

should hold a more

male)

" A m e r i c a n s are c o n v i n c e d t h a t the F r e n c h l o v e of J e r r y L e w i s i s nothing

but a m e a n s of a f f i r m i n g t h e i r

cultural

superiority,

m o c k i n g t h a t w h i c h i s m o s t s t u p i d in A m e r i c a n c u l t u r e . "

and of

(Spectator,

male) "It

a l l o w s us not to t a k e the F r e n c h too s e r i o u s l y . T h e y

have

S a r t r e , e x i s t e n t i a l i s m , and a l l t h a t , BUT they a l s o l o v e J e r r y L e w i s and C l i n t E a s t w o o d . T h a t b r i n g s t h e m d o w n to e a r t h . " (Organizer

retrospective,

of

the

male)

"Doubtless

it

has

something

to

do

with

American

sexual

r e p r e s s i o n . We b e l i e v e the F r e n c h to be more l i b e r a t e d in t h a t a r e a , and t h i s p e r m i t s t h e m to see in J e r r y w h a t w e r e f u s e to s e e in o u r s e l v e s . But i t ' s a l s o a j o k e : 'You see w h a t dumb a s s h o l e s the F r e n c h a r e ? T h e y t h i n k t h e y ' r e so c u l t i v a t e d , and yet they l i k e J e r r y L e w i s ! ' T h i s i s m o r e of a r e f l e c t i o n of w h a t w e t h i n k about the F r e n c h than of w h a t w e t h i n k about J e r r y L e w i s . " (Publicist "American tourists

for a symphony orchestra,

male)

are c o n v i n c e d t h a t E u r o p e a n s d e t e s t

them.

J e r r y L e w i s i s a k i n d of e x a g g e r a t e d v e r s i o n of the A m e r i c a n t o u r i s t ,

387 he i s g e n u i n e l y p e r c e i v e d in t h i s m a n n e r by E u r o p e a n s , o r at l e a s t t h i s i s the w a y w e f e a r he i s p e r c e i v e d . " (Radio producer,

female)

" D u r i n g the 1 9 5 0 s , L e w i s t o y e d w i t h s o m e t h i n g t h a t A m e r i c a n s w e r e not ready to r e c o g n i z e in t h e m s e l v e s . They did not u n d e r s t a n d why the F r e n c h l o v e d J e r r y L e w i s , t h i s s y m b o l of t h e i r w e a k n e s s , of

their

i m m a t u r i t y . " (Film prof, male) "I Lewis.

don't find it p a r t i c u l a r l y He's

our

onscreen

alter

s t r a n g e t h a t the F r e n c h l o v e J e r r y ego,

and

he

manifests

certain

c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s w h i c h w e h e s i t a t e to a c k n o w l e d g e in o u r s e l v e s . " (Video

artist,

female) " Y e s , I f i n d i t r i d i c u l o u s t h a t the F r e n c h l o v e J e r r y L e w i s , but

t h a t i s n ' t n e c e s s a r i l y a c r i t i c i s m . In an e x a g g e r a t e d f a s h i o n , he c r e a t e s p a i n f u l , e m b a r r a s s i n g s i t u a t i o n s , w h i c h he h a m m e r s i n h a r d e r

and

h a r d e r , to the p o i n t w h e r e a u d i e n c e s m u s t f i n a l l y i d e n t i f y w i t h t h e m . "

(Bookseller,

female)

"In the U n i t e d S t a t e s , i t i s the c h i l d r e n , not the a d u l t s , w h o l i k e J e r r y L e w i s . In F r a n c e , he m u s t s e e m e x o t i c , and I i m a g i n e t h a t sentimentality

in h i s f i l m s a p p e a r s l e s s s e l f - e v i d e n t and

the

mortifying

t h a n i t does here. T h a n k s to t h e i r c i n e m a t i c c u l t u r e , the F r e n c h s e e L e w i s as the l e g i t i m a t e d e s c e n d a n t of K e a t o n and C h a p l i n . In the U.S., c o n v e r s e l y , T V has made L e w i s a n a c h r o n i s t i c . " (Film critic,

male)

" L e w i s and Frank T a s h l i n r e p r e s e n t the s u r v i v a l of s l a p s t i c k , of p h y s i c a l c o m e d y , w h i c h i s a l s o a European t r a d i t i o n . T h e r e are

great

s i m i l a r i t i e s b e t w e e n J e r r y and J a c q u e s T a t i . " (Film prof, male) "His programs

unique

manner

and f i l m s

bien." (Writer,

male)

[The

of

o p e n i n g up a s c e n e i n h i s

Ladies'

television

Man] i n f l u e n c e d G o d a r d i n Tout

va

388 "Lewis

e m p l o y s e l e m e n t s of

popular culture

commercials

and c a r t o o n s , w h i c h

are

not

borrowed

from

r e c o g n i z e d as s u c h

in

A m e r i c a . If, f o r e x a m p l e , one f i n d s L e w i s gags in G o d a r d ' s m o v i e s , i t ' s because

they

constitute

a sort

of

critique

of

c a p i t a l i s m , of

the

d e p a r t m e n t s t o r e . " (Film prof, female) " I n i t i a l l y you have a hard t i m e a p p r e c i a t i n g J e r r y L e w i s . A t f i r s t you m i g h t

s a y h e ' s OK but s t r i c t l y

f o r k i d s , l i k e P e e Wee H e r m a n .

W h a t ' s m o r e , he p l a y s the l i t t l e boy h i m s e l f . It's only a f t e r w e b e c o m e f a m i l i a r w i t h his work that we s t a r t

to u n d e r s t a n d h i s a r t . A s f o r

m y s e l f , I l e a r n e d a l o t f r o m w a t c h i n g L e w i s i n Cinderf ella:

I could

u n d e r s t a n d b e t t e r w h a t w a s happening on the s c r e e n , g r a s p the L e w i s t e c h n i q u e s w h i c h had e s c a p e d me w h e n I w a s younger. He c o m e s f r o m a showbiz tradition

t h a t ' s v e r y c l o s e to m u s i c . He has a v e r y m u s i c a l

s e n s e of i m p r o v i s a t i o n w h i c h w i l l brook no c o n s t r a i n t s ; i f he can pump a l i t t l e m o r e m a g i c i n t o the i n s p i r a t i o n of the m o m e n t , n o t h i n g on e a r t h will

s t o p h i m . I've done a f a i r a m o u n t of T V , and o f t e n w o r k e d

with

S a m m y D a v i s , J r . , to w h o m he w a s v e r y c l o s e . He and S a m m y w e r e i n t e r e s t e d i n e v e r y t h i n g , they w a n t e d to t r y

everything. They'd hire

people f o r a g i g , then t e l l t h e m w h a t to do. T h e i r i d e a s w e r e a l w a y s the b e s t . To w o r k w i t h t h e m w a s a r e a l A m e r i c a n e d u c a t i o n . We w e r e too r e a d y to do t h i n g s the u s u a l w a y , w h i c h c o s t us p l e n t y . Why do the F r e n c h l o v e J e r r y L e w i s ? Beyond the c o n v e n t i o n s , you can s e e in h i s work all these nuances w h i c h transcend language, all these w o n d e r f u l

l i t t l e t h i n g s . . . " (Musician, from 1951 till

1963}

male,

member

of Count Basie's

orchestra

389

Appendix

Two:

P i t y f o r John Wayne By B o r i s

Vian

T r a n s l a t e d by Mark

Harris

The t i m e has come to ask o u r s e l v e s i f c e r t a i n s t a r s

don't d e s e r v e

s t a t u e s ; i n any e v e n t , I w o u l d l i k e to see one r a i s e d to J o h n W a y n e , the " J o a n of A r c " of H o l l y w o o d , t h a t e x p i a t o r y v i c t i m of

trans-Atlantic

" B i s h o p C a u c h o n s " , a b i t t e r hero p r e d e s t i n e d to i g n o m i n i o u s d e a t h by a s p h y x i a t i o n i n the h o l d s of d i s e m b o w e l l e d s h i p s s p i t t e d on p o i n t e d r o c k s at the b o t t o m of the sea... Here are t w o f i l m s : Reap the Wild Wind and The Wake of the Witch-the

s e c o n d b e i n g b e t t e r t h a n the f i r s t by v i r t u e of i t s

but-alas!-in

black-and-white.

Here a r e t w o

films

Red

script

(there must

be

t h o u s a n d s of o t h e r s ) w h e r e J o h n W a y n e , p a i n f u l l y s q u e e z e d f o r v a r i o u s r e a s o n s i n t o an u n s a f e d i v i n g s u i t , s u c c u m b s to r u p t u r e d

a i r hoses

s e v e n t y f e e t b e l o w s e a l e v e l . In The Wild Wind, i t m u s t be a d m i t t e d , h i s role is somewhat equivocal;

h e ' s a n i c e guy but a b i t of a b o u n d e r , so

you k n o w h e ' s going to die in a c c o r d a n c e w i t h the m o r a l i m p e r a t i v e s of T i n s e l T o w n . In The beginning

to

Wake, on the o t h e r hand, one r o o t s f o r h i m

e n d , but

he d i e s a n y w a y .

It's

very

from

suspicious. Let's

investigate further. Bad t h i n g s a l w a y s happen to J o h n Wayne. F r o m the m o m e n t

he

a p p e a r s o n s c r e e n , w i t h t h a t t h i n - l i p p e d gob of h i s and t h o s e d o c k e r s i z e d d e l t o i d s , y o u r blood runs c o l d as you s a y , "It

isn't p o s s i b l e , he's

390 not g o i n g to make i t . " One hopes a l i t t l e , a g a i n s t a l l the o d d s , but make i t he d o e s n ' t . T h i s i s r e a l l y , r e a l l y bad.... A b s o l u t e l y a n y t h i n g can happen to E r r o l F l y n n : E r r o l F l y n n always wriggle

out of it. If he w e r e to play hayerling,

the

will

suicide

w o u l d be b o t c h e d s u r e as s h o o t i n g , and i f MGM a s s i g n e d h i m the p a r t of the

Immortal

qualified

French M a i d - f o r

which

he's every

as t h a t h o r s e of a B e r g m a n - h e w o u l d

s q u a d r o n of

the

King's musketeers

while

bit

as

physically

be s w e p t

strolling

to

the

up by a torture

c h a m b e r . B u t J o h n W a y n e ? In the s a m e r o l e , J o h n W a y n e w o u l d

be

burned at the s t a k e at D o m r e m y in f r o n t of e v e r y b o d y , d u r i n g the f i r s t r e e l , on the charge of " b u t t e r y " . Or e l s e he w o u l d s t u m b l e i n t o the m o a t at O r l e a n s , h i s d i v i n g s u i t r i d d l e d w i t h c r o s s b o w b o l t s . He w o u l d be d e a d , s t r a n g l e d by an o c t o p u s in h i s b a t h , s c a l p e d by h i s b a r b e r , o r p o i s o n e d by h i s 1 1 m o n t h old son... One t h i n g i s c e r t a i n : J o h n Wayne i s doomed. And f r o m here on out i t s e e m s i m p o s s i b l e to i m a g i n e a s c e n a r i o from

w h i c h J o h n Wayne c o u l d e v e r e m e r g e u n s c a t h e d ; " t h e y "

will

a l w a y s get h i m . It d o e s n ' t m a t t e r i f J o h n W a y n e ' s i n t e n t i o n s are good or bad. R e p l a c e B i n g C r o s b y w i t h J o h n Wayne in Going My Way, and y o u ' l l f i n d the f a t h e r of one of h i s f l o c k , a n o t o r i o u s c o m m u n i s t , c u t t i n g down w i t h a burst from his t y p e w r i t e r .

him

If J o h n Wayne p l a y e d N a p o l e o n ,

the b r i d g e at A r c o l e w o u l d c r u m b l e beneath h i s f e e t . T h e m o s t t e r r i b l e t h i n g of a l l i s t h a t " t h e y " don't amount to v e r y m u c h in the t r a g i c d e s t i n y of J o h n Wayne. In r e a l i t y , " t h e y " c a n ' t s a v e h i m . I'm

sure that a gut-bustingly

funny

s c r i p t , c o n s i g n e d to J o h n

W a y n e , w o u l d by m e a n s of l e p r o u s , h u m i d , and a l t o g e t h e r s u s p e c t a u t o a l t e r a t i o n , transform i t s e l f into a sad, sordid, brutal story where John

391 W a y n e - i m m a c u l a t e a p o s t l e , c h a s t e , p u r e , i n n o c e n t and s u b l i m e - w o u l d die in s p i t e of e v e r y t h i n g . Does s u c h a t h i n g as the e v i l eye e x i s t , t h e n , in c i n e m a ? J o h n Wayne has the e v i l b u l l s e y e .

392

Appendix Three: Hypocrisy

American Style

By Luc Moulet Translated bu Mark Harris

If I l i k e E.T., i t i s b e c a u s e S t e v e n S p i e l b e r g - w h o , at f i r s t g l a n c e , a p p e a r s to be s i t u a t i n g h i m s e l f w i t h i n the t r a d i t i o n cinema-simultaneously, almost surreptitiously,

of

supernatural

o f f e r s us a r a r e and

m e t i c u l o u s g l i m p s e of o r d i n a r y A m e r i c a n l i f e w i t h the a i d of a f a m i l y t h a t s e e m s a v e r a g e in e v e r y r e s p e c t , c l o s e r to F r e d e r i c k W i s e m a n o r Raymond

Depardon

than

to

Issac

Asimov

or

Philip

K. D i c k .

a n t i c i p a t e s j u d g i n g the f i l m on the b a s i s of i t s r i c h n e s s of

One

invention,

i m a g i n a t i o n and play. And t h e n , as a bonus, w i t h o u t p a y i n g a d i m e e x t r a , one i s p r o v i d e d w i t h an i n f i n i t e l y more p r e c i o u s s l i c e of l i f e w h i c h one c a n n o t even c r i t i c i z e , s i m p l y b e c a u s e one w a s n ' t e x p e c t i n g i t . One i s caught

short,

d i s a r m e d ; one

is

left

with

the

feeling

of

d i s c o v e r e d s o m e t h i n g , of b e i n g o n e s e l f the f i l m ' s a u t h o r o r and of a f i r s t c l a s s and-disinterest

having

inventor-

n e o r e a l i s t f i l m to boot! One had e x p e c t e d one t h i n g ,

i n r o b o t i c s h e l p s h e r e - o n e got s o m e t h i n g t e n

times

b e t t e r . E.T. i s n o t h i n g but a red h e r r i n g o r c l u e . A m e r i c a n h y p o c r i s y i s marvellous. E.T. i s not n e c e s s a r i l y the i d e a l e x a m p l e : an A m e r i c a n who l i v e s this

cinematic

intriguing

reality

on a d a i l y

basis might

than w o u l d a Frenchman. It's

well

also far from

Spielberg anticipated this reading from a distant observer.

find

it

less

certain

that

393 A f i l m s u c h as F r i t z L a n g ' s Beyond a Reasonable r e s p e c t , much purer: we believe that w e ' r e

Doubt is, in t h i s

watching

an

argument

a g a i n s t c a p i t a l p u n i s h m e n t , and t h e n , at the v e r y end, w e f i n d out t h a t i t ' s the o p p o s i t e , or, at the very l e a s t , s o m e t h i n g e l s e a g a i n . T h e A m e r i c a n s are s p e c i a l i s t s in t h i s A s e a r l y as 1 8 5 1 , Moby Dick

activity.

initially

presented i t s e l f

as a

f o r b i d d i n g t e c h n i c a l a c c o u n t of the p r o f e s s i o n of f i s h i n g as p r a c t i c e d in v a r i o u s m a r i t i m e

c o u n t r i e s - a l o u s y c r i t i q u e and a dead w e i g h t

in

t e r m s of s a l e s . B u t t h i s h y p o c r i t i c a l a n c h o r a g e in the m o s t p h y s i c a l form

of o b j e c t i v i t y

architecture.

l a i d the f o u n d a t i o n

for a refined

metaphysical

In s i m i l a r f a s h i o n , in C h a n d l e r ' s Lady in the Lake a n d

D a s h i e l l H a m m e t t ' s tough n e i g h b o u r h o o d s , the i n v e s t i g a t i o n ' s goal i s not p r i m a r i l y broad

canvas

to r e v e a l the k i l l e r ' s i d e n t i t y , of

America,

a portrait

b u t , r a t h e r , to p a i n t a

composed

of

the

various

p e r s o n a l i t i e s s t a n d i n g behind the doors upon w h i c h Spade and M a r l o w e are o b l i g e d to knock. Here i t

i s a q u e s t i o n of i n s i d i o u s c h a n g e s ( i n v i s i b l e

for

sure)

a l o n g the d o m i n a n t l i n e of i n t e r e s t . More a g g r e s s i v e , e a s i e r t o o , i s the switch

i n g e n r e d u r i n g the c o u r s e of the f i l m : w i t h Madam

( D e M i l l e ) , History

is Made at Night ( B o r z a g e ) , and Made for

Satan

Each Other

( C r o m w e l l ) , w e move f r o m pure indoor c o m e d y - m a t i n e e and s o m e t i m e s vaudeville-to

the

resulting

least

(at

disaster film in

the

first

with

aerial

two

examples)

r e d o u b l i n g of i m p a c t , due in l a r g e p a r t

or m a r i t i m e in

an

options,

unexpected

to the e l e m e n t of

surprise.

D o u b t l e s s i t ' s here t h a t we f i n d a s o m e w h a t dubious a e s t h e t i c , c r e a t e d by p r o d u c e r s

who, believing

the

initial

comedy

to

be t o o

s h a m e l e s s l y added an e n t i r e l y new i n g r e d i e n t to the f o r m u l a .

slight,

394 In H o w a r d H a w k s ' s t w i n f l i c k s , Sergeant Prefer

Blondes,

York and

Gentlemen

w e p a r t i c i p a t e i n an even m o r e p e r v e r s e d o u b l i n g up.

T h e s e t w o f i l m s t r i p s h a v e , at the s a m e t i m e , an e n t i r e l y c o n v e n t i o n a l meaning,

plus

(a

little

like

pentimento

in

painting)

a

critical

s i g n i f i c a n c e that is totally contradictory. I

recently

saw

Scorsese's

Color

of

Money,

featuring

two

s u p e r s t a r s who w e r e paid a b u n d l e , P a u l N e w m a n and T o m C r u i s e , t h e i r n a m e s o c c u p y i n g the g r e a t e r p a r t of the p o s t e r . Okay, so t h e s e s t a r s , p a r t i c u l a r l y at the b e g i n n i n g of the p i c t u r e , do not s t a n d out f r o m the r e s t of the c a s t : the e d i t i n g does not p r i v i l e g e t h e m . A t f i r s t w e s e e the s u m t o t a l of s i t u a t i o n s and a c t o r s , m o s t of w h o m are l i t t l e - k n o w n . We are l e f t w i t h the f e e l i n g t h a t w e are t a k i n g p a r t in a n e w s c a s t , w h i c h i n c r e a s e s our b e l i e f in the r e a l i t y of w h a t w e are s e e i n g . A n d the contrary

fictional

weight

which

these two

sacred cows carry

is

s e e m i n g l y r u b b e d out by t h e i r d i s c r e e t i n t r u s i o n i n t o an a p p a r e n t l y n o n - f i c t i o n a l u n i v e r s e . T h a t ' s the s a m e t r i c k e m p l o y e d by J o h n F o r d in a n u m b e r of f i l m s (The Long Voyage Home), Raoul W a l s h (A Lion in Streets,

Dark Command),

the

a n d , in g e n e r a l , by W a r n e r B r o t h e r s S t u d i o s

d u r i n g t h e i r heyday. An a s t o n i s h i n g double p l a y : the p u b l i c goes to the f i l m s b e c a u s e of t h e i r s t a r s ; i t f i n d s t h e m , but o n l y w i t h

difficulty.

T h u s i t p a r t i c i p a t e s m o r e d i r e c t l y i n the f i l m . A n d the s t a r s g a i n a s u p p l e m e n t a r y a d v a n t a g e . In

C i m i n o ' s Heaven's

Gate, not o n l y do w e

have a h a r d t i m e p i c k i n g out the s t a r s , p a r t i c u l a r l y d u r i n g the

final

b a t t l e , b u t - e v e n more a c u t e l y - w e don't c l e a r l y comprehend w h a t

is

going on o r w h a t the f i l m ' s deeper m e a n i n g m i g h t b e - a s s u m i n g t h e r e i s one.

395 One c o u l d s a y m u c h the s a m e about Two-Lane

Blacktop

H e l l m a n ) o r - o n c e a g a i n w e r e t u r n to H a w k s - T r / e Big

(Monte

Sleep,

whose

i n c o m p r e h e n s i b l e s t o r y l i n e w a s w r i t t e n i n p a r t by W i l l i a m F a u l k n e r . T h i s i s the s a m e F a u l k n e r w h o , d u r i n g the c o u r s e of h i s long c a r e e r as n o v e l i s t , n e v e r d e s i s t e d f r o m s e t t i n g t r a p s in h i s t e x t s so t h a t

his

r e a d e r s w o u l d have a hard t i m e f i g u r i n g out w h a t w a s g o i n g o n , at a time

w h e n e v e r y o n e e l s e w a s d o i n g the c o n t r a r y . T h e m o s t

e x a m p l e of t h i s i s the c o r n c o b rape in Sanctuary.

famous

To be s u r e one has

u n d e r s t o o d , i t i s n e c e s s a r y to read o v e r the l i n e s in q u e s t i o n s e v e r a l t i m e s ( s o m e t h i n g w h i c h w a s not a l l o w e d in c i n e m a , at l e a s t not u n t i l the m i r a c l e of v i d e o c a s s e t t e s ) . T h i s t e c h n i q u e can p e r h a p s be e x p l a i n e d by the need to e s c a p e f r o m the c e n s o r ' s t h u n d e r b o l t s ; but one f i n d s i t a g a i n in e a r l i e r n o v e l s s u c h a s The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, w h i c h d i d not run the same risk. One can see h e r e , in a l l t h e s e h y p o c r i t i c a l t e c h n i q u e s , the m a r k of a p u r i t a n c i v i l i z a t i o n . P u r i t a n i s m c r e a t e d a s y s t e m so r i g i d sexually, aesthetically, economically: scriptural codes,

Prohibition,

Hollywood,

etc.)

that

it

passages,

must

(morally, diverse

inevitably

t r a n s g r e s s e d a g a i n s t , and t h i s t r a n s g r e s s i o n , of n e c e s s i t y , m u s t

be be

s u b t e r r a n e a n . P r o t e s t a n t s found t h i s to be the c u l t m o s t a d a p t a b l e to a r t i s t i c m a t t e r s . M o r e o v e r , m o s t s c r e e n w r i t e r s w i l l t e l l you t h a t the e s s e n t i a l t h i n g i s to c r e a t e a d i f f e r e n c e : f o r e x a m p l e , the w r i t e r k n o w s m o r e t h a n the v i e w e r who k n o w s more (or l e s s ) t h a n the

protagonist.

T h e i d e a l g e n r e t h u s b e c o m e s the c r i m e s t o r y , w h i c h , t h r o u g h o u t

the

h i s t o r y of the n o v e l , has long r e m a i n e d the p r i v a t e p r e s e r v e of p u r i t a n , Anglo-Saxon countries.

396 F a u l k n e r ' s i m p o r t a n c e i s s e l f - e x p l a n a t o r y : he w a s t h e f i r s t to f u s e the t w o profound m e a n i n g s of t h i s a e s t h e t i c of e v a s i o n - t h a t i s to s a y , i t s p u r i t a n i m p r e g n a t i o n ( w i t h the u s u a l p a n o p l y of s i n , r e m o r s e , c l a u s t r a t i o n and the tomb) and i t s e x i s t e n t i a l f r e i g h t - t h e c o m p l e x and confusing facts

preventing

an o u t p o u r i n g

of s e n s u a l i t y . I t ' s

more

a n c i e n t t h a n m o d e r n . T h a t w h i c h i s hidden e m e r g e s f r o m c a l c u l a t i o n , w h i l e c a l c u l a t i o n e m e r g e s f r o m chaos. It i s t h i s e x i s t e n t i a l e l e m e n t w h i c h i s d o m i n a n t i n the f i l m s of H e l l m a n and C i m i n o , as i t i s in Mann's Man of the West, w i t h o u t e n t i r e l y e x c l u d i n g , by the w a y , t h a t w h i c h i s w i l f u l l y h i d d e n , s i n c e t h e s e f i l m s p r e t e n d to b e l o n g - q u i t e u n s u c c e s s f u l l y , as a m a t t e r of f a c t - t o a g e n r e , the w e s t e r n o r road m o v i e . The s t r e n g t h of the A m e r i c a n c i n e m a i s t h e r e f o r e l i n k e d to t h i s o m n i p r e s e n c e of t h e h i d d e n , w h i c h m a k e s t h e F r e n c h c i n e m a s e e m m i s g u i d e d . Our f i l m m a k e r s don't hide behind a s y s t e m , w h i c h d o e s n ' t e x i s t h e r e , o r behind a genre ( w i t h the e x c e p t i o n of Gance). T h e y w o r k in the v a s t m o r a s s of p s y c h o l o g i c a l d r a m a . A l m o s t a l l of t h e m e s c h e w b u r l e s q u e , s w a s h b u c k l i n g and a d v e n t u r e m o v i e s , p o r n o - e v e r y t h i n g , i n f a c t , except the c r i m e story. They c l e a r l y delineate t h e i r

subject

m a t t e r , and do not d i v e r g e f r o m i t d u r i n g the c o u r s e of the f i l m . F r o m the o u t s e t , they e m p h a s i z e the i m p o r t a n c e of t h e i r s t a r s . No d o u b l e play. A c i n e m a too s q u a r e , too obvious.... One does f i n d c e r t a i n b r i l l i a n t Nuit

du carrefour,

or the f i l m s

e x c e p t i o n s , s u c h as R e n o i r ' s La of J e a n - L u c

Godard ( h i m s e l f

of

P r o t e s t a n t o r i g i n ) , who play w i t h the p r o m i s e of t h e i r t i t l e s (Pierrot

le

fou, King Lear, Numero deux). T h e l a t e s t s u c h e x c e p t i o n i s c a l l e d

pas

sommeil.

J'ai

397 T h i s f i l m r e l i e s e n t i r e l y on the hidden. C l a i r e D e n i s s a y s as l i t t l e as p o s s i b l e about the t a n g e n t of h e r i n t r i g u e , of the r e l a t i o n s b e t w e e n c a u s e and e f f e c t . Even a l i t t l e l e s s than the s t r i c t m i n i m u m : she t h r o w s h e r v i e w e r a b a i t e d hook. It's

up to h i m to b i t e o r n o t , to d e c e i v e

h i m s e l f e v e n t u a l l y , to w o r k in any c a s e . Out of t w e n t y e x a m p l e s , Til t a k e t h i s one: t o w a r d s the end of the f i l m , the p r o t a g o n i s t , d r i v i n g in h e r c a r , n o t i c e s a man at the s t e e r i n g w h e e l of a n o t h e r v e h i c l e . W i t h o u t a p p a r e n t r e a s o n , w h e n the l i g h t t u r n s r e d , she d e l i b e r a t e l y s l a m s i n t o him,

totally

wrecking

the

machine. The

man

refuses

to

lodge

a

c o m p l a i n t , p r e t e n d i n g - a g a i n s t the a d v i c e of o n l o o k e r s - t o be the one at f a u l t . Is t h i s a doubly g r a t u i t o u s a c t ? Not v e r y l i k e l y . Revenge a g a i n s t an u n k n o w n p e r s o n w h o s e p r e v i o u s m i s d e e d s w e r e c u t out d u r i n g the editing

process?

A g a i n not

very

p r o b a b l e . Or of

the

man,

making

p r o p o s i t i o n s and f o l l o w i n g h e r d o w n the s t r e e t , as one of my f e m a l e f r i e n d s s u g g e s t s ? Or, as I t h i n k w h e n r e f l e c t i n g upon the

moments

w h i c h f o l l o w t h i s s c e n e , of an e x - l o v e r i n t e r v i e w e d an h o u r e a r l i e r , who p r o m i s e d a job

to o u r h e r o i n e t h e n f a i l e d to s h o w u p ?

After

i n q u e s t and r e - v i s i o n ( t h i s i s a m o s t r e w a r d i n g t a c t i c ) , my i n t u i t i o n s e e m s to have been c o n f i r m e d . Any o l d hack c o u l d have a v o i d e d u n c e r t a i n t y by d e c k i n g out

the

e x - l o v e r i n a s u i t or a m e m o r a b l e a c c e s s o r y , or by m a k i n g h i m speak in a h i g h l y d i s t i n c t i v e a c c e n t . B u t , he w o u l d t h e r e b y have d e s t r o y e d o u r d i s q u i e t i n g p a r t i c i p a t i o n in the r h y t h m s of a w o n d e r f u l l y r i c h f i l m .