Metaphysics of the Arabesque
(Radio Cinéma Télévision no. 444; 20 July 1958)
When it appeared in 1955, the Englishman Graham Greene’s novel The Quiet American was a big succès de scandale. With the recent guerrilla wars in Indochina as the backdrop, it tells us the story of a typical British journalist, Fowler, who colludes with the communists to plot the death of his rival in politics and love, his friend Pyle, the typical American. Pyle believes that neither the communists…
Golden Hair Over Milk Soup
(Cahiers du Cinéma No. 108, June 1960)
That Verboten! is a bizarre, uneven, and especially difficult work, I admit. What I absolutely do not accept, however, is the indulgent disdain shown by the majority of the Parisian critique, following the scandalous and unanimous indifference of the Anglo-Saxon critique. None of the film's peculiarities justify this attitude, quite the contrary. And anyone practicing the profession of film critique (or claiming to practice it) and who has…
The Search for the Relative
(Cahiers du Cinéma No. 97, July 1959)
I abhor Westerns. That's why I adore Rio Bravo. The genre irritates me because it proposes admirable sentiments, but almost always in principle, never in fact. Generally, if there is any direction, it focuses on anything else—personal, political, technical problems. It denies the spirit of the true Western to uncover the opposite spirit: emphasis, decorum, lyricism. Yet, Rio Bravo is somewhat the opposite of Johnny Guitar. It's not…
Paris Belongs to Us
(Cahiers du Cinéma No. 161-162, January 1965)
Spent six weeks at the Experimental Cinema in Paris (10,500 admissions), in other Parisian art and trial theaters (3 weeks) and foreign ones (hardly more) and in numerous film clubs. Benefited from the most favorable distribution conditions that its nature could allow. The Bordeaux affair, which it anticipated exactly — a unique case to my knowledge in the history of art (The Manchurian Candidate is probably not a pure…
