New Mexico Quarterly Volume 24 | Issue 2 Article 10 1954 Charles Spaak and the Thesis Film Geoffrey Wagner Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq Recommended Citation Wagner, Geoffrey. "Charles Spaak and the Thesis Film." New Mexico Quarterly 24, 2 (1954). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq/ vol24/iss2/10 This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by the University of New Mexico Press at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in New Mexico Quarterly by an authorized editor of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Wagner: Charles Spaak and the Thesis Film BOOKS and COMMENT Geoffrey Wagner CHARLES SPAAK AND THE THESIS FILM HET RIC 0 LOR waves over the Palais de Justice. Three words are engraved on the ancient stone: LIBERTt T;EGALITt-FRATERNITt. The camera drops a frac tion. We see a harshly modern enamel plate-Place d'Arret. This shot from Avant Ie deluge, written and co-directed by Charles Spaak, bespeaks the thesis, with all its attendant over simplifications, of one of the most provocative screen writers working today-namely, that we are all assassins and that justice is never done. While the cinema in this country is suffering from an overdose of skill-fetichism (one technical gimmick after an other vainly trying to make up. for an emptiness of soul) , and while the Italian realist film is proving steadily more inelastic, Spaak is quietly proceeding with the serious business of the cin ema, enlarging it "in depth" by lending it that most unlikely di mension, real intellectual fervor.