Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

scenes as the attachment is purely one-sided, the result of an obsessive dreamer without the
motivation to make a move until the final strike. The French La Chienne would certainly
not have obtained the approval of Breen Office as the film is much more explicit: Jean
Renoir’s heroine (Janie Mareze as Lucienne Pelletier) is a prostitute in the sordid
passageways and narrow streets of Montmartre and she informs Maurice LeGrand (Michel
Simon [also a married cashier]) that she lives together with her boyfriend pimp André
“Dédé” Gouvain (Georges Flamant). Additionally, a scene like the one in La Chienne, in
which we see the shocking image of the prostitute’s killer kissing her dead body after his
crime of passion, would certainly have been banned from the film in America.
At first, we do not know what Johnny needs the money for. He mentions a few
thousand dollars he needs to put a down-payment on a garage, but the whole scheme seems
to allow him to shoot craps more than anything else. She agrees to be part of the plot as she
is “in love; crazy in love” with him and so she meets Chris secretly on a beautiful terrace,
sipping some cocktails (fig. 72) while the robins sing. “That robin sings just like I feel”, he
says to her, enamoured. She disturbs the romantic ambiance by referring to her lack of
money to pay the rent; she feels all “bottled-up”. Her “embourgeoised version of Renoir’s
prostitute” (Eisner 1976:258) starts here: taking all his money, while sexually and
emotionally double-crossing him. Chris thus goes back to his office and takes the money
out of J.J. Hogarth’s safe. It only takes him a few seconds to realise that this is not the right
thing to do and places the money back where he had found it and decides to go to the bank
for a loan, but to no avail.
Back home, Adele carries on demeaning Chris in every way possible. She now
wants him to buy a radio so she can listen to one of her favourite soap programmes
(ironically called “Happy Households Hour”), scoffing: “The way I have to scrimp and
save and you’re wasting money on paintings” and looking at the painting of her first
husband (whom she is constantly extolling), she adds: “I’d like to know what you’d do
without me”. We now confirm that the only outlet Chris has is his painting (which his
scolding wife will only let him do in the bathroom), a sublimation of his love for Kitty
March. He does not feel anything towards Adele, as he once let slip to Kitty: “I just didn’t
want to be alone.” Adele is the kind of harridan who persistently puts her husband down
and makes him feel enslaved. She apparently feels the same: “I’d be better off a widow.
The only reason why I put up with you is because I’m married to you… I’m stuck.”
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