In adaptation there exists filmable scenes and unfilmable scenes, and that instead of omitting the latter (as was done not long ago) it is necessary to invent equivalent scenes, that is to say, scenes as the novel's author would have written them for the cinema. Abbot Amedee Ayffre knew very well how to analyse La Symphonie Pastorale and how to WHAT ANNOYS ME . . . What annoys me about this famous process of equivalence is that I'm not at all certain that a novel contains unfilmable scenes, and even less certain that these scenes, decreed unfilmable, would be so for everyone. Praising Robert Bresson for his faithfulness to Bernanos, Andre Bazin ended his excellent article "La Stylistique de Robert Bresson," with these words. "After The Diary Of A Country discussion on Faith. This discussion ends with this line by Arsene, "When one is dead, everything is dead." In the adaptation, this discussion takes place on the very tomb of the UNMASK From a simple reading of that extract, there stands out: 1. A constant and deliberate care to be unfaithful framing, complicated lighting-effects, "polished" photography, the whole keeping the "Tradition of Quality" quite alive - it is time to come to an examination of the ensemble of these films adapted, with dialogue, by Aurenche and Bost, and to research the permanent nature of certain themes that will explain, without justifying, the constant unfaithfulness Jacques Sigurd, one of the last to come to "scenario and dialogue," teamed up with Yves its equivalent does not figure, spoken by the most abject couple in the film: "It's always they that have the money (or the luck, or love, or happiness). It's too unjust, in the end." This school which aspires to realism destroys it at the moment of finally grabbing it, so careful is the school to lock these beings in a closed world, barricaded by formulas, plays on authors could take up that line and be sincere! Well, as for these abject characters, who deliver these abject lines - I know a handful of men in France who would be INCAPABLE of conceiving them, several cineastes whose world-view is at least as valuable as that of Aurenche and Bost, Sigurd and Jeanson. I mean Jean Renoir; Robert Bresson, Jean Cocteau, Jacques Becker, Abel Gance, Max Ophuls, Jacques Tati, Roger Leenhardt; these are, neve rtheless, French cineastes and it happens - curious coincidence - that they are who often write their dialogue and some of them themselves invent the stories they direct. THEY WILL STILL SAY TO ME . . . "But why," they will say to me, "why couldn't one have the same admiration for all those cineastes who strive to work in the bosom of this "Tradition of Quality" that you make sport of so lightly? Why not admire Yves Alle when it aims at relating to them. They refused to recognize. themselves in the dockers of Homme Marche Dans La hille, or in the sailors of Les Amants De Brasmort. Perhaps it is necessary to send the children out on the stairway landing in order to make love, but their parents don't like to hear it said, above all at the cinema, even with "benevolence." If the public likes to mix with low company under the alibi of literature, it also likes to do it under of psychology; they have passed on to that sixth grade so dear to Jouhandeau, but it isn't necessary to repeat a grade indefinitely! Notes: (The original translation of this article in Cahiers du Cinema in English, no. 1, did not indicate the exact points in the text to which these notes refer.) 1. La Symphonie Pastorale. This article (originally written in January 1954 for Cahiers du Cinema, no. 31 J is one of the important historical landmarks in the growth of criticism, and bears glowing testimony to the polemical context in which it developed. In no uncertain terms, Truffaut attacks the "Tradition of Quality" which he saw as the province of the much despised metteur-en-scene (in contrast to the auteur), as well as a monolith of anti-clerical, anti- military, anti-bourgeois negativism masquerading as fidelity to literary classics. John Hess' two-part article in Jump Cut, nos. 1 and 2, `La Politique des Auteurs, "examines the political viewpoint expressed here and in other early French auteurist writings quite thoroughly, "La politique des auteurs was, discussion in the early 1960's have died down considerably. This could signal the gradual assimilation of principles into the broader context of film criticism, and to some extent this is definitely true. On the other hand, it may represent a decision to follow separate paths which will make assimilation all the more diffucult. My own guess is that the latter is Godard on Godard, translated and edited by Tom Milne (New York: The Viking Press, 1972). Johnny Guitar). The two need not be wedded inseparably, and one of the most promising directions in recent work is, to me, the attempt to link up We should recall, though, that these writers and others like John Grierson, Otis Ferguson, and James Agee frequently discussed directors at length. They emphasized discussing a director's treatment of social issues, however, an approach that did not seem to prompt as close attention to visual style as the more romantically inclined champions of auteur theory demonstrated. The two approaches are clearly not incompatible, but there is a sharp difference in emphasis (from theme to style) and a general tendency for auteur critics to be more socially conservative than their predecessors. The auteur critics ignore social history and the socially conscious critics ignore style, however, at their own peril. See the Overture to The Raw and the Cooked (New York: Harper and Row, 1969),and "The Story of Asdiwal" by Claude Levi-Strauss; "Cremonini, Painter of the Abstract," "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" in Lenin and Philosophy (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1971) and "The `Piccolo Teatro': Bertolazzi and Brecht" in (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), both by Louis Althusser. Furthman was a major but neglected Hollywood writer praised by Pauline Kael in her "Bonnie and Clyde" article in Kiss Bang Bang. Finally, the selection from Stephen Koch's book on Andy Warhol, Stargazer, characteristics of a non-Hollywood filmmaker from an auteur-like stylistic viewpoint as well as a biographical and psychological perspective. AZthough included in tlze Structuralism-