SOURCE: "Ideology and Cinematic Practice in Lang's Scarlet Street and Renoir's La Chienne," in Wide Angle, Vol. 5, No. 3, 1983, pp. 32-43.

A comparison of La Chienne and Scarlet Street—two films made from the same literary original but in different nations, periods and institutional settings—allows us more easily than usual to isolate the effects of political, historical and economic context as these can be read off from each work. The cinematic devices in each film express the ideology of its cultural context—Popular Front France on the one hand, post-World War-II America on the other—and it is thus not surprising to find more elements subversive of dominant bourgeois ideology in Renoir's film than in Lang's. But, given a spectator not committed to bourgeois values, Scarlet Street may be read in a progressive manner, while La Chienne, for all its criticism of certain aspects of bourgeois society, assumes the dominance of patriarchy and represses the female discourse.

The discussion of each film is organized around three main concepts: first, the idea of the family (domestic space) in contrast to the work world (public space), particularly as this relates to the notion of the individual versus the community; second, the construction of sexual difference as it functions to drive the narrative forward; finally, the idea of class in each film.

The cinematic form of Scarlet Street is for the most part that of dominant (classical Hollywood) cinema. The potentially subversive elements that are evident (particularly in the final section of the film) are a result of its falling, roughly, into film noir. For most of the film, Lang follows the rules of classic cutting: he fragments filmic space through montage as the organizing principle of shot change, but preserves the illusion of narrative continuity by disguising the fragmentation. The transition between shots through dissolve helps further to disguise the division between private and public space that is largely responsible for Chris' misery. This division, of course, is routinely structured into classic narratives, and has an ideological base in that the separation of domestic and work worlds has (at least to date) served the interests of capitalism. The polarity reinforces the concept of individualism on which bourgeois culture is founded, and represses the notion of community that could work to undermine capitalist structures. The myth that the home is the haven to which the weary (male) worker returns for spiritual and personal sustenance enables the public world to be defined, without prejudice, as non-supportive and non-nurturing. Hollywood narratives reflect, without question, this division between private and public spaces, and use montage to make it seem "natural," the way things are supposed to be.

The supposedly "natural" separation between home and work worlds is particularly interesting in Scarlet Street since the hero, Chris Cross, gets into trouble precisely because his home is not the haven it is ideologically supposed to be. The narrative is structured in typical fashion around a series of juxtaposed sequences that set up polarities, contrasts and oppositions. In the opening section of the film, Chris is seen in a series of separate spaces, none of which connect with each other, but whose disconnection is masked, made to "seem natural." The opening use of montage establishes an apparent contrast between the lonely, noir world of the street and a superficially "warm" business dinner commemorating Chris Cross' twenty-five years with his firm. The street scene is so darkly lit that one barely sees the passers-by, the beggar with the barrel organ, or the sleek shiny car that pulls up outside of the Club, lit with a neon sign, where the dinner is being held. The organ grinder plays "Santa Lucia," a romantic love song that prepares for the shot of the glamorous woman in the car, her white furs and jewelry briefly breaking the blackness. We cut to the scene inside as the chauffeur comes to fetch J.J., Chris' boss, who represents the patriarchal order and is obviously much admired by Chris. Chris is significantly introduced by a shot of the back of his head, as the camera focuses along the table to J.J. making a speech and presenting Chris with the commemorative watch. When we finally cut to Chris' face, we see his boyish joy at being made the center of attention, clearly an unusual circumstance.

J.J.'s manhood is established by his having the glamorous girl waiting for him in the car. The diners leave the table to crowd around the window and gaze down at her, while Chris and his friend take the opportunity to creep out, obviously not at home with this group despite the surface togetherness. Once out on the dark street, now deserted and rainswept, Chris confides his loneliness to his friend and wonders bemusedly what it would be like to be loved by a young girl. He admits that no woman has ever looked at him as that girl looked at J.J.

Paradoxically, the lonely street shortly thereafter offers Chris the "gift" of Kitty, but it is in effect a gift as false as the watch in terms of what it really signifies; the watch, simply a routine recognition of service, did not signify the love Chris needs, and Kitty also offers "false" love.

We cut to a bar where Chris begins to fall in love with Kitty, enchanted by her youth, beauty and her apparent interest in him. Ashamed to say he is indeed the cashier Kitty nearly "mistook" him for, he allows her to believe he makes his living by painting, while in reality he merely paints as a hobby, a way to relieve his empty, painful existence.

The noir street thus mirrors Chris' "true" existence, while the two "warm" spaces are illusions. We cut from the scene with Kitty to a closeup of the flower Kitty gave Chris in the bar and which he is now painting in his kitchen, trying to stay out of the way of his hostile wife. Chris' home is, as already noted, far from the haven it is ideologically meant to be; on the contrary, it is a place where Chris is made to feel unworthy, unloved and inadequate.

The next series of scenes continues this juxtaposition of disconnected spaces that Chris inhabits. The "romantic" scene between Chris and Kitty in an outside cafe (it is the one and only time in the film that nature is shown—there are trees, birds, sunshine) is placed next to a dark shot of Chris in his workplace, tempted to steal the money Kitty has begged for. Chris is alone in his box-like cashier's office, the lighting is shadowy and the camera so close in as to produce a claustrophobic sensation. Chris is then seen arriving home to shrill abuses from Adèle about not buying her a house or even a radio, and for not being a "proper man" like Homer, her former husband, whose portrait dominates all the domestic shots. When Adèle goes to listen to a soap opera at a friend's place, Chris takes his revenge by stealing some of the insurance bonds she obtained through Homer's supposed death. When Adèle returns, Chris goes in his usual beaten fashion to wash the dishes.

In this opening series of sequences, then, the use of montage has shown Chris in a series of disconnected worlds, two of which clearly give him little satisfaction. His alienation in the work world, however, is not seen as being a problem (it is how things are meant, to be), while his miserable home life with his bitchy wife is a sign of unhappiness, of things not being as they are meant to be. The spectator is made to identify with Chris and to hate Adèle as much as he does, Since his home is not the haven it is ideologically supposed to be, Chris experiences a lack, a void that has to be filled, and thus arises his first need for Kitty. But secondly, his need for her emerges from his "feminization," exacerbated by Adèle's shrewishness: he must "prove" that he is a man by taking a young mistress. Finally, in the hierarchically structured work world in which Chris is relegated to a low slot, Chris again finds his manhood on the line. He talks of himself as a failure later on in the film, and in terms of the competitive, achievement-oriented society he lives in, he can be described in this way. (Ideologically, we are made to assent to this view of himself.) Falling in love with Kitty seems to place Chris on the same footing as his boss, J.J., and thus fills yet one more need in relation to manliness.

After this introduction establishing Chris' vulnerability to Kitty's manipulations, the narrative focuses on the relationship between Kitty and Johnny, and on their plan to exploit Chris' supposed fame as a painter. Johnny, and to a lesser degree, Kitty, has been briefly established as up to no good in a short scene in Kitty's apartment near the start of the film. The full depth of his evil emerges as the film progresses, but is of course (in accordance with the rules of classical narrative) never ideologically accounted for in any terms other than implicit Christian ones. Cross' name suggests that he is some kind of Christ figure, prey to the "devil" that Johnny personifies. That Lang means Johnny, not Kitty, to be the "serpent" in the Garden of Eden (despite the sex-role reversal involved), is clear from the superimposition of Johnny's face and a snake in one of Chris' paintings at a later point in the film. Johnny, like many characters in more typical noir films, is a "fallen" creature in a world view that sees evil as a matter of individual distance from God rather than as something socially conditioned.

The traumatic discovery of his betrayal by Kitty (through Johnny's urgings) leads Chris to murder his beloved in a fit of jealous passion. From that point on, his tenuous place in normal bourgeois society ("tenuous" because of his low work status and unhappy marriage), is fatally ruptured. Because of the divisions between private and public space, and his enmeshment in worlds that refuse community or proper friendship, Chris, even before he commits murder, has nowhere to turn for help with his miserable marriage, with his newfound love, or with his need for money. Once he has done the deed he is completely, irrevocably isolated. Cross' alienation (masked by the montage in most of the film through cutting from Adèle's rejections to joyful meetings with Kitty) is fully revealed in the final sequence of the film. Film space is now fragmented in an expressionist manner (there are jarring cuts from witness to witness, oblique angles, figures silhouetted against white, empty spaces, distorted sound as in a dream). For a moment, there is a break in the smoothly contained, bourgeois ideology. When Chris is allowed to go free, it seems that public morality briefly follows private morality; for although Johnny is technically innocent, he is morally guilty, and society is shown to honor that guilt in its false reliance on circumstantial evidence.

However, bourgeois morality is hastily recuperated in that Cross, while allowed to go free physically, is not left spiritually free. As the newspaper reporter ominously warned in the train on the way to Johnny's execution, the guilty man never goes free, no matter what faults there are in the judicial system. Chris falls lower than ever after having committed murder; haunted by the persistent voices of Kitty and Johnny, mocking him and declaring their undying love for one another, Chris begins to go mad. In a scene that brilliantly reproduces through lighting, sound and editing, his inner experience of unbearable guilt and frustration, Chris finally tries to hang himself. Although he is saved just in time, he is forever morally and psychologically destroyed. Lost in his pain, Cross is stunned to see his painting of Kitty being moved into a van as he passes the art gallery. After staring at it uncomprehendingly, Cross continues on his way, haunted as ever by the jeering, seductive voices of Johnny and Kitty. He must suffer inner torment forever for having committed a murder—no matter how justified in personal terms—and in this way Lang brings Chris back safely within the bourgeois world, ultimately viewed as a trap from which there is no escape. Within the limits of Hollywood narrative conventions, breaking the rules is no solution.

We see thus how in Lang's film the division between public and private space is built into the structure of the cinematic world as a given, as completely "natural." The cause of Cross' tragedy is not the division itself (i.e., of the way social institutions are constructed), as it might be viewed in a "progressive" reading, but rather it is seen as first, the result of Adèle's not performing her wifely role in the manner prescribed (i.e., as nurturing, supportive, loving toward her husband); second, the result of Cross' lacking the kind of manliness patriarchal capitalism demands and expects of its men. Cross' tragedy is thus viewed as an individual tragedy rather than as a result of social organization or cultural demands.

Renoir's use of cinematic space reflects a very different ideology than does the bifurcation through montage found in Lang's film. This is not to argue, as have critics since Bazin, that Renoir brings us closer to "reality" through his on-location shooting, his devices of loose framing, panning camera, long takes and eye-level, medium-long shots, or through his use of deep focus. But rather it is to say that Renoir constructs an image of "reality" strikingly other than that constructed in classical Hollywood narratives. He presents a new way of seeing bourgeois "reality" a way that is not more or less "real" but simply different from that which we are used to in traditional narratives. To the average spectator, indeed, Renoir's use of cinematic space seems less, not more, "realistic" because it is so unfamiliar and not in accord with the constructions Americans have in their heads as "the way things naturally are."

To begin again with the treatment of private/public space: we find here a striking difference from Scarlet Street, since instead of setting up the two spaces as disconnected, separate, polarized, Renoir rather shows the connections between the spaces. It is not so much that Renoir links the work space and the domestic space specifically (Legrand is perhaps even more alienated at work, although for significantly different reasons than Cross), but that instead of showing his hero as isolated in an isolated domestic unit, Renoir places both Legrand and his domestic space in a community context. This is done through the techniques of deep focus, long takes, and a panning camera as against the placing of characters in a shallow field, the use of relatively short takes, and montage instead of camera movement, that we find in Lang.

Thus the community is present and dwelt upon in all the key scenes, as for instance when Legrand steals Adèle's bonds, when Alexis comes to the house, when Legrand murders Lulu, and finally when Dédé is convicted of the murder he didn't commit. And the connections are made not through intercutting (a separating device) but through use of deep focus, with the action being developed within one shot. The effect of the community presence is different in each case, but the technique suggests a view of reality where actions of moment are seen not as happening to isolated individuals but to people in a very specific cultural, social and institutional context. The individual is presented as a social being, as necessarily a part of a structure beyond himself.

In general, Renoir's editing establishes a method of sequencing unlike that in Lang's film and in Hollywood films in general. In Scarlet Street, we saw that the editing was used to mask disconnections, or to present disconnections as quite "natural." The sequences are set up as separate, complete and rather long units, and the spaces are constructed in accordance with our cultural expectations. Where Lang constructs the film with sequences acting like building blocks, Renoir moves from one short interaction to another in a quite jarring fashion. That is, we experience disconnection, fragmentation, and even have some difficulty in following the narrative at times. Thus we have the paradox that Lang actually presents a disconnected, fragmented world but smooths it over and masks the disconnections through continuity editing; while Renoir presents a more unified, connected set of spaces and a view of people as linked to their surroundings and their community, but does not disguise fragmentation between sequences.

The different constructions of public versus private space in the Lang and Renoir films leads in turn to contrasting constructions of sexual difference. In Scarlet Street, the ideology underlying the private space/public space dichotomy implies a specific construction of gender roles. J.J. in the public space, and Homer in the domestic space, signify the ideal of manliness that capitalist structures demand: J.J. bears the voice of authority as patriarchal leader in his firm, and his phallic power is demonstrated by his possession of the glamorous young girl; in Chris' domestic space, Homer stands as the voice of authority and possessor of the phallus (at one point Adèle notes proudly how Homer used to be attractive to other women since he was a real man). Cross' tragedy arises on one level from his lack of the manliness required in his culture; this lack disturbs the sex gender organization and creates disease. Adèle is dissatisfied and disappointed in Chris as a husband (she complains overtly about his failure to provide adequately for her financially, and from Chris' hint that he has never seen a woman naked, we can assume that he does not perform adequately in the bed either). As a result, she sees Cross as lacking the phallus, as symbolically "female," and therefore relegates him to tasks traditionally carried out by the wife.

Adèle in turn takes on the dominating role usually occupied by the husband, but we assume (from her comments about Homer) that she would have been willing to occupy her gender role had Cross been suitably "manly."

While Adèle pits Cross against Homer and finds him lacking, so Kitty pits him against Johnny and also finds him inadequate. Johnny's masculinity is of a construction the opposite of the benign patriarch J.J., and closer to that found in noir figures. He is the tough-talking, greedy, criminal type who manipulates his woman and is not beyond beating her up occasionally so as to keep her in line. This manly assertiveness, in addition to his implied sexual prowess (e.g., Kitty: "I don't know why I stay around a guy like you." Johnny: "You know why you do"; or the scene, that within the rules of the code is meant to indicate sexual passion, where we find Johnny sprawled out on the bed and Kitty's belongings all strewn around the floor), is what attracts Kitty to him. She is thus constructed as masochistically preferring the man who brutalizes her to the man who genuinely dotes on her and who is gentle to her. This is clearly revealed in the murder scene where Kitty finally allows her repressed scorn for the "feminized" Cross to emerge; "You kill Johnny?" she yells; "Why he'd break every bone in your body; he's a man." And "Me marry you? Why, you're old and ugly!" Cross, unable to endure the double pain of his shattered romantic illusions about Kitty and the attack on his masculinity, is driven to assert his maleness by killing what he had loved.

The two couples, Kitty/Johnny and Adèle/Chris, then, are juxtaposed so as to expose the "correct" and "incorrect" construction of sexual difference (although part of Millie's function as Kitty's friend is to show us that Johnny has overstepped his masculine role and will deserve punishment for this); Kitty can be properly "female" (seductive, worshiping her man, willing to sacrifice anything for him) because Johnny is properly "male" (dominating, assertive, sexual). The "trouble" in the narrative that drives the plot forward emerges from Chris' lack of sufficient masculinity. This failure causes domestic unhappiness, causes Cross to feel inadequate both at work and at home, and leads him to fall in love with Kitty and become vulnerable to her and Johnny's exploitation. His weak sense of himself as a man makes him unable to endure her brutal betrayal and leads to the murder, which in turn destroys his inner peace.

The problem of sexual difference takes on another cast in La Chienne because of the different conceptions of the hero's "problem," which is here related to the notion of the individual versus his community. Much more ambivalence surrounds the construction of all the characters, except Adèle, in their relation to moral absolutes of good and evil. While Cross' vulnerability to the absolute evil of Johnny and Kitty is linked to his lack of sufficient masculinity, the same is not true for Legrand.

Legrand's main problem is not seen as being one of inadequate maleness; rather, he is set up as a condescending man who considers himself above his peers. He is cultured and well read, while they are philistines; he is the artist with refinement and sensibility, while they lack culture and a taste for the finer things of life. Legrand thus separates himself from the others, and to this degree, since Renoir values community, is criticized by Renoir for arrogance. Legrand is not posed in the opening scene as in awe of a more "manly" boss, but is instead presented as a man who likes to keep himself to himself, and who refuses to go along with the silly exploits that his colleagues indulge in.

Although there is reference to Legrand's not daring to visit a whorehouse because of his wife, Legrand in fact seems self-possessed and used to being the butt of jokes. If he has a sin, it is one of pride (analogous to that of Professor Rath in The Blue Angel) as opposed to one of sexual inadequacy. Legrand's behavior results from a kind of snobbish bourgeois lifestyle which leads him to set himself up above others and to separate himself from the community. In a very painful way, Legrand has to learn humility; he has to be brought down to the level of the common man he so scorns, a "lowering" that Renoir views as a liberation from a stuffy, artificial way of being. His obsession with Lulu is thus caused by the bourgeois structures Legrand is locked into; once released from those oppressive structures, he is released from his passion and free to simply "be"—a state far different from the doomed, continual haunting by the past that Chris endures in Scarlet Street. Where Cross seems tentative about Kitty's love for him and keeps questioning her, Legrand assumes that because he loves Lulu, she must love him. Much more than Cross, he identifies himself as an artist, a special being set apart, as is revealed in his conception of himself in his paintings as a Christ figure, bearing the "Cross" of having to endure Philistines. Cross' paintings, on the other hand, deal with his sense of a world beset with dangers, a world where evil lurks in common places, like the Village streets (namely the snake around the El supports in one painting), where the human figure (as in the portrait of Kitty) assumes alarmingly vacant, distanced, threatening features.

Renoir's refusal to separate private and public space enables him to critique the separation that Legrand makes deliberately. As we have seen, in Lang's film the separation is an essential part of the film's structure and is never questioned. By contrast, the unquestioned assumption in Renoir's film is a patriarchal view of sex relations. While a feminist reading of La Chienne would expose the pitiful exploitation of Lulu by all the men in the film, there is nothing in the way the film is constructed to suggest that Renoir deplores the exploitation.

It is interesting to see that Lulu has been given many more traditionally feminine traits than Kitty in Lang's film; she is small, blonde and round—a figure and presence that cries out to be cuddled. She wears flowing shiny clothes with soft, feathery collars and cuffs that frame her little face, and which she pulls around her in a coy, retiring manner. This is very different from the brash, confident gestures of the dark-haired Kitty, who, sure of herself and her beauty, deploys her body in deliberately seductive ways. While Kitty is knowing, worldly-wise, and (except for her fatal blind spot regarding Johnny) has her head screwed on the right way, Lulu is more traditionally "innocent," despite her supposed role as prostitute. She behaves as if she hardly knows that is what she is doing, and her whole being exists to please Dédé. She is thus much more the traditional woman-as-victim (and accepted as such) than is Kitty.

Lulu receives far greater abuse than does Kitty; she is constructed as masochistically involved in a relationship that offers little more than beatings. For instance, immediately after being beaten up by Dédé, she is worrying about him. While Dédé is in some ways (particularly morally) a less obnoxious character than Johnny, he is much more brutal to Lulu.

While Kitty is equally involved with Johnny in the exploitation of Chris, Lulu stands outside of it all, hardly aware of what is going on. At least Kitty gets some acclaim as the supposed great artist, while in La Chienne Lulu ends up being a sexual object to physically distasteful art dealers. Her function as object of exchange between Dédé, her lover, the men selling her work, and the buyers is presented graphically in the scene where Lulu goes to a party arranged by her agents and is literally passed from one man to another, prodded by Dédé, who, thinking only about the money, is anxious for her to please all the other men. Lulu reluctantly complies, and the scene ends with a cut to Lulu signing over her hard-won earnings to Dédé.

Lulu's discourse is completely suppressed in her life with Dédé, and she functions as a mere economic signifier, reduced to the level of a piece of paper. Her function is hardly better in relation to Legrand, for whom she is the receptacle of fantasies and wish fulfillments, there to provide for his pleasure—very much on the level of the pets and flowers with which Renoir's imagery frequently associates her.

The varying construction of sexual difference in the two films creates quite different resonances in the murder scene. Legrand destroys what he loves not so much out of jealousy as out of disappointment that the woman he thought perfect could stoop so low as to love an unrefined man like Dédé. The techniques used to film the murder underscore this interpretation. First, there is the intercutting between the room where the murder is happening and the community outside where people have gathered to listen to a violinist playing a haunting old melody. The people Legrand so scorns are presented as capable of appreciating good music, while he, ironically, stoops to the level of murder. Their presence suggests a deliberate link between Legrand and those he has tried to rise above.

Second, Renoir's method of filming the action from outside the window establishes a necessary distance between the spectator and the action; we are deliberately placed as voyeurs, and are forced to think and judge, rather than simply participate in the horror. The flowerpots and the frilly curtains, along with the soft lighting suggest the tragic loss of Lulu, an innocent victim of men's desires. Legrand looks foolish for killing impulsively and needlessly.

The murder is represented in quite another mode in Scarlet Street. To begin with, the phallic imagery suggests that Cross' sexuality is involved in a way that Legrand's is not. The murder scene is linked to an earlier scene that foreshadowed it, both in its phallic imagery and in the rage toward women that Chris experiences because of his submission to them. This earlier scene takes place in Chris' kitchen, where he is seen, complete with apron, cutting up some meat with a huge knife. Adèle walks in scornful because, having seen Cross' paintings with Kitty's name on them, she assumes that he has simply copied the paintings. Cross at first thinks Adèle has discovered his affair, and holds the knife up ominously in center frame as she talks. When he realizes something else is going on, he lets the knife drop, and we get a closeup of it significantly right between Cross' feet.

In the murder scene, the ice pick is similarly focused on. Cross knocks it out of the ice barrel by mistake when talking to Kitty, and absent-mindedly picks it up. He holds it in his hand as he listens to Kitty and then plunges the knife in several times when he realizes that she is laughing at him—deriding his manhood and comparing him negatively to Johnny. In both scenes, the knife stands for the phallus Chris lacks—a lack that he tries to compensate by using the knife murderously.

There is no such emphasis in La Chienne. The paper knife that we assume is the murder weapon is only briefly seen, and then Renoir's camera cuts significantly down to the community below, listening to the violinist. The camera then pans slowly up the wall of the house outside to the window of Lulu's room, where it pans right, keeping us outside; from our position, we see Legrand apparently caressing Lulu's body, in great distress about the loss he has brought upon himself.

We are, again significantly, placed very much as voyeurs at this moment in La Chienne. We want to see what is going on inside the room, and Renoir's refusal incites our curiousity; one finds oneself peering into the screen, hoping each time to see a little more into the room. Paradoxically, Renoir's hero, while not motivated to murder through sexual inadequacy, nevertheless has a sexual reaction to his self-imposed loss. Chris, motivated through the desire to assert the phallus, is destroyed by his assertion, experiencing no tragic sense of loss and no relief. Legrand, motivated rather through social/class reasons, experiences loss, followed by the final renewal.

We can now see how the construction of sexuality and of public/private space is governed by the construction of class in the two films; and further how the construction of class is related to the political, historical and intellectual milieu in which Renoir and Lang were working. Issues of class were being foregrounded in Popular Front France, while in postwar America they were mystified. While this is partly always the case in America and in Hollywood films, it was particularly true following a successful war in which, ideologically, class interests had been subordinated to patriotism. For the moment, laborers and bosses were working toward the same end, united in their wish to win the war.

That this ideology continued in postwar America may be seen in the mystification of class in Scarlet Street. Everyone is leveled to a comfortable middle-class mean, and the narrative avoids inserting class as a cause for anything that happens. While at the start Kitty and Johnny are clearly living a rather sordid existence (although they are always dressed in a thoroughly middle-class style), this is seen as caused by individual laziness and greed rather than by economic or class systems. The conversation between Millie and Kitty early on establishes the fact that Kitty could earn a good living by modeling if she wanted to; a later conversation with Millie and Johnny establishes Johnny in turn as an indulgent dreamer who wants to get rich quick (note his fantasy of overnight success in Hollywood) without doing any work.

Very quickly, through exploiting Chris, Kitty and Johnny are set up in a fancy apartment. Their use of language alone betrays their class origins, and this is neatly masked by Kitty's legitimate adoption of a "refined" accent to seduce both Chris and the art dealers. Her kind of beauty and her poise, sophistication and elegance establish her iconographically as middle class. Johnny is for his part defined not in terms of class so much as of morality (i.e., he is evil incarnate). Finally, although Chris' work world is in fact hierarchical, this is again masked by J.J.'s stance as "one of the boys." Genial and jolly, he is sympathetic rather than aloof when Chris gets into trouble.

But underneath the surface of postwar America sex and gender issues were causing dis-ease. Again, one can look back at the history of literature in America and discover from early on a difficulty (on the part of the almost exclusively male authors who made up the dominant literary tradition) in relation to sex and women. But as the veterans returned and found that their places had been filled competently by women, ongoing problems of male sexual identity were exacerbated. It is for this reason that sexual difference is foregrounded in Scarlet Street, and takes precedence over class. Cross' family situation, indeed, reflects one that must have faced many a veteran: the "other man" in the background; the demand that he be a full-fledged provider; the assertive, confident woman, able to take care of herself, yet feeling that she has earned the right to be taken care of. Cross himself is in a sort of shell-shocked state, and, unable to deal with the demands, suffers a crisis in his masculine identity.

The context of Popular Front France resulted in a very different emphasis on the same original in La Chienne. Renoir's anti-bourgeois bias dominates his construction of the narrative and is the reason behind his drawing attention to the process of illusion through the device of the puppets, and the constant framing of the action through windows, doors, etc., that replace the proscenium arch. Renoir wants to avoid our identification with Legrand so that we can think about who he is and what he is doing, and also so that we can have some sympathy for Dédé. The distance enables Renoir to set up Legrand as a petit-bourgeois man who, because of his superior culture (he is a painter who understands great art) sees himself as above everyone else in his community, both at home and at work. Dédé, meanwhile, is thoroughly working class in his clothes, hair style, stance, gestures, speech, and is filmed in locations (the bars, the clubs) that reflect his class origins. Although we only glimpse him briefly, Legrand's boss is much more the aristocrat than is J.J. in Scarlet Street; he separates himself from his workers, thus completing the sense of a strong class hierarchy, rigidly adhered to.

Significantly, Lulu is the character least tied to class because of what Renoir intends her to represent in the film—namely, the eternal feminine. (In feminist terms, as we've seen, she is a mere projection of male fantasies with no voice of her own.) Adéle, on the other hand, is a comic stereotype as old as comedy—the working-class, shrewish wife, emotional, violent, abusive.

Renoir's narrative is thus driven forward by issues having to do with class. Legrand's misery is presented as due to oppressive, bourgeois structures; forced out of them by his murder of Lulu, he achieves a kind of existential anarchic freedom, living happily on the street, released from the cares and desires that bourgeois society entails. Dédé, meanwhile, is seen as the pitiful victim of his class status. Despite his brutality to Lulu, he retains our sympathy as a man who knows no better; lacking the education needed to think more deeply about things, he pushes on in the only way he knows how, not deliberately intending to hurt people, but acting out of a sad ignorance of human possibilities.

This analysis of cinematic practice and ideology in Scarlet Street and La Chienne, films made from the same original but in different nations and political periods, has allowed us to see how cultures speak through texts, shaping the means of expression, conditioning what can be said, and affecting the focus given the narrative. The bifurcation of cinematic space in Lang's text, smoothed over by continuity editing, reflects an accepted division between public and private worlds, and a view of the individual as alienated without, however, his being aware of this as something abnormal. The narrative focuses on the problem of sexual difference, reflecting a deep-rooted concern in American culture generally, but one that is of special significance in the post-World War II era. Cross' lack of sufficient masculinity causes the "trouble" in the narrative, and brings about his destruction. The film suggests that capitalist structures like the family and the corporation depend on a certain form of masculinity, and that disaster follows from its lack. Women cannot be properly feminine if their men are not sufficiently masculine, and a man leaves himself open to exploitation if not aggressively male. The film, that is, offers a series of warnings around sexuality in a period when sex roles were in a confused state as a result of the upheavals the war entailed.

Renoir's film, by contrast, structures cinematic space quite differently, relying on long takes, deep focus and a panning camera that probes space. Renoir shoots on location, and his gray, grainy image lacks precise definitions; it stands in sharp contrast to the deliberately stark black/white polarity of Lang's images where mise-en-scéne is all important, and definition clear-cut. Renoir's camera seeks to explore spaces beyond its purview, drawing attention deliberately to its own inherent voyeuristic properties; these are properties that Renoir exploits by using windows, doors, buildings and the dumbwaiter as framing devices that enhance our position as spectators.

The spectator in Renoir's film is thus addressed in such a way that he/she must stand at a distance from what is occurring on the screen; fragmentation is not masked by continuity editing, so that we have a sense of Legrand as alienated. But the refusal to separate private and public space makes us see that Legrand's alienation is of his own making rather than being inherent in the state of things. The way space is structured endows value on the community that Legrand himself scorns, and ensures that Legrand's bourgeois values are critiqued.

Since class was foregrounded in Popular Front France, it is this concern that drives the narrative forward, rather than problems having to do with sexual difference. In Legrand's world, Lulu is inserted as a fantasy, representing all his dissatisfactions, his yearning for more than his narrow bourgeois life can offer. In her own world, on the other hand, Lulu functions as the scapegoat for Dédé's frustrations, the means for his release of tension, and is exploited for her market value. She has no status, no voice of her own, and in placing her thus Renoir implicitly accepts patriarchal culture. The upshot of the film is a devastating critique of the ways men are bounded by, trapped in, bourgeois culture, but it leaves women out of the critique. If the ending is politically unsatisfying in being anarchic rather than revolutionary, that is Renoir's choice.

What my analysis has revealed is that while, paradoxically, the overall ideology in Lang's film is more conservative (it does not question accepted bourgeois structures), his film, in foregrounding sex roles, exposes (this is not to say that it critiques) the assumptions about sexuality that underlie bourgeois capitalism.