La P..... Respectueuse

Is Sartre still taken seriously? This barbarous melodrama (based on his play, which he helped adapt) should sow misgivings in the heart of even the staunchest admirer. It's set in an American South where all the blacks are saintly and passive and all the whites, except the title putain, do nothing but seethe with racist venom. Enter the movie at any point and it offends - musically, via Auric's whining arrangement of 'Swing Low Sweet Chariot', and dramatically through the author's inability even to compose a scene in which two people in a room behave plausibly. Cameraman Shuftan does his best to reproduce Dixie in the Courbevoie studios, but is hampered by Laage's willowy mannequin looks, as wrong here as the signs telling motorists to 'honck' for service.