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Liberation from bourgeois marriage, central radical demand from Sand and Kollontai to Piercy, is subsumed in the age of global capital by calls for same-sex property rights. Wollen's unmade film treatment celebrates love unsanctified by church or state -de Beuvoir's relationships with Sartre and Argen.

Peter Wollen wrote the treatment of ‘Necessary Love’ in 1995 for Bandung Productions, one of a series of films on love triangles for Channel 4 that was never made. Each was to have a woman at its apex: De Beauvoir, with Algren and Sartre; Kahlo, with Trotsky and Rivera; Spielrein, with Jung and Freud. Wollen settled on Paris and Chicago, but might equally have chosen Zürich or Coyoacán.

Film-making has been interwoven with film theory from the start of Wollen’s career. In the 1960s, script-writing formed a backdrop to his nlr essays, as ‘Lee Russell’, on Hitchcock, Renoir, Kubrick, Malle, Fuller, Hawks, Rossellini, Ford; and to his exploration of the language of film that became Signs and Meaning in the Cinema. Wollen’s ontology of the medium derived from the experience of film-makers as theorists: Godard, Hitchcock, Eisenstein on narrative, realism, movement, the camera’s ‘I’. With the advent of a new cine­matic avant-garde in the 70s Wollen turned to film-making, in collaboration with Laura Mulvey; Penthesilea and Riddles of the Sphinx were two notable results. As a curator (exhibitions on the Situationist International, Kahlo and Modotti) in the 80s and 90s, Wollen used film as documentary essay, producing beautiful work on the art of Komar and Melamid and the photography of Milton Rogovin.

In an interview published as an afterword to the 1998 edition of Signs and Meaning, Lee Russell, the interviewer, presses Wollen to choose: which is it to be, auteurism or the avant-garde? ‘I am still an auteurist. I still give priority to the avant-garde.’ Wollen might just as well have been interviewing Russell, or Lucien Rey, his nlr alias for a series of political texts, many of them necessarily anonymous—‘Persia in Perspective’ (1963), ‘The Revolution in Zanzibar’ (1964), ‘Holocaust in Indonesia’ (1966)—as well as interventions on women’s liberation and, with Juliet Mitchell, on ‘The Freudian Slip’. Utopian commitment, psychic freedom, Paris, American noir, the alien girl: ‘Necessary Love’ retraces longstanding themes in Wollen’s work as practitioner, cinephile, theorist.

PETER WOLLEN

NECESSARY LOVE

Paris. A cat scratches at a park bench, mewing and whining. A woman approaches and unwraps some remnants of food from an old newspaper. As she starts to feed the pathetic scraps to the cat, the camera moves past her towards two figures, a man and a woman, who are walking across a lawn. Their backs are turned to us but we can hear their voices. They are discussing a contract. They pledge that their love for each other will always come first. It is a ‘necessary love’. They agree that both of them may have as many affairs, as many sexual relationships, as they wish. But they must tell each other everything about these ‘contingent loves’. Nothing can ever be held back. They are to be completely ‘transparent’ to each other. Their alliance will be forever unshaken. They stop walking and seal their contract with an embrace and a kiss.

Still in close-up, we cut to the same two figures—let’s call them Simone and Jean-Paul—before we pull back to a wider shot. They are in a train, with two battered old bicycles crammed in the aisle in front of them. Suddenly, there is the threatening sound of approaching planes and gunfire. The train stops and everyone dives out onto the track. Simone and Jean-Paul manhandle their bikes through the carriage door and scramble into a ditch. The train is strafed, but no-one is hurt. They climb out of the ditch, get on their bikes and pedal towards the city. No-one pays the least attention to them. Everyone is hurrying somewhere, wearing dishevelled, shabby clothes.

Paris. Michel’s apartment. A party, with minimal, wartime food, but a lot of cheap drink. Simone is wearing a borrowed red angora sweater, huge blue fake pearls, a much-worn wool skirt and her father’s old tweed jacket. As the party warms up and everyone is drinking a lot, guests start looking at the clock, but their host invites them to forget about the curfew and stay for the night. Jean-Paul puts down his pipe, sits at the piano and sings sentimental nightclub blues. Friends join in, accompanying him with saucepan lids and other improvised instruments. Laughter. Simone listens, aloof. Eventually everyone crashes out in armchairs. At dawn, the two make their way home through deserted streets. There are signs of German occupation. Jean-Paul explains his idea for a film that would be shot entirely through subjective camera. Gunshots in the distance. They huddle together in a doorway. When they reach Simone’s hotel, they embrace briefly before he leaves and walks away. She goes into the building alone.

A few days later, Simone is out walking through the streets, a notebook in her hand, watching and observing. Her wooden-soled clogs clop on the pavement. There is a burst of machine-gun fire. Round the corner, bodies are being carried off on stretchers. Simone stands watching as a concierge comes out and starts to scrub the blood off the step. Later—it is another day—civilian fighters storm a building and come down with a group of Japanese prisoners, who have been firing from the roof. The crowd pulls down their trousers and laughs at their shame. More blood on the ground. Trucks are ambushed. Shoppers dodge gunfire crossing the street. Simone hurries on.

Simone and Jean-Paul walk down the street together, towards a restaurant to meet friends. Suddenly they are interrupted: a group of boys on bikes shout that the Germans have asked for a cease-fire. Simone and Jean-Paul hurry back the way they came. In Simone’s hotel room they listen to the bbc, while gunshots echo close by. The next day there are barricades across the streets. A resistance fighter draped in a tricolour flag fires a volley into the air. Another passing cyclist shouts news of the Liberation to Simone and Jean-Paul. Bonfires are lit outside the restaurant, bells peal, couples embrace, everyone dances. The siren sounds for a single plane and there is the distant sound of bombs, but the dancing continues. Simone and Jean-Paul are happy together, lost in the throng.

The following day, crowds fill the streets singing. Simone is alone. She sees American gis chewing gum, giving the V-sign. Revellers hold up streamers, escorting tricolour-painted vans. She is on her way to Michel’s apartment, where Jean-Paul has already arrived. Their friends gather there to celebrate, and one of them brings a gi. Jean-Paul explains to the soldier his theory that the French could never again be as truly free as they were under German occupation, when every act of resistance counted, when so much was at stake. The American is bemused.

Simone and Jean-Paul are sitting together in a café writing. Simone is slowly translating Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer into French in long-hand. Jean-Paul is scribbling much faster, peering down at the paper through his bottle-bottomed glasses, pausing only to puff on his pipe. He is wearing a sheepskin jacket; her unwashed hair is gathered up under a turban. One of their friends, Albert, rushes in and shouts excitedly to Jean-Paul that he has good news. Jean-Paul is to go to America as part of a delegation of French journalists. He stops scribbling. He is elated. Drinks all round. Simone talks enviously of the things he will hear and see—jazz, skyscrapers, gangsters. She promises to have her Dos Passos translation finished for him before he leaves.

1945. Simone is in the café, writing. Albert comes in, this time with news from Jean-Paul in New York. He is shocked by the treatment of blacks, his delegation is to meet President Roosevelt and, Albert hints, he is having an affair with a French refugee in the States. Simone says nothing—although we can read distress in her face, she is determined to take it in her stride. Albert goes on talking, now about his own marital problems. Simone is understanding, and contrasts his situation with hers. Her relationship with Jean-Paul, she explains, is based on their mutual pact, although they will never marry. Their love for each other is a ‘necessary love’, unaffected by changing circumstances, whereas any other involvement either of them might have, however passionate, must remain a ‘contingent love’, the child of circumstance. Although she has had affairs in the past—and so too has Jean-Paul—these can never be allowed to disrupt her primary relationship with him, even though it is no longer sexual.

Jean-Paul is back from New York, wearing the new pinstripe suit he bought on Fifth Avenue. He is in the restaurant with Simone, telling her about the wonders of New York. He was taken around by his translator, Dolores. They went everywhere, had an extraordinary time. He is planning to return, perhaps to go back for a month or two every year. Firmly, Simone asks him, ‘So. Who means more to you? Her—or me?’ Jean-Paul reminds her of the pact. Yes, he is incredibly fond of Dolores, but, as they pledged, he and Simone will always be together. He tells her not to ask him anything more about it. Simone protests that he must tell her everything. A friend comes in and joins them, and Jean-Paul just goes on talking about the Russian Tea Room. He mentions Dolores again as though she was the major character in his adventure. Simone is stricken, but he seems not to notice.

In the café. Simone tells Jean-Paul she has been reading Michel’s new book and is impressed by the way in which he lays bare his own life. She wants to write about herself in the same confessional spirit, but, above all, as a woman. Jean-Paul is quite discouraging. He responds by asking her general questions: What does it mean to be a woman? What is the role of women in today’s society? Simone repeats that she really knows nothing about other women, that she has always tried to live as though she had exactly the same freedoms and opportunities as a man. Jean-Paul tells her that is the very reason why she should write an essay on women. No other woman would be capable of it. Only she can do so, because only she has lived with the same freedom that a man enjoys. Simone asks: ‘But why am I so unusual? I suppose I’ll have to go to the library tomorrow if I want to find out!’

The library. Simone is reading and making notes. A book about the lives of women in America.

Back in the café. Jean-Paul is talking to Albert. He tells him writers should move into the new media, into radio and the cinema. They should use every chance to defuse the oncoming Cold War between America and the Soviet Union. A third option—a truly independent Europe—is the only way out. Albert says he thought Jean-Paul loved America. He agrees that he does—it’s an exhilarating country, in contrast to France—but what he loves about it are the bits that are least American in the political sense: jazz, Harlem, Hemingway, the culture of working people. That’s what America has to offer. Everyone should go there if they can—to see this new civilization, so full of hope, so full of danger. Jean-Paul changes gear—he realizes what a fortunate chance it has been for him to visit America twice now, to have made contacts and to be able to return. Could Albert arrange through his friends for Simone to receive an invitation?

Simone is in her hotel room. A letter from New York on the table. An American stamp. She opens it and starts to read, stops, puts it down, braces herself, picks it up again and goes on reading. We can see that the letter is an invitation to visit New York.

Simone and Jean-Paul. Her depression has lifted. She is enthusiastic about her essay and even more so about the invitation to go to America on a lecture tour, subsidized by the French overseas cultural service. Unsuspecting, she is surprised that Jean-Paul seems unexcited, just mumbling something and looking away. She accuses him of not wanting her to meet Dolores. He denies it and says he would be only too happy for them to meet. She changes the subject back to her book. Albert comes in and she tells him the news. He responds, ‘Watch out! Don’t let one of those strapping Americans steal you away!’ ‘What do you mean? You’re joking! Me! Who would want me? And who would I want besides Jean-Paul?’

Later the same day, Simone goes clothes shopping. She buys herself a Christian Dior outfit.

——————

New York. Simone is sitting at a lunch counter on Times Square, eating a blt sandwich with a large fresh orange juice. She asks for a white coffee. The waitress corrects her: ‘“Regular” over here, sweetie.’

A little later she is with friends, John and Stépha, in their apartment. She is drinking scotch. She more or less orders Stépha in her accented English to call Dolores and invite her to meet them all for dinner the next day. Stépha reluctantly agrees. ‘Okay. She’ll be there.’ Stépha is relieved.

At the restaurant. Simone, in her Dior, is with John and Stépha, discussing the impact of Stalin’s policies on the French Communist Party. Dolores comes in, looks round, walks up to the table and announces, ‘I am Dolores.’ She sits down opposite Simone. John orders a glass of wine for her. Stépha chatters on (in English) about Dolores’s coming trip to Paris, saying how envious she is, and so on. Simone blushes scarlet and stares down into her whisky. She can’t look at Dolores. Nor does Dolores look at her, or indeed at anyone. Simone never says a word. Eventually, as Stépha comes to a halt, Dolores drains her glass, gets up and offers her hand to Simone, who rises and takes it. They both tell each other (in French) how pleased they are to have finally met. Dolores leaves and Simone breaks the silence, explaining the similarities and differences between Stalin and De Gaulle, carrying on as if nothing had happened.

Simone is wandering down 42nd Street, staring at everything. She stops by a bar and looks in her diary. In the blank pages at the back she has noted down all the places Jean-Paul recommended, with little pen-and-ink maps. She goes into the One-Two-Three bar.

Simone in Central Park, Harlem, Coney Island, Great Jones Street, the Bowery. Always she has her diary to consult as she traces Jean-Paul’s steps, drinks scotch, listens to jazz, watches cartoons (‘laff movies’, she calls them).

Evening. Simone, accompanied by Stépha, rings the bell of a brownstone. They have been invited to dinner by Mary, a friend of a friend. The meal is a disaster. Mary spends all the time in the kitchen trying to get a zabaglione right. Every time it goes wrong she starts again. Meanwhile Simone grills her from the dining room on the life of American women. Mary quotes Freud saying that women are the same everywhere and Simone gets increasingly irritated. She talks about the differences between France and America, but Mary denies that these mean anything when it comes to women. Eventually (none too soon) Simone says she must go. Mary asks where she is headed after New York. Simone tells her Chicago. Mary says she has a good friend there, Nelson, a writer, and gives Simone his address, in case she feels like getting in touch. Simone thinks she recognizes the name.

——————

Soon afterwards. We are in Nelson’s apartment on Wabansia in Chicago. Two rooms, linoleum, a bed, piles of books, a record player—Billie Holiday records, of course—a stove, a sink with one tap, and a table with a reading lamp and a trusty old typewriter. He is cooking something at the stove when the telephone rings. He answers and a voice asks for Nelson in a French accent. Something hisses suspiciously on the stove and he shouts ‘Wrong number!’. The same routine happens two or three times, but the next time, an American voice comes on, saying, ‘Please don’t hang up, hold on for just a minute, there’s a party here who really wants to speak to you.’ It’s Simone, suggesting they meet right away. She explains which hotel she’s at and that she’ll be in the ‘leetle café’, with a copy of Partisan Review in her hand. He says he’ll be there.

At Simone’s hotel. Nelson comes in, looks for the ‘leetle café’—they all seem big—and finally identifies it as ‘Le Petit Café’. He positions himself to watch Simone unobserved. She sips her scotch, riffles through Partisan Review, gets up to go, stands in the lobby, goes back in, orders another scotch. At long last, Nelson gives himself the thumbs up and approaches Simone. He hopes she hasn’t been sent by Partisan Review. No, she hasn’t. She didn’t care for them at all, but they did give her a free copy. He buys another round of drinks and starts to talk. In fact, he launches straight into telling her about his wartime experiences.

He has a seemingly endless stream of stories. In France he was stuck in a place called Tent City, with twenty thousand tents. In Germany, he and an Osage Indian friend went out looting the farmhouses looking for firewater. They weren’t afraid of the Germans. They were afraid they’d be shot by their own mps, as they snuck back into the camp. Or they might get killed in an ‘industrial accident’ while they were drunk. In Marseilles, he lived by looting the army warehouses, going down to a pizza joint in the old port, outlaw territory, selling razor-blades, soap, shoes, Pall Malls and military jackets and drinking Chianti. Mostly he needed the money for gambling. High stakes and you didn’t always win. He never got to Paris. They agree to meet again the next day.

Nelson shows Simone Chicago. First, they go to skid row, where lonely men are slumped in doorways, and they go into a bar full of drunks, some asleep, some dancing awkwardly to music from a black jazz group. A lame man is tripping over himself as he capers and spins around; a be-ribboned, white-haired old woman sits at the bar, drinking out of the bottle, then dancing, lifting her skirts up. ‘It’s beautiful’, says Simone. He replies, ‘Now something better.’

Next, a bar-cum-hostel for the homeless. Upstairs is a room with mattresses on the floor, downstairs a bar. The clientele try to sell Simone and Nelson odd bits and pieces, or just beg. A few men are drinking at the bar counter, where Simone and Nelson join them. Joke ‘No Credit’ signs, foreign banknotes, snapshots. At the till is a junkie friend of Nelson’s, Lorraine, who collects money for mattresses or beers. She looks up from her book: ‘Has Malraux finished his new novel? How about you and your friends? Is existentialism still the fashion?’ Simone is amazed, but Nelson explains, ‘She was a singer, she knew lots of artists and writers. But the habit got her. Then she was a dice-slinger for games of “twenty-six” and now she’s ended up working here. Everything I know about French literature I got from her’. Lorraine shows them the corridor out back, leading to the rest rooms, where she lets those who can’t afford a mattress sleep on a bench or collapse on the floor in a corner, stiff, filthy, flea-bitten. Simone has had enough. She is upset. This is too ugly.

Back at Nelson’s place. Simone is still upset. She sits on the bed, with its iron frame and sagging mattress. He brings her a glass of Southern Comfort from the kitchen, sits beside her and begins to comfort her. They make love. She is passive at first, unsure of herself, but becomes more and more excited by his passion. Afterwards, she says, ‘Thank you.’

Next day. A private club. Lunch, organized by the French consul, is nearing its end. A French baroness is lecturing Simone, in her stand-out New Look dress, about the gaiety that survived in Paris during the German occupation and how the lavish lifestyle of the rich was really a kind of patriotism, maintaining la vie parisienne. The consul offers to get her a taxi back to the hotel. Simone says she must visit a sick friend, and gives Nelson’s Wabansia address. The consul says it’s too dangerous to take a taxi to that part of town—she can use the official limo.

Outside Nelson’s place. A crowd gathers round the enormous limo. Simone runs in and pounds on Nelson’s door. Nelson lets her in. She throws down her briefcase and they embrace straight away. He didn’t expect to see her again. They make love. Afterwards he jokes that all his neighbours will try to borrow money off him now they have seen what rich friends he has. He calls her ‘my crazy frog’. She laughs at his toothy grin and calls him ‘my crocodile’.

They go to a Polish bar in the neighbourhood and drink vodka. He tells her more about his life: his time as a hobo riding the freight trains, as the guy who picks up the pins in a bowling alley, as the shill for a carnival huckster, losing all his money playing poker, in jail for stealing a typewriter. He describes the sinister backgrounds of the others in the bar: pimp, baggage-thief, ex-boxer, gangster. She is disappointed by the gangster.

Close-up. ‘Nelson, I think you are the most sinister person here.’ He walks her to the El. Farewells: he invites her to come back. They part with a kiss from which she can hardly tear herself away.

Simone says goodbye on the telephone at the train station. Her friends rip the phone out of her hands as the whistle sounds. On the New York train she immediately starts to write a note to Nelson: ‘You have to know I was happy, being with you—I did not like to say goodbye, perhaps not to see you again in my whole life . . . Anyway goodbye or farewell, I’ll not forget these two days in Chicago, I mean I’ll not forget you. S.’

In a university office. Simone asks for some stationery to write a letter. There is just time before her talk to students on ‘The Responsibility of the Writer’.

‘Dear Friend, . . . I’ll be happy to see you again, S.’ She is still scribbling when she is summoned to give her lecture. She seals the letter and gives it to be posted as she leaves, clutching her notes.

Back in Chicago. Frog and Crocodile in Nelson’s bed. A bottle of Southern Comfort on the ramshackle chair by the bed, now with their clothes thrown over the back. A long love scene.

A Chicago police station line-up. Nelson is showing Simone the petty crooks, old lags and whores brought out of the paddy wagon.

Love scene.

The race-track. Nelson is betting. Simone too, for the first time.

Love scene.

A boxing match. Nelson betting again.

Love scene.

The electric chair. Dazzling white cells, switches, levers, the chair itself behind a curtain. The warder asks Simone, ‘How do you do it in France?’ ‘We have the guillotine.’ ‘Really? Still? But that’s barbaric!’

Simone and Nelson in bed. She is telling him about herself, her pact with Jean-Paul. He can’t understand what she is talking about. ‘You might as well say, “necessary life” and “contingent life”. It just doesn’t make any sense.’ She tries to explain but obviously it exasperates him. He says if they love each other, she should just stay with him. She says she can’t leave France. She can’t leave Jean-Paul.

Again in bed. She is saying how surprised she has been at the subservience of American women. She didn’t expect that from her reading. He talks about class. She talks about the essay she is writing on women. He tells her eagerly it should be a real book. It is like the oppression of blacks in the States, he says. He suggests some new American books she might read.

Again in bed. She talks to him about Faulkner. Algren claims that he didn’t know what he was doing. Hemingway? The same. But he has to admit that you can’t escape him and, after all, he did give high praise to Nelson’s own book: ‘This is a man writing and you shouldn’t read it if you cannot take a punch. Boy, you are good. You are going to be a champion.’

Again they are in bed. Simone tells Nelson he is her husband, she is his wife. Almost joking, he gives her a silver ring he has. It is too big for her and she wears it on her middle finger.

Nelson puts Simone in a taxi to the airport. She is still wearing the ring. He gives her a book. He makes her promise not to open it until the plane has taken off. She holds back her tears. When the cab drives off, she breaks down and weeps. The cab driver asks her how long she’ll be away from her husband. She says, ‘Too long. Too long.’

On the plane. She opens the book. There is an inscription:

à Simone

I send this book with you
That it may pass
Where you shall pass:
Down the murmurous evening light
Of storied streets
In your own France
Simone, I send this poem there, too,
That part of me may go with you.

She starts to cry again. She takes out her pen and begins to write, ‘My precious beloved Chicago man . . . I will be your loving wife, your Simone.’

——————

Back in Paris. A group of her friends are sitting with her in a café. They warn her that Dolores has arrived in Paris and is still with Jean-Paul. She seems unconcerned. Then one of them notices the big silver ring she has on her left hand. Simone explains it was given to her by Nelson—her ‘husband’—and she will never take it off. They are astounded.

Jean-Paul and Simone are together in the garden of a picturesque country inn. They reaffirm their pact. Simone explains her feelings for Nelson to Jean-Paul. He tells her he has no intention of marrying Dolores and, if she pressures him too much, he will drop her. About Simone’s relationship with Nelson, he is understanding, even encouraging. He tells her she must go to see Nelson, but she must return at the end of July, when Dolores is going back to New York. They have work to do. The political situation is deteriorating. They must organize a new political party, they must broadcast, they must write. They need to sustain each other through these difficult times. This is their fundamental project together.

In her room at the inn, Simone writes to Nelson, telling him that ‘if need be, the frog will give up everything she has for her crocodile, even life itself, and she knows he knows it—just as she knows he would give up everything for her’.

Nelson writes back that ‘I did not think I could miss anyone so badly . . . If I were to hold you now I should cry with pain and happiness.’

Simone writes that she is coming. She has already bought the ticket. But for the time being, she warns him, she must return to Paris for the sake of her work. ‘Do you understand it? Are you not resentful about it?’ Nelson smiles stoically as he reads and pours himself a bourbon.

Chicago. Nelson is with a group of junkies. One of them, an ex-carnival barker who Nelson knew from his own days on the road, is clutching at an old cigar-box. He says, ‘Breakfast time. Don’t you want some breakfast, Nelson? Come on, have some breakfast!’ ‘I already had my breakfast.’ ‘Don’t you want to see how it’s done? Don’t you want to look? Just have a look!’ ‘Hell no, I don’t want to look.’ But he does. The junkie goes behind a curtain to shoot up. Nelson talks to his friend Margo, who he is obviously attracted to. Another junkie cuts in and tries to cadge money from him. He leaves in a temper. Margo watches him go.

——————

Paris. A nightclub in a cellar. Jean-Paul and Simone with their friends, listening to a jazz singer in a cellar. Black turtleneck sweaters, flared skirts, ballerina slippers. Simone is still in her Dior. She discusses her trip to Chicago: she is looking forward to hearing some real Chicago jazz. One of her friends is drunk. He throws a glass at Albert and hits him in the face. Albert leaves in a rage. Jean-Paul and the friend get into a fight. They end up rolling on the floor. Unhappy at their antics, Simone leaves.

Back to Chicago. Simone is with Nelson in his Wabansia apartment. Jazz is playing on the gramophone. He proposes they go down to Mexico to celebrate their ‘anniversary’, a year after the day when he put the ring on her finger. She is still wearing it. They can have a ‘honeymoon’ there, drink tequila. She is delighted. He says she should meet his new friends. She doesn’t want to go. She wants to talk with him, not go sightseeing, but he insists. He lends her his raincoat. They go out together into the rain.

At the junkies’ walk-up, Margo nervously tries to make herself decent. A stranger rushes into the bathroom for a fix. Suspicion. Hostility. Simone is bored and irritated. She just wants to be alone with Nelson. ‘Let’s leave.’ He is bantering with Margo. Eventually he agrees to go. Back out into the rain. She clings to him as they walk.

Wabansia. Love scene.

——————

Mexico. Nelson and Simone are walking through the slums. Nelson is exhilarated by the squalor. Simone is depressed.

A fake ‘Mexican dancing’ nightclub. Nelson is in a bad mood. He asks Simone why she won’t stay with him longer when they get back to Chicago. She says she can’t, she has to get back to Paris. ‘When?’ ‘At the end of July.’ ‘Why?’ Simone is evasive. She has some writing to finish. There is talk about a script. Can’t she do that in Chicago? No, she needs to discuss everything with her friends, with Jean-Paul. ‘What about me?’ ‘I’ll write.’ ‘It’s better to talk while I’m here. You should be more self-reliant. Where’s your feminism? Why do you have to depend on Jean-Paul?’ ‘It’s not just Jean-Paul. It’s Paris. I have to be there. There’s no intellectual life in America. There’s no political work to be done in America. There are no choices left any more in America. When you’re in America, everything is decided. I must be in France, where we still have to choose.’ He says, ‘Choose me!’

A market. Simone is shopping—buying herself brightly striped blankets, Mexican curios, embroidered blouses. Nelson is sullen. She tries to talk to him about plans to see the Toltec ruins the next day. ‘I’ve had enough of travelling and markets and ruins. There’s nothing but ruins here!’ He strides off, leaving her alone. She runs after him. ‘Contingent love? We have a word for it. We call it chippying.’

They are in their cheap hotel room. A double bed and a gigantic wardrobe. She won’t go to Chicago. She must go to New York. She has to see her friends there. She has work to do. He says he will come with her. Reconciliation. Love-making.

Now they are in New York. An expensive French restaurant. Nelson is wearing the same casual clothes he always wears—no jacket, no tie. Suddenly he blurts out that he loves her. He asks her to marry him. ‘Now. This instant.’ Simone feels she has wronged him, but she insists that she can’t live in exile. She belongs in Paris, just as he belongs in Chicago. Nelson says he wants to live with her. Her relationship with Jean-Paul is used up. It is emotionally and physically dead. She tries to explain that Jean-Paul is the other for whom she exists. Their relationship involves her entire being-in-the-world. He is impatient, embittered, but he must accept her decision. She is still his ‘wife’, he tells her. He still loves her, whatever her crazy ideas.

A waxwork museum in New York. Nelson talks to Simone about horse-racing. He has been to Aqueduct and lost a lot of money at the track. He thinks he should return the next day to try and win it all back. He is in a self-destructive mood. Simone is near to tears. He says he won’t come with her to the airport. He is going to the track. She breaks down.

——————

Paris. Simone is in her favourite café with a woman friend, Colette. She asks about Simone’s book. Simone interrupts her to ask about Dolores. Is she really still in Paris? What happened? Why did she delay her return to New York? The friend explains that Jean-Paul simply was not strong enough to get rid of her. Nobody likes her, but she has a hold over him. ‘I know. She gave him America.’ Simone is worried. She says she is afraid that Dolores might even kill Jean-Paul rather than give him up. Colette tries to reassure her. Everyone is intriguing to get Dolores out of Paris.

Simone alone in the café, with a pile of books in front of her, reference slips sticking out of the pages. She is writing confidently on a pad, pausing occasionally to think for a moment, lips pursed. It is her book on women. She stops and opens one of the books at the place she has marked, putting her wine glass on the page to hold it flat. She writes: ‘The free woman is just being born; when she has won possession of herself, perhaps Rimbaud’s prophecy will be fulfilled.’—the camera follows her gaze to the open book, where we read Rimbaud’s letter to Demeny:

There shall be poets! When woman’s unmeasured bondage shall be broken, when she shall live for and through herself, man—hitherto detestable—having let her go, she too will be a poet! Woman will find the unknown!

Back to Simone writing. She finishes the page, puts it on the thick pile of completed work, picks up a fresh page and writes ‘conclusion’. Then she underlines it confidently.

Simone is in her new apartment, furnished with the Mexican rugs and curios she brought back from her trip with Algren. It is raining, and she has a line of buckets on the floor to collect rain from leaks. She is reading a letter. When she is finished, she telephones Jean-Paul. ‘Nelson is coming to Paris. We must all give him a great welcome.’

Nelson arrives at the apartment, loaded with luggage and presents for Simone—a bottle of Southern Comfort, chocolates, American books, etc. Simone and Nelson run up and down stairs carrying everything up from where the taxi has dumped it all in the street. Arabic rai music drifts up from the café beneath. They are affectionate but a little wary of each other. He is delighted by the rain buckets. Almost immediately Simone says, ‘You must come and meet Jean-Paul.’

The café. Jean-Paul is sitting with friends discussing theatre. As he sees Simone and Nelson approaching the door, he jumps up to greet them, shaking him warmly by the hand, putting his arm firmly on his shoulder and guiding him through the café to the crowded table. Simone says nothing. Jean-Paul orders a drink for him, introduces him to the assembled group of friends, strikes up a conversation. ‘We were discussing theatre. What is happening in America? Streetcar—is it really as important as they say? I have my doubts.’ Before Nelson can answer, someone else has cut in. Conversation alternates between violent argument and uproarious hilarity. Nelson is at a loss, joining in laughter at things he does not really understand. Simone keeps her eyes on Nelson, but says nothing.

In the street. Simone is walking with Nelson. Suddenly a passer-by turns and starts to abuse her. Nelson is shocked. Simone explains that her book on women is being serialized in a magazine and has caused an uproar. It is selling like hot cakes, but she has become not so much famous as notorious. ‘You have made all the right enemies’, he reassures her.

The café. Nelson and Simone are talking. People at the next table turn and point at her, giggling and making audible remarks. Simone gets up, goes over to their table and tells them sharply to be quiet and leave her alone. Nelson falls silent. Then he starts to update her on his junkie friends. Perhaps he dwells a little too much on Margo and his doomed efforts to get her off junk.

Simone’s apartment. Nelson and Simone are drinking bourbon. Simone asks Nelson why he won’t stay in Paris, just as he asked her why she wouldn’t stay in Chicago. Like her he replies that he can’t stand the idea of exile. No great writers have been exiles. She mentions Dostoyevsky and Joyce. He says that it’s not the same. He must be in Chicago—it’s his city. He’s part of it and it’s part of him. ‘Just like Paris’, Simone responds. If she was forced into exile for political reasons, and this seems a real possibility to her, she couldn’t go to America. Perhaps to Brazil. He asks about Jean-Paul. Brazil. Or Mexico. She explains he is going to Mexico with Dolores. ‘So they’re going to break up too’, says Nelson. ‘Who knows? I hope so. She’s not good for him. He should be concentrating on his work.’ Nelson looks sullen and lapses again into a moody silence.

——————

Mexico. Jean-Paul and Dolores. A hotel room very like the one in which we saw Nelson and Simone. Jean-Paul is drinking tequila, talking about Hemingway, who they have recently met at his place in Cuba, about his historic importance for existentialism and the idea of contingency. Dolores comments that all they talked about when they actually met was royalties and copyright questions. If he’s so business-like, why can’t he at least make his mind up about what they are going to do tomorrow? They can’t spend all day discussing what not to do. He never decides their itinerary or where they should eat. She always has to. ‘I know how to my make my mind up, even if you don’t. There is no future in this relationship. I don’t want anything from you. I don’t want to be one of your old friends, one of your family, forever in your debt. I just want to leave. Enough.’ Jean-Paul doesn’t attempt to argue. He puffs on his pipe.

——————

A Chicago police station. Nelson is arguing with the cops. He brandishes a legal contract which names one of his friends as John Garfield’s technical advisor for a Hollywood movie about junkies. Apparently one of his junkie friends has been arrested. The police cave in, impressed by the idea of Hollywood, the junkie is released and Nelson gives him a rail ticket to Los Angeles—first class on the Super Chief. Outside the station, a group of waiting junkies celebrate.

An agent’s office in la. Nelson is discussing terms for a final version of the script, which he hasn’t yet finished. He agrees to go back to Chicago and complete it in six weeks. He insists he has to be in Chicago ‘for personal reasons’.

Wabansia. Simone has arrived, in her Mexican clothes. Nelson is exultant. The script is finished. But their relationship has changed. Nelson tells her he is going to buy a new house. He wants to get married and settle down. He has had enough of the bohemian life. Simone hasn’t. She wants everything to go on as before. Nelson tells her, ‘I don’t love you any longer.’ She replies, ‘I don’t mind. I’m just happy to be here.’

Simone is sitting out on the deck in a lounge chair, reading de Sade. Nelson is inside typing out his script, cursing under his breath and muttering lines.

Simone has packed. Her suitcase is shut. She is in the bed. Nelson comes in, a bit drunk, and blurts out, ‘I love you.’ She says, ‘Nelson, it’s all over.’ ‘I know it is.’ ‘It’s up to you, Nelson. I can’t marry you. But you must decide whether you want to see me again.’ He gets into bed with her, fully clothed. A long look. Finally he grasps her and kisses her, a little too violently. She wriggles away.

At the airport. Simone checks her luggage. Nelson gives her a resigned, friendly hug. As they part, he reaches in his pocket and hands her an orchid. It is purple. Neither of them says a word. She puts it in her purse. He walks away. She watches him go, turns and heads for passport control.

——————

Back in Paris. Simone is unpacking in her apartment. Jean-Paul is sitting on the sofa, discussing a forthcoming trip to China, the current political situation, Stalin’s death, the anti-colonial struggle. Suddenly she looks up and recalls their contract. How strong their necessary love has been. ‘Of course’, he says. He starts to tell her about a play he is thinking of writing, about the English actor, Kean. He describes how an American audience tried to lynch Kean, how they set fire to the theatre, hunted him through the town, how he hid under a bed at a friend’s house, while his friend’s wife gave birth to a child. Incredible. Why did they want to kill him? Because he had divorced his wife.

Paris. A party is in full swing. Everybody is well dressed and in a good mood. Jean-Paul is playing the piano, singing a sentimental song for which he has written the words. His friends ignore him. As before, Simone listens, aloof. Many old friends are there, discussing politics, how they miss Albert but it was impossible to invite him. Maurice too. Political differences have become too great. Old friends don’t speak to each other any more. A quarrel breaks out. Guests leave. Jean-Paul has stopped playing the piano. He walks over to Simone and sits down beside her.

The street. After midnight. Simone and Jean-Paul are returning home in a taxi. Suddenly the taxi stops. There is some kind of disturbance. Police vans. Algerians are being rounded up. Simone gazes in horror out of the car window. Jean-Paul looks at her and says, ‘We are together again.’

——————

The Hotel Vermilion in downtown Los Angeles. The lobby is dominated by a red neon sign in the front window: good booze. A juggler is practising his craft in the background. Nelson checks in. He stands at the desk while the clerk writes his name down in a ledger, spelling out the Wabansia address. He checks—‘A single room?’ Nelson nods. Somewhere we can hear a cat mewing and whining. Gradually we hear the voices of Simone and Jean-Paul pledging themselves to their necessary love. Nelson picks up his suitcases and carries them to the rickety elevator, loads them in, steps in himself, looks into camera, pulls the grille shut and disappears from view. Sound of the juggler’s balls crashing to the floor and rolling all over the hotel lobby.

New Left Review 38, March-April 2006