Let me keep it simple. This is one of those films that "looks" depressing from beginning to end, and I don't like depressing films. Granted there is some interesting camerawork by veteran cinematographer Marc Fossard and the jazzy soundtrack by Alain Goraguer is sort of intriguing. However the whole idea of an American film done in French by the French is difficult to digest. It starts out interesting enough as a crude exposé of racism in the American South but degenerates into a sexploitation ode to the legendary superiority of African American virility. That's the only explanation I could come up with after watching the main character, Joe Grant -a black man passing for white- arrive at the fictional town of Trenton, and unleash a veritable sexual revolution among the female population. It is never explained how or why every girl in town wants to get into Joe's pants. After all, the man is only there to avenge his brother's lynching, and does absolutely nothing to cause such a nymphomaniac reaction! That is only one of the many uncertainties that plague the script of "J'irai cracher sur vos tombes". I have never read the Boris Vian novel in which is supposedly based, nor do I intend to ever do so. (For me it is quite enough to enjoy Vian´s musical exploits with his muse Magali Noël). But I digress. Back to the film, there's not much to redeem it, unless you enjoy Trenton's seedy atmosphere, a brief lesbian kiss, a topless beauty swimming in a river, sado-masochism behavior by all, violence, and, of course, Joe's uncalled for sexual magnetism, as played by the extremely virile Christian Marquand. C´est dommage!
8 Reviews
Boris Vian disowned it reportedly...
dbdumonteil23 February 2008
I've not read his novel,so I will not argue,but all that I can say is that the film is a complete disaster ;today in France everybody's forgotten all about the movie .Director Michel Gast has made only four movies in total.
The leads ,Antonella Lualdi and Christian Marquand ,had teamed up the precedent year in Astruc's excellent "Une Vie";but Gast left them to their own devices and it has to be seen to be believed.How could we believe Marquand is a black man with a white skin? (Vian's book was a pastiche ,they say)How could we believe that Daniel Cauchy (see Melville's "Bob le Flambeur") and Jean Sorel (Jean Sorel?) are "rebels without a cause "James Dean style?(the electric chair scene takes grotesque to new limits).And this macho racist man played by Paul Guers?And the old man played by veteran Fernand Ledoux ,the best actor in the whole movie,but in his worst part ever.
The script is so poor (I do not speak of the lines,particularly those when Guers tells Lualdi she is restive and he will take pleasure in taming her) it's difficult to catch up with the plot.The form is Nouvelle Vague style complete with jazz with borrowings from the American movies (the ending recalls Lang's "You only live once" and too many chase movies).If it's a plea against racism,then it thoroughly fails in its purpose.
The leads ,Antonella Lualdi and Christian Marquand ,had teamed up the precedent year in Astruc's excellent "Une Vie";but Gast left them to their own devices and it has to be seen to be believed.How could we believe Marquand is a black man with a white skin? (Vian's book was a pastiche ,they say)How could we believe that Daniel Cauchy (see Melville's "Bob le Flambeur") and Jean Sorel (Jean Sorel?) are "rebels without a cause "James Dean style?(the electric chair scene takes grotesque to new limits).And this macho racist man played by Paul Guers?And the old man played by veteran Fernand Ledoux ,the best actor in the whole movie,but in his worst part ever.
The script is so poor (I do not speak of the lines,particularly those when Guers tells Lualdi she is restive and he will take pleasure in taming her) it's difficult to catch up with the plot.The form is Nouvelle Vague style complete with jazz with borrowings from the American movies (the ending recalls Lang's "You only live once" and too many chase movies).If it's a plea against racism,then it thoroughly fails in its purpose.
Racism rewarded and turned on its head
tfdill3 April 2000
It may be that the nightmarish quality of my memory of this movie is caused by my having seen it at about 2 a.m. one night in New York at one of those very seedy all-night theaters on Times Square while I was waiting for a 6 a.m. train. The American "South" portrayed in the film was as phantasmagorical (and real, in its way) as the vision of the country in Kafka's _Amerika_. As I recall it, the screenplay was quite faithful to Boris Vian's original novel of the same name, and both developed from European stereotypes of American culture, with some probable input from Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell. The acting was barely tolerable, but the filming technique (again, as I remember it after almost 40 years) made it seem appropriate. Altogether this was a startling and powerful experience, obviously memorable, but I am sure that it was artistically very bad. Somehow that suggests that some examples of bad art can transcend their own badness, though the reasons are seldom clear.
Nimble Recollections
shatguintruo23 April 2007
Warning: Spoilers
When I watched this film to the time of its launching, I was sufficiently surprised, since the french cinema, until then did not approached the subject of the racism (At least in the movies that I had watched). In the truth I already attended films with this type of subject, but they have been produced in Hollywood. What it called the attention was the performance of Christian Marquand, much to the will in the paper of the mestizo who comes back to the city in which happened the shame. Filmed in black-and-white with a musical score that left me souvenir (by the way: it must have left souvenir in all those that had attended the movie), in my opinion was a film that opened way for all the ones that had followed and approached the same subject.
Ludicrous Tract on U.S. Race Relations Concocted by French Fillmmakers
jfrentzen-942-2042117 March 2020
A French-made rumination of American racial tensions, circa the late 1950s, emerges a ludicrous attempt. A remarkable dissonance of plot, character and sentiment overwhelms practically every scene. The juxtaposition of French-language dialogue and the Continental performances are at odds with the subject matter, which focuses on a so-called "light-skinned" African-American, played by badly miscast lily-white Christian Marquand, who tries to fit in with a U.S. town overrun with racist bourgeois and a "Wild Racer"-type motorcycle gang that appear to have been imported from some American-International juvenile delinquency movie. The clashes of acting, stilted dialogue, a strange French version of Americana, and a plot that is meant to be social commentary but emerges as mild exploitation, result in an abject failure. A risque nude swimming scene is a surprise, and was probably the only reason this movie found its way into the international marketplace. A good jazz-infused music score is the singular plus here.
Enjoyably Pulpy French Film About Crime and Race in America
jrd_7330 September 2022
I Spit on Your Grave is a French film about the problems of crime and race in America. It seems to be made by people who have learned about crime and race strictly by watching other movies. Is this a bad thing? Not if one watches I Spit on Your Grave in the right frame of mind.
Joe Grant (Christian Marquand) is a (very) light-skinned African-American from Mississippi who finds his brother dead from a lynching. He decides to go to Trenton (presumably N. J.), pass for white, and avenge his brother. Trenton is a crime ridden city under the influence of a bike gang led by a smooth-talking scoundrel who plans to marry the local rich girl, Elisabeth Shannon (Antonella Lualdi). Joe goes to work for a bookseller (Fernand Ledoux), promptly upturns the criminal status quo, and falls for the rich girl.
The script is somewhat hard to swallow at times. It seems that every hot looking, young woman wants to go to bed with Joe. He constantly obliges in spite of the fact that he supposedly loves the rich girl. Also, the film wears its references rather loudly. Joe is dressed similarly to Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. The bike gang is out of The Wild One or some juvenile delinquent B-picture. The rich girl's fancy estate suggests a Southern melodrama. The climatic run to the Canadian border (from Trenton, N. J.?) suggests a lot of westerns and gangster films. It is clear the filmmakers have watched many other movies.
At its best, I Spit on Your Grave has an in-you-face energy that reminds me of Samuel Fuller. I enjoyed the film for that reason. As a pulpy crime movie, I Spit on Your Grave is a lot of fun. As some sort of statement about race and crime in America, the film misses by a wide margin.
Joe Grant (Christian Marquand) is a (very) light-skinned African-American from Mississippi who finds his brother dead from a lynching. He decides to go to Trenton (presumably N. J.), pass for white, and avenge his brother. Trenton is a crime ridden city under the influence of a bike gang led by a smooth-talking scoundrel who plans to marry the local rich girl, Elisabeth Shannon (Antonella Lualdi). Joe goes to work for a bookseller (Fernand Ledoux), promptly upturns the criminal status quo, and falls for the rich girl.
The script is somewhat hard to swallow at times. It seems that every hot looking, young woman wants to go to bed with Joe. He constantly obliges in spite of the fact that he supposedly loves the rich girl. Also, the film wears its references rather loudly. Joe is dressed similarly to Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. The bike gang is out of The Wild One or some juvenile delinquent B-picture. The rich girl's fancy estate suggests a Southern melodrama. The climatic run to the Canadian border (from Trenton, N. J.?) suggests a lot of westerns and gangster films. It is clear the filmmakers have watched many other movies.
At its best, I Spit on Your Grave has an in-you-face energy that reminds me of Samuel Fuller. I enjoyed the film for that reason. As a pulpy crime movie, I Spit on Your Grave is a lot of fun. As some sort of statement about race and crime in America, the film misses by a wide margin.
Confused
gibbs-1817210 November 2020
Michel Gast's Cult Film
EdgarST23 April 2024
I finally saw «I'll Spit on Your Graves» tonight and I cannot say it is a good movie... but it is a good movie! It is wonderfully trashy and sordid, yet it is truthful, direct, and daring even by today's standards, elegantly enhanced by Marc Fossard's black-and-white photography, Alain Goraguer's jazz score, and Michel Gast's direction.
Based on a novel by Boris Vian (who died on the opening night of a heart attack), it is one of those typical Northern stories about slightly light-skinned people, whom many call blacks, but go through life as whites. Joe Grant, the protagonist (Christian Marquand), is one of those people. In Memphis, his black brother Johnny is murdered for allegedly raping a white woman (in fact, they were lovers planning to get married). Joe's reaction is violent, he has an incendiary temperament, so he moves to another town, just as racist and virulent, where he looks for a way to avenge Johnny's death, seducing white women who, on several occasions, he is about to kill. However, Joe falls in love with the richest girl in town (the beautiful Antonella Lualdi) and tragedy...
What I find amazing is how director Gast decided to recreate places of the American South in France and got away with it, not because of the details, precision or elaboration of environments and sets, but because of the atmosphere he was able to create, a sensation of oppression and racism with a strong American seal, which I, for example, who am not white, could feel when entering the Panama Canal Zone, when it was under the regime of the United States Armed Forces. (Racism is better or only identified by or known to those of us who have experienced it).
«I'll Spit on Your Graves» is, for me, a very good industrial job, in which I do not find any pretense of making an art film, but rather of competing in the international film market with an effective product. The motion picture was successful everywhere, including Panama. I could not see it at the time, because I was 8 years old, but I heard people talk about it, because of its open frankness about sexuality. Despite all its flaws, I believe this film is a French classic on its own terms, an important piece in the evolution of French commercial cinema.
Based on a novel by Boris Vian (who died on the opening night of a heart attack), it is one of those typical Northern stories about slightly light-skinned people, whom many call blacks, but go through life as whites. Joe Grant, the protagonist (Christian Marquand), is one of those people. In Memphis, his black brother Johnny is murdered for allegedly raping a white woman (in fact, they were lovers planning to get married). Joe's reaction is violent, he has an incendiary temperament, so he moves to another town, just as racist and virulent, where he looks for a way to avenge Johnny's death, seducing white women who, on several occasions, he is about to kill. However, Joe falls in love with the richest girl in town (the beautiful Antonella Lualdi) and tragedy...
What I find amazing is how director Gast decided to recreate places of the American South in France and got away with it, not because of the details, precision or elaboration of environments and sets, but because of the atmosphere he was able to create, a sensation of oppression and racism with a strong American seal, which I, for example, who am not white, could feel when entering the Panama Canal Zone, when it was under the regime of the United States Armed Forces. (Racism is better or only identified by or known to those of us who have experienced it).
«I'll Spit on Your Graves» is, for me, a very good industrial job, in which I do not find any pretense of making an art film, but rather of competing in the international film market with an effective product. The motion picture was successful everywhere, including Panama. I could not see it at the time, because I was 8 years old, but I heard people talk about it, because of its open frankness about sexuality. Despite all its flaws, I believe this film is a French classic on its own terms, an important piece in the evolution of French commercial cinema.
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