Les liaisons dangereuses 1960 (1959)

Les liaisons dangereuses 1960 (Dangerous Liaisons 1960) is a very early Roger Vadim film, released in 1959. It is based on Choderlos De Laclos’s scandalous 1782 novel.

Roger Vadim is one of the greatest and one of the most despised of French film directors. Critics who doted on the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) directors regarded Vadim with contempt. He was a skilful director who made polished professional movies with style and wit. Directorial skill, polish, professionalism, style and wit were things that enraged the devotees of the Nouvelle Vague.

To compound his already numerous sins Vadim has no interest in making overtly political films. He had no ideological axes to grind. Les liaisons dangereuses 1960 is not about politics, and it is not about sexual politics in the way that feminists and ideologically driven film critics understand the term. Vadim is interested in a much more important subject - love. It’s about how love turns to hate and hate turns to love, it’s about the joys and sufferings that men and women bring each other. It’s about love considered as a game. It’s the most dangerous game of all, and therefore the most exciting. It’s certainly about sex, but it’s more interested in the exquisite pleasures and pains that treating love and sex as games can bring.

Valmont (Gérard Philipe) and his wife Juliette (Jeanne Moreau) are expert players in these games. Their favourite games involve adultery and seduction. You cannot hope to understand this movie unless you realise that they are both predators. They are predators of a peculiar type - they hunt as a pair. They both participate in the hunts, and they both get equal pleasure from making the kill. Juliette is not a victim of so-called gender roles or gender expectations. She is a ruthless huntress.

Both Valmont and Juliette ignore all the established social, sexual, more and cultural rules. That is the theme of the movie - what if the game of love could be played without any rules? What if we freed ourselves from these rules? What if the only objective of the game was pleasure? Not just sexual pleasure, but the pleasure of playing the game.

Juliette is of course having an affair. Naturally she tells her husband all the details.

Valmont has his eyes on some promising prey, in the person of Cécile (Jeanne Valérie). Cécile thinks she is a sophisticated young woman of the world. She has two fiancées. She is however a mere child compared to Valmont and Juliette. They’re both going to enjoy this hunt.

Then even more promising prey appears on the scene - Marianne Tourvel (Annette Vadim). Marianne is a happily married young woman who is faithful to her husband. Valmont’s seduction of her will be even more exciting, for both Valmont and Juliette. Juliette loves hearing all the intimate details of the chase and the kill.

But even for expert players this game can be hazardous. That of course is its appeal. Without the danger there would be no thrill.

This movie has nothing whatever to do with gender. Juliette is not rebelling against traditional gender roles or gender expectations. Both Valmont and Juliette are rejecting ALL moral, social and sexual roles. The original novel was written in 1782, which happens to be the year that the Marquis de Sade began his literary career. This is no coincidence. Both Choderlos De Laclos and de Sade were expressing the scepticism about moral rules that was increasingly popular among intellectuals. This was the beginning of a new attitude towards morality - that nothing mattered other than the pursuit of pleasure. They were not in revolt against bourgeois morality because bourgeois morality did not yet exist, for the very good reason that the bourgeoisie did not yet exist. Choderlos De Laclos and de Sade were expressing what was essentially an aristocratic contempt for moral rules.

This is quite evident in the movie. The outlook of Valmont and Juliette is essentially aristocratic. The movie actually has a strong Sadeian flavour. It has quite a bit in common with some of Jess Franco’s later de Sade-influenced movies such as Cries of Pleasure.

Of course by the time the film was made bourgeois morality did exist. Valmont and Juliette are certainly rejecting that morality, but their rebellion is from an aristocratic standpoint, not a modern ideological standpoint. This is not a feminist film, although modern critics twist themselves into knots trying to apply anachronistic feminist interpretations to movies of the past.

And Vadim upsets modern critics and film scholars by not actually condemning bourgeois morality. The villains in this movie are the ones who reject such rules and pursue only their own pleasures.

All of the performances are impressive. Gérard Philipe and Jeanne Moreau have the more showy roles but Jeanne Valérie and Annette Vadim give beautifully judged subtle performances.

Like a lot of Vadim’s movies this one confuses modern critics by ignoring ideology. A complex intelligent provocative movie. Very highly recommended.