Robbe-Grillet's L'Homme qui ment: The Lie Belied Author(s): Carol J.

Murphy Reviewed work(s): Source: The French Review, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Oct., 1983), pp. 37-42 Published by: American Association of Teachers of French Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/391062 . Accessed: 31/01/2013 00:18
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THE FRENCHREVIEW, Vol. LVII, No. 1, October

1983

Printed in U.S.A.

Robbe-Grillet'sL'Homme qui ment:The Lie Belied

by CarolJ. Murphy

IN HIS

1967

FILM,

L'HOMMEQUI MENT, Alain Robbe-Grillet

has succeeded

in

translating to the screen the sleight-of-hand narrative techniques and themes of his novels that are both enhanced and rendered more elusive by the added complexities of the visual and auditory components of the filmic medium. Although not his first film (the scenario for Resnais's L'Annee derniere a Marienbad was written in 1961, L'Immortelleand Trans-EuropExpressdate from 1963 and 1966 respectively), L'Hommequi ment shows a clear maturity of style in Robbe-Grillet's development as a filmmaker. It received some critical recognition, even though not particularly favorable, because, as Robbe-Grillet has maintained, the public could not determine whether the man is lying or not.' The title of the film is ironic, however, and the thrust of the action "lies" in belying the lie. Using techiques similar to those found in his novels, RobbeGrillet sets up an opposition between truth and falsehood at several different levels in the film while simultaneously contesting the possibility of any resolution of these two contraries. The resultant "truth"of the film is a new logic, what Gilles Deleuze refers to as a "logique du sens,"2 based on the sustaining of contradictions and the continual production of meanings through glissements or semantic swerves. The theme of resistance that colors the film is, in fact, a resistance to truth, to message, to ideology and to recuperation. This being said, I will try to "recuperate,"in my brief analysis, the story line that is constantly being subverted in and by the film. The adjective "Kafkaesque"is an appropriate attribute for the film, not only because it was shot in Czechoslovakia (as a Franco-Czech co-production) but also because the central protagonist, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant, is reminiscent of K in The Castle. The film is situated in time several years after an unidentified war. At the very beginning of the film, an unknown figure named Boris emerges from the forest at the edge of an unnamed eastern European village. Although this shadowy figure purports to be called Boris Varissa, he is not quite sure. He refers to himself sometimes as Boris and sometimes as Jean Robin, the village hero of the Resistance movement who has mysteriously disappeared. Boris-Jean is obsessed with telling his story to everyone in the village as well as to Jean's wife Laura, his sister Sylvia, the servant
Seminar at the University of Florida ("Nouveau Roman, Nouveau Cinema"), 31 March 1982.
2 Gilles Deleuze, Logiquedu Sents(Paris: Minuit, 1969).

37

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FRENCH REVIEW

Maria, and his father Frantz. The problem is that all of his stories contradict one another; first he is Boris, then he is Jean; Jean was a hero, or rather a traitor; Boris rescued Jean, but no, he handed him over to the enemy; Jean is alive, no dead; Boris dies, but is ressuscitated, etc. In typical Robbe-Grillet fashion, the film plunges the spectator into the perpetual beginnings of a possible story; we are lost in the muddle and mobility of an imaginative and imagining mind similar to that explored by Resnais in Providence, but without the reconstitution of the story with which Resnais so kindly assuages us at the end of his film. Where lies the truth and what constitutes the lie in L'Hommequi ment? RobbeGrillet's ruse is to tease the spectator into making this distinction; that is, he leads us to attempt to choose one or the other alternative (the lie or the truth) in several ways. Most obviously, the film's title suggests a differentiation between truth and falsehood, and this basic opposition is underlined by the stark black-and-white medium of the film, from which Robbe-Grillet scrupulously eliminated all shades of gray. The resultant texture prevents any sensation of depth-perception or even the possibility that the spectators lose themselves in the gauzy effect of a dream world. In addition to the film's black-and-white tonality, its visual and auditory components are constantly disjointed. The soundtrack, composed by Michel Fano, is an assembly of sound effects which scores its own musical themes that are then played out in seemingly contrapuntal fashion against the recurring themes on the image track; the result is a sustained opposition-a counterpoint that buttresses the dualism hinted at by the title and insinuated by the black-and-white contrasts of the film. In addition, sequences at the diegetic level of the film are played out in duplicate and are series of oppositions between heroism and betrayal, rescue and condemnation, and by extension, true and false. For example, two renditions of a scene that takes place in a pharmacy present two sides to an action: the heroic and the denunciatory. In the first version, Jean (an actual character played by Jean Mistric) enters the pharmacy and asks for a bottle of mercurochrome; a soldier arrives and the pharmacienne, played by Catherine RobbeGrillet, courageously agrees to hide Jean from the enemy troops by leading him through an underground passageway whose entry is concealed behind the counter. In the second version, which occurs later in the film, Boris-Trintignant enters, makes the same request and is obliged to wait while the lady pharmacist mysteriously disappears. Jean emerges from a closet and again descends into the cave, this time followed by Boris. A quick cut to the pharmacist in the street reveals her denouncing Jean-Mistric to the same group of soldiers from whom she had just sheltered him, and he is consequently pursued and shot. In these variant scenes, the spectator is thus burdened with conflicting possibilities of interpretation. Another sequence based on an alternation between rescue and betrayal occurs when Boris-Trintignant attempts to extricate Jean-Mistric from prison in a haycart. His success in the first sequence is contradicted by a second version in which Jean-Mistric denounces Boris to the prison guards. The confusion created by doubling at the diegetic level is also complicated by character doubling, the most obvious example being, of course, the Boris-Jean rapprochement.

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ROBBE-GRILLET'SL'HOMME QUI MENT

39

In short, by its proliferation of alternatives, L'Homme qui ment provokes a decision-making response on the part of the spectator who is constantly prodded at many levels of the film to select one element over another and to try to resolve the dilemma of the action. However, as in Robbe-Grillet's novels such as Les Gommes or Dans le labyrinthe, we, as detectives in search of a story, become victims of the crime and are lost in the labyrinth of multiple interpretations. The truth of the film lies elsewhere: its narrative and filmic structures are based on the sustaining, rather than on the resolution, of contradictories. The fact that the film is a fiction which plunges us into a new logic of sustained oppositions is accentuated by the opening sequence. Borrowing from Queneau's parody of the Cartesian cogito in Le Chiendent (where he gradually insinuates his central character into existence by thinking him to exist), Boris is literally being shot at and shot into existence by the soldiers who are, like the camera, tracking him. Form and content are merged in this initial sequence. Using a dolly shot, Robbe-Grillet propels Trintignant from a forest (suggestive of an Urwald or Freudian unconscious) into the film in a state of confused identity. The Boris-Jean doubling is suggested from the very first lines spoken in the film: "My name is Jean Robin." "My name is Boris; others call me Jean." "Icome on Jean's behalf. My name is Boris. Boris Varissa." Although Jean-Louis Trintignant seems little by little to take on the stable identity of Boris as he wanders into the village tavern and through the family manor, the film continually plays with our perceptions of the character's identity in a manner that constantly reminds us of the freedom of the filmic, and thus fictive, medium. For example, Boris is confused with Jean in several shots that might be called metafilmic. In one of these scenes, a shot of a picture of the hero Jean Robin (Jean Mistric) is followed by a cut to Jean-Louis Trintignant (as Boris) in the same picture frame and alive. At other moments in the film both BorisTrintignant and Jean Robin (Mistric) are framed by doorways and windows in a series of rapid cross-cuttings. The insistence on frames of interchangeable characters in frames is a visual statement about the fictitious and thus fluid aspect of their identities; at another semantic level (a figurative one which works only in English), the proliferation of frames is also suggestive of a continual "framing"of the audience being led on to differentiate characters and story line by the oppositions noted above. Andre Gardies has pointed out this mirroring effect of story and filmic medium (image of images, photos of photos and frames of frames) as a device which sets up a game of expectation and disappointment in the semantic network of the film. In Gardies' interpretation, Robbe-Grillet frees the frame from a stable semantic and referential system, that is, a single shot (plan) becomes a pure signifier (signifiant) freed of a stable signified (signifie). This disjunction results in an emphasis on the hiatus or gap between two frames.3 Robbe-Grillet uses discontinuous frames (faux raccords and jump cuts) to suggest the meshing of two characters into one. For example, there is a sequence in the film where Jean-Mistric leaps into the air, and the succeeding shot captures Boris-Trintignant landing deftly on his feet from the
3 Andre Gardies, 'Recit et Materiau Filmique,' in Robbe-Grillet:Analyse,Theorie, v. 2. Cinenma/ Roman (Paris: UGE 10/18, 1976), p. 98.

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FRENCH REVIEW

same mid-air position occupied by Jean a 24th-of-a-second before. Teasing his spectator, Robbe-Grillet simultaneously transgresses the principle of continuity or match (raccord) and invites a comparison of the two characters through their gestures. In a sense, he has rendered filmically what Beckett has done in his novel Molloy where two supposedly separate characters Moran and Molloy become confused and are suggested to be a composite character in the similarities of their behavior and quest. The technique of opposition/confusion is quite evident in the film's soundtrack where contrapuntal patterns of sounds and images are established and expectations are created by the recurrence of certain sounds. For example, the sound of heavy boots signals the presence of the father, the machinegun fire is quite naturally associated with war and, as Robbe-Grillet has interpreted it, the sound of the woodpecker signals the mendacious chatter of "the man who lies."4 However, a look at a few sound-image contrasts reveals a lack of strict patterning and steady counterpoint in the musical score. In his sound-track, Michel Fano has produced a musical version of Robbe-Grillet's verbal and visual play in his novels and films. For Fano, segments of meaning in RobbeGrillet's works are related to one another in a state of interference, that is, they intersect and contradict one another.5 Like the jump cut of Boris-Jean accomplishing the same gesture in different spaces, the musical score by Fano stresses opposition and association, disjunction and continuity. Working with distinct, isolated sounds and absolute silences, Fano sets up a rhythmic pattern (e.g., the volley of shots which opens the film and signifies war and the pursuit of BorisTrintignant), then subverts it (e.g., the same sounds of shots interrupt a peaceful scene later on in the film where they signify nothing in direct relation to the visual, except perhaps the overriding menace of the war and the pursuit of Boris and Jean). These sounds (of dialogue, of ambiance, of isolated noises) are, like the individual frames, freed of a direct referential function and are played off both against the images and against one another. For example, a look at the series organized around the frame of a glass breaking will reveal several different orchestrations. The sequence is introduced by the sound of a shot shattering the glass. We both see and hear the glass breaking in the normal causal pattern. The second time that the sound of a glass breaking is heard, there is an immediate cut to the barmaid with an unbroken glass in her hand. On the image track, she then breaks it, but we do not hear the shattering as we see it happening. Later in the film, we hear the familiar sound but see no glass. Finally we see a glass breaking and we hear the sound a few seconds afterward. Obviously, the lack of synchronization is geared to direct our attention to disjunction and discontinuity that, in turn, become the basis of a new pattern of order (as disorder) in the film. Another example of sound-image disjunction occurs while Boris is walking through the countryside. The eerily silent sequence is only occasionally punctuated by a hollow echoing of clanging metal. The
4 Seminar,

5 Michel Fano, "L'Ordremusical chez Alain Robbe-Grillet: le discours sonore dans ses films," in

University of Florida, 31 March 1982.

Robbe-Grillet:Analyse, Theorie, v. I Roman/Cinema, p. 177.

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ROBBE-GRILLET'SL'HOMME QUI MENT

41

visual suggestion of tranquillity and calm is interrupted by a menacing sound suggesting the tracking of the character in the opening sequence. At other moments bells ring and we see no bell, or we see a bell and hear the sound of a woodpecker, etc. Examples of sound-image discontinuity are legion, but attempts to codify or contain them are constantly defied. Sounds are also at odds with sounds. For example, Boris' monologue at the beginning of the film informs us that when he arrived at the village pub (having escaped the soldiers in the field), it was empty. At the same time, a frame of the pub reveals that it is filled with animated drinkers and the soundtrack registers silence. Later, while Boris is outside talking to the old women of the village, the sounds of an animated pub usurp what should be his conversations with the women. What Fano has accomplished is to orchestrate all the normal dialogue and sound effects to accompany the multiple stories that are being suggested visually but to dislocate them causally, temporally and spatially from the images. At one moment in the film, the soundtrack is used in a metanarrational manner to comment on the spectacle that we are witnessing. BorisTrintignant is discovered in bed with Sylvia by the stern authoritarian fatherfigure Frantz. Stating once more his desire to tell the "true"story, Boris exits from the bedroom to sounds of the clapping of a wildly-enthusiastic audience. By the association of a commonly-heard theatrical sound with the supposed moment of truth in the film, Robbe-Grillet makes a not overly subtle commentary on the fictionality/illusion of truth. Like the image-track, then, the soundtrack prevents easy identification with the film. It urges the spectator on to stabilize the various patterns in an attempt to find meaning, at the same time that this heuristic aspect is continually frustrated and denied. In his study entitled Logique du sens, Gilles Deleuze provides a philosophical framework for looking at the production of contradictory meanings in Robbe-Grillet's work as a new "logic" of meaning(s). Taking the notion of sens or meaning back to Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, Deleuze demonstrates that the latter group of philosophers did away with the Aristotelian dichotomy between being and accident, or the Platonic distinction between measurable quantities and pure becoming, and concentrated instead on two separate types of things: bodily beings (corporels) with the necessary physical qualities, actions, and passions and states of being resulting from reaction with other bodies; and incorporal (incorporels) or non-bodily effects, i.e., the results of actions and passions, logical or dialectical attributes, in short, ways of being. In a grammatical analogy, the first type corresponds to nouns, adjectives, and conjugated verbs, the second to verbs in the infinitive form (grandir, rapetisser, etc.). In a reversal of the Platonic valorization of the Idea or Being as the overriding category of existence, the Stoics posit the extra-etre or that which subsumes being (bodies) and nonbeing (ways of being) as the quelque chose at the summit of existence. In the Stoic viewpoint, emphasis is placed not only on cause but on effect, not only on depth but also on superficial movement. The sens or production of meanings takes precedence over meaning or fixed signification but in a subversive manner which relies on an acknowledgement of

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FRENCH REVIEW

the Idea at the same time that the Idea (or image of the Idea) is contested. This is, of course, what happens in paradox. Deleuze points to Lewis Carroll, James Joyce, and to Robbe-Grillet as makers of meaning, saying of the latter: "I1etablit ses series de descriptions d'etats de choses, de designations rigoureuses, a petites differences, en les faisant tourner autour de themes figes, mais propres a se modifier et a se deplacer dans chaque serie de mani&reimperceptible.6 In L'Homme qui ment, various sequences and shots support this dichotomy between depth of meaning-the Idea-and surface structures of meaningsthe activity of subverting the Idea. Both pharmacy scenes include shots of BorisTrintignant, oftentimes interchanged with Jean-Mistric, descending into a cave and clearly involved in a search for freedom which, in the context of the film, might be interpreted as a search for identity. The initial sequence, as I have indicated, concentrates on propelling Boris-Trintignant from the depths of the forest (the unconscious) into filmic existence (identity). These scenes might be looked at as teasers that urge the spectator on to find the key to the story, to establish chronology, plot, and character identity. Against these shots of depth is played off a predominance of horizontal shots, such as prolonged travellings of characters passing from door to door and running through labyrinthine passageways. These superificial shots, together with the proliferation of jump cuts (that suggest similarity of time and space while simultaneously subverting it) create the sensation of shadowy figures skimming along the surface of an unstable narrative. The film's linear look and ontological/teleological theme (the search for identity, etc.) are but a smokescreen for the subversion of the ontological and the teleological. Deleuze points out the ludic as a rapport between sense and non-sense (that has a logic of its own based on an absence of sense); that is, one can only imagine an absence of sense in relationship to a presence of sense, and it is in the activity of opposing sense to non-sense that the production of meaning resides. This is exactly what Robbe-Grillet has done in L'Homme qui ment. By holding on to the notion of the lie, he belies it by making every lie a truth in the generative structure of the creative processes of his film, of the film as a series of beginnings. One is reminded of the paradox of the legendary liar from Crete who proclaimed that "all Cretans are liars." Are we dealing with lie or truth? The answer seems to be that we are dealing with the co-presence of two ideas, lie and truth, in the "incorporal"act of expressing/ creating/writing/filming. In Robbe-Grillet's work, it is the expression of fictional meanings that constitutes truth.7
UNIVERSITYOF FLORIDA

Deleuze, p. 55. Although not quoted in this article, other analyses of L'Hommequi ment which were consulted are the following: Dominique Chateau et Francois Jost, Nouveau Cinema, Nouvelle Semiologie: Essai d'analyse des films d'Alain Robbe-Grillet(Paris: UGE, 10/18, 1979) and the special issue of Obliques, Francois Jost, ed., 16-17 (1978).
7

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