Rosemonde is simply doomed; she came from the lower classes and (to Tanner) never got an even break. There is no element of originality in such a story. We would hope there would be some in the treatment of it. There isn't.

When Pierre wants to take her picture. She demurely tells him to wait, to let her clean herself up. Pierre's camera focuses on this helpless babe crying to be heard. How she should be protected, not accused. Her shiftlessness comes from her need for love. This is the epitome of innocence.

And yet she did shoot her uncle. (Paul had predicted it, so how could it be otherwise?) But both writers love her anyway. I don't The poor girl from a big rural family at one time might have move some people to tears (not me, however) but at this point the images reek of pulling at the heartstrings. The straight-on camera angles with which she is photographed are visually insulting and emotionally unconvincing.

For if it were to convince us, we would have to feel there was some spirit on her part. But Rosemonde is incredibly immature -- spoiled, willful, and foolish. At the end of the film, we see her swirling amidst the Geneva crowd, Free and Happy. Loving Life.

But that is a false ending. Rosemonde still has nothing and knows nothing except her own desires. She is not happy, not in any own desires. She is not happy, not in any real sense. She is still enchained by irresponsibility.

Try to imagine her in a week. It will be the same old story. And Tanner himself is irresponsible to close the film the way he does. If he had really thought this film through to its own logical conclusions, he would have shown Rosemonde trapped. Such a conclusion would require detailed characterization and not just a bunch of symbols.

Now the copout of Tanner's ending becomes clear. To leave her unhappy, given her shallow personality and Tanner's feeble analysis would have been too heavy-handed given the film as it stands. To make his social criticism, she must be unhappy. To make his "artistic" statement, she must be happy and free. Neither solution is satisfactory.

Tanner's employment of soft close-ups and "picturesque" imagery grates against sensibility. In trying to make social criticism, he forgets that he is working through human beings. If his point is to convince us, his people must be real. But his frames are as hackneyed and as fired as TV images, his visuals in general signify rather than explain what is happening to the people in his film.

I am hardly denying his right to make social statements. But like Godard, he forgets or ignores the fact that in art as implicit social criticism is far more effective than explicit didacticism. Thin of Rules of the Game. Unlike Tanner, Jean Renoir understand that the best way to show how society maltreats people was through the struggles of his characters to define themselves while playing their game. In the Renoir film we are dealing with people who are truly caught between expediency and integrity.

Rosemonde, however, has given up--if she ever struggled. Because of Tanner's inability to flesh out character, we have no reason to sympathize, for we do not know her, She rebels, but we are at a loss to understand why She is mysterious at the beginning and doesn't change.

Some of the bleeding-heart au courant might say that this extraordinarily harsh, the Tanner is a new artist with promise. Tanner's actual promise seems more in the line of a director of television documentaries a comment which is not meant to be entirely demeaning.

For Tanner certainly addresses himself to important and serious questions. Malaise does overhang much of Western Europe Society seems to be stifling, mediocrity seems the rule.

But this is expressed much more acutely in any of Bergman's completely non-dogmatic films about human relationships. We understand the anomie which faces Elis in Passion of Anna as a personal problem. To understand Flis it is important for us to understand his comments on the stupidity and boorishness of the European bourgeoisie. The social comment is penetrating because it arises from a central character's dileruma. Tanner's explicitness cannot begin to approach. Bergman's artistry.

But Tanner's films are only part of the disturbing trend in film to rely on visual and emotional shorthand, on elliptical reference, on stock symbolism, and on inadequate artistic explication in dealing with human problems. I am tired of being manipulated without compensations. Modern life is too complex to be treated with Tanner's irresponsibility--or without the artistic and moral understanding of Bergman.