Retro Visions

While the trend for historical subjects in 1970s French cinema is often remembered in terms of la mode rétro, defined by an obsessional fixation on the Occupation, this article examines films that revisit two polarizing scandals during the explosive final years of the Third Republic. Alain Resnais's Stavisky (1974) recounts the mysterious death of a swindler that triggered a political crisis, leading to the violent street protests of February 6, 1934; Claude Chabrol's Violette Nozière (1978) dramatizes a famous case of parricide in 1933 that became a national obsession, pitting adherents of conservative bourgeois values against opponents of tradition and patriarchy. Rather than investigate the “myth” of resistance under Vichy, these films explore the fault lines of the bitter divide between Right and Left, recasting the prewar narrative through the prism of the 1970s to interrogate the legacies of fascism and the political stakes of interpreting history.