ABSTRACT Jean Renoir's post-war films are generally not given the same critical attention as his great works of the 1930s, and are usually regarded as indicating a withdrawal of interest in politics. Although it deals with a possible coup d'état, Elena et les hommes/Paris Does Strange Things (1956) appears to be principally a light-hearted film about love set in a fantasized nineteenth century. This article argues that the political context is more important to the film than has so far been acknowledged. It draws out some of the links between the film's treatment of the emergence of right-wing extremism during the Third Republic and the situation in France in the mid-1950s. In particular, the film is shown to allude to tensions in France arising from decolonization and the dangers of a public all too ready to submit to dictatorship.
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