LA NUIT DES TRAQUÉES (Night of the Hunted, 1980; w/d Jean Rollin)

Title play on Laughton/Agee Night of the Hunter, switch in emphasis from victimizer to victim + actor to acted-upon, w/ similar concern for protecting innocent/ce.

Opens on young Robert driving at night (on psychological journey) in country (issue involving nature + Nature) + finding confused, white-nightgowned + platinum blonde (angelic "screen" for w/d Rollin’s projections) Elizabeth in street (own anima, caught in headlights, as tho singled out from forest of unconscious information), never noticing nude (but for sneakers: at slight remove from nature/noumena) redhead (again, one step from divine) Veronique (typical Rollin divided spiritual sisters, civilization causing rift w/ innocent nature [cf later Lost in New York + similar Morte Vivante]); can’t remember her address (unmoored, transient psych’l material loosed into dream-consciousness), demands 2B let out (dream-material almost lost at dawn), then pleads for shelter (recovered, as happens again at end), neither noticing pursuers in car behind (threat of loss of memory/dream).

At his apartment (new img accepted into Self; upstairs, as in mind), explains that she can’t remember anything past a few minutes (existential take on personality as ever-shifting/never-definite/definable; cry of "Ma tête est vide!/My head is empty!" à la similar MV’s "Je suis une morte/I’m a dead girl!"): eternal/ly transitional character invoked by protagonist in need of change; only memory (echoes of La Jetée) img of self running w/ nude Veronique (primal unity w/ infant-innocence, as of Rollin w/ anima) + being separated on seeing his headlights (leaving primary-narcissistic "lesbianism" [never consummated in film not lacking in sexual activity] on mtg Spiritual-Other Robert): defining characteristic, she embodiment of separation/transition.

After long + lovely sex (communing w/ "lost" innocence + consummating [proving] bond, her "Stay inside me. I will never forget you" – spoken into distance, not to him V mind’s desperate – + futile – need to be penetrated by world, as to penetrate it), writes down name + number (imprinting i.d./solidifying connection) so she’ll remember (verifying reality, he reciprocal animus, or masculine "pwr" she will later [literally] call on for help) while he at job ("work" of maintaining connection + balance w/ unconscious during waking hours).

On his exit (loss of focusing conscious faculty), platinum-topped George Will lookalike Dr Franc[a]is + dark-haired assistant Sol-ange ("Earth-angel," new 2 reciprocal of Liz + Rob, on side of forgetting + repression) show up + take her "home" (back to unconsciousness), she unmindful of nudity like child w/ parents; back in (deserted: mind at sleep) metropolis, taken to Black Twr (under-world extruded into consciousness in dreams) peopled by similarly lost souls/minds (limbo: dead in transit to next world + lost memories themselves; "family" in "home" driven crazy by unfeeling mother + father + their peculiarities), where lodged w/ dark-haired Catherine (completing feminine trinity + mvmt from day/consc’ss/revivification to night/unconsc/death), two bonding over lack of memories (which Cath makes up for them: all reality invented, consensus).

Friendly bald buy (traditional "phallic" consciousness, later assaulting Liz + raping another: violated by reality) who brags of recollections (coin of realm) enters, bearing dinner Cath can’t remember how to eat, à la infant (process of dying reversal of conscious development), Liz’s sympathetic embrace not leading to anticipated lesbianism (1: failure to unite fragmented anima; 2: mvmt away from eros/life; 3: film’s feminine relationships not erotic in 1st place but sororal, platonic; 4: mvmt away from primary narcissism); in commons, encounter middle-aged wmn who’s lost her child (youth: connection to continuous world) + for whom Cath again invents memories (she faculty of dreaming mind which fabricates scenarios from scraps of own storehouse of memories + associations: "Even if it’s false, it’s true") + man who’s "lost his sense of balance" (1: mind wavering btwn un/consciousness; 2: Robert, as all men, seeking blnc w/ Liz-anima).

Back in room, can’t phone out (incommunicado mind in sleep), Liz’s rebuff of Cath’s advance ("the only thing we have left is the touch of our bodies": erotic foundation of sleep/imagination) + departure to make escape (rejecting homo/genous unconscious for hetero consciousness, running into Veronique as into opening link to outside world) prompting C to drive scissors (instrument of separation) into own eyes (primary expressive vehicle for mostly impassive actors): rejecting connection precipitating stream of violence to last rest of film.

Reunion w/ Veronique prompts Liz to recover Robert’s name + # (mvmt back twd "outside" reality – paradoxically, at night: for Rob, reemergence of unconscious material) while "anxiety attacks" drive others to rape (Baldy attacking wmn in theater [conscious imperative to impose marketable sensations + threat of consciousness itself dominating unconscious, as latter [Liz-unconsc] tries to gain equal footing w/ former [Rob/consc’ss]; rapist killed by "unbalanced" man [Rollin’s own awkwardness thwarting mass-audience ambitions] no triumph, as blood-drenched wmn lies screaming) + murder (couple who get away to sauna [deepest, closeted unconsc] to make love, man again strangling her: danger, also, of illogic dominating); Liz herself blows away security guard (sentinel of "watchful" ego/consc’ss) before calling Rob (directing him to "a large twr surrounded by other twrs": the phallocracy, which is "trying to hold us back") + killing strangler in elevator (loosing grip of unreason on mvmt back to reality).

Liz + Veronique recaptured (film losing own "balance," becoming aimless in efforts to pad out + deliver thrills when true strength in its romanticism + mournful dialog), Liz straitjacketed + V "dead" (not: in advanced stage of deterioration/sleep), while Robert must dance w/ Solange (ambiguity, in similarly see-thru dress) before Doc (dour platinum opposite of Rob’s brunette enthusiasm + passion) fills him in on Liz’s condition (at dawn, twr "evacuated" of unconscious denizens), as others: brain cells deteriorating as result of disease, until all reach vegetable state (total unconsciousness); sez he can have her if she recognizes him, she walking by him across bridge (transitional state for both, oscillation replaying opening waffling), before turning (as on recollection) + being hustled off by Doc, film adaptation of underworld Orpheus, tottering btwn Cocteau + comix.

Rob shoots Solange (physically moored soul, preparing for Liz’s transcendence) + follows train bearing patients (somnambulists in car labeled BAR, DANCING irony à la Liz + Veronique discovering strangled wmn under RELAX sign) to abandoned factory (further layer of underworld, operations [+ film] continuing on past original purpose)/concentration camp, where masked doctors (unable to look victims in eye, à la scissored Catherine: critics who fail to understand Rollin’s art) execute + cremate them (dissolution of ego + transcendence of body in sleep [+ unconsciousness upon waking]), freed V also shot (à la counterpart Solange) while Liz wanders off.

Dr F again spills beans to Robert, again on bridge ("disease" result of "pwr station" leak: civilization destroying soul à la Morte Vivante + subconscious "leaking" psychological material into consciousness in sleep), then shoots him in head (final elimination of ego anticipated in opening), Rob joining hands w/ Liz (thanatotic reunion of animus-anima) + walking down bridge (scene of recent rebuff [she cdn’t join him in his world, so he joins her in hers]: limbo + suspension – elevated, removed + oblivion-bound)/jetty (again cf La Jetée, Rollin reuniting that film’s archetypally sundered dyad, obliterating Rob’s formerly independent masculine persona) as camera Slow Fades to Black.

"Je mal dans ma tête!"