Jeanne Moreau’s career in film spanned 66 years, from 1949 to 2015. She is a film legend. The Lovers is a French film (original title: Les Amants) directed by a young man who would become another film legend: Louis Malle.
Saddled with a dull husband and a foolish lover, a woman has an affair with a stranger.
The significance of the film itself was dwarfed in importance by the legal battle surrounding it. Given the conservative climate in the USA in the 1950s, it was just a matter of time before some theater executive would get arrested on an obscenity charge for booking this film, with its amoral premise and bare breasts. It was theater manager Nico Jacobellis of Cleveland who drew the short straw. He dared to screen it and was charged with possessing and exhibiting an obscene film.
He was convicted, but the appeals eventually went all the way to the Supreme Court, which overturned the convictions in Jacobellis v. Ohio. Unless you are a lawyer, you may not recognize the case by name, but you have almost certainly read about it at some time in your life. This is where Justice Potter Stewart made his famous statement about the nature of pornography: “I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”
