In his latest film Stavisky Alain Resnais attempts to handle the peculiar climate of France during the 1930s, the years that paved the way for Laval and Pétain to come to power. For the Frenchman with a memory mention of the name Stavisky conjures up images of the worst civil disorders his country experienced since the Paris Commune of 1871. He would recall a government discredited by corruption and coverups, a country set adrift, demoralized by the great depression, domestic hopelessness and also mesmerized by the rise of Hitler.

Little of … political history is depicted in Resnais' "Stavisky." It could have been the ideal topic for a historical treatment but Resnais, despite the political tone of his early documentaries, has not been much given to Brechtian exposition. When considering how the subjects of Hiroshima Mon Amour and La Guerre est Finie could easily have lent themselves to cinemagraphic...