J'irai cracher sur vos tombes (1959)
Directed by Michel Gast

Film Review

Racial hatred is not a theme that was widely dealt with in French cinema of the 1950s, and it is telling that two of the films of this decade which tackle the subject most directly are set not in France, but in the United States, around the time when the Civil Rights Movement was just coming into being.  Charles Brabant's La P... respectueuse (1952) and Michel Gast's J'irai cracher sur vos tombes (1959) are sweaty films noirs, very much in the American style, that were shocking for their time (perhaps even more so today) in their depiction of the black-white divide in 1950s America.  Neither film is a masterpiece but both deserve some praise  for tackling the race issue in a way that would not figure in American cinema until Norman Jewison's landmark In the Heat of the Night (1967).

J'irai cracher sur vos tombes started out as a novel of the same title by Boris Vian, a prominent writer, poet and critic whose other famous novel, L'Écume des jours, was adapted for cinema twice, most recently by Michel Gondry in 2013.  When it was first published in 1946 (under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan), Vian's racially themed novel was branded pornographic and it was banned three years later for its supposedly immoral content, not that this prevented it from being a massive bestseller.  There was even a stage play adaptation, performed at the Théâtre Verlaine in Paris in 1948.  Vian collaborated on the script for the screen version of his novel but had a running battle with the producers and director, whom he believed were wilfully perverting the meaning of his original novel.  At the film's premiere screening, not long after he had publicly denounced it, Vian suffered a heart attack and died shortly afterwards whilst being taken to hospital.

It is easy to see why Vian loathed the film.  In the hands of an inexperienced and not particularly talented film director (Michel Gast had helmed one film before this and would only direct two more), and made on a fairly low budget, J'irai cracher sur vos tombes was never going do to justice to Vian's groundbreaking novel.  Most of the focus appears to be concentrated on the more sordid aspects of the original novel and the context, where the contrived thriller plot fits into the wider scheme of things, is distinctly lacking.  At the time of its release, Gast's film, stylishly shot with a lively jazz score and a few teasing glimpses of female nudity, the film would have been seen as modern and daring, but watched today it just looks like a clumsy exercise in style over substance, populist B-movie trash with no depth or honest engagement with the issues underpinning its trite pulp fiction narrative.

Such was the notoriety of Vian's novel that the film could hardly avoid drawing a massive audience - in fact it was seen by three and half million people on its first release in France.  J'irai cracher sur vos tombes deserves some credit for daring to venture into territory that was almost a no-go area at the time, and the opening sequence depicting the lynching of an amiable black youngster can hardly fail to shock.  But, without the satirical pungency of Vian's novel and next to nothing by way of character depth, it is a pretty vacuous affair, and after half an hour even its hip jazz score becomes monotonous.  No wonder Vian's heart gave up on him.

Film Synopsis

In the southern United States in the 1950s, 18-year-old Sonny Grant confides in his half-blood brother Joe that he is in love with a white girl.  The problem is that Sonny is black and when the local population gets to hear about his amorous designs he is lynched by a group of racists.  Joe is so disgusted by his brother's murder and the hatred that caused it that he emigrates to a city in the North.  Here, with the support of Horace Chandler, he finds work in a library.  Soon, Joe realises that the city lives in fear, under the tyrannous yoke of Stan Walker and his gang.  Knowing that he is the only man who is immune to Walker's intimidatory tactics, Joe plots to take his revenge against white people.  Owing to a quirk of fate, Joe Grant has white skin which allows him to conceal his black origins.  His plan is to seduce and then murder Lisbeth Shannon, the girl who has been promised in marriage to Walker.  But Joe's scheme goes awry when Walker discovers his true racial identity...