Cassandra Kipp

Douglas Sirk’s A Scandal in Paris follows historical figure Eugene Vidocq’s path from petty criminal to criminal mastermind to virtuous chief of Parisian police. Beginning in prison, he and his sidekick Emile escape. Vidocq meets a performer named Loretta two years later, stealing her ruby-adorned garter and her heart. Vidocq earns the good graces of a relative of the French minister of police, whose daughter Therese recognizes Vidocq’s face from the church painting she’s fallen for. Vidocq and Emile steal the family’s jewels, only for Vidocq to feign finding them to become chief of police. Vidocq instates Emile’s criminal family as police staff and plots a massive heist, but his growing love for Therese compels him to put an end to the plan. Emile attempts to kill Vidocq in a bid for control. Vidocq kills him, tells the truth to the minister, and is forgiven. While not now perfect, Vidocq reconciles the good and evil potential within him and controls his inner evil. The film is defined by themes typical of melodrama: good overcoming evil, forgiveness and salvation, and religious, class, and gender structures. These themes form a critique of power structures augmented, not hidden, by Sirk’s melodramatic methodology.

Semiotically, the film operates on a main joint of symbolism. At the start of the film, Vidocq and Emile pose for a bishop’s mural depicting the myth of Saint George slaying a dragon. The bishop identifies Vidocq’s face as saintly while Emile’s is dragonlike. Therese, before ever meeting Vidocq, falls in love with his face in the mural, the virtuous part of Vidocq. She finds out he is a criminal, but eventually comes to terms with this side of him. Meanwhile, Vidocq rises to fill the good image Therese adored. This mobility and recombination of good and evil in the self leads to success in the narrative. Meanwhile, Emile, connected to the symbol of the dragon, refuses to reconcile with doing good and dies. Loretta, who fell in love with the evil side of Vidocq, is also killed. These saint-and-dragon combinations represent the interplay of inner desires as they relate to power. While symbolism, this structure also acts on intertextuality, incorporating religious legend to augment the story being told. It also requires the self-flagellating cultural viewpoint Christianity operates from, where one is guilty until they suffer to become innocent. Finally, the film is an adaptation of memoirs, drawing its narrative from an existing story. Its adaptational status, however, means new layers of meaning can be generated through the filmic form.

Use of the medium to construct new meaning is integral to the scene where the mural is painted. Sun rises with white pigeons, and Vidocq’s narration becomes hopeful. Light, associated problematically with good, fills the screen. Emile and Vidocq, sleeping on church steps, are bathed in light when discovered by the bishop. In fear, the pair recoil from the bishop and his companion. This blocking reveals the characters’ weakness in this moment, as well as their potential. Promising money, the bishop rejoices in the “soulless animal look” Emile makes, especially in contrast to Vidocq’s face. Almost comically, the film cuts to Vidocq in shining armor and a blond wig atop a white horse, dark church artifices framing his brightly lit figure. This sudden change and the image’s content builds the sense of comedy, obscuring the critical metaphor that is drawn in the scene; it immediately shows who has the power between the criminal pair as well. Emile reclines at the horse’s hooves, in a corny dragon costume. Where the bishop was in pure black in the previous shot, he is now in white. This color change signifies a pure moment. Vidocq lures the bishop into comfort, then absconds with the horse to the bishop’s dismay: “I’m not finished!” This purity is subverted and disrupted, and comedy is made of the bishop’s response. The scene, establishing the framework the film operates upon, blocks, colors, and paces itself over-dramatically but passionately. It is necessary for the story the film tells, but appears an invention of the film, and thus reflects the greater scale A Scandal in Paris takes on. Using visual formal elements in addition to the storytelling capacity of film, a new meaning is created. Additionally, detailed and luxurious settings inform the desires and status of the characters (for instance Therese’s home is opulent because she is rich, Loretta’s outfits are gaudy to represent her yearning for higher status) and reveals how performative these constructs are. These decorative sets also lend themselves to lowkey lighting putting evil moments in darkness and shadow while virtuous ones are set in light. Likewise, melodramatic acting complements the convoluted narrative and heightened good and evil contrast.

Sirk is renowned for subversive but aesthetically beautiful films, using melodrama as social critique (Jacobowitz et al.). This throughline of his work is consistent with A Scandal in Paris, where political power and riches make characters like Therese’s father and aunt comical figures who will believe anything. The morally bankrupt—dragons like Emile and Vidocq—easily succeed and climb social ladders, and that moral bankruptcy is almost required for success. But, Sirk concludes, while power is tempting, love and connection with other people—Vidocq and Therese falling in love, with Vidocq embracing good in himself and Therese embracing evil in herself through one another—is ultimately more fulfilling. Some, like Loretta and Emile, may stew in their hunger for power, but this social structure is not moral. Sirk’s work is typical of the melodrama: recontextualizing the world into a battle of good and evil, trying to find morality in a chaotic world. His directorial intent mediated by luxurious scenes and powerful emotions culminate in commentary with tact. While the narrative of A Scandal in Paris is not his, his selection of the story to adapt and his methodology impart his intent. The film is a pleasurable experience, the same pleasure Sirk critiques–pretentious, but successful in its purpose.

Works Cited