From Eternal Current Events, a collection of writings by Chris Marker, edited and translated by Jackson B. Smith, and published by Inpatient Press.
A Grin without a Cat (Chris Marker, 1977).
In 1946, a 24-year-old Chris Marker—or, as he was briefly known then, Chris Mayor—began writing for the Paris-based magazine Esprit. He remained a regular contributor to the leftist monthly until the early 1950s, around which time he made his first films. Marker’s writings for the magazine traverse genres and forms—stories, poems, essays, and reviews—consistently blurring the lines between fact and fiction while maintaining the distinctive blend of humor and political engagement that viewers of his films know well.
Marker’s writing most often appeared in the section of the magazine called the “Journal of Many Voices”: an assemblage of political, social, and cultural commentary in which the musings of many contributors—among them the film critic André Bazin, the philosopher Paul Ricœur, the writer Henri Queffélec, and the magazine’s founder, the Catholic thinker Emmanuel Mounier—are juxtaposed in a montage of sorts, printed consecutively without transitions between them. It is in this section of Esprit that the following texts—translated here into English for the first time—originally appeared, in February 1947.
It was the dawn of a new era of politics in France: following the end of World War II and the fall of fascism, France had finally established a Fourth Republic led by its first-ever Socialist president. Yet, as Marker’s “The Three Cows” demonstrates, this freshly elected government—hopelessly in search of a compromise between Gaullism and Communism—and France’s new constitution had done little to protect its people from police brutality.
—Jackson Smith, translator and editor, Eternal Current Events
THE SKINNY COWS. Algiers, 7:10 p.m. The arrival of B.’s train, a few hours late, obviously. A lot of people, not much light, a moon, four cops. The people and the light are sordid, the moon and the cops are imperial, the sordid and the imperial together are colonial. And the train unleashes the crowd by basketfuls, until some guy runs up to me, an Arab porter who walked his sordidness a bit too close to the cop’s imperialism. It starts up again a bit farther away, with the blows of a billy club this time, while the first cop carefully wipes off his white glove. Nobody is paying attention to this, especially not the battered porters. As for me, I’ve already seen this gesture… Seen: China Express, you know, that Soviet film where a crew of Chinese rebels fight and win their freedom. The whites defend themselves, fall back into the restaurant car, and I find the same problem again here: What to do to not be associated with the whites? On the China Express or in the Algeria Express, the dividing line is straightforward: white, color. The color that comes to offer its services to the white is looked down upon. The white who tries to associate himself with the color raises suspicion. And I wonder about this justification that all colonialists must give to themselves: Our place is on this side. And when I see socialist ministers or Christian military men standing together with the colonialists, I rediscover the same reflex, which deep down is a reflex of fascism. The young bourgeois who understands the class struggle tells himself: My place is on this side, anyhow I will not be welcomed on the other side, my pride wants me to fight, and he joins the French Socialist Party. May we no longer be surprised, then, to find some presumed revolutionary on this side of the China Express. Just like with fascism, it is still a question of rebellion: rebellion of the privileged.
THE FAT COWS. Paris, 2 p.m., in front of the “Samaritaine,” a kid, very badly dressed, flees, pursued by a cop, very well dressed. “Arrest him,” the cop hollers, and it seems to me (joy!) that this call is enough for the crowd to make way for the pursued. But a gentleman comes alive with the voice of the cop (the voice of blood, as it were) and blocks the kid’s pathway. The kid stumbles over the gentleman, the cop stumbles over the kid, the gentleman and the cop each grab one of the kid’s arms, and they’re on their way to see the goldfish. The gentleman will go all the way to the police station, assuredly, where he will be warmly congratulated while they beat the kid up. For the moment, he casts victorious glances at the gallery. He is totally reassured, the brave man. He thinks of his kids, of himself, and of the good example of practical morals that this incident, with some embellishment (a knife between his teeth… in his hand, I mean), will bring to his dinner conversation. It will be an opportunity to work on his favorite maxims, such as “Crime does not pay for long when there is a cop nearby” or even: “He who takes from the rich lends to the Devil.” And he is delighted to think that, this way, never will his children be of the kind that gets taken to the police station, that they will instead be among those who help to send them there.
THE MEDIUM COWS. A short prayer, dedicated to a friend from my military service who, recently arrested for a robbery, in turn, was robbed during the interrogation, and who wonders what fate can then await civil servants who exploit their office:
My God, who created cops, we are no longer in a position to be surprised by the curiosities of your Creation. But then give us the courage to refuse all complicity with them, and to love their victims. We forget every reproach of the dead. Make it so that the man who moves forward, his cheeks bleeding, tied to a fat vicious beast, be for us as though dead, and that his crime be returned to him. Make it so that the world over, every man, whatever his fault may be, who is in the hands of the police, touch our hearts, and that in some way it be we who are beaten. It will be one of the last forms of fraternity, while we wait for it to be the only one. Amen.