ABSTRACT
This chapter charts the critical battle that coursed between Cahiers du Cinéma and Positif at the turn of the 1970s over the film Othon by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. Of particular importance here was Jean Narboni’s review of the film, “La vicariance du pouvoir,” which defended Straub/Huillet’s adaptation of the Corneille play by invoking the deconstructionist method of Jacques Derrida, as well as André Bazin’s views on the relationship between theater and cinema. Published a few months after Cahiers’ analysis of Young Mr. Lincoln, “La vicariance du pouvoir” can rightly be seen as its pendant, establishing a method for grappling with radical modernist films much as the earlier article did for classical Hollywood films. It likewise marks an early landmark in a lengthy engagement with the work of Straub/Huillet, which continues to the present day.
