Contenu du sommaire

The Hays code. Self censorship in American cinema, Francis Bordat. Any student of the American cinema of the 1930s instantly recognizes the difference between a pre- and post- 1934 film. From that year until 1952, films had to comply with very strict self-censorship rules. The author has studied the beginnings of the Hays code, its backgrounds — pressures and censorship — and its legal context. He shows both how the rules were applied and how they fell apart in the 15 years that followed. This post mortem leads to the conclusion that although the Hays code was an undeniable attack on freedom of speed it was also a compromise which probably saved what was essential, by making it possible to reject censorship of a far more threatening nature for freedom of expression and creation.

Anticommunism in France, Jean-Jacques Becker, Serge Berstein. Following the chronology of anti-communist manifestations from 1917 to the present, the article shows that they were proportionate to the physical strength of the French Communist Party and to the feeling of danger to France dicted by the power of the USSR. This hatred and this fear played substantial part in the France's history, above all during the Popular Front and the Cold War. Under the Fifth Republic, they paradoxically favored both the veering to the right and the 1981 victory of the non-communist left.

The herrenvoïk car. Birth of the Volkswagen, André Gunthert The Third Reich decided in 1937 to launch the « people's car » as part of a policy of « motorization of the German people » ; highway construction was another aspect of that policy. Hitler and Porsche joined forces to propose to the German people the best car at the cheapest price, as a symbol of the vitality and supremacy of Nazism. The mobilization of propaganda means and of the phantasms of race and motherland made the VW a sign and symbol of totalitarian ambitions : to construct a total political representation.