The Mother and the Whore is made from inside the state of mind that is thought of as Village or Berkeley-graduate-school or, as in this case, Left Bank. It's about the attitudes of educated people who use their education as a way of making contact with each other rather than with the larger world. Their manner of dress and behavior is a set of signals: they're telling each other that they're illusionless. Their way of life is a group courtship rite, though the court each other not in order to find someone to love but in order to be loved - that is, admired. They live in an atmosphere of apocalyptic narcissism. [...] The hero, Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud), is a thirty-year-old puppy; in his milieu the less you do the cooler they appear. Alexandre has the glib, attitudinizing male-intellectual vanity that is the educated bum's form of machismo. [...] He's an amusing put-up artist, with no visible convictions or depth of feeling. When he sees an old girl friend who's abut to be married (Isabelle Weingarten), he makes a declaration of undying passion merely for the pleasure of hearing himself sound passionate. [...]

All his energy goes into his poses and paradoxes, and the strategies of coolness.[...]

Alexandre (and the graduate-school little bohemias of the world are full of Alexandres, though generally sponge off their parents as well as friends and girl friends) is, in fact, a spoiled infant-pimp, who lives off Marie and doesn't even provide a pimp's protection. He has nothing to offer but his taste, his classy prattle, and some body warmth. He considers that his presence - when he's around - is gift enough. [...] Alexandre is onscreen throughout, reacting to the women, cajoling them, trying on attitudes -so infatuated with his own pranks he hardly cares what effect they have on others [...]

Pauline Kael: The Mother and the Whore. The Used Madonna. New Yorker, March 4, 1974.

im full text (nicht online, nur abgeschrieben) geht das immer so weiter. jeder satz ein abgrund. bewusstseinsanalyse. aber, eh klar, unglückliches bewusstsein. objektiv unglückliches bewusstsein. bis in die nebensätze hinein. "in placing this theme among the students and those who go on living like students, Eustache …" heißt es zum beispiel. 30 jahre nach entstehen des textes sofort gedacht: lebt noch irgendeiner nicht wie ein student?

der merkwürdige schluss von pauline kaels rezension: die "mutter und die hure" als eine rückkehr zum christentum, genauer: "Christian love" zu dechiffrieren, vs. "sexual freedom", als reaktion auf "miserable sex experiences" und die daraus folgende empfindung, "lost and degraded" zu sein. und dann: "the film is designed to be a religious experience, but the musty answer it offers to the perils of sexual freedom is actually a denial of sexual freedom". groß, dachte ich, diese pauline kael, unkorrumpierbar, mit zweifel aufhören.