on pure image

French cinema was as heavy with smells as American films were light with Palmolive, polish and antiseptic. The women had a carnal presence that established them in the film-goer's mind as at once living women and erotic fantasies (Viviane Romance is the actress I'm thinking of here), while the eroticism of the Hollywood stars was sublimated, stylized, idealized. (Even the most carnal of the American actresses of the time, the platinum-blond Jean Harlow, was made unreal by the dazzling whiteness of her skin. In black-and-white the power of the white transfigured female faces, legs, shoulders and necks, making of Marlene Dietrich not so much an immediate object of desire but desire itself, seen as some extraterrestrial essence.) I sensed that French cinema was talking about things that were more disturbing and somehow forbidden....

- Italo Calvino, "A Cinema-Goer's Autobiography" pp. 49-50, The Road to San Giovanni.