Louis Malle, Les Amants
- Artist/Author/Producer: Louis Malle, Director
- Confronting Bodies: State of Ohio
- Dates of action: 1964
- Location: Ohio
- Description of the Art Work
- Louis Malle's film, Les Amants (The Lovers) told the story of a bored,
neglected, bourgeois house wife who falls for an irreverent young
student. Although it celebrated the glories of adulterous love, Les
Amants sexual explicitness is limited to a glimpse of the heroine's
breast.
- Description of incident
- In the case Jacobellis vs. Ohio, the State of Ohio used obscenity law to
ban the film. Justice Brennen points out that the film must be utterly
without social importance, and Justice Potter Stewart states, " I shall
not here today attempt further to define (obscenity)...But I know it when
I see it."
- Results of incident
- In 1968 the Supreme Court reversed the obscenity conviction of the Ohio
theater who exhibited Les Amants.
Source: New York Public Library, New York City