UNIVERSITÉ SORBONNE NOUVELLE - PARIS 3
CANOPÉ NETWORK PRESENTS
A FILM FROM THE PUBLIC EDUCATION FILM LIBRARY,
DISTRIBUTOR OF DOCUMENTARY FILMS IN SCHOOLS,
KINDERGARTEN TO UNIVERSITY, 1920-1996
THIS FILM WAS MADE
BY THE MINISTRY OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND EDUCATION
J. K. RAYMOND-MILLET FILMS PRESENTS
NADIA SIBIRSKAÏA
RAYMOND PELISSIER & JAN DOAT IN
THE SECRET ENEMY
CAST:
PHOTOGRAPHY: JEAN LEHERISSEY ASSISTED BY: PIERRE PETIT
MUSIC: PIERRE SANCAN RECORDED BY THE ORCHESTRA
OF LA SOCIÉTÉ DES CONCERTS DU CONSERVATOIRE
NARRATED BY JULIEN BERTHEAU, COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE MEMBER
ASSISTANTS: MONIQUE MUNTCHO & PIERRE MERLE
DECOR: RAYMOND DRUART
SOUND ENGINEER: GEORGES LEBLOND
PRODUCTION: ANDRÉ ROY & JEAN MOTTET
MAKE UP: BORIS DE BANOW & MADELEINE TEDESCO
INTERIOR SHOTS FILMED AT STUDIOS DE NEUILLY
SOUND: CTM
SCENARIO - DIALOG - SCRIPT DIRECTED - EDITED BY:
J. K. RAYMOND-MILLET
Motherhood.
Fatherhood.
Happiness has always built upon these words.
Happy couples.
Couples in love.
Young couples approaching life with confidence.
Such happiness!
Harrowing motherhood,
empty crib.
Pitiful patients
roving from one hospice to the next, a community burden.
Defective faces.
BLIND
Cripples.
Criminals society had to put away.
Sterile couples.
Hostile couples.
Old, bored couples. Tomorrow, they'll despise one another.
Such unhappiness!
All these happy and unhappy people,
all the promises sown around the world, of old age surrounded by family,
all the excruciating certainties of old age in solitude...
What separates them?
And herein, what makes some happy and others not?
Less than nothing.
Come closer to this microscope.
Put your eye to the eyepiece, and you'll know.
It is an infinitely small, 12/1000 mm,
silvery white spirochete: treponema pallidum,
the specific agent of syphilis.
Nowadays, syphilis infects over one tenth of the world population.
One in ten humans.
In Europe, each year,
of 50 million inhabitants, syphilis causes 40,000 abortions,
20,000 stillbirths,
80,000 deaths.
Total: 140,000 fatalities.
It kills as many people in 10 years as a world war in 5.
How do you catch this treponema loathe to the human species?
Sometimes in the simplest manner.
A barber's dirty razor,
a glass,
any object,
will transmit it.
Any object.
Each newly contaminated person becomes dangerously contagious.
However,
most syphilis cases are caused by sexual contact.
It's always the same.
You get carried away,
you give in to temptation.
You get lucky one night
or at least,
you think you do.
A pretty lass, half honest, half easy.
An adolescent often changing beaus.
A working girl going through fiancés,
unknowingly slowly slipping into prostitution.
About 3 weeks later,
a chancre appears,
so obvious that it both alerts and frightens its victim.
It marks the onset of primary stage syphilis.
The chancre may not always be as visible,
unfortunately.
It may look like an inconspicuous pimple.
You overlook it.
Still, the treponema is in your blood, in your body.
And it's advancing.
A month 1/2 after the chancre, you notice a peach blossom breakout:
roseola.
That's the secondary stage of syphilis.
You feel like seeing the doctor,
but the breakout vanishes, and you forget.
One fine day, you decide to marry.
You get married.
Happiness is looming.
Soon, your wife is pregnant.
How wonderful!
The mother-to-be prepares for the baby.
But she delivers preterm.
Unfathomable.
The following year, another pregnancy.
Again, preparations are made for the desired child.
It is unnecessary.
The child?
The child is stillborn.
But you want a child, you aren't the selfish kind.
You won't give up.
Third pregnancy.
The child is born alive.
Death would have been preferable.
He is and will remain defective.
Defective.
Soon you'll reach the dire tertiary stage.
Tabes will deprive you of movement control.
Optic neuritis will make you blind.
Cerebral hemorrhage or a ruptured aneurysm
will take your life lickety-split.
Even worse, general paresis will impair your mind
while still making you seem like a reasonable man.
By establishing branches in all of these countries...
Take notes, will you? We'll multiply our turnover by 10.
Friends and banks have agreed to lend me 200 millions.
There'll be more.
Dumont,
for our new branches, hire the best.
Pamelier, you'll be in charge
of the publicity campaign.
Ardouin,
the accounting.
Remember that of these 50 new branches,
most of them, given the importance of...
General paresis will turn a business owner,
once a meticulous
and cautious manager,
into a daredevil,
a bluffer,
a plotter,
and will lead him to bankruptcy and ruin.
Now, write this down:
a desk,
polished walnut,
an armchair, leather,
one set of desk accessories...
General paresis once inspired a train driver,
a diligent, valued railwayman,
with a faultless record,
the most amazing answer.
Look at the signs. It's closed.
The signs? Those aren't for me.
Old engravings show that venereal patients
used to be whipped when entering and leaving hospital.
In 1850, less than 100 years ago,
they were still relegated to the most abject hospice quarters.
They ate scraps,
and wore an ignominious V on their clothes,
which provoked contempt and disgust from others.
At the turn of our century,
neither the patients who dared to see a doctor,
nor doctors themselves,
dared to speak the dreaded word.
Doctor, here's why I'm here.
I...
-With the current heat wave... - Let's see.
It's nothing.
I mean...
Even so, strictly follow treatment.
Strictly, you hear me?
However, while 10 people were being cured,
ignorant or oblivious luetics
fell through the cracks and contaminated 100 more.
Thus the scourge continued to spread in France.
Meanwhile, scientists sought to reveal Nature's secrets.
In addition to long used mercury,
Ehrlich discovered the wonderful, anti-syphilitic properties of arsenic.
Sazerac and the fabulous bismuth salt.
Tedious hours of research,
methodical,
patient,
fraught with headway and despair.
This is my 605th attempt,
and I still haven't found what I want.
Should I continue?
Don't give up, Ehrlich.
If your next compound works, we'll call it 606.
And today,
Fleming's penicillin is giving us
new hope.
Prof. Alfred Fournier declares war on syphilis.
Heeding his call,
many surveillance and combat outposts are founded:
humble rural clinics,
upscale city facilities.
Here and there, patients,
and those who aren't quite so sure,
can come at any hour of the day,
so they don't have to miss work.
WAITING ROOM
A file is created.
Treatments are given for free,
discreetly,
painlessly and safely.
One day, the doctor can tell the patient
who had come to him in despair, on the brink of suicide:
You're cured, my good friend. You can get married.
Thank you, Doctor.
He's cured.
Two laws from 1939 and 1941,
more or less inspired by Prof. Alfred Fournier,
have allowed epidemiological records
in which patient names are replaced by codes,
to determine who contaminated
any given syphilitic patient.
How does this work?
This young woman,
quite alarmed by the sudden appearance of a chancre,
was sent to the Institut Alfred Fournier by her doctor.
MEDICAL CLINIC
SOCIAL SERVICES
They reassured her,
and treated her.
She can no longer contaminate others.
They interviewed her.
I must insist, Madam.
You must tell us who contaminated you.
We won't punish nor trouble him.
We are neither policemen, nor moral teachers.
But we only want to treat him, just as we cured you.
She's afraid.
Really, Doctor, what can I say?
I don't understand it, at all.
I'm married and I've never been unfaithful.
The doctor has heard it all.
Very well.
If she's telling the truth, it's her husband.
He is summoned.
He doesn't know why or pretends not to know.
I don't get it.
A medical check-up? Why me?
Why?
I've seen your syphilis posters in the hall.
I can assure you I don't have it and I won't catch it.
Because as long as I can play a game of cards each night,
that's all I need.
Is this a joke?
The doctor tells him it isn't,
that he wants him no harm and is only looking out for him.
Finally, he accepts to have a blood test.
The result is indeed negative.
I have nothing to add.
Someone has reported you as being contagious,
or risking to be.
Who would dare say such a thing?
Trust me, our information is usually quite good.
You'll need to come back.
He goes back 3 times,
for an examination and a blood test.
Both are negative.
How long is this going to go on?
Clinical examination and blood test.
Both are negative.
Am I some kind of guinea pig to you?
Clinical examination and blood test.
The test is negative again,
but clinical examination allows for early detection.
It reveals a chancre.
There's no doubt,
this man has been infected by his wife.
He didn't give it to her.
He was devastated.
Well, I never!
I never!
The husband is treated.
He won't contaminate anyone.
The doctors calls in the young woman again.
Listen, Madam.
I see 200 persons a day.
I don't know you.
I'll have forgotten your name, and your face in 15 min.
I don't care if you had a lover.
Just tell us the truth.
PLEASE, BE BRIEF
Doctor.
Doctor,
I need to explain.
You need to understand and believe me.
My husband doesn't care for me.
His only love is playing cards.
He spends all evenings in a café and I stay alone.
I'm alone during the day too.
And so, you see...
One day...
I swear it was the first time I cheated on my husband.
Phew!
Finally, the doctor has a name.
And he knows that it all took place during a trip
she took to the town where the pilot lives.
The file is transferred to the local health service.
Very soon, the gallant, dangerous seducer
is going to be visited by a social worker
with a rather unpleasant mission.
Chief Robert? - Yes.
Miss Duchâtel, I'm a social worker.
- I'm on a difficult mission. - Difficult?
- A sensitive one. - Come with me.
It's a small room.
- Sit down. - Thank you.
- Cigarette? - No, thank you.
However sensitive your mission is,
you're bound to carry it out perfectly.
A pretty girl like you.
That sweet mouth could tell me anything.
Could it? That's good to know.
You're accused of infecting a woman.
So what?
It's very simple.
We have to ask you to come to our clinic for a medical check-up.
It won't take long. You can choose the day.
If you're healthy, we'll apologize for the inconvenience.
But if you do have syphilis,
it's your best interest and your duty,
your duty as a responsible man, to be treated immediately.
See, it isn't that scary.
What if I refuse?
If he refused,
well, within 2 days, he would receive a registered letter
without any distinctive sign on the outside,
ordering him to have a medical examination.
If he didn't go,
he would be hospitalized perforce.
No, I won't refuse.
You're right.
Lately I've noticed
worrying things.
How embarrassing to tell a woman.
I'm used to it.
It's my job.
Maybe...
I must have got it from that little bitch.
I've been seeing her for 6 months.
Each time I go to Paris...
I just knew I couldn't trust her.
What little bitch?
The social worker marks a name, an address:
rue de... Paris.
The pilot agrees to be treated. He won't contaminate anyone.
We're back in Paris, in the A. Fournier Clinic.
Me? Sick? Absolutely not.
I've never been sick. Even as a kid.
No whooping cough, no measles, no scarlet fever.
Never a cold,
nor a headache.
I wouldn't start getting sick now, you know?
You can't say the same, with that sad face.
Still, the girl will be examined.
Ouch!
You're tickling me.
I'm ready to believe that you never had
neither the whooping cough, nor the scarlet fever, nor measles,
but right now,
you have syphilis.
Oh, sh...!
BE POLITE WITH OUR STAFF
Should I thank you?
Her syphilis is more recent than the pilot's.
It means he infected her.
She's very dangerous anyway.
She's getting treatment. She won't contaminate anyone.
Questioned again, the airman gives another name.
Lida, one of those fake Quartier latin students.
He met her on a furlough.
She was the initial contaminator.
She'll get treatment too and won't contaminate anymore.
And so it goes,
as further down the contamination chain as possible,
as close as possible to the source of contagion.
Sometimes, the quest stops
because, naturally, some women can't remember.
There are surprises too.
Lida had charmed a teen.
During the summer he seduced his cousin,
the daughter of a provincial notary.
NOTARY
A social worker is sent to visit the young girl.
- You want to see my daughter? - I do.
Come in. The maid will show you in.
Another charity collection!
Treat me? You're here about a treatment?
This is so extraordinarily funny.
How did you know I have eczema?
Alas, it wasn't eczema,
but a syphilitic breakout.
This girl will be treated too.
Like the others, she'll be cured, get married and have healthy children.
Syphilis can be cured.
Truth be told, what a pity to risk your health, future and life,
for a fleeting moment of unhealthy pleasure.
This isn't happiness, true happiness.
It lies in untroubled eyes,
in a steadfast promise,
in marriage,
for better and for worse,
while peeling bells
seem to be already calling out
the laughter of tomorrow's children.
This is happiness.
It's simple,
so easy to grasp,
and so great,
so great,
that it can fill your whole life.
THE END
Subtitles: Thibault Riegert & Élisabeth Fuchs