The Art-House Film

A cinema manager showed a French film about a bored married woman who leaves her husband for a younger man. The last reel contains an explicit love scene. The manager was charged with possessing and exhibiting an obscene film. A panel of three judges convicted him and fined him $500 on one count and $2,000 on the other, with jail if he did not pay. He says the film is a serious work with social importance, and that obscenity must be judged by national standards, not local taste.