Mark S.’s surmise — that the 10th book in the series was chosen as the primary source for the film because it was logistically the simplest — is insightful. The only problem is that, as everybody who has read the series knows, the Yanks were the villain of that piece. But viewed in the context of the entire series, turning them into Frenchmen in the film makes sense. O’Brian was clearly very favourably disposed to the Americans. Yet because he began the series rather late in the Napoleonic era (as he later had cause to regret), he couldn’t continue it for very long without running into the War of 1812. The Americans are the enemy in a few books, but the primary enemy of the series is, of course, the French.

O’Brian portrays the British sea-officers as fighting their transatlantic ‘cousins’ only with great regret. Bt the books are francophobe (or at least, phobic of a certain type of franc) to their core. Jack Aubrey is firmly if mildly xenophobic, but seems to have trouble viewing Americans as quite properly foreign; while Stephen Maturin is forever brooding about ‘that Buonaparte’ and doing all in his power to contribute to his downfall.

I would say Tobias that the final bill on this has yet to be settled.

If you go back to the twenties, and the role of the Banque de France in making life difficult for the British and the gold standard, surely you could argue there was an economic cost in terms of an exaccerbated European depression.

In the 1980′s you get the same picture with the undermining of the gold backing for the dollar, which lead to the Louvre and Plaza accords which are in part responsible for the mess we are about to have today.

Then we have the vanity of vanities the euro. Somehow they managed to convince Kohl (elf???) against the better judgement of a lot of good German economists. The only raison d’etre seems to have been to try and undermine the dollar hegemony, and now we get to pay the price. And oh, what a price it may turn out to be!

So yes: we Europeans pay a high price, too, for this Bonfire of the Vanities, and it isn’t only a cinematographic one.

There is one superb scene (and of course you need to have followed the Cahiers debates over the years to appreciate what a master B is in the film) where the principal French character explains to the American (who is enamoured with the genius of Buster Keaton) just how much more of a genius (he imagines) Chaplin was. Here we have it. The ultimate arrogance: the French intellectual, explaining to the US one the significance of American cinema. Of course he may have got it wrong, and this is the point, since at the end of the film B – apart from thumbing his nose at everyone, with a Je ne regret pas rien – sides with american pragmatism against the allure of European intellectualism.

Brilliant: this is why we need art. To say the things which otherwise remain unsaid.

And this is also why Hollywood doesn’t interest me at all: it simply states the obvious. (of course I leave out things like Eastwood’s mystic river, which again is clearly in another class).

BTW two things which perhaps need to be taken into account in moving from a beta to an alpha version of the theory you present.

1/ The changed portrayal of the Irish in US cinema (mystic river is a good case in point). Clannish and gangster like. Maybe you could argue that post 09/11 terrorism in general has been re-evaluated (since of course the IRA was never treated in the way Al Quaeda currently is) and the Irish have consequently also come under the big hammer.

2/. That the scenes you describe are nothing new in US cinema. Back in the days of the Good Soldier Ryan Cahiers was complaining bitterly about the image of the helpless French family stuck in a ruin awaiting rescue from the brave American GI’s.

Plus ca change.

But looking at the Hollywood/Paris/France relationship, it has a longstanding tradition of attraction-repulsion, one of mystical opposites drawn towards each other. It?s very cinematographic.

And it’s all in Douglas Coupland’s Shampoo planet: American “male” honesty being betrayed and drawn onward to doom by French “female” seductive sophistication that even, every time, gets away with it. This is, in the end, very Faustian for the poor Americans, for whom the very idea of France seems to be one of the eternally female that draws poor males onward into doom.

But ?France? (to be slightly generalising) isn?t really that feminine, as anyone who ever lived there will readily testify. It?s fare more machist, and clearly far more elitist (and far more American) than the image mostly conveyed by American cinematographic projections of their own perceived lack of cultural sophistication and beautiful cities.

But there?s more. Being French means to this day to be pretending to be entirely self-referential, resisting assimilation or even recognition of the US as current civilatory centre to be measured against, unlike like the Brits, or the vast majority of post 1945 Germans. Asterix might have been a Gaul, but he?s certainly French. And it?s this resistance that is the most annoying and at the same time the most attractive for ?Americans? (again slightly generalising).

Moreover, for Hollywood, the exemplification of French resistance through a ?continental barrier? of quotas on Hollywood content even adds a true price tag.

But the French (and we Europeans) pay a high price, too, for this game of play pretend ? last Monday I talked to a film student at the national Grande Ecole for motion pictures, ?femis?, in Paris who complained about the lack of a healthy commercial motivation of French and European film students. Here it?s all about ?art?, she said. And she?s right. And that?s because in the eurosnobbish students? eyes, ?commercial? screams ?American?. They?re not exactly as self referential as they claim to be?

Since they weren’t going to make the antagonist an American ship, what other choice did they have? I think this is at best a modest moment in anti-French-ness, far less anti-French than, for example, the appalling French Kiss with that renowned acteur francais Kevin Kline.

As for Catch Me If You Can,, it’s based on a true story and, if the hero’s mother is French, that makes the hero half-French…