It further didn’t hurt that contemporary reviews discussed the jazz soundtrack. It didn’t hurt that the protagonists were played by heart-throb Gérard Philipe, and the stunning Jeanne Moreau “at her ravaged best” according to ace American film critic Pauline Kael. With scandal-generating themes from a historic novel and publicity generated from a conservative reaction, Les Liaisons Dangereuses went on to break French film box office records. Even the American release was delayed over censorship issues in an unsuccessful curve-ball, Duke Jordan attempted to stop the film because his music was not properly credited. The High Priests of the French literary establishment claimed that the film “desecrated a classic.” Advocat François Mitterrand, who went onto become the president of France, and the Société negotiated a ridiculous compromise: 1959 was added to the French title and 1960 to the American release, thus ending the blasphemy. The September debut screening, only six weeks after Romano brought the soundtracks to France, was delayed for a few hours and the film actually seized as the result of a lawsuit by France’s Société des Gens de Lettres. Initially the French government refused permits for export on the grounds that it portrayed contemporary France in an unfavorable light. Vadim’s film adaptation was equally sensational due to its perceived prurient content.
Yet it was also wildly popular, with twenty re-imprints within the first year. The novel was notorious in its time, the scholarship indicating that it was never displayed openly in the homes of its readers. The movie was an adaption of the four-volume 1782 epistolary novel by soldier and writer Pierre Choderlos de Laclos describing the elaborate social games of two libertines engaging in sexual seductions that purposefully result in the ruination of the reputations of pure, innocent, and virtuous young people, and ultimately the revenge of fate on the protagonists. He also carried a second set of tapes recorded by Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers playing music composed by Duke Jordan. The key man for the soundtrack’s realization, Marcel Romano, made it back to Paris with Monk’s tapes in time for a July 31 editing deadline. There he taped eight compositions for the soundtrack of the Roger Vadim film Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
On the evening of Monday July 27, 1959, Thelonious Sphere Monk took his working quartet (Charlie Rouse, Sam Jones, Art Taylor) and guest saxophonist Barney Wilen into the Nola Penthouse Sound Studios at 111 W.
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