Variations of an archetypal scene: the Paris Métro confrontation in Michael Haneke’s Code Unknown

Michael Haneke’s film Code Unknown (2000) depicts an interracial confrontation on the Paris Métro, which the critical literature has tended to discuss as a comment on European multiculturalism. In this essay, I argue that this scene must also be understood as a variation of a string of similar interracial subway scenes that emerged in the New Hollywood-era of American cinema in the late 1960s and 1970s. Reflecting interconnected changes in the American city and film industry, this subterranean scene constitutes a key example of a new form of graphically violent urban cinema. As an ardent critic of American entertainment violence, Haneke’s appropriation of this particular scene provides a useful example to evaluate his counter aesthetic in ways that bridge thematic and auteurist approaches, and which takes into account the crucial role of the spectator.