Main Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Ettore Manni, Umberto Orsini, Keith Skinner, Jeanne Beretta, Mony Rey
Release Year: 1966
Country: UK/FR
Run Time: 100 minutes
Plot
In 1951, French writer Jean Genet presented a screenplay called "Les Rêves Interdits/L'Autre Versant du Rêve" to actress Anouk Aimée as a wedding gift. He then proceeded to sell the rights three times without telling her. Eventually the script was reworked by Marguerite Duras and filmed by British director Tony Richardson as Mademoiselle, with Jeanne Moreau in the title role. In its final form, Mademoiselle tells the story of a repressed schoolteacher who visits a veritable plague of deliberate "accidents" on the people of her rural French village. She sets fires, poisons animals, and causes floods -- all in a fit of thwarted passion for an immigrant woodcutter. Though Marlon Brando was originally set to play the role of the Italian craftsman, the part went to Ettore Manni when the production schedule shifted. Umberto Orsini plays Antonio, the woodcutter's forlorn son, whom Mademoiselle maliciously humiliates out of perverse desire for his father. A notoriously difficult shoot, Mademoiselle was filmed consecutively with The Sailor From Gibraltar, another collaboration between Richardson, Moreau, and Duras. As for Genet, he despised the casting of Moreau; nevertheless, she would go on to star in Querelle, another adaptation of the author's work. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Review
Although it was booed at its premiere at Cannes and it distorts the vision of the Jean Genet script on which it was based, this savage melodrama is good fun in its over-the-top, blackly humorous way. With her big eyes and buttoned-down façade, aging beauty Jeanne Moreau proves delightfully monstrous as the titular schoolmarm stirred by secret passions. One moment besotted by an itinerant peasant, the next cruelly torturing his coarse, motherless son, Moreau is the absolute picture of frustrated obsession. The mad delight with which Mademoiselle tears around her rural French village secretly fomenting "natural" disasters brings to mind the sadomasochistic camp of Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Strapping hunk Ettore Manni, meanwhile, oozes vitality and humanity as the unsuspecting object of Mademoiselle's sick fascination. The love scene between Manni and Moreau -- played out against a vast countryside backdrop during a violent storm -- is as expressionistic as any silent German classic. Indeed, cinematographer Philippe Brun's fixed-frame camera and director Tony Richardson's avoidance of incidental music lend the picture an eerie hyper-naturalism. Unfortunately, the fateful denouement, visible from the first act, feels rote when it finally arrives. In between, though, Mademoiselle takes several surprising turns. Even at its most schematic, when it merely moves from one vicious stunt to the next, the film exudes a shrill vigor that must have somehow wafted right past those stuffed shirts at Cannes in 1966. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
In a French village, Manou is an Italian logger, virile, with a broad laugh. He can't say no to women's sexual invitations, and jealous villagers blame him for recent fires and a flood. He is innocent; the culprit is "Mademoiselle," town schoolmarm, a recent arrival admired by all, but sexually repressed and obsessed with Manou. She sets the first fire accidentally and throbs watching a shirtless Manou perform heroics. Subsequent catastrophes are no accident and express her mad passion for him. Also, after befriending Manou's son, she turns on the lad, making him miserable and raising his suspicions. Her designs, Manou's frank innocence, and the town's xenophobia mix explosively.
Overview
As the film begins, Mademoiselle is shown opening floodgates to inundate the village, so there's never a moment in the film that the audience, like the villagers, believe she's a normal upstanding citizen. But understanding her motivation is impossible though the structure of the film; she has no cause for revenge, no personal material gain, no increased standing in the community from her furtive crimes.
At first her evil acts, which lead to deaths, seem catastrophically unfair to the afflicted villagers. She's seen as a beautiful woman but by her deeds render her a Fury or hag out of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane or some similar psychological horror tale.
Cinematography
The noir widescreen black & white photography, & a good deal of night or storm scenes, underscores a mood of evil. And as the village becomes corrupted by their own terror & close in on their own evil act of mistaken vengeance, it begins increasingly to seem like Mademoiselle is an actual embodiment of demonic passions sent by greater powers to visit the punishments of Job on an unsuspecting village. A test they thoroughly fail to pass.
Script
Having a script written by Marguerite Duras based on a story by Jean Genet, Mademoiselle could pass as an art film, a sexual thriller, or subtle horror; it is seen by many critics as a work of art.
Othello (1955) •It Should Happen to a Dog (1955) •"BBC Sunday Night Theatre" (1955) •"ITV Play of the Week" (1956) •"The Sunday-Night Play" (1960) •A Death in Canaan (1978) •The Penalty Phase (1986) •Beryl Markham: A Shadow on the Sun (1988) •Women and Men: Stories of Seduction (1990) (with Frederic Raphael and Ken Russell) •The Phantom of the Opera (1990)
