Main Cast: Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Robinson, Sylvia Marriott, Reuben Dorey, Joseph Blatchley
Release Year: 1975
Country: FR
Run Time: 95 minutes
Plot
Based on the real-life diaries of Adèle Hugo, The Story of Adele H. is a psychological drama opening in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the 1860s. The daughter of famous French writer Victor Hugo, Adèle (Isabelle Adjani) has left her father's home to seek out her fiancé, the English soldier Lt. Albert Pinson (Bruce Robinson). She conceals her identity and rents a room in a boarding house from Mrs. Saunders (Sylvia Marriott). Pinson wants nothing to do with her, but she still obsessively follows him and spies on his affairs. Spending her time writing madly in journals and letters, she eventually meets the bookseller (Joseph Blatchley), who develops an interest in her. Her madness grows when Mrs. Saunders discovers her true identity, and even more so when the bookseller gives her a copy of her father's latest work, Les Miserables. When Pinson is transferred to Barbados, Adèle follows him again and sinks into insanity, living on the street. With the help of a local woman, Madame Baa (Madame Louise), Adèle returns home to her father and spends the rest of her days writing in her diary in Paris. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
Review
Isabelle Adjani attained stardom in her first major role as the eponymous daughter of Victor Hugo in Truffaut's somber study of romantic obsession, a subject he explored obsessively in films such as Les Deux Anglaises de la Continent (1971), La Chambre Vert (1978), La Sirene du Mississippi (1969), and others. Based on a coded diary discovered in 1960, the film follows the young woman's pursuit of a British lieutenant Bruce Robinson, with whom she's become infatuated with on the island of Nova Scotia. Despite his unambiguous lack of interest, she at one point writes to her father to announce their forthcoming wedding, her mind gently parting from its moorings. As she becomes increasingly desperate to win the indifferent soldier, Adele offers money and sex, along with a promise to obey him slavishly, even buying him a prostitute, while continuing to degrade herself even further. After he's driven her away, she becomes a voyeur of his assignations with other women, descending slowly into madness. Like La Chambre Verte and Les Deux Anglaises, the film links the creation of art with powerfully repressed emotion, as the young woman fills reams of paper with her occasionally lucid, more often deranged stream-of-consciousness. Like Vertigo (1958), it evokes the overwhelmingly impersonal force of erotic attraction, as it transforms the object of desire into a fetish. Shooting in the style of a sober documentary with a desaturated palette, Truffaut modulates the growth of his heroine's obsession so carefully and with such sympathy, that, up to a point, her experience is easily recognizable, and even in the depths of madness, completely engrossing. Adjani is sublime as the tormented young woman, possibly the most unforgettable embodiment of tragic beauty on film. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
Carl Hathwell - Lt. Pinson's Batman; Louise Bourdet - Victor Hugo's servant; Geoffrey Crook - George; Cecil de Saumarez - M. Lenoir; Chantal Durpoix - Young whore; Raymone Falla - Judge Johnstone; David Foote - Young Boy; Jacques Fréjabue - Cabinetmaker; Clive Gillingham - Keaton; Ivry Gitlis - Hypnotist; Edward Jackson - O'Brien; Jean-Pierre Leursse - Black penpusher; Madame Louise - Mme. Baa; Aurelia Mansion - Widow with Dogs; Roger Martin - Dr. Murdock; M. White - Col. White; Mr. White - Colonel; Thi Loan Nguyen - Chinese; François Truffaut - Officer On Ramparts; Ralph Williams - Canadian
Credit
Jean-Pierre Kohut-Svelko - Art Director, Jacqueline Guot - Costume Designer, Suzanne Schiffman - First Assistant Director, François Truffaut - Director, Yan Dedet - Editor, Patrice Mestral - Musical Direction/Supervision, Thi Loan N'Guyen - Makeup, Néstor Almendros - Cinematographer, Marcel Berbert - Producer, Claude Miller - Producer, Jean-Pierre Ruh - Sound/Sound Designer, Michel Laurent - Sound/Sound Designer, Jean Gruault - Screenwriter, Suzanne Schiffman - Screenwriter, François Truffaut - Screenwriter, Jan Dawson - Screenwriter, Maurice Jaubert - Featured Music, Frances V. Guille - Book Author
The Story of Adele H. (also L'Histoire d'Adèle H.) is a 1975 film in French and English which tells the story of the real-life Adèle Hugo, the daughter of writer Victor Hugo, whose obsessive unrequited love for a naval officer led to her downfall. The film is based on her diaries. It stars Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Robinson and Sylvia Marriott.
The film tells the story of beautiful Adèle Hugo, the second daughter of Victor Hugo, who is devastated by the accidental death of her elder sister Léopoldine Hugo. Hugo is living in exile on the island of Guernsey where Adèle meets and is seized by an obsessive and unrequited love for a British officer, Lieutenant Pinson (Robinson). She follows him to Halifax, Nova Scotia, under the assumed name of Miss Lewly. While in Halifax, he rejects her, but she communicates to her parents, via letter, that she has married him. Her father urges her to return home, but she destroys Pinson's hope of happiness by claiming to his actual fiancee's father, a judge, that Pinson is married to her. She follows him to Barbados, West Indies, when he is posted and assumes the name of Mrs. Pinson, her clothes now torn. By the time he catches up with Adèle, she does not acknowledge or recognize him. Returned to Paris, the Third Republic now established, she is placed in an asylum by her father. She dies in Paris in 1915, in her 85th year.
Director's comments
About the film, Truffaut wrote:
"In writing the script of L'Enfant sauvage based on the memoirs of Dr Jean Itard, we discovered, Jean Gruault and myself, the enormous pleasure of writing historical fiction based on real events, without inventing anything and without altering documented facts. If it is difficult to construct an unanimistic intrigue involving a dozen characters whose paths entwine, it is almost as difficult to write an animistic film focusing on a single person. I believe that it was this solitary aspect which attracted me most to this project; having produced love stories involving two and three people, I wanted to attempt to create a passionate experience involving a character where the passion was one-way only."[citation needed]
Film locations
Many of the exterior scenes were shot on location in St Peter Port, Guernsey, and many of the film extras were well-known locals. Both Sir Raymond Falla and Sir Cecil de Sausmarez were, at the time, prominent island politicians. Scenes set in Halifax were mainly interiors created in a house in Guernsey and the external scenes were also shot in Guernsey. They were not filmed in Halifax.
