L'Émigrante (1940)
Directed by Léo Joannon

Film Review

If Léo Joannon is remembered today it is most likely on account of his unfortunate association with Laurel and Hardy in their final film Atoll K (1951).  Joannon directed several other comedies, almost all of them better than this dismal L&H swansong, but it was with his dramas that he was most successful, although the vast bulk of his work is (somewhat unjustly) overlooked today.  One film of his that is inexplicably forgotten is L'Émigrante (1940), an absorbing film noir melodrama that strongly evokes the gloom and pessimism of the era in which it was made (it was released in March 1940, just a few months before France capitulated to Nazi Germany).  The film is impressively mounted and is distinguished by strong performance from two immensely talented stars of the French stage, Edwige Feuillère and Jean Chevrier.

L'Émigrante suffers from a somewhat contrived plot (conceived by Yves Allégret and Jean Aurenche) but a strong central performance from Feuillère somehow makes it plausible.  It helps that there are some unexpected twists and turns before we get to the all-too-predictable noir denouement (which is the weakest element of the film).  L'Émigrante owes its relentlessly oppressive mood to the work of cinematographers Henri Alekan and Eugen Schüfftan, whose combined artistry makes this one of Joannon's most compelling and atmospheric films.  For a film that could easily hold its own alongside other memorable American films noirs of this era, it is hard to account for its present obscurity.

Renowned for playing the damned or flagrantly immoral female (Lucrezia Borgia in Abel Gance's Lucrèce Borgia, a lesbian headmistress in Olivia and a mature cradle snatcher in Le Blé en herbe), Edwige Feuillère is well chosen for the part of the seemingly irredeemable heroine Christiane, a conflicted character that gives the actress plenty of scope to demonstrate her tremendous range.  Jean Chevrier is equally well-served by his far from archetypal character, one whose stubborn nobility serves as a benchmark by which we may measure Christiane's moral progression as she realises there is more to life than riches.  Georges Lannes's character, by contrast, proves to be a flagrant noir cliché, the inveterate gangster-type of the kind who usually ends up shooting Humphrey Bogart in the back.  Lannes's Tino may be a well-worn stereotype but he has a powerful physical presence which lingers even when he is off the screen, lending credulity to Christiane's obvious fear of being cornered by him.

The film's other stand-out performance is supplied by Pierre Larquey, a much-loved character actor who seems to be in every French film of this period (one suspects he was the result of a secret government cloning experiment).  Larquey's natural aura of trusting innocence can only make us hate the calculating Feuillère as he falls foul of her selfish machinations, and this is probably why the film's dramatic ending isn't quite as convincing as it should be.  Short of drowning a dozen newborn meerkats and their mother in a bucket of acid, there's not much more that Feuillère could have done to alienate her audience after deceiving Pierre Larquey and then subjecting him to the far from tender mercies of the Portuguese health service.  But, like any capable politician, tax inspector or maths teacher, Feuillère doesn't need to be liked to prove she's the best there is.  Even when we loathe her and can hardly wait to see her get her comeuppance she is still magnificent.

Film Synopsis

Christiane is the owner of a popular night club whose habitués includes Monrozat, a sad wreck of a man who is desperately looking for a woman to accompany him to South America to start a new life.  When Christiane is robbed of her precious diamond necklace by her partner Tino, a notorious trafficker, she denounces him to the police as he attempts to leave the country.  The news of Tino's escape from custody sends Christiane into a wild panic.  Certain that the hoodlum intends to kill her, she agrees to accompany Monrozat as his wife to South America.  Their journey is barely underway before Monrozat falls ill and has to be taken to hospital when their ship docks at Lisbon.  Christiane stays on board, and evades capture by the intervention of a young ship's officer, François Champart.  François is dismissed for disobeying orders and must join the other steerage passengers, who persuade him to settle with them in South America.  When Christiane insists on being given a first class berth, François realises he has been duped by her and will have nothing more to do with her.   When the ship reaches its destination, Christiane finds she has one last chance to redeem herself before her final confrontation with Tino...