La Châtelaine du Liban (1956)
Directed by Richard Pottier

Film Review

In the twilight of his fairly mixed and mostly undistinguished filmmaking career, Richard Pottier routinely trotted out bland crowdpleasers without any detectable sign of skill or enthusiasm, and it's incredible he was still making films as late as the mid-1960s given that his best years were in the mid-1940s and he scarcely made a film worth watching after his 1950 Fernandel offering Meurtres (1950).  Pottier was still able to attract an audience in the early to mid 1950s, however, which is presumably why some unsuspecting producers allowed him to helm La Châtelaine du Liban, an expensive Franco-Italian production adapted from the 1924 novel of the same title by Pierre Benoit.  They should have known better.  This is a film that has 'monumental flop' written all over it - in bright red capitals.

Pottier was never the most inspired or imaginative of filmmakers but here he excels himself and turns in almost two hours of mind numbing tedium that is an endurance test to sit through without falling asleep.  Despite its charismatic leads - a young Omar Sharif and future Eurovision winner Jean-Claude Pascal - the film is almost completely bereft of life and drags itself along more slowly than a one-legged hundred-year-old tortoise with severe asthma.  The film was photographed in colour but manages to be more drab and colourless than any other film that Pottier made - in fact it is probably the most unbearably stilted and uninteresting French film of the decade.   La Châtelaine du Liban has absolutely no redeeming features - it merely shows the depths of mediocrity that its director was capable of descending to, although you only have to watch his subsequent films Le Chanteur de Mexico and Sérénade au Texas - which are marginally less painful to watch - to see the truth of this.

Film Synopsis

In Lebanon, Hennequin, the managing director of a French petroleum company, has just acquired the mining concessions in a remote region of the country from the Countess Athelstane Orloff.  Without delay, he sends two of his engineers, Jean Domèvre and Mokhrir, to undertake a survey of the region, but the exploration proves to be fruitless.  Then, by chance, Mokhrir discovers some uranium deposits, but before Jean can pinpoint their location Mokhrir suddenly goes missing.  Fearing that his colleague may have been abducted, Jean calls on the Countess Orloff to enlist her help in finding Mokhrir, but arrives just as she is negotiating a deal with a rival of Hennequin, an Englishman named Hobson.  Appearing to succumb to Jean's charms, the Countess sets out with him to look for the missing engineer...