La Fille au fouet (1952)
Directed by Jean Dréville

Film Review

Jean Dréville was a film director who often used striking natural locations to give a sense of scale and drama to his films, as well as to define the tone and reflect the personality of the protagonists.  This is certainly noticeable in his rural melodrama Les Roquevillard (1943) and the spectacular cross-mountain wartime exploit La Bataille de l'eau lourde (1948), but La Fille au fouet, one of his lesser known films, also shares this characteristic.  In this visually compelling adaptation of a novel by the famous Swiss author Ernst Zahn, the stunning mountain landscape on the Swiss-Italian border reflects the wild and pure nature of its androgynous protagonist, admirably played by Véronique Deschamps in what is probably the best role of her career.  En passant, it is worth mentioning that Jean Dréville also made a German language version of the same film, titled Das Geheimnis vom Bergsee (1952), with a different cast.

La Fille au fouet's main achievement is the captivating beauty of its photography - particularly the location exteriors, from which the film derives most of its raw and intense poetry.  Here Dréville was well-served by the great cinematographer Marc Fossard, who performed miracles on many a French film, including Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko (1937).  The stark lyricism of the visuals is sustained throughout the length of the film and helps to mask the many deficiencies of a far from perfect screenplay.  It is to be regretted that the characters are poorly developed, most looking like vague archetypes, and that the uglier facets of melodrama are glimpsed so frequently.  The dramatic denouement which sees Deschamps selflessly battling the elements to save her community is preposterously melodramatic and feels painfully like a hangover from the silent era - indeed, you can't help wondering if the film would have had much greater impact if it had been a silent film.

Michel Simon, Gaby Morlay and Colette Darfeuil were the three big hitters intended to draw the crowds, although Simon is completely wasted in a thankless role and Morlay has nothing more to do than play the 'soap queen' yet again.  Rent-a-vamp Darfeuil at least makes something of her caricatured 'bad girl' role, the scene in which she is whipped by Deschamps being the one Sadean episode the film admits (a disappointment no doubt for those expecting something more from a film titled Girl With the Whip).  Michel Barbey was clearly cast more for his rugged good looks than his acting ability, but he more than serves the role required of him, which is to make Deschamps appear butch, heroic and resourceful.  Some tasteful eroticism (justified by the need to prove that Deschamps is indeed of the female gender) confers a welcome touch of modernity on the film, making up for the creaking storyline and some ghastly attempts at tear-jerking.

Film Synopsis

Pietro Pons lives a happy life in the mountains on the Swiss-Italian border with his mother Lamberta.  No one but his mother knows that Pietro is a girl, a deception that Lamberta was forced into by a series of tragedies almost twenty years previously.  Not long after her husband Joseph Pons died, Lamberta also lost her fragile infant son, Pietro.  Whilst mourning this double loss, she began an affair with Bolzano, a notorious smuggler.  After Bolzano was killed by the customs men, Lamberta gave birth to his child, a little girl that she decided to pass off as her son Pietro, in the hope of securing an inheritance from her husband's wealthy parents.  Now that Pietro is fast coming of age, his tutor and grandmother are adamant that he should be sent to a religious school.  Pietro escapes from the school and joins a gang of smugglers.  As the customs men pursue the gang across the mountains, a young man named Calixe comes to Pietro's rescue.  Pietro in turn saves Calixes's life when his jealous girlfriend Lauretta shoots him in the back.  When a violent rainstorm breaks, a far greater threat imperils the whole region, and it is left to Pietro to save the day...