Le Secret du Chevalier d'Éon (1959)
Directed by Jacqueline Audry

Film Review

It seems fitting that a film recounting the exploits of the gender-ambiguous Chevalier d'Éon should have been directed by Jacqueline Audry, one of the few women film directors working in what was overwhelming a male-dominated industry in the late 1950s.  Audry preceded the French New Wave by a full decade and, through sheer determination, she managed to make a name for herself with a series of films with an obvious feminist slant.  After two daring adaptations of novels by Colette - Gigi (1949) and Minne, l'ingénue libertine (1950) - she courted controversy with Olivia (1950), one of cinema's first flirtations with lesbianism.  Le Secret du chevalier d'Éon is an atypical genre for Audry - a lavish period swashbuckler of the kind that was hugely popular in France in the late 50s, early 60s - but the adventures of its cross-dressing hero/heroine presumably appealed to Audry's feminist instincts, providing ample scope for re-examining gender roles and challenging the assumption that a woman's place is in the home.  Alas, the film doesn't quite live up to its promise...

Audry's Chevalier d'Éon is certainly a force to be reckoned with, as skilful with her sword as any male and every bit as courageous.  The only thing that gives her away are her impeccable manners.  Gutsily played by an androgynous Andrée Debar (in her last film appearance before she gave up acting to become a film producer), it is easy to lose sight of Éon's sex - she is slightly more convincing (and more attractive) when dressed as a man than when she is arrayed in female garb.  And there's more than a whiff of homoerotica when this cross-dressing enigma becomes amorously entangled with members of both sexes, who may or may not have been taken in by her disguise.  Deducing the sexual orientation of the protagonists is just one of the accidental delights offered by the film.

You can imagine how the film might have turned out if Billy Wilder had had a hand in the screenwriting - a full-on gender-bending farce that would have made Some Like It Hot look like a Sunday school play.   As it is, the story (a lumbering affair that struggles to keep going) was provided by Cecil Saint-Laurent (of Caroline Chérie fame) and scripted by a team of writers who were clearly taking their job far too seriously.  What should have been a deliciously tongue-in-cheek pro-feminist comedy ended up as a pretty drab mix of swashbuckler and political intrigue - poorly paced, humourless and generally lacking on the characterisation front.   With a less distinguished cast the film would have been unbearably pedestrian, in spite of its impressive production values (the widescreen colour cinematography is of a high calibre and brings out the full opulence of Alexandre Trauner's wonderful sets).

Critics of the film are quick to point out its glaring historical inaccuracies (the Chevalier d'Éon was not, as the film implies, a woman striking a blow for feminism in 18th century France, but a man who just happened to like dressing up in women's clothes), but since when has French historical fiction been a respecter of fact?  (Alexandre Dumas just made it up as he went along...)  The film's real failing is not that its story is total hogwash but that it wastes a golden opportunity to confront the sexual prejudices of its time.  How dismal that the film has to end with that most tedious of clichés, with the heroine falling happily into the arms of her handsome beau, who will doubtless whisk her down the aisle and condemn her to a life of sweet domestic drudgery.  One would have expected better of Jacqueline Audry than this lame concession to mainstream convention.

Film Synopsis

To ensure he inherits his uncle's fortune, Pascal d'Éon, an impoverished nobleman, has no choice but to pass off his newborn daughter, Geneviève, as a son.  Twenty years later, Geneviève goes by the name Charles d'Éon, a respected swordsman who proudly serves under Louis XV in the king's dragoons. Through the influence of the Countess de Monval, Geneviève is sent on a special mission, to deliver a letter to the Tsarina Elisabeth that will end Imperial Russia's alliance with Prussia.  Disguised as a woman, Geneviève is assisted in her mission by Bernard de Turquet, an officer in the dragoons whom she is secretly in love with.  Unbeknown to Geneviève, Bernard is also in love with her and knows full well that she is a woman...