Les Condamnés (1948)
Directed by Georges Lacombe

Film Review

Georges Lacombe was never going to make it into the first rank of France's film directors but in the course of his prolific career he did deliver a number of films that have stood the test of time and compare well with the work of his more illustrious peers.   One of these is assuredly his brooding melodrama Les Condamnés (1948), one in a series of films that Lacombe made in the 1940s and 50s that are distinguished by their exceptionally bleak tone and generally pessimistic take on human nature.  The experience of the Occupation clearly left its mark on the director and nowhere is this more evident than in this twisted tale of marital infidelity and revenge, one of the very best films to which Lacombe put his name.  The film's montage sequences depicting gossiping women casting judgement on a supposedly 'fallen' woman carries an unpleasant echo of the épuration légale in the wake of the Liberation, a time when accusations flew thick and fast amidst a frantic Collaborationist purge.

Immediately before making this film, Georges Lacombe had directed Martin Roumagnac, Jean Gabin's first film in France after his aborted bid to break into Hollywood in the mid-1940s.  Lacombe's attempt to rehabilitate Gabin was a notable failure and it's an odd conicidence that his next film would feature another star actor with whom the French cinema-going public had fallen out of love with, Pierre Fresnay.  Arrested and branded a collaborator after the Liberation on account of his association with the German-run company Continental, Fresnay was persona non grata for a while but he redeemed himself through an astonishing performance in Maurice Cloche's Monsieur Vincent (1947), the film he made immediately before Les Condamnés.

Here Fresnay stars alongside his real-life partner Yvonne Printemps, with whom he appeared in several films, including the one he himself directed, Le Duel (1939), and Marcel Achard's musical biopic La Valse de Paris (1950).  Completing a deadly love triangle is an impeccable Roger Pigaut, with comic relief provided by Marguerite Pierry, hovering in the background as a potty aunt with an exceedingly nasty streak of malice.  Lacombe was not the most technically accomplished of filmmakers but he knew how to get the best out of his actors.  One fair criticism which can be levelled at Les Condamnés is that it resembles too much a conventional stage play, but since the performances are so compelling and so authentic this hardly matters.  Fresnay was at his absolute best around this period and his performance in Lacombe's darkest film is a master-class in understatement and ambiguity, one that keeps us guessing right until the end of the final reel.

Film Synopsis

Dr Jean Severac and his wife Hélène are celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary. Outwardly, they appear to be a perfectly happy married couple, but in reality Hélène has a lover, the younger Dr Bernard Aubertin. Severac pretends to know nothing about the affair, although he has been receiving anonymous letters informing him of his wife's infidelity. One night, Hélène asks Bernard to elope with her. At first, Bernard hesitates because of his career but, to avoid a scandal, he agrees. The next morning, Bernard is elected to the post of manager at Severac's clinic. The promotion is more than Bernard could have hoped for and now he knows he cannot run off with Hélène.  But when Severac falls ill a short while later Bernard becomes convinced that he is being poisoned by his wife...