Les Orgueilleux (1953)
Directed by Yves Allégret, Rafael E. Portas

Film Review

Les Orgueilleux was an ambitious attempt to break with the conventional romantic drama which dominated French cinema in the early 1950s.  Filmed mainly on location in Mexico and with some graphic depictions of human suffering, it has an hard-edged authenticity which the Paris-bound studio dramas of the period lacked.   Some of the images in the film still retain their power to shock, particularly the seemingly interminable shot where Michèle Morgan is injected with a syringe needle.

The only thing that mars the film is the traditional, overly cautious direction, which gives the film a dated feel and partly undermines the wonderfully heavy doom-laden atmosphere.  If only its director Yves Allégret had been a little more daring and gone more in the direction of all-out neo-realism this would have been an unequivocal masterpiece.  In spite of that, it remains an impressive work, which makes a perceptive and uncompromising assessment of human nature.

Sublime performances from Michèle Morgan and Gérard Philipe makes this a compelling and poignant film.  Morgan is particularly impressive, playing (against type) a slightly amoral character who has great difficulty showing her emotions.  She conveys the unspeakable hell of her character's predicament with great force and subtlety, bringing a much needed humanity to what is pretty grim drama.

Film Synopsis

In a remote Mexican town, a coach deposits two strangers, an attractive young French woman Nelly and her visibly sick husband Tom.  In a desperate state, Nelly seeks the help of the local doctor but she is far from encouraged by his diagnosis: Tom has contracted a deadly strain of meningitis that is spreading through the region like wildfire.  After her husband has breathed his last gasp Nelly finds herself alone in a strange town, without money and no way of getting back home.  Far from being distressed by her present situation, she finds herself irresistibly drawn to an unkempt Frenchman named Georges who drowns his sorrows in alcohol, having failed to come to terms with the loss of his own spouse.  Georges has no interest in Nelly and urges her to leave the town before she goes down with meningitis.  But Nelly cannot bring herself to leave the broken, solitary man and through her influence he manages to put aside his grief and help to defeat the epidemic that is ravaging the area...