Maria Chapdelaine (1934)
Directed by Julien Duvivier

Film Review

Louis Hémon's popular 1914 novel Maria Chapdelaine was the perfect subject for Julien Duvivier's concept of poetic realism, a quintessentially French film aesthetic (similar to film noir) that would shape most of the director's films in the latter half of the 1930s.  Duvivier was not the only exponent of poetic realism - Jean Grémillon and Marcel Carné both contributed some superb films in this style - but he was the first director to have success with it.  A captivating tragic romance, his Maria Chapdelaine was not only a commercial success it was also highly regarded by the critics, on both sides of the Atlantic, and it won the Grand Prix du Cinéma Français in 1935.

The film's main claim to fame is that it completely transformed the screen persona of its star, Jean Gabin.  Prior to this, Gabin had been a cheerful comedy performer, consigned to crowd-pleasing comedies in which he often exercised his talents as a singer.  Maria Chapdelaine revealed to the world a very different kind of Gabin - a brooding romantic working class hero - a man who was prone to moods of passion, physically powerful and yet emotionally fragile.  Over the next few years, Duvivier would give Gabin some of his best screen roles - in La Bandera (1935), La Belle équipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937) - which established him as an icon of French cinema.  After the war, it was Duvivier who helped to give Gabin a new, tougher, more cynical persona in their seventh and final collaboration, Voici le temps des assassins (1956).

So that his film would be as truthful to Hémon's novel as possible, Duvivier decided that at least part of it would have to be shot on location in Canada - an incredibly ambitious undertaking for a French film of this era.  The extreme weather conditions encountered by the film crew made for a difficult and demanding shoot but the effort was worth it.  (One scene in which a horse struggles frantically to fight its way out of a snowdrift hints at the ordeal faced by Duvivier and his team.)   The location photography gives the film an epic grandeur and poetry it could not have had if it had been made entirely in France.  The scenes around Lake Mistassini are particularly stunning, some of the most eye-catching that Duvivier ever shot.  Not only does the film capture the astonishing beauty of its setting but it also delivers the most authentic portrait of Canadian life in the 1930s.  At times, Maria Chapdelaine feels more like a documentary than a piece of drama.

Regrettably, budgetary and practical constraints prevented Duvivier from shooting the entire film on location.  The greater part of the film was recorded in the studio, which is okay for the interior scenes, but not so okay for the exteriors.  Rear projection was often used as a cheap alternative to location filming but, in the 1930s, the technology was not sufficiently advanced to achieve a convincing result.  Even with simple static shots, you can tell straight away that it's just a group of actors standing in front of a projection screen.  For the more ambitious shots, such as the one in which Gabin gets caught in a violent snowstorm, the result is laughably bad and any dramatic impact is totally lost.  In the 1930s, audiences would have accepted all this as part of the cinematic convention of the time.  Today, such sequences jar horribly and merely succeed in shattering the film's credibility.

In between such bursts of cinematic naivety, Duvivier frequently takes us by surprise with the maturity and sheer artistry of his mise-en-scène.  With the support of a fine cast that includes such superlative performers as Madeleine Renaud and Jean-Pierre Aumont, Duvivier draws us into an isolated community in which every character is well-drawn and convincingly portrayed.  Maria's exquisite torment as she awaits the return of her lover is palpably rendered and enhanced by some imaginative use of montage, with images of springtime suggesting her future happiness with François.  As she lies dying in her bed, Maria's mother sees the world around her as a kaleidoscope with swirling ghost-like images haunting her last moments of life.  It is easy to see why, in its time, Maria Chapdelaine was hailed as a masterpiece.  Although it is now massively overshadowed by Duvivier's subsequent great films, which are far less marred by technical limitations, it remains a powerfully moving piece of cinema, undeniably the best adaptation so far of Louis Hémon's remarkable novel.

Film Synopsis

Maria Chapdelaine lives with her parents and siblings in a remote corner of Quebec.   The nearest town is Peribonka, where, one fine spring day, Maria meets François Paradis, an introverted but likeable hunter.  The two young people are instantly drawn to one another but Maria is courted by two other men: Eutrope Gagnon, a rough lumberjack, and Lorenzo Surprenant, a well-mannered businessman and town dweller.  Of the three men, it is François that Maria chooses to be her husband, but before they can marry François insists that he must leave the region to work at a lumber camp for a few months.  The coming winter proves to be more severe than usual.  So fierce is the weather that the Chapdelaine family cannot make it to midnight mass.  During the long cold nights Maria prays that her beloved will soon return to her.  François seems to hear her prayer and sets out on the hazardous trek across country in a desperate attempt to reach her...