Maria Chapdelaine (1950)
Directed by Marc Allégret

Film Review

Not content with the plot of the novel by Louis Hémon, Marc Allégret and his co-screenwriter Roger Vadim had a go at sexing it up, introducing plot and character contrivances that pretty well destroyed the integrity of the original story and turned it into the most ludicrous of melodramas.  With Vadim shoving his oar in with his customary ineptitude, wrecking just about everything in sight, the resulting film could only be a pale shadow of an earlier screen adaptation by Julien Duvivier, made in 1934, but Allégret had to go the extra mile and make casting decisions that would well and truly sink the film. By this time, Allégret was well past his best but even his most vehement detractors must have been taken by surprise at how badly his version of Maria Chapdelaine turned out, despite its ample budget and the presence of one of cinema's great icons, Michèle Morgan, in the lead role.

The film begins well enough, making the most of its stunning location with some picturesque vistas supplied by accomplished cinematographer Armand Thirard.  Pretty though the film's opening third is, the dearth of substance soon becomes apparent when Miss Morgan's row of suitors present themselves and enter into some kind of bizarre private competition to convince us who is the most ill-cast of the three.  Kieron Moore and Jack Watling are at an immediate disadvantage, both being so badly dubbed that you can hardly help laughing every time they open their mouths, but it isn't long before Philippe Lemaire convinces us that he is the most badly chosen of the three, by showing no acting ability whatsoever.  No wonder Morgan looks so desperately wretched throughout the entire film - having to choose a mate amongst these three would have driven a lesser woman to suicide.

Having somehow managed the seemingly impossible task of dragging its way across the dreariest of territory and reached the one hour mark, showing as much character depth and genuine human feeling as a Soviet propaganda film (but with far less entertainment value) the film finally goes to pieces in its final third, losing whatever vestige of credibility is left to it by plot developments that are so beyond logic you wonder what drugs Allégret and Vadim were on when they knocked out the script. By this time, you have given up asking why the characters behave as they do as they clearly have less sense than a packet of potato crisps, so it hardly matters that they keep making random decisions that put all their lives in jeopardy for no good reason.

As the story collapses into a pile of total gibberish you are left as confused and fatigued as the heroine.  Whilst manifestly too old for the part she plays, Michèle Morgan does everything she can to salvage this wreck of a film but in the end even she is overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the undertaking.  The combined onslaught of Roger Vadim and Philippe Lemaire is enough to make anyone give up the will to live.  Just what possessed an actress of the calibre of Françoise Rosay to appear in the film, in what is little more than a minor supporting role in which all she is required to do is die gracefully, is anyone's guess.  The curse of Vadim strikes again.

Film Synopsis

After completing her education in a convent, Maria Chapdelaine returns to the family farm in Quebec and is happy to be reunited with her childhood sweetheart Robert Gagnon.  Two other men lay claim to Maria's affections - city boy Lorenzo Surprenant and trapper François Paradis - and the young woman soon finds herself torn between her three attractive suitors.  It is the brave François that Maria prefers, but whilst he is away from the area working at a lumber camp, Robert and Lorenzo reveal their feelings for her.  Realising that it is François she loves, Robert writes to him urging him to return for Christmas.  Caught in a blizzard, François loses his way and dies.  Meanwhile, Lorenzo has got himself mixed up in a bank robbery but decides to return to Maria, knowing that he risks getting captured by the police.  Maria's dilemma is conveniently resolved when only one of her suitors is left standing...