Mitsou (1956)
Directed by Jacqueline Audry

Film Review

With Mitsou, director Jacqueline Audry completed a handsome trio of Colette adaptations which tells us everything we could ever want to know about a young woman's sentimental education around the turn of the 20th century.  Audry's version of Colette's 1919 novel Mitsou ou Comment l'esprit vient aux filles is a characteristically light piece of confectionary, sickly sweet but with just a tang of bitterness to it.  Unlike Audry's previous Colette adaptations - Gigi (1949) and Minne, l'ingénue libertine (1950), which were filmed in lush black and white - this one was shot in sumptuous Eastmancolor.  The film's garish colour palette, which was presumably meant to be imitative of the main character's congenital vulgarity, jars somewhat in a few scenes whilst rendering others laughably gauche.  Life on the Front during World War I could not have been portrayed less convincingly if Jacques Demy and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen had both been involved in the design -  suffice it to say that Up the Front (1972) could pass itself off as a serious WWI documentary by comparison.

Realistic reconstructions of historical skirmishes was evidently not a forte of Jacqueline Audry (she confirmed this fact later on in the even more camply garish Le Secret du Chevalier d'Éon), so it's just as well she was so adept in other areas.  Of her achievements, few served her better than her ability to draw out the nuances of Colette's novels and use these to add substance to her intricate explorations of the female psyche, assisted by her husband Pierre Laroche who was also her faithful screenwriter.   Danièle Delorme was the perfect muse for Audry's exploration of early womanhood, having not only the physique and personality of a typical Colette heroine, but also the ability to deliver a multi-layered performance.  It is with skill and integrity that Delorme reveals the confused and contradictory individual that lies beneath her seemingly insouchiant gamine exterior, a solitary child working hard to fashion an adult identity for itself.  As in Audry's two previous Colette adaptations, Delorme absolutely steals the film, not just through her inordinate charm, but through the exquisite subtlety of her art.

Jacqueline Audry (at the time the only woman film director in France) was renowned and often reviled for her honest depictions of female sexuality.  In Olivia (1950), she had incensed some critics by broaching the thorny subject of lesbianism (Edwige Feuillère's uncomfortably realistic portrayal of a predatory lesbian certainly gave the critics a lot to get their misogynistic teeth into.)  In Mitsou, Audry breached another taboo by showing its heroine indulging in not one but two love affairs outside the sacred institution of marriage.  It's bad enough that Delorme is allowing herself to be kept by Fernand Gravey, but to see her in bed with another man, and a naked handsome one at that, was just too much.  Today, there is nothing in the film that any sane person would find even remotely offensive, but in the mid-1950s such frank allusions to illicit sex were best avoided and Audry's habit of flouting propriety led some to regard her as an immoral filmmaker.  In fact, she was just slightly ahead of the game, and more honest than most.  Compare her version of Gigi with the plush MGM musical directed by Vincente Minnelli and you'll see straight away which is the nearest to Colette's original conception.

Film Synopsis

France, during the First World War...  Mitsou has risen above poverty and obscurity to become a star of the Parisian music hall, but her education is lacking and her taste atrocious for someone aspiring to better herself socially.  Now in her mid-twenties, she leads a contented life and is happy to be the mistress of rich industrialist Pierre Duroy-Lelong, even though he is more than twenty years her senior.  One day, she is surprised to find two handsome young soldiers hiding in her wardrobe, placed there by her well-meaning friend and stage partner Petite Chose.  One of the soldiers, Robert Bleu, finds himself drawn to Mitsou, and the attraction turns out to be mutual.  On his return to the Front, Robert sends Mitsou a letter apologising for the fact that his duty as a military man will prevent him from seeing her for some time.  He cannot bring himself to admit the truth that she is too vulgar to be his wife.  When Robert is injured in combat, Mitsou hastens to the hospital where he is being treated and is confronted by his parents...