Mourir d'aimer (1971)
Directed by André Cayatte

Film Review

The events of May 1968 must have seemed liked a faint and distant memory when André Cayatte made Mourir d'aimer, one of French cinema's most shocking indictments of the country's legal system.  Despite its highly controversial subject matter, the film was an immense commercial success, drawing an audience of around five million, and provoked a wide-ranging national debate in France over the extent to which the state can be morally justified in putting justice, as dictated by the rule of law, before the rights of the individual.  Cayatte was driven to make the film having learned of the real-life case of Gabrielle Russier, a 31-year-old teacher from Marseilles, who was sentenced to a term of imprisonment in 1969 after pursuing an affair with one of her 16-year-old pupils.

Mourir d'aimer is a difficult film to watch, so uncompromising is it in its depiction of the ruthlessness with which the state prosecutes its notion of justice, assisted by the hideously vindictive parents of the boy who has allegedly been corrupted by his school teacher.  If you did not know that the story was set in modern day France, you would assume it took place in Soviet Russia, in the dark days when intellectuals were routinely picked up and locked away in so-called psychiatric units for their own good.  The unfeeling brutality of the state's legal machinery is heightened to a devastating pitch by the raw humanity which the two principle actors - Annie Girardot and Bruno Pradal - bring to their portrayals.  The central irony of the film - that a mere few months is all that prevents Danièle and Gérard from legally pursuing a love affair - is emphasised by the fact that Girardot and Pradel look and act as if they are about the same age.

In what is unequivocally one of her finest screen performances, Annie Girardot evokes something of the solemn dignity and tragic helplessness that we find in Dreyer's portrait of Joan of Arc in his La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928).  This impression is reinforced by the Rouen setting (the town where Joan was burned for heresy) and some heart-wrenching close-ups of the actress which strikingly match some of the famous stills from Dreyer's film.   This is deliberate on the part of Cayatte - he sees his heroine not merely as a tragic victim but as a martyr, a modern free-thinking woman whose destiny is to be despicably sacrificed by a system of justice that is characterised by its narrow-mindedness and complete lack of humanity.  Without challenging the laws which protect minors, Mourir d'aimer offers a heart-felt appeal to society and those who enforce these laws to show some consideration for the human implications and not merely to act as a cold, unthinking lump of machinery.  After all, justice without mercy is the fastest short cut to totalitarianism.

Film Synopsis

In 1968, Danièle teaches literature at a high school in Rouen.  A staunch advocate of modern teaching methods, she invites her pupils back to her home and makes no distinction between her private and professional lives.  No one objects to this arrangement until she begins to have an affair with one of her students, 17-year-old Gérard.   The boy's parents are outraged when they learn of this and prosecute the teacher for corrupting a minor.  Unable to give up Gérard, Danièle is arrested and taken into custody, pending a trial.  When Gérard insists on continuing his affair with Danièle, his parents get him certified as mentally unsound and have him placed in a psychiatric clinic...