Best film @ Cannes in 1946! . . . along with ten other winners. Starting up after WWII ended, the re-inaugural edition of the hardly begun Film Festival spread the wealth among participating countries. The committee was out to make friends and influence tastemakers. (Hollywood took their prize home for THE LOST WEEKEND/’45.) Alas, this ‘winner,’ a significantly tamed version of André Gide’s novel on religious and social hypocrisy at a small town in the Alps, probably serves best as an example of the sort of infuriating work and positive critical reaction directors like Jean Delannoy regularly received by hitching a ride on some classic piece of literature.* Not that it’s bad, it’s adequate, and nicely shot when they stick to real Alpine wintry locations. Michèle Morgan is blonde & beautiful, affectingly ‘off’ (if a decade too old) as a blind orphan ‘adopted’ by town minister Pierre Blanchar who either doesn’t realize or can’t admit his love for the girl is anything but pure. (Per Gide it ain’t, which is the whole point; per Delannoy it technically is, which loses the point.) The girl morally innocent, yet not unaware of the destabilizing effect she has on everything she touches: the minister, his suddenly ignored wife, his handsome/talented organist son just back in town (Jean Desailly, best thing in the pic), etc. And when she discovers her sight can easily be corrected with simple cataract surgery (Delannoy’s modern setting making this belated realization hard to swallow), Morgan instinctively knows her physical handicap was the only thing protecting her (and the family) frm a complete meltdown. This is pretty interesting stuff, but as presented here, little more than sudsy romantic misalliance.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Similarly, Michèle Morgan’s best English-language film, THE FALLEN IDOL/’48, a superb Carol Reed/Graham Greene collaboration, also softens its story. But with two major differences: it’s Greene’s own story, and the change is an improvement. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/fallen-idol-1948.html
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