Rating: 
Summary: Something different for discriminating film lovers...
Review: Depicting the story of a sexually frustrated French schoolteacher's relationship with a sexy Italian woodcutter and his son, this 1966 film is probably one of the more provocative and unusual films from the mid-1960s. Definitely something different for the discriminating filmgoer of the day. Directed by Oscar-winner Tony Richardson ("Tom Jones") from a script by the legendary Jean Genet ("Querelle"), "Mademoiselle" is notable for its striking black & white cinematography and, most especially, a spellbinding performance from the great Jeanne Moreau ("Jules and Jim"). It's stylish and well-made, to be sure, but this unusual picture probably isn't for all tastes. If you're a fan of Genet, Moreau, or off-beat European cinema, "Mademoiselle" comes highly recommended, for others the film may ultimately be too self-conscious, slow-going and demanding to make for a rewarding viewing experience. But, again, for the discriminating movie lover looking for something different, it's definitely worth a look. The MGM DVD release is fine, if bare-bones simple. It includes a rather haunting theatrical trailer, but, unfortunately, doesn't feature the film's alternate English soundtrack (it was released in both French and English language versions). Too bad MGM chose not to add this extra, as the English dub (featuring Moreau's own voice) is actually quite well done.
Rating:
Summary: Ideal first date movie
Review: Fans of "The Piano Teacher", take note. Here Jeanne Moreau plays an extremely uptight, sexually repressed school teacher in a French village whose unrequited lust (up to a point) for an Italian laborer (Ettore Manni) manifests itself in arson, acts of cruelty against animals, and the daily humiliation of the laborer's son in her classroom. Where Isabelle Huppert would "control" her desires by inflicting the pain on herself (in "Piano Teacher"), inversely Moreau has the beautiful French countryside to ravage. We watch the cycle of rage perpetuate itself as Manni, due to the xenophobic hostility of the villagers, becomes the fall guy for Moreau's psychopathic actions, and takes out his beleagured emotions on his son by slapping him around. The deliberate pace (a screenplay by J. Genet) becomes hypnotic after awhile, as the characters are positioned at the wide screen's edges, loitering there, dwarfed by the beautifully shot black-and-white landscape: Rain falls in a pond and the camera lingers on the still water disturbed; a long shot of a tree falling as Moreau & Manni face off in the foreground; the genesis of fire in a match, pure and neutral, to its swift incarnation as a blaze, out of control and taking no prisoners. The little house has been consumed with the prairie. Tony Richardson contrasts the "nature" shots with close-ups so, well, close up that Manni's pores threaten to drench the lens with sweat. We guys reach for our chins, remembering that we need a shave. Stick with this movie - there is no exit and Genet wouldn't have wanted it any other way.
Rating: 
Summary: Cinematography looks superb, Moreau and others do not
Review: I am a huge Jeanne Moreau fan and was thrilled to see some fine cinematography and those classic faces Moreau gives off without having to utter a word. But this was just the first 10 minutes of the film, and usually you know a film is going to be good when the first 10 minutes or so is very intriguing, however this one went downhill from there. I have to say that Moreau probably looks the worst here than she did in any other film either 5 years prior or 5 years after this. I am not sure why, but while the cinematography was carefully filmed, I don't think they spent much time on lighting and make-up for our lovely Jeanne. The story is very far fetched, and was presumably quite risque for the time (and still has scenes that would shock most even today) however there is no one in this film to either care about or be intrigued by. We quickly jump into Moreau's character's devious acts of violence, but we never really know why. Why does she act so deviously? And now that she is, you just can't relate or care to relate. Besides Moreau, there are no other adults in this film who give any decent performances, or develop any characters which held my attention. The only other interesting player in this bleak (but ironically beautifully filmed) film is Manou's son, who the boy who played him gives a very credible performance. I quickly lost interest in this film, and a lot more could have happened, and should have happened. The plot and story development, while risque and shocking, was not very intriguing. No likable roles, no likable scenes, I just didn't care about the people in this film or the film. 2 stars for the cinematography and ahead of it's time shock value.
Rating: 
Summary: Well, at least Andy Milligan Liked it . . .
Review: Jeanne Moreau! Tony Richardson! Jean Genet! Art! Art! Art! Mod! Mod! Mod! Oh brother . . . Crazy, repressed schoolteacher pants after hunky woodcutter in small French town, setting fires and such to relieve her epic sexual tensions in the process. The woodcutter, who is even dumber and hornier than most males, stays in this town because he's apparently keeping every woman in town but Moreau very, VERY happy . . . Anyway, she eventually has some sort of erotic(?) encounter with him and accuses him of rape. None too happy ending follows. In short, a nasty little exploitation drama dressed up with bad dialogue, a draggy pace, and portentous acting. Moreau is terrible, and you have to wonder how anyone talked her into appearing in this piece of dreck . . . Did someone have proof she paid for acting school by robbing banks?
Rating:
Summary: Well, at least Andy Milligan Liked it . . .
Review: Jeanne Moreau! Tony Richardson! Jean Genet! Art! Art! Art! Mod! Mod! Mod! Oh brother . . . Crazy, repressed schoolteacher pants after hunky woodcutter in small French town, setting fires and such to relieve her epic sexual tensions in the process. The woodcutter, who is even dumber and hornier than most males, stays in this town because he's apparently keeping every woman in town but Moreau very, VERY happy . . . Anyway, she eventually has some sort of erotic(?) encounter with him and accuses him of rape. None too happy ending follows. In short, a nasty little exploitation drama dressed up with bad dialogue, a draggy pace, and portentous acting. Moreau is terrible, and you have to wonder how anyone talked her into appearing in this piece of dreck . . . Did someone have proof she paid for acting school by robbing banks?
Rating:
Summary: Gives French cinema a bad name
Review: MADEMOISELLE is an overly dark, lethargically-paced film about a rural French town beset by repeated tragedies: fires, floods and more. The locals suspect an Italian woodsman named Manou - because he's Italian, I guess - but in actuality it is a repressed old spinster called Mademoiselle (Jeanne Moreau) who is responsible. She is obsessed with Manou and out of her frustration is driven to horrible acts. Sure. Whatever.
This is a ridiculous story with no logic to it. No one ever suspects Mademoiselle, despite the fact that she's always on the scene, watching. Apparently French criminology was not very advanced in 1966. Mademoiselle is beloved by the town, even though she is always quite unpleasant. Manou's son knows it is she who is causing the destruction, but he never says anything to anyone about it, even though he loathes her. The "love" scene at the end, which feels like it takes up half the movie, will likely have you rolling on the floor with laughter.
If only being boring and absurd were its only crimes. Potential viewers will want to be aware that there are numerous scenes of real animal cruelty in the film. See Mademoiselle crush a quail's eggs in her hand and then thoughtfully place the remains back in the nest for the mother to find when she returns. See a young boy beat a rabbit to death by repeatedly swinging it against a woodpile because he's mad at his teacher. (Bonus shot! See the rabbit's bloody corpse!) And in the grand finale, Mademoiselle poisons the town's water supply. Lingering shots of dead and dying horses, cows and sheep ensue.
This is exactly the sort of movie that makes people think foreign films are dull and pretentious. Anyone with an ounce of sensitivity will find it abhorrent, and it is worthless on any other level as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Work Here
Review: MADEMOISELLE is the kind of picture that always caused Quentin Crisp to roll his eyes and hiss, "FESSSTIVAL MATERIAL!!" -- meaning too arty and rarefied for mere mortals chomping down popcorn at their local movie palace. A major thud in its day, this movie still features plenty worth seeing. Directed with intelligence and care by Tony Richardson from a Jean Genet screenplay, MADEMOISELLE features a story like a Bunuel fever dream, without his sly humor. Jeanne Moreau gives a subtle, controlled performance as the titular sack of seething neuroses; her first scene, opening a sluicegate to flood a stable while sporting fetishistic hat, gloves and high heels, all cut in counterpoint to a processional of priest and villagers blessing the crops, certainly grabs the attention! Watch her careful underplaying in the schoolroom scene where she fills her students in on that ultimate Gallic bad guy, Gilles de Rais. Moreau's one actress who never lets you down. At times way over the top (surely someone connected with this project could have given the scene where she ogles her sexy Italian's snake a second thought), MADEMOISELLE is a picture that's fallen between the cracks of cinema releasing, hardly seen since its initial release. In this satisfactory MGM DVD, at long last, you can take a look. Please do!
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Work Here
Review: MADEMOISELLE is the kind of picture that always caused Quentin Crisp to roll his eyes and hiss, "FESSSTIVAL MATERIAL!!" -- meaning too arty and rarefied for mere mortals chomping down popcorn at their local movie palace. A major thud in its day, this movie still features plenty worth seeing. Directed with intelligence and care by Tony Richardson from a Jean Genet screenplay, MADEMOISELLE features a story like a Bunuel fever dream, without his sly humor. Jeanne Moreau gives a subtle, controlled performance as the titular sack of seething neuroses; her first scene, opening a sluicegate to flood a stable while sporting fetishistic hat, gloves and high heels, all cut in counterpoint to a processional of priest and villagers blessing the crops, certainly grabs the attention! Watch her careful underplaying in the schoolroom scene where she fills her students in on that ultimate Gallic bad guy, Gilles de Rais. Moreau's one actress who never lets you down. At times way over the top (surely someone connected with this project could have given the scene where she ogles her sexy Italian's snake a second thought), MADEMOISELLE is a picture that's fallen between the cracks of cinema releasing, hardly seen since its initial release. In this satisfactory MGM DVD, at long last, you can take a look. Please do!
Rating:
Summary: Moreau Brings the Audience Fusion of Thought and Puzzlement
Review: Mademoiselle performed by Jeanne Moreau, who is in her own rights probably one of cinema's most alluring women, opens the gates of a small dam. The calm water begins seeping through the gradually opening crack as the tiny stream quickly turns into a rapid river that floods a small farm where tied up animals disappear underneath the surface. This gruesome event unveils the dark nature of Mademoiselle as she returns to her home above the school in which she teaches. The wicked Mademoiselle leaves the townsfolk's in a hazy mist of confusion as they brood over the identity of the maniac behind the crime as her true nature is as evident as an innocent infant's search for a mother's warm embrace.
Mademoiselle callously continues to hides her evidence as she plans further dreadful deeds. The police are blindsided by the high number of unexpected arsons and malevolent crimes as there seems to be no reason behind the wrongdoings. The heinous crimes provoke escalating tumult within the village that demand answers and a stop to the dreadful acts. The townsfolk point their fingers towards the foreign woodsman as they begin to whisper and secretively plot his demise.
Most of all, Mademoiselle is an interesting character study, as the psychology of the main character is dissected through visual symbolism and the clear-cut storyline. The symbolism strikes through in several scenes, but the scene that might be the most pungent is when Mademoiselle shakes hands with the husky Italian Manou (Ettore Manni) and a snake embraces their handshake. The snake scene oozes of bad omen as well as a sexual tension between the characters. In a sense, the snake scene is a visual culmination of the dreaded nature of Mademoiselle, which could be comparable to a black widows tendency to kill her mate after copulation.
Tony Richardson brings a tremendously well directed cinematic experience to the audience which offers both contemplation and bewilderment. It is the fusion of thought and puzzlement where the audience is allowed to step into the world of Mademoiselle where good and evil coexist. Jeanne Moreau's performance as the maliciously vindictive teacher that torments students is breathtaking. Ultimately the audience is to experience a well made film that offers much for the eye to be pondered and debated.
Rating:
Summary: Cinematography looks superb, Moreau and others do not
Review: Opening shot: In the countryside a religious procession moves along under a hot sun. Somewhere in the hills above Jeanne Moreau cranks open a floodgate. She is wearing black fishnet gloves, a black dress and heels. The water pours downhill toward a farm flooding it. The church bell rings alerting everyone of the disaster, the procession disperses, and Moreau heads down hill to watch as they all try to save the livestock from drowning.
Tony Richardson directed Tom Jones and in that picture showed he had quite a knack for capturing English rural folk. But with this tale filmed in a gorgeous tinted black and white which makes apple blossoms look more beautiful than they ever do in color he has swapped the 18th Century ribaldry of Fielding for the 20th Century subversive austerity of Genet and made a French language film which I'm certain raised quite a few eyebrows, French and English, in its day. Its shock value I do not think has diminished much, if at all. The star of the film is Jeanne Moreau as the chaste schoolmistress who comes from the city to educate the rural children. But lurking within her cool reserved impassive demeanor are passions that have perhaps been too long divorced from nature so she is especially vulnerable when her long hidden passions are stirred by the presence of an Italian woodsman who she spies on one of her solitary strolls through the woods. "Be careful miss," yells one of the villagers as he sees her heading toward the woods, "there's a wolf in those woods." But thats just what shes seeking. Meanwhile a series of fires have been set and being the foreigner the Italian woodsman is the the prime suspect. We know who it is however setting those fires, and we slowly learn why. Tony Richardson captures Moreaus face as it changes from mood to mood. He captures her melancholy and isolation as she applies her lipstick and puts her hair up in preparation for one of her "acts", and then he shows what she looks like when she returns and looks in the mirror again seeing how the "act" has changed her. Moreau is one of the more mysterious beauties of French cinema and in this role that beauty is used to greater effect than any other director has used it. She is fascinating to watch as this prim sophisticated schoolmistress who finally undergoes the transformation she has been longing for.The night Moreau and the woodsman spend together is one of unleashed instinct and abandon and it is all filmed in an unforgettable series of vignettes: the two lying down in tall grass as the sun goes down, beside a pond in utter darkness as a storm breaks, running from each other and surrendering to each other time and again. Raw and sensual as anything you will see in a film then or now Richardson takes the film to a completely different plane with these scenes. When Moreau returns to the village the next morning covered in mud and clothes in shreds the villagers ask her if it was the Italian. Her answer and her final expression seen from a car window as she drives away from the village is one of utter self-content. Also recommended: Elevator to the Gallows, The Lover, Bride Wore Black.
|
