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Summary: Mademoiselle's Return to Nature
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.
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Summary: "The fire had been made just for him."
Review: The film "Mademoiselle" from director Tony Richardson is based on a story by Marguerite Duras and adapted by Jean Genet. It's a riveting and very unusual tale of the violence of female sexual repression. Jeanne Moreau is 'Mademoiselle'--the only teacher in a sleepy French village. However, life in the village isn't exactly sleepy and peaceful as it becomes clear to the village residents that a malicious person is on the loose. Someone is responsible for setting fires, causing floods, and poisoning farm animals. Suspicion naturally falls on the unpopular outsider--an Italian woodcutter named Manou (Ettore Manni). Manou is already very unpopular with the jealous husbands whose wives are luring Manou off to dally in the fields, and tensions in the village reach boiling point after yet another disaster. It matters little that Manou is on the scene of each disaster as he risks his life to salvage the meagre possessions of the villagers. Manou's friend and fellow woodcutter, Antonio, urges Manou to move away from the village, but Manou choses to stay--partially because the women in the village provide him with many distractions, but also Manou thinks his son, Bruno, should stay in school where he receives attention from Mademoiselle. Jeanne Moreau as Mademoiselle is magnificent in this role. She is at once the very prim and proper, sexually repressed school mistress, and also the wanton, violent woman who desires Manou and will stop at nothing to get him and keep him. The highly erotic scenes between Manou and Mademoiselle are perhaps some of the oddest in cinema, and certainly it doesn't get more symbolically graphic than Manou uncovering the snake he has around his waist which he then persuades Mademoiselle to fondle. Fondling the snake, unleashes Mademoiselle's buried passions, and the viewer is privy through flashbacks, to the most bizarre courtship to exist on film. A horrible, seductive pattern exists to explain Mademoiselle's behaviour. Mademoiselle dresses--complete with make-up, seamed stockings, black laced gloves, and high-heeled shoes for each destructive act as she watches her witless prey--stripped and sweaty, muscles rippling for the occasion. Jeanne Moreau manages the duality of the role marvellously as she seamlessly moves from the bitter, cruel schoolmistress to the abandoned sexual wanton with a penchant for pyromania. The film is in black and white with French subtitles. Cult film director, John Waters discusses "Mademoiselle," one of his favourite films in his book "Crackpot"--displacedhuman.
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