After several weeks of busy-ness and not a lot of free time (and most of that wasted), I finally resumed Lean Quest today with a viewing of Lean's 1950 film Madeleine, the second film he made with his third wife, Ann Todd.
Madeleine is inspired by the true story of Madeleine Smith (Ann Todd), a young woman in 19th Century Scotland who carries on a secret affair with Emile L'Anglier (Ivan Desny), a lower-class Frenchman, while she is being courted by Mr. Minnoch (Norman Woolland), the respectable yet bland friend of her father (Leslie Banks). Madeleine tries to navigate her way through this crisis, only to find Emile unwilling to take no for an answer, threatening to expose their affair if she won't marry him. Shortly thereafter, Emile falls ill and dies, and it's discovered that he was poisoned with arsenic. Madeleine goes on trial, and the case of the adulterous woman who killed a prospective lover becomes a national tabloid sensation.
Lean once again returns to the melodrama genre, a well he used in at least 75% of his films. This unfortunately is one of his weaker efforts, managing to bring little original to the table. The story is interesting in and of itself, and Lean manages to make it interesting for about an hour or so, even if Madeleine's love triangle never rises above the cliche and soap operatic. But after L'Anglier is killed, the movie comes to a grinding halt, slipping into a dry, formulaic courtroom drama after the commission of murder. There is inherent drama in most courtroom films and plays, but the movie fudges it by dropping the testimony in favor of lengthy monologues.
The cast is also rather weak; although gorgeous (and in spite of having played this part on stage prior to the film's production), Ann Todd is at least ten years too old for the part of Madeleine, and she's just not convincing as the naive, romantic young girl trapped in a difficult situation. Todd proved her talent in many other works, she's just off here. The rest of the cast, Ivan Desney and Leslie Banks excepted, is rather one-note. Lean's movies usually have at least one great performance to make you stand up and take notice; no one here really achieves that, and even Desney and Banks aren't on a level with Noel Coward in In Which We Serve, Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter, Alec Guinness and Kay Walsh in Oliver Twist, Claude Rains and Todd herself in The Passionate Friends, or Katharine Hepburn in Summertime, and certainly not Guinness in Bridge on the River Kwai or Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. Bland acting is almost unheard of in a David Lean movie, but there's always an exception to any given rule.
The ending also seems a bit off. It's interesting to note that Ann got off on a charge of "Not proven" - a curious, uniquely Scottish ruling that proves not her innocence, but that the prosecution gave a poor case - but the film spoils it by refusing to answer. Although the movie gives hints and misdirection early on - particularly during the "poisoning" scene with the cocoa - after the act actually occurs. The movie ends with a "What do YOU think?"-type narration, putting one in mind of those old Centron educational shorts that Mystery Science Theater 3000 liked to screen in its early days. To be fair, it might not be so offensive if there weren't a narrator ham-fistedly pounding the point home.
However, like all Lean films, the movie excells on a technical level, and here, Lean is perhaps even above his work on Brief Encounter, Oliver Twist and The Passionate Friends. Guy Green's cinematography is rich and livid, his vivid use of darkness, light and shadow throughout the first half more appropriate for a film noir than a melodrama, creating an appropriately foreboding atmosphere. The film features much memorable imagery, particularly the surprisingly violent and suggestive preludes to Madeleine and Emile's trysts, and the scene where Madeleine is taken to jail in a wagon strongly presages an equivalent scene thirty years later in A Passage to India. Lean and Green also make very effective use of deep focus, with several scenes that heavily recall Citizen Kane. And the editing is quite striking throughout, particularly when a raucous town dance is intercut with a meeting of the illicit lovers.
Madeleine is worth a look, and I note that amongst Lean fans, it has a fairly large following, so, as usual my opinion must be taken with a grain of salt. It has its virtues, but has enough flaws and weaknesses to push it into the lower-tier of Lean films. That being said, mediocre Lean is still better than most directors at their best.
Now, only two Leans left - The Sound Barrier and Hobson's Choice. Let's hope we'll have time to get to them within the next week or so.
Rating: 7/10 - Recommended
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