Arrow Video, like The
Criterion Collection, continues to prove themselves to be a benchmark of
educational film releasing informing this still young but eager to learn
cinephile of some of the greatest films from the world over. Their latest offering, the final film of
still largely unknown in the US French director Jean Gremillon The Love of a Woman is no exception,
providing viewers with all the hallmarks of a grandiose tragic romantic
melodrama steeped in uncompromising realism with a hefty dose of ambiguity as
to whether or not we should feel elated or devastated by what transpires. Whereas an American film production of this
story would have taken a black or white, happy or sad choice for our central
protagonist in the end, The Love of a
Woman brilliantly sidesteps an easy conclusion truer to life than one would
expect.
Like Powell and
Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going! before
it, The Love of a Woman concerns a
headstrong and fiercely independent female doctor named Marie Prieur (Micheline
Presle) who upon the arrival of an isolated island of Ushant finds her life at
crossroads. Elegant in visual splendor
and disarming simplicity, the film posits an existential question for the strong
willed heroine: should she live out her vocation as a compassionate and
selfless doctor or should she give it all up in search of love if that means
submitting to the role of devoted housewife?
When it isn’t serving up a still relevant commentary on the roles of
women in society and what it truly means to love another, this is among the
earliest examples I can recall of what it means to be a female doctor in a male
dominated work force.
Some of the greatest
challenges a doctor faces from calming the patients to commanding a surgery and
bringing the divided under unity with a single minded goal of working together
to save a patient’s life are given a rarely seen spotlight here. As with Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face, the French film offers up to this time some of
the most explicitly graphic and realistic surgery footage depicted in a
fictional film and there were times during a patient’s conscious abdominal
hernia incision that I wanted to look away, furthering our respect for Marie’s
composure and professionalism in the medical field. Contrasting Marie’s elation from successful
medical treatments is her love for an Italian man named Andre Lorenzi (Massimo
Girotti), who cares deeply for Marie but can’t adjust to her professional life
which leaves little to no room for him.
Visually the film is
splendid with elegant cinematography by Louis Page and fine performances across
the board though Massimo Girotti’s dubbed dialogue takes some getting used
to. The soundtrack co-written by Elsa Barraine
and Henri Dutilleux is a bit of a heavy handed warm up to the likes of Bernard
Herrmann but The Love of a Woman
contains so many great scenes free of music that we don’t mind the forcefulness
of the score when it comes on. What
struck me about The Love of a Woman aside
from the brilliant location scouting (though some shots are evidently created
on a film set) is the use of close ups of actors tear streaked faces. The film is heavy on the exchanges of
dialogue but zeros in on particular pauses indicating on the actors an
emotional complexity that isn’t about to dictate easy routes for the cast of
characters.
In a film that could so
easily have gone the happy/sad route with such a difficult position for our
heroine to be in, The Love of a Woman
earns it’s stature as one of the great French romantic melodramas by refusing
to provide Marie with a simple solution.
Life itself is never as simple as most movies lay the decision making
process out to be and it was a rare thing of beauty to see a 50s melodrama
present viewers with choices that offer as many rewards as they likely would
include consequences. While I admit to
being at a disadvantage in the director’s last film being my first, what I can
say is that I was taken in by this delightful and frequently sad ode to what it
means to be a professional woman torn between patriarchal expectations of love
and living out her life as the selfless and independent individual she always
was. Of the bygone era of French melodramas
that were equal parts old fashioned schmaltz and unbridled realism, The Love of a Woman is without a doubt
one of the very best the genre has to offer!
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki