Madeleine (1950)

User Rating:

6.9/10   

Director:

David Lean

Writers:

Stanley Haynes (writer)
Nicholas Phipps (writer)

Release Date:

14 February 1950 (UK)

Genre:

Crime | Drama

Plot:

The middle-class family of a young woman cannot understand why she delays in marrying a respectable young man. They know nothing about her long-standing affair with a Frenchman.

Plot Keywords:

Scotland | Love Letter | Poison | Scandal | Murder Trial

Cast

Ann Todd	...	Madeleine Smith
Norman Wooland	...	William Minnoch
Ivan Desny	...	Emile L'Anglier
Leslie Banks	...	James Smith
Barbara Everest	...	Mrs. Smith
Elizabeth Sellars	...	Christina Hackett
Patricia Raine	...	Bessie Smith
Eugene Deckers	...	Thuau (as Eugène Deckers)
André Morell	...	Defending Counsel
Barry Jones	...	Prosecuting Counsel
Susan Stranks	...	Janet Smith

Also Known As:

The Strange Case of Madeleine (USA) (reissue title)

Runtime:

114 min | USA:101 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-16 | Sweden:Btl

Company:

Cineguild

Trivia:

Ann Todd had portrayed the title character in theatrical productions of the play this film was based on, and had always wanted to play her in a film adaptation. Shortly after she married director David Lean, he agreed to make this film and cast her as the lead as a "wedding present" of sorts.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Foul Play (1978)

true story told by David Lean

Ann Todd is "Madeleine" in this 1950 film directed by David Lean. The film also features Norman Wooland, Ivan Desny, Andre Morrell and Elizabeth Sellars. The film looks at the true story of the famous Madeleine Smith murder trial in the mid-1800s. Pressured by her upper class family to marry, Madeleine is in fact secretly intimately involved with a man from a lower class, L'Anglier (Desny) and has agreed to marry him. She doesn't want to tell her family, so she urges him to elope with her. L'Anglier was planning on marrying into the upper class lifestyle and insists instead that she tell her father (Leslie Banks) about their relationship. She can't, and believing that all L'Anglier wanted was her money all along, she breaks off with him and requests the return of her letters to him. She then agrees to marry William Minnoch (Wooland), who has been courting her.

L'Anglier doesn't return her letters, and after she purchases arsenic, he dies of arsenic poison, having become ill at her house once before. Madeleine is arrested for murder.

The film seems to follow the case quite accurately, but it's pretty cut and dried. There are some marvelous scenes - the two dancing in the moonlight is one, as an increasingly wilder dance goes on inside. The structure of the courtroom was interesting, as I had never seen a prisoner walk upstairs into the dock from what is almost a trap door in the floor. The view of all the faces looking down before she starts the climb gives an idea of what it's like to be put on trial.

Ann Todd is a good actress, though an internalized one who comes off as rather cold. She was married to Lean, which may be the reason for her casting. At the time of the murder, Madeleine's father was displeased that she wasn't married, complaining that she had met many men but none of them have worked out. She was twenty when she took up with L'Anglier and 22 when she broke it off. Todd was 41 at the time this film was made. She was not carefully photographed and looked her age - way too old for this role. Andre Morrell is excellent as Madeleine's attorney. The rest of the performances are very good, with Banks a strong, intimidating father and Desny hinting at the slime that's below the surface of L'Anglier. Norman Wooland gives a charming and concerned performance as Madeleine's suitor, Minnoch.

Lean's opinion of what happened is made very clear in the last moments of the film. Someone said the story needed Hitchcock's hand, but he was not successful with "The Paradine Case." There's something about these stories that is very detached and unemotional. Maybe Hitchcock could have cracked it; this early effort by David Lean doesn't quite make it.