Director: Tony Richardson
Starring: Jeanne Moreau
After the recent passing of the great French actress Jeanne Moreau, I was keen to watch one of her old movies, and TCM delivered, once again. "Mademoiselle", from 1966, is an obscure British-French co-production, in English no less. I could not find a review of it anywhere, which is surprising, since it was directed by Tony Richardson, three years after winning an Oscar for "Tom Jones."
It is an undiscovered gem of a film, quite of its time. The theme is sexual repression, and when the hunky Italian immigrant logger asks the repressed French schoolteacher (Ms. Moreau) to touch his pet snake, you know this is a Sixties art film! The movie is cleverly constructed: it begins in the middle of the story, where the first few scenes lets the audience in on the schoolteacher's random acts of cruelty, towards nature and the small French village she inhabits. The clueless villagers never figure out what we know from the beginning (the culprit for the acts of sabotage), and instead choose a convenient scapegoat: the itinerant foreigners who work in the forest. It doesn't help that the Italian with the snake is also carrying-on with many of the womenfolk in the village.
Only when the schoolteacher is offered said snake (well-into the movie), do we get to see what motivates her in her quest for destruction, via a 20-minute flashback of events leading up to when the movie begins. At this point, the movie drags toward its inevitable conclusion, when the pace should accelerate (we know what's going to happen, so get on with it already!) Perhaps that is also a hallmark of Sixties art films: enamored with mood at the expense of plot. Nevertheless, the story delves into thorny issues of xenophobia, psychological fixation (Mademoiselle has a clear case of Munchausen-by-proxy), and hypocrisy. And the Black and White cinematography is exquisite.
**Undiscovered gem!**
