Los orgullosos

Jean-Paul Sartre did not have much luck with his screenplays for French Pathé as only two of eight saw the light of day, one of which, 'Les Jeux sont faits' was directed by Jean Delannoy whilst the other, entitled 'Typhus', eventually surfaced some ten years later as 'Les Orgueilleux' which retained distant echoes of the original. Ironically Sartre was nominated for an Academy Award but unsurprisingly withdrew his name.

Directed and adapted by Yves Allégret with contributions from the legendary Aurenche and Bost, it is set in a fly-blown harbour town during a meningitis epidemic and stars two of France's finest, Gérard Philippe and Michele Morgan, both of whose class enables them to rise above the grubby milieu. Philippe both excels and engages one's sympathy in a role that could so easily be a caricature. Mlle Morgan's innate sensuality is singularly sweaty here and Martin Scorcese admits that the sight of her lying on a bed in her lingerie whilst cooling herself with ice cubes 'troubled his adolescence'.

Cinematographer Alex Phillips has brillianty captured the seedy surroundings and oppressive heat but the soundtrack of yelping musicians becomes rather tiresome.

The final Hollywood-style clinch is not the ending that Allégret would have chosen and was apparently shot by an operator in the Boulogne studios against a painted sky.

Allégret had reached his peak with three 'noirs' in the 1940's and this work from 1953 is generally regarded as his last film of note.

This was Oscar-nominated in the "Best Writing, Motion Picture Story" category at the ceremony selecting the winning movies released in the U.S. during 1956; ironically, it was given in the name of celebrated author Jean-Paul Sartre – who, however, appears nowhere among the credits (but is then prominently displayed on native posters)…because the screenplay of the finished film was an adaptation of an unpublished one he had written back in 1944 (called "Typhus")! For the record, it was also awarded the Bronze Lion at the Venice Film Festival. A Franco- Mexican production set in the latter country, the dialogue alternates between French and Spanish throughout; indeed, translations in the former language are given for most of the Hispanic exchanges – however, these end up interfering with the newly-created English subtitles accompanying the movie for the entire duration! Incidentally, the IMDb lists Portas' alleged co-directing credit here…but, again, this is entirely omitted on the film proper!

Anyway, the torrid, crisis-torn setting (which invariably brings together a number of disparate characters) actually recalls a number of excellent contemporaneous French films – H.G. Clouzot's THE WAGES OF FEAR (1953) and two by my favourite auteur Luis Bunuel, DEATH IN THE GARDEN (1956) and REPUBLIC OF SIN (1959), with which this one even shares composer Paul Misraki and leading man Gerard Philipe respectively! In fact, here we deal with a village combating a meningitis epidemic: the local medic (played by Carlos Lopez Moctezuma – who apparently is no relation to Juan, cult director of "Nunsploitation" flick ALUCARDA {1975}) soon has his hands full with patients; Philipe, an ex-French doctor who took to the bottle after his wife died in his own care, helps out while being made a laughing stock of by the inhabitants. The first case is the spouse of elegant French lady Michele Morgan – in the second of five pictures she and Philipe appeared in, though two were compendiums and one a documentary in which the stars were featured as themselves! She takes an instant dislike to her grimy compatriot, yet becomes increasingly dependent on him when her own hubby perishes and the innkeeper forces himself upon her (typically more permissive than comparable Hollywood films of the era, Morgan is repeatedly seen in her underwear on account of the excessive heat) – she also incurs the jealousy of the latter's wife, another French expatriate. Finally, Philipe rekindles his vocation and decides to remain sober – while the heroine, who had intended leaving before a quarantine was ordered sealing off the village from the outside world, opts to stay behind due to her new-found feelings for the male protagonist…

The handling is sturdy and the atmosphere vividly rendered, aided in no small measure by the cinematography of Alex Phillips (who had also lensed Bunuel's ASCENT TO HEAVEN and ROBINSON CRUSOE {both 1952}), the production design of Gunther Gerszo (who, apart from Bunuel's SUSANA {1951} and THE RIVER AND DEATH {1955}, would be responsible for several "Mexi-Horror" efforts) and a lively score – accentuated by loud yelps redolent of Latin American nonchalance! – from Misraki (later a collaborator of Orson Welles, not to mention exponents of the "Nouvelle Vague"). That said, there is an odd emphasis on showing its main characters humiliated (and at inordinate length, to boot!): now- penniless Morgan goes to wire her relatives in Paris for money, but she is forced to change pens numerous times because they run out of ink or break and then reduce her message because it exceeds the amount borrowed from the innkeeper!; Philipe, too, is literally made to dance for his share of rum (the drunkard act is slightly overstated, to be sure) – on the other hand, when he has to assist the doc in vaccinating Morgan and ordered to wash his hands, he complains that it will take another eight day's filth to bring them to their current state…but, then, they are cleaned up in no time at all! Another minor quibble: with this type of film, there is usually some questioning of religious faith vis-a'-vis the significance of the plague – but, despite the obligatory presence of a curate, there is little of that feeling here!

I had missed out on a solitary screening of the movie under review (which, by the way, finds a place on the "Wonders In The Dark" website's ranking of the all-time top 3000 movies – while the Leonard Maltin guide, where it was listed under the alternate international title THE PROUD ONES, saw fit to raise its rating from *** to ***1/2) on a French Cable TV, where it was broadcast without the benefit of subtitles; normally, the channel concerned at least provided a French transcript of the dialogue – but this practice has long since been dropped! As for director Allegret, it is the fourth (and perhaps best) effort of his that I have watched after DEDEE' D'ANVERS (1948), MANEGES (1950) and LEATHERNOSE (1952); I also own one of his most highly-regarded works, SUCH A PRETTY LITTLE BEACH (1949; also with Philipe)…while I did not take advantage of a late-night scheduling of MIRACLES ONLY HAPPEN ONCE (1951) – and as for the French-Italian anthology THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS (1952; one of the Philipe/Morgan collaborations I alluded to earlier on), it is only readily available via a trimmed Italian print!

I sat through this movie this evening, forcing myself to stick with it even though I never cared about any of the characters or what happened to them, because the two leads, Gérard Philippe and Michèle Morgan, were major film stars of their era and I wanted to see them in "something different," which this certainly was. They both gave fine performances, but of distasteful characters.

Indeed, the whole movie is about a shabby little town in Mexico inhabited by almost uniformly distasteful characters (the doctor is, of course, the major exception). What Michèle Morgan ever sees in Philippe to fall in love with him is never explained.

This is supposedly based on a work by Jean-Paul Sartre. All I could think was that, if Sartre's work is anything like this movie, it must be a very mediocre attempt at imitating Camus' masterful novel The Plague, which dealt with a plague in North Africa.

A well-acted but uninteresting movie.

`Les Orgueilleux' is one of a constellation of worthy French movies of this era that the French stopped making for two reasons: the complete lobotomy of the intellect that was the so-called New Wave and the premature death of Gérard Philipe, one of the century's finest actors. His pairing with Michèle Morgan here is inspired. (They also starred in René Clair's `Les Grandes Manoeuvres'.) In order to describe Philipe's charm, one has to evoke equal parts Leonardo DiCaprio and Laurence Olivier and imagine them cast as romantic leads in the kind of challenging narrative that is not even conceivable today, except for the odd exception. `Les Orgueilleux' is set during a typhus epidemic in a remote Mexican village and is based on Jean-Paul Sartre's novel `L'Amour rédempteur' (`Redeemed by Love', aka `Typhus'). The oversimplification of the novel's themes is compensated by Allégret's penchant for realism and his attention to details, like the long scene of Morgan enduring the discomfort and perils of a lonely hotel room during a heat wave in a third rate Mexican hotel, which is part striptease (daring for the time) and part psychological analysis. In other words, a perfect blend of commercialism and intelligence, both qualities sadly lacking from the aforementioned so-called New Wave.

I saw this movie when it first came out, have not seen it since, but have remembered it vividly all these years. Seldom, if ever, has a film held me riveted the way this one did. Of course, I would have paid to see Michele Morgan read the Manhattan phone book, especially attired in a slip (no, I am not a lezzie). The mood created by the meningitis epidemic in Mexico and the sexual tension, created mostly by Morgan, are more enveloping than real life. This remains one of my top 10 - perhaps top 5 - favorite movies of all time. For the life of me, I cannot understand why there is neither a VHS nor a DVD version available, apparently anywhere. What can be done to rectify this situation? For years, I moaned about the lack of a DVD of The Informer. Now, one is available but only as part of the overpriced John Ford collection of some of his lesser films.

Jen