La tour de Nesle

First thing you've got to bear in mind is that it's not history :it's legend ; Marguerite de Bourgogne was Philippe Le Bel's daughter-in -law and this king was no joker :when he learnt that his son's wife had an affair with Philippe d'Aulnay and her sister-in-law Blanche was sleeping with brother Gaultier ,he had both unfortunate young men flayed alive and Marguerite was strangled in her dungeon;as for Buridan ,he was a scholar :he used to teach philosophy at the university . It's François Villon's poem "ballade des dames du temps jadis" which spawned the legend of" this man thrown into the Seine in a bag."All these characters are featured in the film. But they do not play the same role at all .

Dumas' play ,which was a rewriting of an obscure colleague's , was twice filmed in the silent age ; then three other movies followed : Gaston Roudès 's (1937) which featured ,which was risqué for the time ,an orgy ,then Abel Gance's (1955,probably the best of the lot)and German Franz Lantel ' s "der Turm der verboten Liebe " (=the tower of forbidden loves);both these latter works featured soft eroticism .

Do not expect to get an eyeful with Noel herpe 's film ; the director was essentially a stage director,and it's exactly what we get : filmed stage production ; the settings are reduced to the strict minimum ,thus involving minimum expense : the tower ,for instance is a drawing and that's it ; the actors' histrionics may irritate the viewer in the long run;and the actor/director casting himself as Buridan and masquerading as a gypsy who predicts an ominous future for all the characters involved , thus tries to turn what was primarily a popular play into a Greek tragedy : Oedipius meeting Jocasta in the forbidden tower .

That said ,it 's not as accessible as the former efforts; the treatment may soon put off the viewer, even armed up with the best will in the world .It has some good moments ,often not due to the principals : the two young courtiers (gay undertones) , fighting for the letters (warrants of arrest), a lot of blackmail ....Now farce, now tragedy , with absolutely no concession to show (love scenes and murders work behind the scenes),with winks at the viewer and actors in an aside ,like on stage , it is really a curious adaptation. The main difference wiith theater is the frequent use of close shots on the eyes ; the flashback is told by Buridan's mouth ; no picture ,only his mouth reminds the queen of their doomed affair a long time ago.