L'amour d'une femme

Significant within the history of French film though director Jean Gremillon, no doubt is, this his final feature, before he died a few days later barely holds the attention of the viewer today. Most interesting for me is the Brittany location for the setting and location for much of the film, Ile d'Ouessant, Finistere, a bleak far North Western outreach of France that I seem to recall reference to in those old shipping forecasts. Micheline Presle plays a doctor transferred to look after the isolated community and represents the 'modern woman'. Hard to fully appreciate but apparently, at the time the film was made, women in France had only had the vote for some ten years or so and so her treatment and the attitude of the young Italian guy perhaps more understandable in the circumstances. Today, however, the story is slight and of little relevance or interest and although some of the scenes are well shot much is rather mundane and offering none of the wonderful imagery of some of the director's earlier works.

Marie Prieur, a young doctor, decides to settle down on Ushant, a remote island in the English Channel. Little by little she manages to be accepted by the population. One day she meets André Lorenzi, a handsome engineer, and it is love at first sight. Life is wonderful for a while, but...

This film is notable for being director Jean Grémillon's final film. Though little known outside of France, Grémillon was a devoted filmmaker from his country's golden age and beyond. He was a classical violinist who turned to directing, and went on to make almost fifty films — from documentaries to avant-garde works to melodramas with major stars — in a career that spanned thirty years.

Two of his films have stood out to me in the past: "Stormy Waters" in 1941 and "The Woman Who Dared" in 1944, both starring Madeleine Renaud. Perhaps with this film coming to Blu-ray, a new re-discovery may emerge. Renaud, oddly enough, makes no appearance this time.

Grémillon rejected what he referred to as "mechanical naturalism" in favor of "the discovery of that subtlety which the human eye does not perceive directly but which must be shown by establishing the harmonies, the unknown relations, between objects and beings; it is a vivifying, inexhaustible source of images that strike our imaginations and enchant our hearts." Did this vision translate to his films? That is open to debate; for me, the style is very much a natural one, with the cinematography hinting at the melodramas of Douglas Sirk.

What was most striking about "The Love of a Woman" was its historical context. We must remember that women in France did not get the right to vote until the mid-1940s, and Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex" was not published until 1949. The heroine of this film is a modern woman. She not only achieved the vote in her lifetime, but earned a medical degree. She is forced to choose between her love and her career; and what a choice! Giving up a secretary job (or some other stereotypical "female" role) would be easy, but who can walk away from the medical profession after all the work that goes into it?

The Arrow Video Blu-ray is light on extras, but it does include "In Search of Jean Grémillon", a feature-length documentary on the filmmaker from 1969, containing interviews with director René Clair, archivist Henri Langlois, actors Micheline Presle and Pierre Brasseur, and others. What the disc lacks in bonus material, it more than makes up for by introducing a new generation to Gremillon.

THE LOVE OF A WOMAN is French filmmaker Jean Grémillon's swan song before his death in 1959 at the age of 58, Grémillon's name has remained relatively unknown outside France, and his aesthetics and techniques are often coined as "enchanted realism", an antecedent anticipates the slam-bang French New Wave.

The film takes place in the north-westernmost point of France, the Ushant island, where the new replacement of its retired village doctor is an unmarried 28-year-old woman Marie Prieur (Presle, who is still with us today at the age of 96), who has to overcome the local inhabitants' prejudice and earn her place in the village through her professional aptitude, meanwhile, she falls in love an engineer André Lorenzi (a virile Girotti), who is assigned to a project lasting six months in the island, when marriage is propounded to her as a getaway from the harsh insularity she inhabits and dreads, the option is clear, to become a full-time housewife or remain as a singleton country doctor.

The sticking point here now seems obsolete but what amazes viewers is Grémillon's skill of story-telling, emotions are trenchantly condensed through the cast's uncontrived acting, initially dispirited by Andre's blinkered proposal, Marie takes an about-face when she witnesses the comeuppance of Germaine Leblanc (a solicitous Gaby Morlay), the school teacher who devotes all her life to her students, only succumbs to an abrupt death right after her retirement, yet, not a single tear is shedded in her funeral, it is this noxious apathy that brings forth Marie's disenchantment, and she wants out, even a wedlock diminishes her worth. Only if André could accept that, he is machismo and narrow-minded, but not air-headed, once he realizes her competence and the fact that she revels in her competence, he is sober enough to pull the plug before making a commitment he cannot abide by, a cruel maneuver but not entirely irrational, which in itself reflects Grémillon's lucid conception of what a grown-up love affair should look like.

The film's provincial locale is captured with astonishing pulchritude under the rein of Grémillon and DP Louis Page, a studio-bound sequence of a life-boat buffeted by a tempestuous storm shows up Grémillon's eclectic approach which isn't circumscribed by a Sisyphean obsession of realism, whereas a veri-similar surgical operation passage ensures that Marie has an able hand and is a true asset to the community. Propelled by leading actress Micheline Presle's top-notch embodiment of our heroine, THE LOVE OF A WOMAN should belatedly put Grémillon's name on the international map alongside his more fêted peers, a maestro unfortunately stuck in the limbo of oblivion for too long.

That was to be Grémillon's last full-length feature film.After a golden decade (roughly from "Gueule d'Amour" (1937) to the overlooked "Pattes Blanches "(1947) which is perhaps his masterpiece ) there were only two movies: "L'Etrange Madame X " which was an intimate version of "Lumière d'Ete" : the bourgeois society versus the working-class people (cabinet-maker Henri Vidal and unhappy married uptown woman Michèle Morgan).And this movie.

"L'Amour d'une Femme " is a beautiful film.Beautiful but extremely sad,even lugubrious.It features two funerals ,and many many depressing scenes;even the love scenes (with the exception of the one which takes place when the schoolteacher is dying) are painful,the two lovers talk but they do not communicate:the engineer is an Italian macho - one mistake: dubbing Massimo Girotti was dubious cause he was supposed to have an accent- ;for him,a woman's job is acceptable as soon as she is without a man.But when she gets married ,she becomes a housewife.It was the fifties after all,woman's lib hadn't happened yet and Marie who wants to reconcile her work and the love she feels for Andrea ,is too much ahead of her time.The young schoolteacher who replaces Madame Leblanc at the end of the film,will do it,simply because she 's doing a female job (teaching)and her fiancé is her colleague.I hardly exaggerate when I write that there were three jobs for a woman before the sixties: shop assistant or factory girl at worst,nurse or teacher at best.But a female doctor? On the Ouessant Island,In Britanny,Grémillon's native region -where "Pattes Blanches" took place too- where coarse uneducated people live,it's hard to accept that.And even once she's integrated ,the teacher warns her " Beware,people will talk " Marie's job took the best of her,but it gave her independence,pride,self-assurance .But the schoolteacher's death ,which is the turning point of the film ,calls everything into question.What?All that admirable woman did for the others' children,it's already forgotten.Two of the pupils she loved left the funeral to look for their lamb ,no one shed a tear during the ceremony.All that is left is photographs of the mistress ,surrounded by pupils,photographs which will soon turn yellow.

When Madame Leblanc,about to retire, packs her stuff,when the doctor asks herself if her work is finally worthwhile ,we think of the director who knew it was to be his final work.During his last years he had to be content with shorts ,which,for a first-class director such as him ,was certainly a pity,considering the great works he could have still made.He died at 61,prematurely.

A last thing : religion was important in Britanny (still is) and the inhabitants 'life was governed by the rhythm of the services,the vespers,the mass sung in Latin.The only moment when it's not taken seriously takes place after Marcel's operation ,when a drunk verger breaks into "Minuit Chrétiens" (O holy night).