Le fruit défendu

Henri Verneuil made no less than eight films with Fernandel which proves that Verneuil possessed the patience of a saint.

This is their second and is both a tender and touching variation on the theme of a menopausal married man's affair with a younger woman that is of course destined to end in tears. Fernandel as the smitten Docteur Pellegrin engages our sympathy, the forbidden fruit is played by the suitably delicious Francoise Arnoul whilst Claude Nollier is perfectly cast as his elegant if rather glacial wife and the always-good-value Sylvie plays his mother. All-in-all an engaging film marked by customary Gallic taste and restraint.

The major problem, for this viewer at any rate, is that Georges Simenon's dark and deeply personal novel 'Letter to my Judge' in which a doctor and his far from attractive mistress are involved in a complex relationship marked by obssessive jealousy and violence which leads him to strangle her and commit suicide in the prison infirmary, has here been reduced to a love triangle-cum-domestic drama.

The reasons for such an anodyne treatment are understandable as the husband's return to wife and family would satisfy the moral requirements of the time and not least serve to maintain Fernandel's much-loved persona. He was all too aware of his image and the very idea of playing a convicted murderer/suicide would have been anathema both to him and to the audience he sought to please. Probably true to say that based on the principle of 'horses for courses', this artiste would anyway have been totally unsuited to such a role.

As a vehicle for the appealing Fernandel this adaptation is fine as far as it goes but it is to be regretted that an opportunity has been missed and one cannot help but wonder how Simenon's explosive material would have turned out with either Gabin or Simon in the leading role and Autant-Lara or Duvivier in the director's chair.

It might seem strange but Fernandel's talent was huge in dramas as well.Most of his parts in Marcel Pagnol's works verged on tragic anyway.

The film begins with the celebration of Doctor Pellegrin's forty-fifth birthday.He seems a happy man with a beautiful wife .Henri Verneuil (then a much better director than in the sixties when he made blockbusters by the dozen) introduces his hero with a painting first.

A very long flash back tells us that the doctor's life was not a happy one;his wife was a straight bourgeois lady and he fell for a young girl ,Martine (Françoise Arnoul who sometimes steals the show from the star).

The story is not really quirky but the cast (it also includes the excellent Sylvie)makes up for it.There are also nice pictures of Arles (and the Alyscamps,the biggest Roman necropolis in France.

"Le fruit défendu" (= French for "the forbidden fruit") deals with an all too familiar theme: a man aged 45, locked up in his marriage, fatherhood and profession, gets involved with a much younger girl.

Set in the early fifties in the South of France, the predictability of this film's story is more than compensated by both Fernanadel's and Arnoul's excellent acting.

These two leads treat us to some fine human nuances. For instance, how their affair's development is favored by the wife's cold ambition to keep up with high society -- leaving much of her husband's genuine feelings towards her unanswered in the process.

Also fascinating is the mix between the young girl's passion and calculation. And how the latter gradually takes over with the progress of their affair.

But for Fernandel's and Arnoul's play, this film would have been forgotten for a long time.

Considering Neo-Realism was really invented by a French writer-director, Marcel Pagnol (who also invented "poetic realism" in the process), this is its natural legacy. It could have been called "Adultery - French Provincial Style". It is remarkable for many reasons, not the least of which is Fernandel's dramatic turn as a two-timing husband giving in to temptation with a kind of childish, innocent glee and Françoise Arnoul's affirmation as a typically French sex symbol representing everything "wrong" with the new generation. It is realistic in that it doesn't over-dramatize the sexual aspects but delves rather seriously in the social and psychological consequences of adultery. It is also shot on location in Arles. The production values, direction, music (by Paul "Mademoiselle de Paris" Durand) and acting (including a good part for Sylvie) are beyond compare. Highly recommended and worth more than all the New Wave films combined...

1st watched 1/1/2003 - 3 out of 10(Dir-Henri Verneuil): Sober drama about a well-to-do Doctor who gets into trouble carrying on a relationship with a younger woman, whom his family brings in to live with them, as well as being married to another in the same household. His searching for happiness is not clear, but they do bring out the reason for his unhappiness rather well by displaying the overbearing trait of the females in his wife's line. Well played, but predictable drama.