Le mura di Malapaga

Considering it won an honorary Oscar in 1949(before the category of Best Foreign Flm became a competitive affair) and garnered awards for both director René Clément and actress Isa Miranda at Cannes, the subsequent neglect of this film is indeed mystifying.

Its critical success was not reflected in box office returns however, perhaps because the public did not want to be reminded of post-war austerity.

I have revisited this film on a few occasions and it never fails to move me.

Gabin's career seemed to be in free-fall at this time before Jacques Becker came to his rescue with 'Touchez-pas au Grisbi'. His air of world-weariness, no doubt influenced by his war service, suits the role perfectly. Gabin was certainly no stranger to characters pursued by implacable Fate but this is his final appearance in such a role.

The performances that haunt however are those of Isa Miranda and fifteen year old Vera Talchi as mother and daughter. Miranda would never again to my knowledge be gifted such a part and she is absolutely wondrous. Her chemistry with Gabin is palpable. Talchi was a great find but her career thereafter did not alas amount to much apart from playing the love interest in the first of the Don Camillo series. What a pity.

This and his films 'Battle of the Rails', 'Forbidden Games' and 'Gervaise' guarantee Clément a place in the Pantheon of great directors. Roman Vlad has written a powerful score and the images by Louis Page of war-torn Genoa add to the film's neo-realist feel.

Visconti maintained that the most important thing on screen is to portray the burden of being human. Clément's film certainly fulfils that criterion in no uncertain terms.

It's hard to know how good "The Walls of Malapaga" may or may not be, because the print I saw (which aired on TCM and which I'm assuming therefore is the best one available) is so horrible that it almost makes the film unwatchable. Most of the time the actors' faces are so washed out that you can't see them, and 50% of the subtitles are unreadable because they're in white font against frequently white backgrounds.

But the film is good for a peek at post-WWII Europe and the daily reminders of desperation and devastation from which America was largely spared. I happened to watch a couple of Susan Hayward melodramas that came out on either side of this film around the same time I watched it, and I was struck by the huge difference between what American audiences were being sold in their movies vs. what Europeans were seeing. In American films, it's like the war never happened, and the wealth and privilege is hard to stomach, whereas European films from the same time period seem to be about nothing but the war and the legacy it left behind.

"The Walls of Malapaga" received the annual Honorary Foreign Language Film Oscar that the Academy bestowed for a decade before introducing the competitive Foreign Language Film category that exists today.

Grade: B

Just watched it o0n TCM and the Janus Films copy they showed was terrible and barely watchable in HD. Someone, somewhere need to a restoration. Nonetheless, it was a good film with Gabin being Gabin, and I mean that with all the respect and accolades he deserves. But the real star performance (IMHO) is by Vera Talchi as Chechina. Sadly she has only four other films on her resume'. 8/10.

Le mura di Malapaga (1949) is a Italian/French movie directed by René Clément. It stars Jean Gabin as Pierre Arrignon, a French criminal who escapes to Genoa, Italy.

René Clément was a famous French director in the mid-20th century. He is sometimes called the father of French New Wave Cinema, although the directors in the New Wave were younger than Clément.

Jean Gabin was the leading French male actor of his day. Clément and Gabin made a great team, and what resulted was a great movie. As others have pointed out, this film is a mixture of film noir and neorealism. We see film noir touches everywhere--shadows, steel bars, crimes. Neorealism was easy if you were shooting in 1949 Genoa. The rubble left behind by WW II was everywhere. People speak of "living in the rubble" or "playing in the rubble" is if this is just part of everyday life. (I assume it was part of everyday life.)

The movie also stars Isa Miranda as Marta, the Italian woman who falls in love with Pierre. She's easy to distinguish--the beautiful, slender woman with high cheekbones. (That's a joke, because it describes every French movie star of her day. However, she really was beautiful, and she really was a great actor.)

However, for me, acting honors go to Vera Talchi, as Cecchina, Marta's daughter. At age 15, it couldn't have been easy to play alongside Gabin and Miranda, but she managed it extremely well.

This film won the Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film in 1950. We saw it in 35mm at Rochester's wonderful Dryden Theatre in the George Eastman Museum. However, it will work almost as well on the small screen. If you love film noir and 1940's neorealism, it's a must see. Even if those are not your favorite type of films, it's still worth seeking out and seeing.

P.S. The Walls of Malapaga in Genoa still exist. It was hard to get information about them, because my search brought up either the movie or a restaurant in Genoa. However, I finally tracked down the fact that Malapaga was a terrible debtor's prison for centuries. It's these walls that physically keep Pierre from getting away. Of course, there are emotional walls as well.

Jean Gabin in a typical role of his, is a stowaway on a ship arriving in Genoa, a Frenchman on the run from what appears to have been a terrible crime, but in old Genoa he meets Isa Miranda who works in a trattoria and takes care of him out of pity, but gradually she falls in love with him. She has a daughter, and they are persecuted by her former husband. There is a typical noir love drama in the bombed ruins of Genoa with only one possible outcome, but at least there are some dreams allowed on the way. Her daughter plays an important part through the whole film and at times appears as the lead indeed, but Isa Miranda is the one you will remember for her beauty and excellent acting. You can always rely on Jean Gabin, he is always the same, but most striking of all are the sets among the old harbour quarters of Genoa with its ruins. It reminds you of "The Third Man" and other post war films like that with very emotional moods throughout, and this film could hardly have been made more beautiful in its neorealistic strictness. You will love it from beginning to end, and when the end comes it will not be a surprise, but like Isa Miranda and her daughter and Jean Gabin himself you will just accept it as something of a naturally fallen curtain.