Like Jean Aurel 's precedent effort ,"De L'Amour" , "Lamiel " is based on a Stendahl (unfinished ) novel ;screenplay by Cecil Saint-Laurent ,whose touch makes itself felt in the anti -French Revolution lines:the famous sentence of the Declaration of Rights," Men are born and remain free and equal in rights "is ridiculed by one of the characters.
Cecil Saint-Laurent 's most famous heroine ,Caroline Chérie, had to live through the dark hours of the French Revolution ,and her misadventures were worthy of "the perils of Pauline";in the movie made by Richard Pottier,screenwriter Jean Anouilh was an asset ,sending away the opponents (aristocrats and sans-culottes)without pronouncing in favor of either.
Like Caroline , Lamiel is free and easy ;unlike her ,who was a noble ,she's a peasant girl , a go-getter ,who found her Pygmalion in the shape of Dr Sansfin (=endless) ,mischievously played by subtle Michel Bouquet ;he helps her climb the social ladder; a charlatan ,who makes a duchess (Denise Gence) think she suffers from an imaginary eyes disease and has her hire Lamiel as a reader ; from the dowager's son (Pierre Clémenti) to a count (Jean-Claude Brialy) she marries ,she eventually finds love with a thief (Robert Hossein)....
Like Julien Sorel ,she is not in a world where she belongs and Saint-Laurent will see to it...
Even though Anna Karina (27 at the time) was a little too old to play an ingenue ,she shows plenty of go in a part which does not demand too much anyway.The cast and the nice cinematography make up for the relative paucity of the story .
Like this?try these .....
"Kitty " Mitchell Leisen ,1945
"Caroline Chérie" Richard Pottier ,1950
"The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders " Terence Young ,1965
