Monsieur Hawarden

«Monsieur Hawarden» is a strange and little-known film, that was enthusiastically received in the late 1960s and awarded the first prize in the Chicago film festival, but which has not aged very well. It was the debut of Belgian director Harry Kümel, who would later make highly celebrated films such as «Malpertius» and the vampire drama «The Red Lips».

Based on a novel by Filip de Pillecyn, inspired on a 19th century woman's diary, it tells the story of Meriora Gillibrand (Ellen Vogel), a woman who killed a suitor in her youth, and has been hiding from justice for decades dressed as a man known as "Monsieur Hawarden", travelling along with her maid Victorine (Hilde Uitterlinden). All Meriora's reflections on genre, self-image or identity, are spread throughout the movie with excessive intellectual resonance, while, on the other side, everything related to Victorine is intensely worldly, lascivious, and mundane.

According to reviews of Pillecyn's novel, the treatment of the subject is romantic, so I am not sure what were the origins of Meriora's reflections, which later became topics of frequent debate, or if it was the screenwriter or the director who introduced the subtexts of lesbianism and pedophilia: the relationship between Meriora and Victorine is never openly assumed, and the interest that Meriora (who seems to be in her late 50s) has for the 13-year-old boy Axel (Xander Fisher) goes from maternal affection to hidden eroticism.

While the cinematography and locations are beautiful, the direction is overly cautious and antiseptic, and little effort was made to make actress Ellen Vogel look like a "monsieur", resulting in an effeminate lead. In spite of everything, as a pioneering film that announces the themes of gender and atavisms, as well as later films such as «Albert Nobbs», among others, it deserves a view.

A woman disguised as a man or otherwise around is the theme of many comedies in which most of our pleasure comes out when the transvestite is almost being caught. But this movie from Harry Kumel doesn't need the suspenseful moments or the jokes about transvestism, because he has made a tragedy out of it. He uses the premise to inform us that the heroine is feeling safe when she is in disguise, because in this way she avoids prosecution for the murder of her lover 15 years ago. But this disguise also destroys her freedom and identity, because nobody knows anymore who she is and why she lives. We need other people to define ourselves. And if these people think we are someone else we feel lost.

Harry Kumel uses techniques from Griffith, the sober mise-en-scene from Carl Theodor Dreyer and the themes of Sternberg( whom he dedicates the film to) to tell this story. But he makes of all these different visions a very personal film. It is his first movie and he already shows that cinema is capable of complex feelings. He shoots Belgian landscapes of pure beauty and frenzied walks through the forest and he lets all these images emphasize the isolation of the heroine. The only real weakness of this movie is that the people who call the disguised woman 'monsieur Hawarden', had to be given a guide-dog for their blindness. But if you throw away Hollywoodstandards for 100 minutes and prepare yourself for some art from the Netherlands and Belgium, then you will not be disappointed.

If you liked this movie, Harry Kumel's Eline Vere is the next one to see. It shows much parallels with this movie.