La belle meunière

...the viewer's face turned a whiter shade of pale! The first film using the Rouxcolor process(and also the last),the film was made to fight against American color movies which could attract the French audience to the detriment of their local production.Today the film has lost most of its pristine charm:it looks like another color movie ,where the colors are not that beautiful,although it's much better than the faded gevacolor of Christian-Jaque's "Barbe -Bleue" (1951)

"La Belle Meunière is an (imaginary,without a doubt) moment in the life of Franz Schubert portrayed by singer Tino Rossi.If you do not like this kind of singer,take to your heels :in the first part,he sings every five minutes;he even sings when the miller and his daughter are talking!

What's bred in the bone comes out in the flesh:although it takes place abroad,the characters and the story look like ... a Pagnol story .All that the miller needs is a Provençal accent.Although wearing a horrible wig with big braids -to get the Teutonic look-,Pagnol's wife ,Jacqueline is another Pagnolesque heroine: the baron in his castle wants her to be his mistress and he paints in glowing colors what she stands to gain from taking this position!Of course Pagnol (and Schubert) does not approve of such a dishonor,but it's nevertheless the only movie by the director where the moral is not intact in the end.Brigitte is another soon-to-be "Angèle"

Schubert spends some time in a mill.Just like Alphonse Daudet in Pagnol's swansong "Lettres de Mon Moulin".As for the music ,just compare with Abel Gance's "Un Grand Amour De Beethoven"!