Madness of the Heart

No one is pretending that a movie made in 1949 will be the latest. However this feeble story about a woman who goes temporarily blind, and who is trying to be killed off by her evil in-laws, stretched credibility to the very end. Students of French movie accents may find it interesting, as will those studying the geography of the French coast, and airport terminal design in the 1950's.

Margaret Lockwood is quite compelling as "Lydia" in this tense mystery of a woman who encounters a French gent "Paul" (Paul Dupuis), romance ensues and they fall in love. Throughout their courtship, though, she suffers from increasingly worrying dizzy spells that a doctor confirms will lead to blindness. Horrified, she flees from her beau and takes up in an abbey where she considers holy orders. Luckily, the abbess insists she rejoin the world and she rekindles her romance with the Frenchman, they marry and retreat to his father's chateau. Initially welcome, she soon senses that someone is out to get her, and as the plot slowly develops we are drawn into quite a sinister web that has no shortage of potential perpetrators. Chief amongst them is their neighbour "Verity" (the excellent Kathleen Byron) who has designs on the husband. Finding her life unbearable, she, and her maid "Rosa" (Thora Hird) return to her old life were she encounters another surgeon who thinks he can fix her sight... It's at this point that the story takes a bit of downturn. Up til now, the tension had increased consistently with Byron and Lockwood squaring up nicely, but the ending is just too fanciful (although it does contain the best scene in the film). The men folks contribute little, too - Maxwell Reed is pretty hopeless and Dupuis pretty flat as her husband. Still, it sustains the mystery well enough for the most part and Lockwood is on good form.

With shorter hair, Margaret Lockwood stars in this romantic mystery. She goes blind just after meeting the love of her life. She spends a year in a convent thinking marriage is not for her. But her French beau accepts her blindness and they marry to live at his noble family's home. There she feels a secret enemy is working against her. She is indeed being deceived which leads to a quarrel with her husband. Her enemy has done the trick and so she leaves for England with her companion (Thora Hird). The lovely French Chateau is the 9th Century Chateau d'Ansouis which was loaned to the Two Cities film company by it's owner, Comte de Sabran. There is a great scene where the blind Lockwood is deliberately being led into dangerous waters. Amazingly this 'seaside' scene was all done in a tank at Denham Studio.

No matter how well Margaret Lockwood acts and how she doubtlessly dominates the film, the character you will remember from this film is Kathleen Byron as her scheming rival. Margaret Lockwood is courted by the ideal French aristocrat, who will not give in in his efforts to marry her. The problem is she is going blind. She does go blind and seeks refuge at a convent, but the mother superior commands her to return to mundane life, she has no choice, but there, in spite of her blindness, the gallant Paul Dupuis is still waiting for her and marries her. He brings her home to his castle in Provence in southern France, where she soon finds herself unwanted och worked against, but she can't see by whom. Naturally a noble family like this must have second thoughts about their son marrying a blind girl, and the plot thickens. Kathleen Byron, intelligent and beautiful, more so than Margaret Lockwood, takes the lead in the intrigues, which go from bad to worse. It's an excellent thriller and very romantic at that, so this is a film you will enjoy seeing again at times, at least once every ten years.

A faint-hearted, discount version of Rebecca (itself a version of Jane Eyre.) The first third is adequately, but unexcitingly presented, and the remaining two thirds ground out in a series of unconvincing, predictable and lame melodramatic clichés. The usually dependable writer/director seems to have no discernible appetite here for the potential suspense, tension and excitement. This should be a good old fashioned melodrama, but at best it's a milk chocolate romance for undemanding picturegoers of the 1940s. Only Maxwell Reed as the oily servant, lurking and scheming, seems to have the right idea, but is given very little to do. The stars are dull. Maurice Denham and Thora Hird are okay, and Desmond Dickinson's photography is sometimes lovely.