Manèges

Delightful, powerful, but darkest tale. Once seen, never forgotten. Expertly played out to the end. Signoret shines as Dora - the unfaithful and soulless wife. Marken is the mother-in-law from hell. The mother-daughter relationship is brutally honest, and they keep few secrets. Ultimately, it is their love of money (and poor timing) that is truly ruinous...

The substantive "Manèges" in French has three meanings:a merry-go-round,a ring(where you practice horse-riding),and ploys.The last two meanings can be applied to Allégret's movie.It does take place in a ring and hateful people are making ploys . Bernard Blier owns the ring,he's a naïve meek man,not the handsome guy women can dream of.Enter Simone Signoret -in one of her most satanic parts-:abetted by a mother (played by a remarkable Jeanne Marken)she marries the poor lad,who believes she loves him,and then the plot will become as ruthless as it can be. Signoret's portrayal is extraordinary,and easily matches her sensational roles in "les diaboliques" or "Room at the top":emptying her hubby's pockets ,lying lazily on her bed ,horse-riding in the woods,stalking rich preys among chic clients of the "manège"(because Blier is only a stage on her way to social elevation),or laughing at Blier behind his back,with her mother's strident chuckles which come back as a sinister leitmotiv.She does not realize she remains a rather vulgar woman,and the posh people she sees in her husband's ring cannot be fooled."Your perfume will always be horse-manure!",the stable -lad,her lover,tells her. Signoret's mother (Marken) is an evildoer to a fault:she acts with her daughter as a madam .Her charms must provide her with money and respectability. The movie is masterfully constructed,using flashbacks,now Blier's memories,now Marken's ones.The ending is so black that the viewer ,after this "horse-manure" atmosphere,needs a breath of fresh air.Film noir buffs,do not miss this gem!

Having watched Frenchman Marc Allegret's BLANCHE FURY (1948) to inaugurate a foreign-language film marathon (albeit by way of a British production and, therefore, in English!), it was logically followed by an effort from his younger brother Yves. Alas, this study of a femme fatale (played by the director's own wife at the time, Simone Signoret) proved disappointingly dreary as a whole – wasting a rather interesting noir-ish structure wherein the female protagonist goes through a 180-degree turn from victim (we first see the girl badly injured, with her devoted husband Bernard Blier then recounting preceding events) to schemer (as she asks her mother, Jane Marken, to tell Blier about their true grasping nature and how she frequently betrayed him with other more handsome men). Though, perhaps appropriately, the English title of the film is THE WANTON, the original was more subtle – if no less obviously related to some of the themes involved; MANEGES, in fact, translates to riding-school and, indeed, Blier is the proprietor of one (not exactly an exciting milieu, I might add)…but I suspect that the director also intended to use the figurative meaning of someone being "taken for a ride" here. The film does have most of the qualities one associates with French cinema of the period (especially with respect to the acting strength and monochrome photography) but, as I said, plotting is rather weak throughout – while the iris effect utilized to depict the transition between past and present eventually becomes irritating with the repetition.

Wow. Bernard Blier, Simone Signoret, and Jane Marken are the trio at the center of a melodrama in high-gear from start to finish. Dora (Signoret) is married to Robert (Blier), an older man with some money (he owns a riding school in Paris). She's a gold-digger--attractive and selfish--but her mother (indelibly played by Marken) is a harridan of the first order, a monster who pushes her daughter to marry men with the means to keep them in a comfortable lifestyle. Dora's mother is also her confidant: the two women laugh at the husband behind his back, as they happily spend his money. Eventually Dora grows tired of pretending to love her husband and strays, counting on a wealthy suitor to take her away. The film is composed of grim interiors and flashbacks, as Robert and, mostly, the mother narrate the story in voice-over. Blier and Signoret were two of France's greatest actors and it pays off here. Marken so perfectly embodies the man-hating mother--vulgar and cackling--it's easy to hate her, along with her scheming daughter. Perhaps it's a cautionary tale. Yves Allégret's direction is brilliant, each scene revealing more about the characters both in word and deed. A dark, intense drama that deserves to be better known.