User reviews

In a small provincial village things occur, that has the occupants distressed, visibly stirred, as the floodgates are wound open, fires lit then lives are broken, beasts fall dead, leaving a vastly reduced herd. Tongues start to wag about the culprit and his reasons, the Italian who appears in summer seasons, foreigners not welcome here, we should make him disappear, but the constables maintain the laws cohesion. In the background out of sight and out of mind, there's a villain, who's quite the opposite of kind, presents herself as a school teacher, but deep down she has some features, that give her kicks, when those around her are maligned.

Left me thinking just how many people, who present as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths, are actually nasty, conniving and sociopathic nutters. Jeanne Moreau performs the role with aplomb although I'm not sure this was a film that delivers quite as much as some of her other roles.

This is a real gem from British director Tony Richardson (The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Taste of Honey) and French jailbird Jean Genet, very rarely seen, filled with eerie and wondrous black and white photography courtesy of David Watkins, whose static camera seems to peer more deeply into certain moments than should be possible, making many of the outdoor scenes in particular feel mythic and fairytale-like.

Jeanne Moreau, as the sociopathic small-town schoolteacher, reminded me very much of Isabelle Huppert in another of my favourite films, La Pianiste - there's the same cold, reptilian, but hypnotically mesmerizing malevolence, and a desire on our part to understand what can't be understood. Ettore Manni, as the immigrant lumberjack Manou, has many moments of delicate injury and thoughtful reflection amid his lusty joi de vivre that makes him a much more appealing and relatable character.

It's a very simple story, and perhaps doesn't have all that much more to tell us other than people are unfathomably strange and usually smallminded, and that evil is mundane and often rewarded when hiding in plain sight in a fragile form. And yet the effect of it all is much more, and this feels both a very modern and forward-thinking film (the long, stationary shots reminded me particularly of the movies of Michael Haneke) and a very ageless film, unmoored from any particular era - either way, it certainly doesn't feel like it was made the same year The Beatles were making Yellow Submarine.

It falls a little short of greatness because of its slightness of story and lack of cohesion - most of the English supporting cast are a little weak too - but I can wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone wanting to see beautiful cinema and willing to go for a ride into the murkier waters of the human heart.

Dark in its commentary about human nature, 'Mademoiselle' is both artistic and disturbing. Several say that it's the frustrated sexual desire for woodman Ettore Manni that leads to Jeanne Moreau's spate of secret violence against the town, but it's worth noting that the first fire set is accidental. I think it's more horrifying to think how arbitrary sociopathic behavior may be, that it may exist in all of us, and small turns of events turn her into a monster. The malevolence in her eyes is frightening, as is her cruelty to his son in her classroom, and we see how cruelty begets cruelty, as he dashes a rabbit repeatedly against the ground after an incident with her. That's one thing to beware of in the film, there is more than one scene of what appears to be actual cruelty to animals. There is also sexual humiliation - kissing boots, crawling on the ground, and getting spit on before being kissed - in a sequence that drags on over multiple scenes far too long towards the end. The film simply tries too hard to makes its point, sometimes with silly, obvious symbolism (for example, him unwrapping his snake and having her stroke it). Director Tony Richardson, with screen writing from Marguerite Duras based on a story by Jean Genet, certainly creates an image with this film, it's just not all that pleasant. On the positive side, he does capture several wonderful shots, mostly outdoors. It's as if he saying nature is beautiful, man is not. I also loved seeing Jeanne Moreau, who is fantastic.

The legendary Jeanne Moreau stars as Mademoiselle, a school teacher, filled with repressed sexual urges, in a small French village. She finds ways to vent her desires, mostly through arson and other destructive acts.

Mademoiselle seems like a film that desperately wants to be profound. It seems like a film that wants to say something about repressing desires, and the insignificance of mankind against nature. For the most part, it fails. It is unclear whether Mademoiselle's violent actions are the product of sexual desire or simple sadism. She sets fires and opens floodgates, but is it a sexual urge? Not really, she just seems to get a kick out of watching the townspeople scramble to save their lives and possessions.

And while the film is directed with an interesting visual flair that does often capture the beauty of nature quite well, it never really achieves a level of Lean-esquire glory or magnificence. Sure, it's pretty to look at, but what's the point? The acting is also sorely lacking. Ettore Manni, who plays Mademoiselle's (and everyone else's) sexual interest, is just not very good. He often unleashes these boisterous laughs, and every time I cringed. It's not even a little bit convincing. Even the usually wonderful Moreau fails to impress here. Her performance just feels hollow. As she has proved in the past that she can be very good, I blame director Tony Richardson, who, unlike someone like François Truffaut or Louis Malle, clearly doesn't grasp what Moreau is capable of.

That's not to say Mademoiselle is a failure. There are several deeply disturbing moments, one in particular involving a rabbit. The film seems to be trying to say that all human beings can be monsters at times, and we take out our suppressed aggression on whatever innocence may be around us. Still, the film seems to lack a core of genuine emotional depth, and therefore, lacks resonance. It doesn't help that it tends to move along at a remarkably slow pace, which causes it to try the viewer's patience at times.

However, I would probably give Mademoiselle a mild recommendation, if for nothing besides the attractive visuals and the fact that it contains Jeanne Moreau.

The film opens with nuns singing as they climb a hill. But any similarity with the Sound of Music stops there. Jeanne Moreau is evil incarnate. Like the ex-girlfriend that is love and light to everyone she meets. But only you know the truth! She is lovely. She is beautiful. She wanders the hillside like Aphrodite blessing the ground on which she walks. Each carefully observed detail of the countryside is there in her natural and engaging charm (and heightened by use of natural sound only). Gentle and sensitive. The sort of person everyone wants to know. Do we fall in love with her in the first few minutes? She picks up some birds' eggs and gently crushes them. What? Some mistake n'est ce pas? Did we really see that? Have you ever refused to believe an awful thing because a person 'couldn't possibly be bad'? A friend, a lover, a spouse even. Or the upstanding member of a community. A politician? The velvet glove. Kennedy - Vietnam. Gandhi - bloody Partition. Catholic Church - Spanish Inquisition. The super-spin smile. The well-meaning malice. The invincible persona of goodness. And in the dark it conceals what we refuse to believe.

Am I too harsh - all over some eggs? The water-lock she opens girlishly. The lighted cigarette by which things burn. Is it wrong of us to suspect her childlike innocence? See her soft lips! See her run to help you in need! Comfort you. Always there for those less fortunate.

Mademoiselle works as a typist at the police station and also as a schoolteacher. Both respectable jobs. She's an upstanding new member of the rural hamlet where things go mysteriously wrong. A chaste girl, of course. (Except when she's having sex – but if she doesn't get caught, does it 'count'?) She sweetly tells the children stories of Gilles de Rais. How brazen (for well-read viewers!).

Apart from the femme-fatale-in-overdrive aspect of this film, it is also visually satisfying in every possible way. Rampant open-air sex - in a thunderstorm - has never looked so good (or so convincing). Natural sound creates more atmosphere than an added soundtrack ever could. Dramatically, it has the long-drawn out obsession-tension of a Lady Chatterley (What is it with these woodcutters??) but with much more finely chiselled characters. While Moreau's poisoned chalice has similarities with her role in Diary of a Chambermaid, this Mademoiselle is altogether more accessible, more extreme, more downright nasty.

Some may find fault with the artistic overstatement. Or the fact that a cast of many nationalities has to somehow be made to gel. If you are turned off by the tone of it, you may even find it preposterous. But let it work its magic. Director Richardson is most ambitiously at his height of 'British New Wave,' and master-storymaker Jean Genet shines. Moreau is a monstrously formidable force. Mademoiselle is one of the most dedicated portrayals of female malice ever brought to screen. It is the femme fatale made real, and without any puritanical come-uppance to relegate her to the realms of noir fantasy.

David Watkin's (The Devils, Chariots of Fire, Out of Africa) dreamlike photography icily dramatises the charged eroticism. The Panavision lenses "drool" over the bodice-ripping element, the fiercely animalistic sex. Fellow director Richard Lester once described it to Steven Soderberg saying, "Mademoiselle was the most beautiful black-and-white film I have ever, ever seen . . . they were using different stocks which had different flare factors and different qualities of the way the blacks and greys played for each scene. You were choosing stock to make something look great. It was very experimental." It has also been described as, "black and white widescreen noir," making effective use of the large frame, often placing the characters right or left at the limits of our vision.

Some critics have gone as far as to suggest that Mademoiselle is demonically possessed. The other view is that it portrays the havoc caused by repressed passions, and in which the church is complicit. This latter, more reasonable view, is supported by a careful reading of the film. The hypocrisy of the clergy is also hinted at in moments of humour. "Some are called to a life of suffering," says the priest sententiously. To which the hard-working old peasant woman retorts, "You seem to forget that I make your bed!" Whatever your feelings, it does give a whole new meaning to the phrase, "Come when I whistle."

Jeanne Moreau is simply brilliant in this role of a frustrated woman driven by madness to commit evil against the world. It has an ending that is wonderfully realistic and disturbing.

Jean Genet has created a world of simple people who are easily manipulated by a brilliant woman and their own fears and the results are predictable. Evil is here seen as not something grandiose and politically driven but as a simple everyday element of human nature.

The film's pace is wonderfully timed to draw you in to this strange little world that somehow feels normal. Somewhere in our subconscious mind, we know this place. I, for one, was not entirely shocked by the actions of any of the characters in this film. The evil that can result when people are not allowed either by religious authority or circumstance to express their natural sexual needs is here examined in gruesome detail.

See this film. It is brilliant.

I gave up one third of the way through and turned to watch the paint dry on the wall. I got tired of Moreaux never changing her crabby facial expression. Whoever thinks this film was sensual must find a constipated expression titillating.

If this was part of the French wave they should have flushed completely.

I learned about "Mademoiselle" from a "Salon" web interview with cinematographer John Bailey (see link below).

He pointed out a remarkable thing—that the film consists entirely of static wide-screen shots. No pans, no zooms, no dollying, just one immaculate, immobile shot after another. That's one reason the film, unpleasant as it may be, has a calm unsettling pace that's the opposite of today's frenetic films.

Bailey said: "...the fascinating thing about (Richardson's film) is there's not a single camera movement in the entire film...All the action happens within a static frame. This film is, like, two hours long, and it's absolutely riveting. It's so unlike anything that you would ever see now."

from Salon article www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2003/07/03/cinematographers

And ages well. Good story and players. Moreau as usual is great. Jean Genet gets in the head of others.

My 1st wife puked after 30 minutes of this film in 1966, as she did after about the same amount of Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. Mademoiselle herself was sadistic, while being afraid of her sadism. She was extremely alluring to a twisted mind like mine. Moreau plays her to creepy perfection. My wife looked at me in a different way afterwards, since I finished the movie, so if one is married it might be better to see the movie separately. The drowning of farm animals is the least of the psychological challenges with this film. You do learn what I tried to tell my 30-yr-old daughter three years ago, that "The French have no moral center," for which I got chewed out. But you see that every day, and there is plenty to read about it in history. Medecins sans Frontieres somewhat redeems them.

Did you have a sadistic teacher? I did, but no one that goes to quite the depths of depravity that this one does. Her bullying of the boy in class is very much like what I have seen in my lifetime in school. Wonder if the writer actually had some similarly demoralizing experiences and therefore wanted to make a point of the stupidity of the masses when someone 'acts respectable'.

I was cringing at the horror in this movie all the way through it. The man refusing the teacher his sexual favors was not made clear to me at all, as I thought they had 'done it'. Still, you wonder why there was no effective authority in the town. The policemen were like boy scouts, bicycling ineffectively all over the town.

This really reminded me of the lynching mentality of some of the small towns in Alabama, where I grew up. Oh, if only they had a lawyer there such as the father in "To Kill a Mockingbird". In this movie they killed a rabbit, and more. It at least was not a formula movie, as there were unique touches all the way through. I will have to see it again.

"Mademoiselle" is a genuinely strange film--one that is very, very difficult to describe or understand. The title character is played by Jeanne Moreau and she's a school teacher with a strange obsession. She loves to do evil things to the folks in her village. Mostly, she lights fires, but she also poisons their cattle and floods their farms. There really is no explanation for much of this behavior--she just likes to do evil things. Yet, she really isn't crazy, as she's the school teacher and KNOWS what she's going is wrong. Later, you realize part of the reason she lights fires is that Manou (Ettore Manni) looks so manly as he battles these fires. However, at the same time, the villagers begin to blame Manou for the fires. After all, he has a lot of nerve being a foreigner!! At the same time, Mademoiselle takes great delight in making Manou's son feel worthless--and treats him abominably in the classroom. What does all this mean? I really am not sure. In fact, I am not sure there's much behind all this and making heads or tales of it is a dilemma. It was well made but that just isn't enough. All in all, a strange movie that left me baffled--and I assume your reaction will probably be about the same.

By the way, there seem to be a lot of dead animals in the film--including a rabbit that is beaten to death. I sure hope they didn't do this just for the film, but it sure looks like they did. What a waste.

First a warning: if you can't stomach any scenes of animal suffering, do yourself a favor and steer clear of this film.

I just saw a brand new print of this film. In all its Cinemascope glory, this is a breathtaking film, incredibly photographed and directed. And there are some incredible touches in the telling of this story.

My problems with this film derive from a few things: 1. though the goal of this film is to build a dark and compelling yarn of the simple banality of evil, there are ways that you can read this film that really undo that goal, especially as it pertains to the female character at the center of the drama and the way we're ultimately encouraged to view the impetus of her rage, 2. the town ends up being a shadow character which is effective in some ways, but it is also unsettling.

No question this is an important film that should be seen.

7.5

Tony Richardson is a somewhat forgotten director, but he signed a series of iconic works in the sixties, which even earned him two Oscars (for the 1963 film Tom Jones) and two BAFTAs (for the 1961 film A Taste of Honey).

But this Mademoiselle, from 1966, which was even nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes and features one of Jeanne Moreau's most powerful performances, is a masterpiece of perversity and sexual tension. Certainly one of the most daring films of the sixties, and this was a revolutionary time, in mentalities as well as in the arts.

The psychological drama and the effects of repressed sexuality are here taken to the extreme of psychopathy, while at the same time intelligently criticizing prejudice and hypocrisy, which always come to the surface in human beings, particularly hateful in the closed and narrow-minded small provincial village.

A pearl as black as coal.

In a village populated only by cowardly fools, reprehensible things often occur such as fires, a flood, poisoning of the water, all caused by one person. Who is the author and why does this mysterious person does these things? You will see a movie not like others, with a sensual Jeanne Moreau, who, in one scene, the only funny one in the whole movie, she squeaks like a puppy. There are people like the character played by Jeanne Moreau in real life. And the actress managed an admirable portrait.

Set entirely in a small town and surrounding countryside in central France this is at once a tale of idyllic country life with its emphasis on religion, patriotism and family but at the same time a devastating portrait of a psychopath. The remarkable actress Jeanne Moreau plays that psychopath which makes it even more difficult to accept and deal with within the context of this beautiful looking film. The only film I can think of that comes near to this one in its seeming idealism gone rotten is Luis Bunuel's Diary of a Chambermaid two years before. Mademoiselle does not have the humour or quite the same subtlety but it does have Moreau and that disconnect between the apparent 'pillar of society' and utter corruption. Indeed Bunuel's much quoted phrase concerning the 'immorality of bourgeois morality' is played out here from the very beginning with malicious and violent action combined with a religious procession through golden fields. Moreau is magnificent here in the central role and so believable we have to pinch ourselves lest we lapse into misreading her as others clearly do. Her cool and calculated manner amidst the farmyards and animals is terrifying and extremely well dealt with by Tony Richardson, who marshals all his cast immaculately. There is a scene at one of the arson attacks and as we watch with Moreau we have a close up of her quietly gleeful state and catch the reflection of her burning object of desire reflected within her eyes. Measured but masterful.

This movie, most notable for its authors, Playwright Jean Genet, is a lost classic which one ups Bunuel's Diary of a Chambermaid in its portrayal of the secret twisted desires of the rural french. Jeanne Moreau stars as a teacher in a rural french village. Her secret desire for the Italian logger Manou leads her to acts of brutal destruction on the town. A brilliant story combined with luscious camera work and nearly silent but incredibly tense scenes with Jeanne Moreau lead to making this movie an absolute must see.

Yes, poisonous is the main word that comes to my mind where I watch this British movie made in France in the new British cinema manner, as Jack Clayton's THE INNOCENTS was a couple of years earlier. The two stories are obviously different, but the atmosphere so close to each other. Listen to the noise of the surroundings, it is a very poisonous atmosphere, very...I can't find the adequate, accurate words. if you have also seen THE INNOCENTS, a - I repeat - very different topic, you will notice although some similarities between the two. Just notice the birds song among the trees, at night, in the right middle of this fascinating, atmospheric and sooo disturbing tale. And certainly not a fairy tale. Far from that. Jeanne Moreau at her peak. But she always was at her peak.

Few seem to understand what this film is about, which is rank misogyny. That's really all there is to it. Jeanne Moreau, an intelligent woman who admitted to craving the unconventional, was the driving force behind the project. She presumably understood the film's basic theme and went for it. Mademoiselle is sadistic, perverse, capricious, and emotionally comatose.

Based on a discarded screenplay by the sadistic homosexual Jean Genet who was on a mission to subvert normative society, and with some tweaking by others, including the doyenne of non-conformist romantic anguish, Marguerite Duras, and directed by Tony Richardson, who was himself in the closet at that time, the film's gay credentials now look obvious, though at the time the hidden meaning would have been relatively obscure and it is no surprise that viewers at the time found the meaning of the film as garbled as the various languages spoken in this French village.

In any case, it was hardly possible though to mask the sociopathic malice of the main character and the clear implication that heterosexual passion is a nasty disease - a kind of insanity - sufficient to lead, in women, to bestial submission and the destruction of men, and, in men, to, well, at least a terrible waste of resources (from a gay point of view).

The static, wide-angle compositions are a thing of beauty though and are worth watching for their own sake. The technique goes some way to represent Mademoiselle's placid detachment from normality, and serves to mask the obviousness of the message - without it, the film would have been too blatant for its own good. Unfortunately, coupled with misogyny theme, the catatonic presentation turns the story into a dreary and rather unpleasant slog.