Old Yorker

David Lean (1950)

In 1857, a young, middle-class Glasgow woman, Madeleine Smith, was tried for the murder (by arsenic poisoning) of her lover, Pierre Emile L’Angelier.  The remarkable verdict, which could not have been returned in an English court, was ‘not proven’.  This David Lean film of the story is watchable and competent in preserving the mystery of whether or not Madeleine was guilty – but it’s also somewhat ridiculous.  The problems stem from the miscasting of the lovers.  You assume that Madeleine is meant to be young, high- and free-spirited.  The apparently middle-aged, glacially inexpressive Ann Todd (Mrs Lean at the time) makes strenuously abortive attempts to seem, by turns, kittenish and unfathomable.  (The only believable aspect of her playing of Madeleine is that this woman might be coldly calculating enough to commit the murder.)  Perhaps Lean under-exploits Todd’s physical energy:  she’s most striking when, staying at her family’s out-of-town retreat, she’s vigorously horse-riding along the seashore or highland-flinging herself around.  The cross-cutting between her movement and the exuberant dancing of a party of earthy, bright-eyed rustics (whose singing she has heard in the distance) makes this one of the most animated bits of the film.   Except that Madeleine encourages L’Angelier to join in her sensual abandon and it takes him all his time to tap his foot to the rhythm.  This lover is supposed to be dashingly Gallic[1], hot-blooded, excitingly arrogant, etc:  Ivor Desny in the role is fleshy, sluggishly pompous, a lot more boring than the ‘dull’, honourable local gentleman Minnoch (Norman Wooland), to whom Madeleine becomes engaged.  Ann Todd and Ivor Desny throw the whole film out of balance.  Instead of representing a dynamic contrast to the stifling respectability of Madeleine’s family, this stiff, snooty pair suggests that the starchy formality of Victorian society was pervasive enough to petrify even rebellious grand passions.

David Lean skates over what looks on paper one of the potentially interesting questions of the story:  how can the Smith family cope with their eldest daughter’s being tried for murder when the build-up to this has signalled – through Madeleine’s urgent efforts to conceal her relationship with L’Angelier – that the shame of her affair would be intolerable?  A more interesting question still:  which do the family and society regard as more heinous – Madeleine’s alleged crime or her undoubted sin?  Lean doesn’t quite neglect, but is uncharacteristically confusing on, this point:  Madeleine is publicly jeered on her way to court and stigmatised in the local press as a scarlet woman.  When she’s been acquitted of murder – but not, of course, of the extra-marital affair – the crowds in the streets cheer her home.  Lean seems relieved to get into the trial scenes, which he directs (and protracts) with a kind of impersonal zest:  it’s as if the audience that’s been observing Madeleine’s private life for the previous hour has just entered the public gallery of the courtroom and knows nothing about the case.  Still, the two counsels (Barry Jones and André Morell) give forceful, well-spoken closing addresses.  (Morell is, appropriately enough, particularly convincing for the defence.)  The film ends with a close-up on Madeleine; a fey Scottish voiceover asks her if she really did the murder.  Madeleine smiles back enigmatically – or that seems to be the idea.  In one of the rare lapses in David Lean’s distinguished film editing career, you watch Ann Todd composing her facial muscles to try (and fail) to appear tantalising; she then relaxes, but the camera stays on her; then she starts trying to bewitch us again.  Inside your head, you’re shouting ‘Cut!’ for what seems about five minutes.

The cast also includes Leslie Banks as the buttoned-up patriarch Mr Smith, and John Laurie, who galvanises proceedings with an intensely lively, too-brief appearance as a hellfire preacher.  Guy Green’s handsome black-and-white photography captures some impressively atmospheric Glasgow bad weather.  The music (laid on with a trowel) is by William Alwyn.  The screenplay by Stanley Haynes and Nicholas Phipps is pedestrian but includes at least one memorable line, when Madeleine’s father says to his daughter, ‘Your mother and I are becoming increasingly worried about you – there seems to be something in your character which prevents you from acting naturally’.  He doesn’t know how right he is.

[1990s]

[1]  The real L’Angelier came from the Channel Islands.  In the film, I took him to be straightforwardly French.