One of the few non-thrillers in the oeuvre of producer-auteur Val Lewton, this period piece shows even more glaringly how close his celebrated taste and intelligence could skirt to outright stodginess. Adapted from two Guy de Maupassant stories, it kicks off with Boule de Souif, with plucky laundress Simone Simon riding a stagecoach with fellow countrymen in Prussian-occupied 1870 France. Stranded in a lodge, the other passengers persuade Simon to swallow her patriotic integrity and have dinner with transparently Aryan rotter Kurt Kreuger, who arranges the rendezvous less for personal lechery than for symbolic national degradation. The passengers' chumminess dissipates as soon as the deed is done, though dapper cynic John Emery is moved enough to join the underground movement against the invaders. This would be soaring stuff in the hands of a kindred spirit like Max Ophüls, especially as the plot, even sans shocks, has strong thematic branches to the other works in Lewton's series (mainly in its strong heroine). Unfortunately, the uninterestingly efficient Robert Wise (in his first solo outing after sharing The Curse of the Cat People with Gunther Von Fritsch) tidies everything up into a starchy wartime allegory, despite Simon's vivacity and a few modest studio recreations of 19th-century Europe. With Alan Napier, Helen Freeman, Jason Robards, Sr., Norma Varden, and Edmund Glover. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce
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