Félicie Nanteuil (1945)

Félicie Nanteuil is a French romantic film drama first released in 1945, directed by Marc Allégret.  The film is based on a novel by Anatole France and stars Micheline Presle, Claude Dauphin, Louis Jourdan, Edmond Beauchamp and Mady Berry.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


During a school revue at which she gets to show off her singing talents, Félicie Nanteuil meets the well-known actor Aimé Cavalier.  The latter has seen sent by the Odéon theatre to read some poetry.  Félicie is a big fan of Cavalier and he admires her beauty.  The actor persuades himself that the young woman has talent and gives her some lessons in diction, which turns out to be a pretext for her becoming his mistress.  Cavalier persuades the manager of the Odéon to hire Félicie and in no time the aspiring young singer is a greater star than the man who launched her on her career.  Cavalier is devastated when Félicie falls for the irresistible Robert de Ligny, but he has a plan to win her back...
© Willems Henri (Brussels, Belgium)

You have to feel sorry for Marc Allégret.  Active throughout the sound era, during which he turned out some excellent films, he finally came up with a Valentine to the nineteenth century French Theatre, featuring a beautiful and charismatic actress who has two men fighting over her.  This had ’winner’ written all over it but alas there was another film on a very similar theme made in that same year and, next to the Carné-Prévert masterpiece Les Enfants du paradis, Allégret’s Félice Nanteuil got lost in the shuffle.  That doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it today of course, and there is a lot to enjoy.  Leading lady Micheline Presle was rapidly ascending the North Face of her career peak (which was a scant two years away via Le Diable au corps) and if Louis Jordan never really convinced in anything he did, Claude Dauphin scarcely puts a foot wrong as Presle’s mentor.  I urge you to seek this one out.

© Leon Nock (London, England) 2010 

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