La Vérité sur Bébé Donge (1952) - film review

A wealthy industrialist François Donge is seriously ill in hospital, apparently suffering from food poisoning.  He realises this his wife, Bébé, has poisoned him.  Without recrimination, he looks back on their marriage and tries to understand why she should want to kill him...

Although slow moving, La Vérité sur Bébé Donge offers a typically Simenonesque dark study about the tragedy of an unfulfilled love.  Whilst the husband, François Donge, regards marriage as little more than yet another business contract, tidy and well formalised, his wife, the beautiful Bébé sees marriage as a step towards spiritual fulfilment.  Her frustration and disappointment soon transforms her initial affection for Donge into quite loathing, and she dispatches her husband with the same cool efficiency which he himself applies in his business life.

The film can easily be criticised for its lack of drama and emotional intensity, but its understated, almost complacent treatment of its subject lends it a disturbing tragic dimension.  The film’s power lies almost entirely in the spell-binding performances of its two lead actors, Jean Gabin and Danielle Darrieux.  (Darrieux had in fact been married for a while to the film’s director, Henri Decoin.)

© James Travers 2001

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