Le Toubib (1979) - film review

France, 1983.  Jean-Marie Desprée, a brilliant surgeon with a thriving Parisian practice, sees his comfortable world torn apart when his wife leaves him.  Then World War III breaks out and he is sent to a field hospital in a major European war zone.   There, Jean-Marie meets a young nurse, Harmonie, whose positive outlook on life at first irritates him.  Then he realises that he has fallen in love with her, but fate has a few more nasty surprises in store…

Le Toubib is by no means a particularly great point in the career of Alain Delon. The fault lies not with the actor but with the film’s weak script and even poorer technical presentation. In spite of some commendable performances from Delon and his co-star Bernard Giraudeau, the film lacks realism and emotional depth, and this is largely on account of the production team’s failure to convince us that the film is set during wartime. This is one of a number of projects where Alain Delon over-stretched himself as a producer, something which contributed to the gradual decline in his popularity as an actor in the 1980s.

© James Travers 2003

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