Le Val d’enfer (1943) - film review

Foreman of a quarry in Haute-Provence, Noël Bienvenu lives with his elderly parents after the death of his wife.  Shortly after his son, Bastien, is sent to prison for a minor theft, Noël visits an old friend who, on his deathbed, asks the foreman to take care of his daughter, Marthe.  In the wake of an ill-fated romance in Marseilles, Marthe is all too eager to start a new life and accepts Noël’s invitation to live in his house.  Noël falls in love with Marthe and, although he is twenty years her senior, they marry.  It is not long before Marthe realises her mistake.  Bored by her husband, bored by her life in the quarry, she begins to have an affair with a young bargeman…

Le Val d’enfer was the fourth of five films which Maurice Tourneur made for Continental, the German run film company that operated in France during the Nazi occupation.  (The others were: Péchés de jeunesse, Mam’zelle Bonaparte, La Main du diable and Cécile est morte, released between 1941 and 1944).  It is easily one of Tourneur’s bleakest films, reflecting the director’s gloomy assessment of human nature at a time when France had fallen, perhaps too willingly, under the might of fascism.   The excellent cast includes Ginette Leclerc playing a truly venal character who shows a total lack of humanity and compassion as she wilfully ruins the lives of the kind people who offer her help and affection.  Needless to say, the film didn’t do much good for her public image.

Partly as a result of the impressive exterior scenes shot in a working quarry, the film has a striking sense of realism that sets it apart from most other films of this period.  The naturalistic performances and beautifully atmospheric chiaroscuro photography add to this impression, making the story a particularly poignant and absorbing one.  The one flaw is that the plot feels too contrived, the characters too simplistic, and the ultimate triumph of good over evil far too easily and swiftly achieved.

Like many films made in France at the time, Le Val d’enfer is a coded allegory about the Occupation.   Cinema audiences would have had little difficulty identifying Ginette Leclerc’s character, Marthe, with the enemy of the French people – the Vichy government, the Nazis, and all collaborators.   The good guys – the aptly named Bienvenu family – are honest folk who allow themselves to be poisoned and divided by the soulless Marthe.  Just when everything seems to be lost an anonymous hero ("Le sauvage") saves the day and the old order is restored - an optimistic message that would undoubtedly have brought comfort too many, whilst doubtless encouraging others to offer their support to the French Resistance. With such a blatant anti-Nazi subtext, you can’t help wondering how the film ever managed to get past the German censors...

© James Travers 2007

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I differ with the above interpretation since I see the film as pro-Vichy propaganda. Unlike Le Corbeau, Ginette Leclerc's character is definitely an evil "femme fatale" from the city, out to destroy the family into which she has married.  After arranging for the deportation of the grandparents to an old people's home she has an affair with a younger man.  It is only the intervention of one of the cuckold's loyal workmen that the threat is destroyed. The prodigal son returns to be an honest worker and the film ends happily with the whole family re-united. Le Maréchal would have been proud of this film!
Tony Williams (USA)

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