Louise (1939)

Louise is a French romantic film drama first released in 1939, directed by Abel Gance.  The film stars Grace Moore, Georges Thill, André Pernet, Suzanne Desprès and Robert Le Vigan.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


Louise, a young Parisian seamstress, is in love with Julien, a struggling composer who lives opposite her apartment in Montmartre.   Unfortunately, Louise’s parents have a poor opinion of Julien and are determined that the two young people should not marry.   In the end, Louise becomes tired of her parents’ interference in her love life and moves into another apartment provided by her lover.  Thereafter, Louise and Julien spend an idyllic few months together, oblivious to the toll that Louise’s absence is taking on her parents.  When she learns that her father has fallen ill, Louise agrees to return to the family home, on the understanding that she will return to Julien as soon as the present crisis is over.  Having lured her daughter back home, Louise’s parents have no intention of letting her go...

Gustave Charpentier’s popular opera Louise (first performed in 1900) gets the full Mack the Knife treatment (butchered beyond recognition) in this mediocre film adaptation which was directed by none other than Abel Gance, the esteemed director of the landmark French epic Napoléon (1927).  Very little of Charpentier’s original opera makes it onto the screen, most of the original sung text being replaced by spoken dialogue or else cut altogether (with its author’s approval), but the end result is far from being a disaster.  Gance’s direction may lack the inspired touch of his previous great silent films, but the musical numbers are well executed and the near-expressionistic cinematography which is employed in the more dramatic scenes creates the appropriate mood of oppression and parental tyranny.  Louise is significant in that it was the only musical film that Abel Gance made, and judging by the outcome it is not hard to see why.

The fact that this was the last film to which the world famous soprano Grace Moore lent her vocal talents (she died in a plane crash eight years later) gives it some historical importance.  Despite being patently too old for the character she is playing, Moore gives an arresting performance which more than compensates for the deficiencies in the mise-en-scène and writing.  The cast includes two other noteable opera singers, Georges Thill and André Pernet, both excellent in their respective roles.  Appearing here in supporting roles, Ginette Leclerc and Robert Le Vigan were each on the cusp of stardom, although both would suffer a career setback after the Liberation when they were branded Nazi collaborators.  Louise is a long, long way from being Abel Gance’s greatest film and it does few favours to the fine opera from which it derives.  However, whilst no one could mistake this for a masterpiece, it does have a certain faded charm and occasionally surprises with the odd imaginative flourish, such as Gance’s trademark over-layering of multiple images to capture the spirit of Paris.  A curiosity piece, nothing more.

© James Travers 2011

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