Manèges (1950) - film review

With his wife, Dora, lying in a hospital bed after a horrific car accident, Robert looks back with tenderness on their life together.  Believing that his wife is going to die, Robert can think only of the happier times, convinced that theirs was a perfect marriage.  This illusion is shattered when Dora’s embittered mother tells Robert the truth about his wife.  Dora only married Robert for his money and has been bleeding him dry to the point where he ends up having to sell his business, a riding school.  But there is worse: without him knowing, Dora has taken a secret lover whilst ruthlessly plotting her next move up the social ladder…

With Manèges, director Yves Allégret paints his most cynical and intensely pessimistic picture of human nature.  A gullible husband is manipulated by his unscrupulous social climbing wife and then morally devastated by his even more odious mother-in-law.  Not what you might legitimately call light entertainment.   The bleak, film noir style of the piece lends it an atmosphere of despair, conveying the mood and feelings of the central characters whilst strangely keeping them at some distance from us.  This is not a comfortable film to watch.  None of the characters is portrayed in a sympathetic light and the relentlessly heavy mood becomes almost overwhelming as the film progresses.  Nonetheless, extraordinary performances from the three principal actors make it compelling viewing and the film leaves a lasting impression on its spectator.

Bernard Blier is perfect in the role of the husband who is incapable of seeing his wife’s faults until they are pointed out to him by the venomous tongue of his mother-in-law – a part which allows Blier to give one of his darkest and most introspective performances.  As the seductive but manipulative wife, Simone Signoret could not have been bettered, and her masterful portrayal of a heartless villainess is evocative of her later, more celebrated, film roles, most notably as Nicole in Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1955).  (Famously, Signoret was the wife of the director at the time – the last occasion when the two worked together before their separation.  Should we read anything into Allégret’s decision to cast his wife in this role?)   Jane Marken completes the triangle of unsuppressed mutual contempt with what can only be described as a superlative performance with her portrayal of the ultimate mother-in-law from Hell.

© James Travers 2004

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?