Martin Roumagnac (1946) - film review

In a small provincial town, Blanche Ferrand and her uncle own a shop which sells seed and birds.  Blanche resents her drab milieu but has no difficulty attracting male suitors who might offer her an escape.   One of these is Martin Roumagnac, a building contractor who falls passionately in love with Blanche as soon as he sees her.  Blanche appears to reciprocate Martin’s love but, without his knowing, she allows herself to be courted by a wealthy consul, whose wife is grievously ill.  The consul proposes that after his wife’s death Blanche should marry him.  When Martin learns of this he is thrown into a murderous frenzy…

After an unsuccessful attempt to break into Hollywood in the 1940s, actor Jean Gabin returned to French cinema in 1946 with this bleak film noir melodrama, which also starred his partner at the time, Marlene Dietrich.  The couple had originally been slated to star together in Marcel Carne’s Les Portes de la nuit but instead opted for this film – an apparent casting coup for director Georges Lacombe but one which turned out to be something of a poisoned chalice for its stars.

It has to be said that this is most definitely not Marlene Dietrich’s finest hour and some would say that she was somewhat miscast. Her on-screen rapport with Jean Gabin appears more like lukewarm endurance than smouldering passion.  Interestingly, this was the only film the German actress made in France, and also the only film where she appeared along side Gabin.  It was not long after making this film that the couple separated.

Whilst Dietrich disappoints, the rest of the cast turn in some pretty respectable performances, particularly Jean Gabin, who was on the first leg of his spectacular come-back in French cinema.  Here, Gabin plays the kind of working class character of his earlier years but with a much darker, more cynical edge – a foretaste of the tougher Gabin we would come to know and love in the following decades.  Working in America, coupled with his not insignificant wartime service, had clearly left its mark on the actor.

The film’s brooding film noir atmosphere is typical of post-war gloom in European cinema at the time, with illusions of prosperity, longevity and world harmony well and truly laid to rest.  The tragic ending, with its typically noirish “free but dead” theme – although a tad contrived – is well realised, matching the standard of the films which Lacombe made earlier in the decade.

© James Travers 2008

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