Film Review
In the twilight of his fairly mixed and mostly undistinguished filmmaking
career, Richard Pottier routinely trotted out bland crowdpleasers without
any detectable sign of skill or enthusiasm, and it's incredible he was still
making films as late as the mid-1960s given that his best years were in the
mid-1940s and he scarcely made a film worth watching after his 1950 Fernandel
offering
Meurtres (1950).
Pottier was still able to attract an audience in the early to mid 1950s,
however, which is presumably why some unsuspecting producers allowed him
to helm
La Châtelaine du Liban, an expensive Franco-Italian
production adapted from the 1924 novel of the same title by Pierre Benoit.
They should have known better. This is a film that has 'monumental
flop' written all over it - in bright red capitals.
Pottier was never the most inspired or imaginative of filmmakers but here
he excels himself and turns in almost two hours of mind numbing tedium that
is an endurance test to sit through without falling asleep. Despite
its charismatic leads - a young Omar Sharif and future Eurovision winner
Jean-Claude Pascal - the film is almost completely bereft of life and drags
itself along more slowly than a one-legged hundred-year-old tortoise with
severe asthma. The film was photographed in colour but manages to be
more drab and colourless than any other film that Pottier made - in fact
it is probably the most unbearably stilted and uninteresting French film
of the decade.
La Châtelaine du Liban has absolutely
no redeeming features - it merely shows the depths of mediocrity that its
director was capable of descending to, although you only have to watch his
subsequent films
Le Chanteur
de Mexico and
Sérénade
au Texas - which are marginally less painful to watch - to see the
truth of this.
© James Travers 2017
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
In Lebanon, Hennequin, the managing director of a French petroleum company,
has just acquired the mining concessions in a remote region of the country
from the Countess Athelstane Orloff. Without delay, he sends two of
his engineers, Jean Domèvre and Mokhrir, to undertake a survey of
the region, but the exploration proves to be fruitless. Then, by chance,
Mokhrir discovers some uranium deposits, but before Jean can pinpoint their
location Mokhrir suddenly goes missing. Fearing that his colleague
may have been abducted, Jean calls on the Countess Orloff to enlist her help
in finding Mokhrir, but arrives just as she is negotiating a deal with a
rival of Hennequin, an Englishman named Hobson. Appearing to succumb
to Jean's charms, the Countess sets out with him to look for the missing
engineer...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.