La Reine Margot (1954)
Directed by Jean Dréville

Film Review

Forty years before Patrice Chéreau made his controversial yet critically acclaimed La Reine Margot (1994), with Isabelle Adjani playing the title role, Jean Dréville directed a film which tells the same story in somewhat less spectacular fashion.  Adapted from one of Alexandre Dumas' best-known works, the script was written by Abel Gance, who, as a young man, had been one of the most important filmmakers of the silent era, best known for his epic melodrama La Roue (1923) and landmark biopic Napoleon (1927).  Gance remains faithful to Dumas' novel, even though it is known to be historically inaccurate, for example overplaying Catherine de Medici's part in the Huguenot masacre.  Dréville's film is somewhat less excessive in its depiction of violence than Chéreau's later film but it still manages to be pretty grim and has a certain amount of shock value, most notably in the scenes of a public execution and the infamous St Bartholemew's Eve massacre.

Almost a decade before François Truffaut gave her the role (in Jules et Jim) that made her an international star, Jeanne Moreau was selected by Dréville to play the role which Adjani would later take on - that of Marguerite de Valois.  Moreau's portrayal is noticeably feistier than Adjani's and she assumes a somewhat more dominant role in the proceedings, even if she is still very much a hostage to fortune, with Françoise Rosay's deliciously evil Catherine de Medici very much controlling the sequence of events.  Like Virna Lisi in Chéreau's film, Rosay's chilling Queen Mother becomes the star attraction and we become utterly enthralled by the actress's multi-layered performance, which makes Catherine de Medici far more than just a vile political schemer.  Dréville's mise-en-scène is adequate but shows little of the inspired touch seen on earlier films, such as Les Roquevillard (1943) and La Cage aux rossignols (1945).  After a dramatic build up to its climactic moment, the film peters out at the end, leaving the spectator with no real sense of what happens next.  Chéreau's film is far superior in this respect, closing the narrative in a far more satisfactory way.

Film Synopsis

Paris, 1572.  Ostensibly to settle decades of enmity between Protestants and Catholics, King Charles IX of France agrees to marry his sister Margot to the Huguenot prince Henri de Navarre.  In reality, this is merely a plot conceived by the wicked Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici, to lure her Huguenot enemies out into the open so that they can all be massacred.  Unable to love her new husband, Margot has an affair with a Protestant messenger, La Môle, whilst the her mother makes plans to dispose of Henri de Navarre...