Les Yeux de l'amour (1959)
Directed by Denys de La Patellière

Film Review

Les Yeux de l'amour is a competently realised but somewhat formulaic melodrama that typifies the quality end of commercial cinema which the auteurs of the French New Wave (Truffaut, Godard, etc.) reacted against with their more uninhibited approach to filmmaking.  Based on Jacques Antoine's novel Une histoire vraie, it has some plot similarities with André Cayatte's Le Miroir à deux faces (1958), and it isn't too difficult to see which is the superior film.  Unlike Cayatte, Pierre Granier-Deferre had no pretensions (and certainly no talent) to be a great auteur, but in the course of his twenty year career as a director he made the most of the ability he did have to turn out polished films with popular appeal, be they thrillers (Retour de manivelle), dramas (Les Grandes Familles, Un taxi pour Tobrouk) or facile comedies (Le Tatoué).

As befits a quality French film melodrama of this period, Les Yeux de l'amour lands itself an exceptional cast and a supremely gifted dialoguist to deflect our attention away from the ludicrously contrived plot.  Since Michèle Morgan played Miss Ugly in Cayatte's film, it was only right that Danielle Darrieux should take on the same role in Granier-Deferre's offering.  Unfortunately, someone appears to have overlooked the fact that in her film Mademoiselle Morgan had had considerable make-up applied to cover up her seraphic features.  We have to take it on trust that in her film Darrieux is so unattractive that no one will give her a second glance when it is apparent that she is anything but.

Fine actress though she is, Darrieux is woefully miscast for this film.  The same cannot be said for the diva who plays her unaccountably vile mother, Françoise Rosay, a monstre sacré in the fullest sense of the term.  Rosay has played some pretty formidable females in her time - most notably the ballsy burgomaster's wife in Jacques Feyder's La Kermesse héroïque (1935) - but here she is positively grotesque, exploiting and humiliating her daughter like some psychotic stepmother from the grimmest of Grimms' fairytales.  Rosay has such fun playing up her character's villainy that she tends to monopolise our attention, although Bernard Blier makes his presence felt as Darrieux's one-time frustrated lover - his is the only character who rings true, and he gets some wonderfully funny lines, courtesy of the legendary screenwriter Michel Audiard.

Another actor who seems to be out of place is Jean-Claude Brialy, a promising debutant who would earn his spurs not long afterwards through his collaborations with Nouvelle Vague directors Claude Chabrol and Jean-Luc Godard (Le Beau Serge, Une femme est une femme).  As the romantic lead opposite Darrieux Brialy is somewhat unconvincing, although an actor of his tender years could easily be forgiven for being totally awestruck in the company of such a living legend.  With such a charismatic cast at his disposal, Granier-Deferre could hardly fail to deliver another attention-grabbing crowdpleaser, but lacking the inspiration of his New Wave contemporaries, all that is left to us now is a creaking melodrama that just about manages to stay on the right side of absurdity.

Film Synopsis

In the spring of 1944, France remains under Nazi occupation and prisoners are still being taken by the Germans, who have yet to discover that the war is already lost.  Pierre Ségur, a young architect, is one such prisoner.  He is being taken away in a truck with several other unfortunates when the French Resistance strikes.  Pierre takes advantage of his freedom to steal a cigarette from the truck's dead driver, but when he lights it there is an almighty explosion and everything goes black.  The badly injured man is discovered a short while later by a woman cyclist on her way home.  Realising that the stranger is in no condition to fend for himself, Jeanne Moncatel fetches Dr Andrieux and together they take him back to her house.  Many years ago, Jeanne and Andrieux were once deeply in love, but their plans to marry were thwarted by the former's selfish and mean-spirited mother.

Now fifty and used to her life as an old maid, Jeanne still lives with her mother, who has succeeded in convincing her that she is both stupid and ugly.  No wonder all men shun her!  Under Jeanne's careful ministrations, Pierre begins to recover from his injuries, but he hasn't yet regained his sight - Andrieux fears that he could remain blind for the rest of his life.  Thanking her lucky stars that her patient is unable to see her, Jeanne allows herself to fall in love with him without her mother's knowledge.  Pierre responds to his carer's unceasing devotion and takes her as his lover.  After the Liberation, Jeanne finds herself in a terrible position when Pierre has an operation that fully restores his eyesight.  Convinced that she is too old and ugly for him, she decides that she must run away...