Yves Allégret, the director of the Franco-Mexican co-production ‘Les orgueilleux‘ (known in English distribution as ‘The Proud and the Beautiful’) was in the 1950s one of the preferred target of the critics of future French New Wave filmmakers. He directed this 1953 film together with the Mexican film director Rafael E. Portas, who did not appear on the film’s credits or posters in France. The script also has five other co-authors besides the director, including Jean-Paul Sartre, who in the 1940s had written about ten screenplays or short stories, looking for a source of income and using them as a vehicle for his political, social and moral ideas. One of these stories is the basis of the film, although Sartre denied authorship when distributors wanted to use his name. Sartre‘s story is shifted from China to Mexico, a country with which European cinema had a long history of collaboration. ‘Les orgueilleux‘ surprises with its visual qualities and the intensity of the melodrama which is more than saved by the exceptional performances of two of the best known and most beloved actors of France of those years. I have no information about the critical reception of the film apart from the fact that it won an award at the Venice Film Festival and the script was considered for the Oscars, but for me ‘Les orgueilleux‘ is proof that quality film was made in France even during the time of ‘cinema de papa’.
The story takes place in a village in Mexico and at many moments the description of the background is as interesting as the story itself. On-site filming built the image of a world in which deep Catholic faith meets with pre-Columbian traditions, extreme poverty with corruption and abuses of the powerful. Alex Phillips a Canadian cameraman whose career has been mostly spent in Mexico, contributed with the cinematography. The film’s heroes, Nellie and Tom, a couple of French tourists are taken off a bus because Tom is sick. He will die soon, and the illness he brings makes him patient zero of a plague that will sweep the town. Nellie is left alone among strangers, her money is stolen, and she is forced to look for the means to ensure a decent funeral for her husband and to defend herself in a foreign country, populated by aggressive men fascinated by her blond beauty. Will she be saved by Georges, a young doctor who abandoned his profession following a tragedy and has fallen into poverty and drunkenness, becoming the target of the ridicule of the villagers?
‘Les orgueilleux‘ is the first film to bring the two great actors together on screen, and they do so in roles that are atypical for what they had done and what their image was until then. Gérard Philipe abandons the mask of the young lover to play the role of a man struck by fate and who has become skeptical even about his own humanity. Sometimes it seems like he is overacting, but that is the character. His dance scene is memorable. Michèle Morgan also breaks away from many other roles of strict moral reference, playing a vulnerable woman who finds the resources to survive and preserve her honor, even if she does not do it in a conventional way. She also has a memorable scene, a long shot, alone, in a hot hotel room, in a skimpy outfit, anticipating Catherine Deneuve, the one in ‘Belle de Jour’, by 14 years. If there had been an American remake, the role would have suited Marilyn Monroe. Minus the talent. I don’t think there are many deep interpretations to be found in the story, even though the script is based on a short story by Sartre and even though there are superficial similarities to ‘The Plague’. The film’s appeal lies in the simplicity, in the magnetic attraction and interpretations of the two lead characters and in the cinematography that tells a lot about the places where the events take place. Papa Yves Allégret made a good film with these materials.