Michèle Morgan Movies

There's a curious, unsettling "feel" to MGM's The Vintage, perhaps because of its curiously selected cast. Mel Ferrer and John Kerr play a couple of Italian brothers, Giancarlo and Ernesto Barandero, who escape to France after Ernesto kills a man. Attaining jobs in a vineyard run by Louis Morel (played by the decidedly non-Gallic Leif Erickson), the Barandero brothers fall in love with two local lasses: Leonne (Michele Morgan), Monel's young wife, and Lucienne (top-billed Pier Angeli), Leonne's kid sister. Emotions simmer into a boil before the predictably violent climax. The Vintage was adapted from an Ursula Kier novel by Michael Blankfort, a blacklistee compelled to work in Europe during the late 1950s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Producer/director Sacha Guitry's contribution to the 1956 film season was the free-flowing historical pageant Si Paris Nous Etait Conte (If Paris Were Told to Us). Guitry himself appears as the ghost of King Louis XI, who relates the story of Paris to a group of fascinated modern-day students. As usual, Guitry manages to "humanize" history by depicting the great men and women of France in amusing warts-and-all fashion. Symbolizing the indomitable spirit of Paris is Robert Lamoureaux as Latude, a prisoner of the Bastille who repeatedly tries to escape, and just as repeatedly is captured and thrown back in jail. A note of pathos is provided by Jacques de Feraudy as the dying Voltaire. Though Sacha Guitry suffered a stroke and was confined to a wheelchair throughout much of the filming of Si Paris Nous Etait Conte, he still had two more films left in him before his death in 1957--just 10 days after Bastille Day. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Showing no signs of slowing down in his 70th year, Sacha Guitry served as director and writer of the lavish historical epic Napoleon, and also costarred as Talleyrand. It is now hard to assess the quality of the film, since most American prints are severely edited, and the color photography appallingly washed out. Reviewers in 1955 admired the effort that went into this $1,800,000 production, but complained that the viewer left the film with no deeper understanding of Napoleon Bonaparte than the viewer had had when coming in. Daniel Gelin poses impressively as the young Bonaparte, registering emotion only when things go wrong in his conquest of Europe, while Raymond Pellegrin is somewhat better as the older, more jaded Napoleon (the transition between the two actors is handled in a near-comic fashion). The Revolution is reduced to a few fleeting scenes, while the rest of the film is devoted to political infighting and betrayal. The huge supporting cast includes Michele Morgan as Josephine and Lana Marconi and Dany Robin, respectively, as Napoleon's mistresses Waleska and Desiree. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Germany's first CinemaScrope feature, Oase (Oasis) was directed by France's Yves Allegret and distributed by Hollywood's 20th Century-Fox. Michele Morgan and Cornell Borchers stars as Francoisce and Karin, a pair of gorgeous lady smugglers. The ladies are sent by their respective gangs to halt the activities of novice gold smuggler Antoine (Carl Raddatz). Francoise gums up the plan by falling in love with Antoine, while Karin remains loyal to her compatriots. As it turns out, only Antoine emerges the winner in this contretemps. The film's title refers to its locale, a way station in the desert from which Antoine conducts his illicit operation. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Stendhal's brilliant but difficult novel Le Rouge et le Noir all but defies transfer to film, but adaptor/director Claude Autant-Lara comes within shouting distance of full success. Stripped to essentials, the plot concerns Julien Sorel (Gerard Philipe), a carpenter's son who becomes a tutor. While his duties do not include the seduction of his employer's wife (Danielle Darrieux), Sorel offers this service free of charge. After this episode, Sorel becomes a priest...and the story isn't over yet. Though the director is too doggedly literal in his adaptation at times, and despite the fact that Gerard Philipe was about ten years too old for the part of Jean Sorel, Le Rouge et le Noir manages to hold the audience in its thrall for 2 hours and 50 minutes (most American prints, retitled The Red and the Black, run only 140 minutes). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

La Minute de Verite (The Moment of Truth) stars Jean Gabin as happily married French physician Pierre. Upon treating a would-be suicide, Pierre finds out that his patient was once the lover of the doctor's wife Madeleine (Michele Morgan). Confronting his wife with this information, Pierre is compelled to trace back the history of his 10-year marriage to find out what went wrong. Director Jean Delannoy combines some very perceptive views of the human condition with moments of unexpected shock and sensationalism. Otherwise, La Minute de Verite is more straightforward and less laden with symbolism than earlier Delannoy works. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though French director Jean Gremillon's postwar films were nowhere near as brilliant as his prewar efforts, they still afforded plenty of entertainment value. L'Etrange Madame X stars Michele Morgan as Irene, a woman torn between two lovers. Married to aristocratic Jacques (Maurice Escande), Irene is devoted to her husband, yet she cannot resist the charms of low-born laborer Etienne (Henri Vidal). Her passionate affair with Etienne results in a pregnancy, which Jacques accepts with dignified resignation. Etienne, however, is less understanding, especially when he learns that Irene is not the humble housemaid she has pretended to be. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director Jean Delannoy's immediate followup to his brilliant Les Jeux sont Faits was the more conventional Aux Yeux du Souvenir (aka Souvenir and To the Eyes of Memory). The film is based on a true story, wherein an France airliner managed to survive a journey from Rio De Janeiro to Dakar with two of its engines incapacitated. To this already intensely dramatic situation has been added a romantic subplot involving Claire Magny (Michele Morgan) and Jacques Forester (Jean Marais). The love story adds very little to the film; fortunately, neither does it detract from the film's overall quality. As was the case with many French productions of the 1940s, Aux Yeux du Souvenir benefits immeasurably from the Wagnerian musical score by Georges Auric. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After several years of wartime austerity, the Italian film industry returned to spectacle with Fabiola. French actress Michele Morgan plays the title role, the daughter of a Roman aristocrat (Michel Simon) during the takeover by Emperor Constantine. As a reaction to Constantine's Christian conversion policy, many old-line Romans are persecuting the city's Christian community, killing the believers off before Constantine marches into town. Fabiola is loyal to her Christian-sympathizing father but is irresistibly drawn to a Roman gladiator (Henri Vidal). All works out for the best when it is revealed that the gladiator is secretly working on behalf of Constantine. Originally released in 1949 at a length of 183 minutes, the French/Italian co-production Fabiola was distributed to the U.S. two years later in a 96-minute version, retaining the action highlights but cutting the plot footage to incomprehensible ribbons. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Adapted by Pierre Bost and Jean Aurenche from a novel by Andre Gide, Symphonie Pastorale proved yet another box-office success for popular French filmmaker Jean Delannoy. Michelle Morgan stars as a blind orphaned girl who is adopted by kindly pastor Pierre Blancher. The pastor's paternal affection for the girl blossoms into romantic love, despite the fact that he's already married. As a form of courtship, Delannoy fills the sightless Morgan's head with visions of a "perfect" world, as harmonious as her favorite musical piece, Beethoven's Symphonie Pastorale (you'll recall that composition from Disney's Fantasia). Delannoy's son Jean Desailly, likewise falling in love with Morgan, arranges for an operation that will restore the girl's sight. This plunges Delannoy into despair: once Morgan sees the world for herself, and not as an idyllic image conjured up by the pastor, she will be lost to him forever. A delicate, evenly-paced fable ending in tragedy, Symphonie Pastorale was harpooned in later years by New Wave critics who complained that Delannoy, Bost and Aurenche "trivialized" their adaptations of literary classics. The audiences, who ate up the film like cotton candy, didn't seem to be bothered in the least over the filmmakers' so-called diminishing of the Gide original. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide