Madness of the Heart

I hate to be critical of something into which a great many people invested a lot of time, money and effort but it has to be said that Madness of the Heart is far from being a classic.

Neither a superb cast, a substantial budget, exotic settings nor the presence of the sublimely gorgeous and extremely talented Margaret Lockwood in the leading role can save this film from its dire script.

The premise is promising enough; a lovely young Englishwoman (Lockwood) falls in love with an aristocratic Frenchman (played by Paul Dupuis) but is promptly struck blind. Despite this tragedy, the couple marry and move to Monsieur's stately pile in Provence where their happiness is sorely tested by his family's negative attitude toward disability and the murderous machinations of his psychopathic former intended (a scary turn from Kathleen Byron of Black Narcissus fame).

The camera work is great and the sets and the set pieces are fantastic (especially the evening ball) but the dialogue is risible in places and the film's ending frankly ludicrous! The actors do their best - Lockwood, in particular, shows her mettle and is very convincing as a blind woman - but it is clearly an uphill struggle. The writer apparently collaborated with Hitchcock on some of his early films but you would never have guessed!

I am, to put it mildly, a huge fan of Margaret Lockwood but I have to admit that this is not one of her better films. If you like her and you like vintage thrillers, then The Lady Vanishes, Night Train to Munich, Girl in the News or Cast a Dark Shadow (several of which are inexplicably unavailable in PAL format on either DVD or video) are far, far better; this one is for die-hard fans only.

Margaret Lockwood is quite compelling as "Lydia" in this tense mystery of a woman who encounters a French gent "Paul" (Paul Dupuis), romance ensues and they fall in love. Throughout their courtship, though, she suffers from increasingly worrying dizzy spells that a doctor confirms will lead to blindness. Horrified, she flees from her beau and takes up in an abbey where she considers holy orders. Luckily, the abbess insists she rejoin the world and she rekindles her romance with the Frenchman, they marry and retreat to his father's chateau. Initially welcome, she soon senses that someone is out to get her, and as the plot slowly develops we are drawn into quite a sinister web that has no shortage of potential perpetrators. Chief amongst them is their neighbour "Verity" (the excellent Kathleen Byron) who has designs on the husband. Finding her life unbearable, she, and her maid "Rosa" (Thora Hird) return to her old life were she encounters another surgeon who thinks he can fix her sight... It's at this point that the story takes a bit of downturn. Up til now, the tension had increased consistently with Byron and Lockwood squaring up nicely, but the ending is just too fanciful (although it does contain the best scene in the film). The men folks contribute little, too - Maxwell Reed is pretty hopeless and Dupuis pretty flat as her husband. Still, it sustains the mystery well enough for the most part and Lockwood is on good form.

Lydia (Margaret Lockwood) meets Paul (Paul Dupuis) and he is immediately smitten with her. They date a bit but then she runs off to a nunnery when she loses her sight. The Reverend Mother eventually counsels her to leave and stop hiding from the world. Soon after she arrives back in London, Paul arrives and sweets her off her feet and they marry.

Paul then takes Lydia to his ancestral estate in France. Her family gives her a warm welcome and things seem fine...at first. However, over time, her husband's old girlfriend, Vérité*, begins undermining Lydia in small, hidden ways. The goal is for Vérité to drive Lydia away from Paul....and soon her scheming begins to cause friction in the family. What's next? See the film and find out for yourself.

I saw that someone compared this film, unfavorably, to "Rebecca". Well, I can see some parallels....but the story is different enough that it didn't feel like a rip-off to me.

*Calling the villain 'Vérité' is sloppy writing. After all, in French it mean 'truth'....and what a ridiculously obvious name for a villainess...too obvious.

No one is pretending that a movie made in 1949 will be the latest. However this feeble story about a woman who goes temporarily blind, and who is trying to be killed off by her evil in-laws, stretched credibility to the very end. Students of French movie accents may find it interesting, as will those studying the geography of the French coast, and airport terminal design in the 1950's.

A faint-hearted, discount version of Rebecca (itself a version of Jane Eyre.) The first third is adequately, but unexcitingly presented, and the remaining two thirds ground out in a series of unconvincing, predictable and lame melodramatic clichés. The usually dependable writer/director seems to have no discernible appetite here for the potential suspense, tension and excitement. This should be a good old fashioned melodrama, but at best it's a milk chocolate romance for undemanding picturegoers of the 1940s. Only Maxwell Reed as the oily servant, lurking and scheming, seems to have the right idea, but is given very little to do. The stars are dull. Maurice Denham and Thora Hird are okay, and Desmond Dickinson's photography is sometimes lovely.