Spanish drama about a french actress at a stage company arrive in a village resulting in fateful consecuences. The film tells a devastating love story with due crudeness. A young French 'Revista' showgirl (Corinne Marchand) spends a few days in a provincial Spanish city recovering from an operation, altering with her brash self-confidence the narrow-minded customs of the place and awakening passion in the local doctor (Antonio Casas) and in a young teacher (Jean Pierre Cassel) as well. While the latter has fallen in love with the doctor's wife (Julia Gutierrez Caba). The presence of the attractive Frenchwoman in the small town stirs up the students of the educational institute, makes the members of the business circle talk, creates gossip all over the place and scandalizes the pious ladies. As the beautiful girl is badly received , as the gossip women treating her lousily with envy , contempt and eventually agressiveness .
A dramatic film regarding the vicissitudes about a French party girl who finds herself isolated in a small town due to appendicitis, concerning social habits , and deep repression of the Spanish society of the Sixties submitted to rigid moral criteria of the Catholic rules . Based on one of the best and least known novels of the Spanish postwar period, 'Miss Giacomini, by the Balearic writer Miguel Villalonga and well directed by Bardem who manages to give it the light, pleasant and sometimes dramatic charm of the literary work skilfully adapted.
Against a little town background, the romantic relationship between the doctor and the star of the magazine develops, a little timid due to the self-censorship that existed during the dictatorship of General Franco, together with another passionate relationship that Juan, the French teacher at the Institute, has for the physician's wife, Julia. With these elements, scriptwriter and director Bardem provides a perfect portrait of a sad, sordid and bored small town of suburbs with its gossip and rumors, widespread apathy, flights to the capital as the only way of recreation, while he draws the profile of frustrated, disillusioned, failed beings, who have seen how life slips through their fingers.
The four main actors: Corinne Marchand, Antonio Casas, Jean-Pierre Cassel and Julia Gutiérrez Caba give fabulous interpretations. The film displays a star-studded cast with plenty of familiar faces and great secondaries , such as : José Franco, Rafael Bardem, Matilde Muñoz Sampedro, María Luisa Ponte, Tota Alba, Ana María Ventura, Josefina Serratosa, Pilar Gómez Ferrer, María Vico, among others.
As a trivia, it should be added that this classic film bears a remarkable resemblance to the later ¨Las salvajes de Puente de San Gil¨ by Antoni Ribas , with similar situation though in a choral style: A team of vedettes of a Spanish Revue arrives in a Castillian village to play the Revista with plenty of picaresque songs and erotic dances, but they are limited by the strict standards of the repressed society .
The film is well shot, but suffers from a bit of dramatic roughness and, above all, uneven narrative, if compared with Bardem's other two great films: Muerte de Un Ciclista (1955) and Calle Mayor (1956), the latter being the dramatic climax never again achieved by this director.
There are some remarkable scenes and interesting conversations, showing the lack of understanding between the doctor and the vedette in their dialogues in Spanish and French, or exploring the frustration of the marriage with the argument that finally breaks out between the husband and the wife, being shot in a long and complex shot, underlined by a sensitive musical score by French composer George Delerue; despite being efficiently filmed, the movie was a remarkable and unfair failure. That's why both, critics and the public, considered it as a mere repetition of "Calle Mayor". And from a commercial point of view, the film also failed because it was a bilingual film with too many subtitles that the public of the time could not stand nor were they used to it at the time.
It displays an atmospheric cinematography by cameraman Juan Julio Baena , shot on location in Aranda de Duero, Burgos,Peñafiel, Valladolid, Castilla y León . As well as a lively and evocative musical score by George Delerue. The motion picture was competly directed by Juan Antonio Bardem. This great director Bardem had a successful career , though some flops as well. Bardem was an outspoken critic of the Franco regime, his political views prevented him from gaining a diploma from the Spanish cinema institute in 1947 . "Bardem is one of the clearest examples of the convergence of political and cinematographic aspirations in the history of Spanish cinema. His opposition to the prevailing cinema is, at the same time, to the prevailing culture and ideology and, obviously, to the political regime from which they emanate. This attitude derives from a lifelong militancy in the Spanish Communist Party.
Thereafter, he worked as a critic and finally broke into films as writer/director of Cómicos (1954) and Felices Pascuas (1954) were the first two films that Bardem directed alone. He then made his most prestigious and praised works, two masterpieces that placed him as one of the most important names in European cinema at that time: Muerte de un ciclista (1955), perhaps his best-known film worldwide, and Calle mayor (1956), which is often considered his high point. The much acclaimed ¨Death of a cyclist¨ or Muerte De un Ciclista (1955), which won the 1956 Cannes International Critics Award . He also made a lot of films of all kinds of genres . He directed "Esa pareja feliz" along with Luis Garcia Berlanga , "La Venganza" with Carmen Sevilla , "Sonatas" with Maria Felix , "A las 5 de la tarde", "Nunca pasa nada" , the wartime movie: "El Ultimo dia de Guera," Varietes" with Sarita Montiel , a Jules Verne movie : "La Isla Misteriosa" with Omar Shariff , "La Corrupción de Chris Miller" with Jean Seberg , "El Poder del deseo" with Marisol , El Puente" with Alfredo Landa , "7 Dias de Enero" , "La Advertencia" , " Resultado Final". His biggest hits were "Calle Mayor" and "Muerte de un Ciclista". Rating: 7/10. Better than average.
