Madness of the Heart

With shorter hair, Margaret Lockwood stars in this romantic mystery. She goes blind just after meeting the love of her life. She spends a year in a convent thinking marriage is not for her. But her French beau accepts her blindness and they marry to live at his noble family's home. There she feels a secret enemy is working against her. She is indeed being deceived which leads to a quarrel with her husband. Her enemy has done the trick and so she leaves for England with her companion (Thora Hird). The lovely French Chateau is the 9th Century Chateau d'Ansouis which was loaned to the Two Cities film company by it's owner, Comte de Sabran. There is a great scene where the blind Lockwood is deliberately being led into dangerous waters. Amazingly this 'seaside' scene was all done in a tank at Denham Studio.

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.

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.

This is a definite must-see for any Margaret Lockwood fans, as well as Hitchcock lovers as it's very Hitchcock in style. There's simply not a dull moment as we follow the young Lydia through the path her life takes when she goes blind and finds there is only the tiniest chance that surgery could restore her sight - and an even smaller chance that she would even survive the operation. Her sweetheart Paul still wishes to marry her, and she finds happiness with him, but that is short-lived as she begins to get the feeling that someone wants her dead. The movie takes a truly terrifying turn, and though in part is predictable, it's still definitely exciting. 9/10