#simone signoret

A depressed and dissatisfied wife (Simone Signoret) falls in love with a truck driver (Raf Vallone) who causes her husband's accidental death. When they are blackmailed by a sailor who witnessed the incident (Roland Lesaffre), the two lovers pay the demanded sum, but the young man dies before he can stop the denounce against them.

Carné, assisted by screenwriter Charles Spaak, re-sets Émile Zola's famous novel in contemporary times and transforms it (inevitably, I would say) from a melodrama of passion into one of his signature "tragedies of fate." To do this, he introduces the character of the sailor, a casual spectator of an equally casual event and himself the victim of an unforeseeable accident, and... done! Zola's psychological determinism is gone, while the beloved narrative motifs of Prévert and 1930s French cinema reappear.  I can say that the characters perhaps suffer from excessive typification, but the pace is vigorous, the acting convincing, and Carné's mise-en-scène is a model of economy and precision.

Silver Lion (well deserved) at the Venice Film Festival.

r.m.

Yves Montand and Simone Signoret.

The photo was taken in 1960 during their joint trip to the USA. Yves Montand flew to Hollywood to shoot the musical comedy "Let's Make Love", where his partner on the set was Marilyn Monroe. Simone Signoret arrived with her husband.

However, during the filming, a stormy and public romance broke out between Yves Montand and Marilyn Monroe, which was followed by the whole world.

Las granjas ardientes (1973)