As you will know from reading other reviews this film is based on a true crime from Scotland in the 1850's.The question is: what does David Lean make of this material? At first he seems to be making a study of the repression of women in Victorian society. Madeleine Smith's life at home is dominated by a stern father who expects his daughters to do their duty by him, even changing his shoes! The bars on Madeleine's bedroom windows are a not too subtle symbol of her caged existence. A breath of freedom and excitement seems to come in the form of a lover, but even he just wants to use Madeleine to advance his social position and can be brutal when his ambition is frustrated - he is certainly not a romantic hero. It is interesting that on the two occasions when we can clearly infer he and Madeleine make love (the first time against the background of a Scots ceilidh, which makes for some very erotic imagery), it is done from a position of dominance on his part, he is literally standing over her.The man Madeleine is expected to marry seems honourable and decent, but he too will prove incapable of loving her as a real person - she must be flawless. When the lover turns to blackmail it seems Madeleine has no way out but to turn to poison.Now the film becomes a courtroom drama. Do we want to see Madeleine acquitted or not? Did she poison Langelier? The end of the film answers this question with an enigmatic smile into the camera from Ann Todd (the 'fourth wall' is broken several times in the film).What we are left with, then, is a film which appears to start from a feminist viewpoint, then becomes a romance, then a crime procedural. From being deeply involved in Madeleine's story, we become distant from her when she is charged with murder. Ultimately we don't really care about her fate, and an unsolved crime is always strangely unsatisfying.There are some great moments of cinematography (particularly deep-focus photography) and image-making here, but the film is not quite a satisfying whole, with too many loose ends (her family's reaction, for example; I'm sure 'Papa' was outraged but he still provided the best lawyer he could find) to make a rounded drama.

I had the great joy of watching David Lean's MADELEINE(1950)for the first time ever on TCM early this morning, and can say without any reservations that though it is one of the great director's lesser-known works, but it is by no means lesser in either acting or direction.Featuring the glacial blonde Ann Todd(then Mrs. David Lean) as the real-life accused murderess Madeleine Smith, the film skillfully portrays the travail a foolish and willful young woman goes through when she follows her heart instead of her head and gets ensnared in a sticky situation. Caught between her tyrannical martinet father, James Smith, played excellently by the great Leslie Banks with his paralysed profile which added an extra flourish to his cold unsympathetic manner and her charming but unscrupulous gold-digging French paramour, Emile L'Anglier played skillfully by Ivan Desny, Ann Todd's Madeleine is veritably "caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea!" It would seem that there is but one recourse for Madeleine, that of shutting two-bit Casanova and lothario L'Anglier up so that her fire-breathing dragon of a father does not bite her pretty little head off, in much the same way that I have enjoyed biting into pastry Madeleines! But the ambiguity throughout the film of whether Madeleine actually did the deed and put paid to her paramour is maintained even up to the end when Madeleine gives her leprous Madonna half-smile which could indicate either guilt or innocence, leaving it up for the viewing audience to decide on their own.The splendid direction of Lean, the superb moody photography of Guy Green contrasting various shades of darkness and light as well as interesting character studies of familiar character actors' and actresses' faces, the excellent film editing of Clive Donner(later to become a great director as well) and Geoffrey Foot, the authentic costume design of Margaret Furse all add to the moving drama. Jewel-like performances by such thespians as Barbara Everest as Madeleine's mother, Jean Cadell as Mrs. Jenkins the careworn landlady, Kynaston Reeves as a lugubrious Dr. Penny, Amy Veness as the sympathetic police matron Miss Aiken, John Laurie as the hypocritical Bible-spouting religious maniac and fanatic Divine rabble-rouser exhorting the crowd to condemn Madeleine, Edward Chapman as the worried Dr. Thompson, Moyra Fraser(more than HALF A CENTURY later, 55 years to be exact, in Dame Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer's "As Time Goes By" latest 2005 episode as one of the regulars, bumptious Penny, a role since 1993) as a spirited Highland dancer! Irene Browne as Mrs. Grant, George Benson as the Chemist, Eva Bartok as the Girl, Ivor Barnard as Mr. Murdoch, Anthony Newley! as Chemist's Assistant, Wylie Watson as Huggins, and many, many more, bear in mind that from Jean Cadell onwards, these were all UNCREDITED roles in Lean's film! They join with the credited cast Barbara Everest, Leslie Banks, Ivan Desny, Ann Todd, Norman Wooland as the ever-stolid and respectable William Minnoch, Madeleine's would-be-husband-to-be, Elizabeth Sellars as the harried but loyal pretty housemaid, Patricia Raine and Susan Stranks as Bessie and Janet Smith, Madeleine's younger siblings, Eugene Deckers as Thuau the unsympathetic French consul and friend of L'Anglier, and Barry Jones as the merciless Prosecuting Counsel. Last but not least is Hammer films stalwart and a superb actor, the late Andre Morell(husband of the late Joan Greenwood) as the Defending Counsel, who gives an impassioned and heart-wrenching yet cool and logical defense of Madeleine that has got to be one of the greatest courtroom speeches in Cinematic history! At least I think it is! The next time I bite into a pastry Madeleine I will recall Andre Morell's defense! All in all, a FIVE STAR ***** film rating for the actors' performances alone!

David Lean is one of those directors who I don't quite know how to 'take'. Watching the 'lesser' films of a great director (in a great box set I got this year) is no doubt an excellent way to decide what you really think about them. The awe (or boredom) inspired by the best-known and – allegedly – the best-loved works is absent; you watch with completely open, unaffected eyes. Thus "Madeleine": I knew nothing about the (true) story on which it is based, and was gripped by a thoroughly sinister and tense story from first to last. I won't cover the story - it's been done so well by other reviewers.The best parts of a 'minor' film like this stand out all the more strongly for there being no expectation that you should fall on your knees over it. Where a minor director would direct a film of a true story in stocky, reliable fashion, a great director adds flourishes – not merely ornamental – that truly raise the film to a greater status. The tension is ramped up more effectively; the bitter consequences of the rash acts more bitter; the harm, the joy, the cause-and-effect more meaningful. Lean's control of sound, vision, story, pace here – these mark him out as great and bring to mind – at their best – the way that Kurosawa tells a story. I'm not comparing them – they're so different – except in the ways that, as the saying goes, it really is all in the detail.Ann Todd plays the temptress Madeleine – and my goodness, what a sharp-faced little thing! As much of greed and spoilt willfulness in her wayward course as of real, true love. That her love cools so quickly when she realises (really, didn't she before?) finally that her lover will only take her WITH her money, means that there's really not that much sympathy with her plight. One look at her lover (and this really should be to the credit of the actor) is enough to tell you that he is vain, dandyish, idle, assuming, selfish and too proud for his own good. One look at her is enough to tell you that she usually gets what she wants – despite being – at least superficially – afraid of her father.The scene where Madeleine dances with her lover in a garden, intercut with scenes of the wild ceilidh going on down the hill, whose music provides her ambiance, is absolutely extraordinary, and reminds me of the masterful use of sound and music displayed in Kurosawa's "The Bad Sleep Well" (particularly, the funeral scene). Lean beat the censors in telling his story the way he did, and he shows great control in his racking up of the tension throughout the story.It's also a real pleasure to see some great Scottish actors that appeared in other films of this period which I adore: Jean Cadell, who appears in "Pygmalion" – which Lean edited – and "I Know Where I'm Going!", and John Laurie (also in "I Know Where I'm Going!" and in "Major Barbara").The transformation of L'Angelier from ardent, put-upon lover to oppressive, near-blackmailer is nicely done; as is the ambiguity surrounding whether Madeleine did, or did not, poison her lover. You just don't really ever quite believe her absolutely: you know there is ambiguity in everything about her, so that you don't trust her reactions and impressions. The court scenes are well played, and there's a thick tightness to the whole that feels like a short, rich dish, full-flavoured and satisfying. And that's not an impression I ever carried away from Lean's 'great' works. It won't make me rethink those works; it will make me seek out with greater interest than before, more of those works of the 1940s and 1950s which I think might be getting lost in the mists of time as cinema and its troublesome offspring, TV, grow from their infancy of those years, to their virulent, American-flavoured adolescence.

Madeleine is one of a number of costume dramas produced around the late 1940s to focus upon psychological conflicts from a female perspective. Other notable examples are Vincente Minelli's Madame Bovary and William Wyler's The Heiress, both released in 1949. However, whereas those two pictures were based upon great literary works from the 19th century, Madeleine is a dramatisation (I would imagine a fairly liberal one given its melodramatic style) of actual events.Director David Lean was always one to immerse the audience in the psychological states of his characters, often through use of attention grabbing shots and expressive use of sound. There are some fairly routine examples of this in the first half of the film – eerie shadows of Emile twirling his cane, the blaring bagpipe music of a village dance at Emile and Madeleine's secret meeting, and so on.Another of Lean's characteristics was that, in order to tell a full story, the narrative would switch between the multiple points-of-view. This can be done fairly easily with a director who treats the audience as a passive, externalised viewer, but with Lean's constant involvement of the audience it could occasionally give his films a disjointed, unbalanced feel. This is somewhat the case with Madeleine, which begins as a psychological drama in which a young woman from a strict household must choose between her heart's desire and loyalty to her family. About halfway through however the story becomes a murder mystery and eventually a courtroom drama, and the narrative fragments as we see the points-of-view of various witnesses to supposed crimes. All the psychological set-up of the first forty-five minutes becomes forgotten.In spite of the fragmentary nature of the whole, there are some strong scenes and the occasional touch of class here and there. The pivotal scene in which Madeleine's father discovers his daughters affair, while at the same time Madeleine learns of Emile's death shows Lean's dramatic staging at its best. Intelligent use of space and positioning of actors in this scene best shows off the varying reactions. The final scenes in court are a carefully constructed blend of points-of-view and reaction shots, and Lean's background as a renowned editor is in evidence.A great cast was often a hallmark of a David Lean picture, but Madeleine suffers from a lack of classy actors. Having said that Ann Todd, whom I don't normally rate that highly, is not too bad here, emoting well in close-ups. Apart from that the only standouts are Andre Morell in a powerful performance as the defence counsel towards the end of the film, and an unfortunately brief appearance from Scottish character actor John Laurie as a fanatical mob leader.Madeleine has its moments, but all in all is a bit of a mediocrity. Lean was at his best when he could go all out on the emotional drama, but this foray into the courtroom is simply not enough of one thing or the other to be a really strong picture.