The Widow Couderc [La veuve Couderc] **** (1971, Alain Delon, Simone Signoret, Ottavia Piccolo, Jean Tissier, Monique Chaumette) – Classic Movie Review 5551

Alain Delon and Simone Signoret are outstanding in co-writer/ director Pierre Granier-Deferre‘s excellent 1971 French drama film adaptation of the 1942 Georges Simenon novel The Widow Couderc [La veuve Couderc].

As a drama, it is more of a nuanced character study than a thriller, and, as a movie, it is more a seductive acting showcase than a romantic melodrama. It has a splendidly doomy atmosphere to it, worthy of the great French wartime poetic dramas.

Signoret stars as the middle-aged widow Couderc, who hires the handsome young stranger Jean Lavigne (Delon) who has helped her carry her heavy new incubator for chicks from the bus to her farm by a canal in Burgundy in 1934. Running the farm just with her infirm father-in-law, she offers Jean a room as well as work, and soon she is sharing his bed.

Across the canal live the widow’s envious sister-in-law and ineffectual husband, who are trying to evict the widow and get the farm. They have an alluring nubile 16-year-old daughter called Félicie (Ottavia Piccolo), who has already had a baby with an unknown father. But Jean can’t resist sleeping with the Félicie as well as the widow, and her sister-in-law denounces Jean to the police.

Delon and Signoret also starred together in The Burned Barns [Les granges brûlées] (1973).

The cast are Simone Signoret as Tati Couderc, Alain Delon as Jean Lavigne, Ottavia Piccolo as Félicie, Jean Tissier as Henri Couderc, Monique Chaumette as Françoise, Boby Lapointe as Désiré, Pierre Collet as Commissaire Mallet, François Valorbe as Colonel Luc de Mortemont, and Jean-Pierre Castaldi.

It was a hit, opening at number one at the box office in Paris with a first week gross of $163,000, and overall 2,008,203 people paid to see it in French cinemas.

The Widow Couderc [La veuve Couderc] is directed by Pierre Granier-Deferre, runs 89 minutes, is made by Lira Films (Paris) and Pegaso Films (Rome), is written by Pascal Jardin and Pierre Granier-Deferre, is shot by Walter Wottitz, is produced by Raymond Danon and scored by Philippe Sarde.

Director Pierre Granier-Deferre’s films: La Métamorphose des cloportes, La Horse, Le Chat, The Widow Couderc [La veuve Couderc], The Train, Creezy, The French Detective, A Woman at Her Window, The Medic, Strange Affair, L’Étoile du Nord, L’Autrichienne, and The Voice.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5551

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com