The Proud Ones [Les Orgueilleux] **** (1953, Michèle Morgan, Gérard Philipe, Víctor Manuel Mendoza) – Classic Movie Review 10,027

Director Yves Allégret’s 1953 France Mexico co-production The Proud Ones [Les Orgueilleux] [The Proud and the Beautiful] stars giants of French cinema Michèle Morgan and Gérard Philipe.

The sensitive, versatile Gérard Philipe and the beautiful, haunting Michèle Morgan enhance a fine Graham Greene-style psychological drama tale – though in fact it is supposedly based on an Oscar-nominated story by Jean-Paul Sartre (Typhus) – about a French woman tourist called Nellie (Morgan), who falls for the drunken French former doctor Georges (Philipe) while her husband Tom (André Toffel) is sick with typhoid fever in a small Mexican village during an epidemic.

Allégret directs atmospherically, and the story is a concentrated little mesmeriser, but it is the star chemistry that really counts.

Also in the cast are Victor Manuel Mendoza, Carlos López Moctezuma, Michèle Cordoue, and Arturo Soto Rangel.

It was shot on location in Veracruz, Mexico, and in the studio at Estudios CLASA, Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico, and Studios de Boulogne, Avenue Jean-Baptiste Clément, Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France.

The Proud Ones [Les Orgueilleux] is directed by Yves Allégret and Rafael E Portas (co-director), runs 103 minutes, is made by Compagnie Industrielle et Commerciale Cinématographique (CICC), Films Chrysaor, Iéna Productions and Reforma Films, is released by Curzon Film Distributors (1954) (UK) and Kingsley-International Pictures (1956) (US), is written by Jean Aurenche (scenario and dialogue), Jean Clouzot (dialogue) and Yves Allégret (adaptation), is shot in black and white by Alex Phillips, is produced by Raymond Borderie (executive producer) and Salvador Elizondo (producer), is scored by Paul Misraki and is designed by Jean André, Roberto Silva and Auguste Capelier (construction coordinator).

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote ten drafts for screenplays, one of which, Typhus, came to be the inspiration for Les Orgueilleux, which won the Bronze Lion in the 1953 Venice Film Festival.

Sartre disowned his authorship when he was nominated for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story, for the 1957 Academy Awards after the film’s belated 1956 release in the US with promotional material saying it was ‘Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Proud and the Beautiful’.

Michèle Morgan moved to Hollywood in World War Two and had a house built at 10050 Cielo Drive, later the site of Sharon Tate’s murder by the followers of Charles Manson in 1969.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,027

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