MADELEINE (1950)

In 1850s Glasgow, the Smith family is about to buy a home in the city, and the older daughter Madeleine (Ann Todd) is particularly taken with a basement bedroom which has a barred window looking out onto the sidewalk and the feet of passersby. When they're moved in, she shares the room (which looks like it was intended to be servants' quarters) with her younger sister, and we soon see what appealed to her about the room: her illicit lover Emile (Ivan Desny) walks past, tapping his walking cane against the bars and dropping love notes into the window. Her autocratic father (Leslie Banks) is insisting that she marry the respectable William Minnoch, but has allowed her not to set an engagement date yet, so she continues seeing Emile who is more handsome and exciting, but also struggling to get by. Soon, Madeleine presses Emile to elope with her, but he needs her money and so insists that they get married properly. She finally agrees to marry William, but Emile threatens to use her love letters to blackmail her. Eventually, Emile is found dead of arsenic poisoning in what is assumed to be a suicide, but a friend of Emil's takes Madeleine's letters to her father, and evidence comes out that Madeleine had set up a secret meeting with Emile the night before he died. When it is discovered that she had a bottle of arsenic in her possession, she is put on trial for murder.

[Spoilers follow] This David Lean film is based on a real case that ended in a "not proven" verdict, which is somewhere between guilty and not guilty. This ambiguous ending is actually fairly satisfying, with the last shot lingering on Madeleine's face as she leaves the courtroom, a tiny smile just about to break out. But what I found not satisfying is the portrayal of the fateful night before Emile's death. We are given brief glimpses of Emile heading for the basement window during a storm, and of Madeleine waiting for him, but we never actually see if they meet or not. Her story is that he never showed up. More confusion occurs involving what seems to have been an earlier poisoning attempt by Madeleine, but again, what we see is inconclusive. In prose, this kind of ambiguity would go down better, but in visuals, it's frustrating. Performances are fine. Todd was married to David Lean and he did the movie for her, as she had played the role on stage, but he considers this to be his worst movie. Todd is good, however, as is Desny as her lover. Leslie Banks as the father isn't given enough screen time or enough scenery to chew. Norman Wooland does what he can with the underwritten role of Minnoch; he manages to make him fairly sympathetic, as though he knows he is caught between the father and the daughter in a game that no one can win. The movie has the look of a film noir, and there is some fun to be had with the camera's focus on a phallic cane that Emile carries and twirls and thrusts, and at least once has yanked out of his hands by Madeleine. Despite the unsatisfying last third, it's worth seeing. Pictured are Desny and Todd. [TCM]