MADAME SANS GENE
Italy, 1961, 91 minutes, Colour.
Sophia Loren, Robert Hossein, Marina Berti, Nadia Gray.
Directed by Christian Jaque.
Madame Sans Gene is a costume drama from the early 1960s. It was directed by veteran director Christian Jacque.
There had been an early 1940s version of this same story starring the classical French actress Arletty (Les Enfants du Paradis). Sophia Loren is now in the central role – with an Italian accend for a Parisian lady.
The film is set in the Napoleonic times, the first part with the Napoleonic wars, the second part in the courts of Paris.
The film is one of many colourful French dramas, based on popular stories, that give a background to the more solemn aspects of French history.
1. How enjoyable a film, as history, as costume melodrama, as comedy? The significance and emphasis of the title, its tone? Audience expectations and their fulfilment?
2. The importance of wide screen, colour, sets and costumes, the large east, the atmosphere of spectacle?
3. The response by the audience to the French Revolution, its issues, Napoleon? How were these fulfilled?
4. The different response to the mundane side of things underlying history? The ordinariness of people, of places? The irony of the characters and what happened to them? The pretensions of the people involved? The parody of the revolution and Napoleon? The satirical look at human nature, power, history and its interpretation?
5. The importance of the structure and its development: the atmosphere of the ordinary people in the revolution and the attack on the aristocracy, from laundry woman to queen, the great social change, yet human nature remaining the same?
Audience response to the picture of Paris, the revolution, the executions, the soldiers and the shooting at the palace? The way of life of the ordinary people? The plots? The transition to the country side? the barracks, the war situation? Camp followers throughout Europe, to Italy? As a comment on what was happening to the people at the end of the 18th century? How interesting a picture of Napoleon and his origins in the army? his personality, his relationship with Catherine, his way of command, the episode with the cannon? His sisters? His shrewdness as a leader? His return to Corsica and building himself up there? his gradual greater command? His arrogance? The significance of the captions showing his rise to power? The contrast of his being Emperor with his ordinary beginnings? The historical and well known public side of Napoleon, the private side? Did the film throw any light on Napoleon and his impact? How did Catherine symbolise the ordinary people during this period? Her character, her talkativeness, her preoccupation with her laundry, the
buxom laundress attracting people, involved in the revolution, wanting her privacy and getting rid of the cannon? Her work for example washing Napoleon's shirts? Her encounter with the soldiers, especially with Lefebvre? The other girls and their liaison with the soldiers? Her marrying? Was she a credible ordinary character? The sequences of the search, the irony and humour of the reconciliation, their arrest, the accidents of history helping them in their growth to power?
10. The films comment on the ascendance of the new aristocracy, the memory of their origins, their attitudes towards the aristocracy they had executed? The character of Lefebvre as a soldier in this situation? His success, moving through the ranks? Napoleon's dependence on him? His becoming Duke of Danzig and possibly becoming a king?
11. The contrast with sumptuous scenes of ballroom and banquet, the contrast with the Bonaparte family squabbling about the partition of Europe, keeping it in the family? The satire on the Bonaparte's and their hunger for power, their snobbery?
12. The importance sequence of Catherine being trained for aristocracy, her manners, the address coming out in her, her being carried away and telling the truth about them all, the affect on the gathering, the use in the newspapers of Europe?
13. The affect of all this on ambitions, on the ambition of Lefebvre? His dilemma? The way that true love was able to prevail? How credible was this? Catherine's discussion with napoleon and his response to Lefebvre's discussion? The happy ending?
14. How enjoyable a historical romance, the different angle on their characters?
