L'HISTOIRE D'ADELE H (THE STORY OF ADELE H)

France, 1975, 98 minutes, Colour.
Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Robinson, Sylvia Marriott, Joseph Batchley.
Directed by Francois Truffaut.

Francois Truffaut is a humane writer and director, able to tell a story, create setting and atmosphere and explore character. All of which he has done superbly in a short film on Adele Hugo, the novelist's daughter. The unusual setting is Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1863, presented effectively with great attention to detail. We are made to live Adele's romantic dreams which become obsession, her retreat into a private and lonely world of madness and an empty life contrasted with the publicly acclaimed career of her father. Isabelle Adjani portrays Adele's decline impressively. though she elicits sympathy, rather than empathy, for this unfortunate victim of life?

1. The quality of this film? Its reputation? Its overall impact? The reasons for critical and popular admiration?

2. The film's emphasis on the fact that it told the truth about people? Why was this? Would audiences have responded differently to fiction? Truth being stranger than fiction? The emphasis at the end on dates, Victor Hugo and his daughter, funerals, the nature of deaths and funerals, and funerals and memory?

3. How well did the film create the world of the 1860s? The presentation of the world and the map, the Halifax setting and the detail of the wharves, the streets, shops and people? Did this help to understand Adele? In a familiar and yet a strange world? Away from the security of France? Away from home?

4. Isabelle Adjani's performance? Its empathy and range of moods and feeling? Did she make Adele a credible character? The initial seeing her in the docks, and her slipping ashore? Her sensitivities on arrival, going to board? The mystery about her attitudes and the gradual way that it unfolded?

5. How successful was the film in gradually unfolding the character and the mystery of Adele? How much sympathy did she elicit from the audience? How much puzzle and antipathy? Her obsession and madness and audience sympathy? The gradual revelation of her story, for instance to her landlady, to the people at the bank, to the bookseller, to the lawyer, to Mrs. Sanders? How kindly and understanding were people in response? What did she learn from them?

6. The explanation of her love and its obsession? The emotional effect of her being jilted? The film's filling in the background of the island of Guernsey? The romantic reasons for Adele's pursuit of her love? Why did it grow into an obsession? Into a desperate pursuit? The whole focus of her attention on this? Her correspondence with her father, her visits to the bank to get money? Her detailed writing down of her experiences? The film's technique of focussing very much on close-up for our understanding of her? The details of her daily life?

7. What kind of nun was the English soldier? In himself. as a soldier, his easygoing way of life, especially with women? His assistant who gave him advice? The effect of the encounter with Adele? His explanation of his not following up his love, especially with the disapproval of her father and his reputation? Was he in any way an admirable character? Was it comprehensible why Adele was so in love with him?

8. The importance of the gradual revelation that Adele was the daughter of Victor Hugo? The expectations in audiences about Victor Hugo his role in France and influence, politics and exile? The effect on people, the money situation,, the doctor discovering the truth? Her then using her name? The announcement in the paper about her engagement? The death of her father etc.? What was the film trying to communicate about the relationship of father and daughter and the mutual influence?

9. The significance of Adele's writing her journal? The scenes where she wrote this?

10. The importance of the encounters of Adele with her lover? His fear? His trying to explain? Her inability to understand? The reason for her visit in the disguise as a man and its effect on him? Her watching the military exercise by the sea etc.? What was the cumulative effect on him? How did it eat into her?

11. How well did the film show her retreating more and more into her own world? Creating her own fantasies? Understanding people in the light of her fantasies? Her changed appearance, growing wilder and looking after herself less, wearing glasses etc.? The impact of her illness? Her stories to Mrs. Sanders and her leaving Mrs. Sanders? The effect of her wandering about Halifax, for example, the scene at the markets and her avoiding Mrs. Sanders? The ultimate humiliation of her going to the Poorhouse, falling out of bed, holding on to her possessions? How mad was she and why?

12. The transition of the film from Halifax to the Barbados? Her lover establishing his military way of life there? Marriage? The prospect of Adele arriving and his trying to cope with it? Her arriving in Barbados as decrepit and ill-kept? Completely mad?

13. The pathos of her walking the Barbados street in rags, open to ridicule, collapsing? The prospect of her returning to France with her father's reinstatement? The kindliness of the Barbados woman writing the letter and taking care of her? The ultimate irony of her walking past her lover and not recognising him?

14. How important was the epilogue? The explanation of the famous father, his role in France, his death and the people at his funeral, the contrast with her forty years of life in madness?

15. Her romantic achievement and its success? That she would pursue her lover across the seas? The grim irony of reality? The pathos of the picture of her grave?

16. How well did the film explore themes of love, hatred, father and daughter relationships, love and self-giving in love, obsession, the meaning of life and its fulfilment?

17. The insight into people? Into history? How true was the film?