Directed by Marc Allégret • Drama • With Danielle Darrieux, Leo Genn, Erno Crisa, Jean Murat • 1955 • 100 minutes
This is the first film of D.H. Lawrence’s controversial novel, which premiered in 1955, five years before the uncensored novel even appeared in print in the UK. Danielle Darrieux (in the peak years of her stardom) is Constance Chatterley, faithful wife to her war-wounded paraplegic husband (British actor Leo Genn), whose fortune flows from a local coal mine. Everyone but she seems concerned about her loss of sexual fulfillment, and the possibility of her bearing an heir, until she crosses paths with the estate’s new gamekeeper (Erno Crisa), and they launch into an affair that ruptures the tight social fabric around them.
While this film wouldn't be considered risqué by today's audiences, it was seen as scandalous at the time. Initially banned upon its release, the Supreme Court eventually ruled this was a violation of free speech, letting LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER screen in theaters. Restored in 2K, this film deserves its place in cinema history.
Up Next in France Before the New Wave
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School for Love (w/ Brigitte Bardot)
Directed by Marc Allégret • Drama • With Jean Marais, Brigitte Bardot, Isabelle Pia, Yves Robert • 1955 • 96 minutes
Brigitte Bardot was only 20 when she starred in this adaptation of a 1920 Vicki Baum novel. She’s Sophie, one of a platoon of young music conservatory students in postwar Vienna, ...
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Travels in the Congo (Voyage au Congo)
Directed by Marc Allégret • Documentary • 1927 • 117 minutes
In 1925, Marc Allégret accompanied André Gide on a journey to French Equatorial Africa, the Congo, as his secretary, and novice filmmaker. Filming throughout their 11-month travels, and only three years after Nanook of the North, Allég...
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Martin Roumagnac
Directed by Georges Lacombe • Drama • With Marlene Dietrich, Jean Gabin • 1946 • 108 minutes
This tragic postwar romance is a tale of class anxiety and classic Romantic fatalism, run through with a typically French frankness about sex and gender. Jean Gabin is the titular character, an unpretent...
