A woman disappears (1942)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | A woman disappears |
| Original title | Une femme disparaît |
| Country of production | Switzerland |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1942 |
| length | 110 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jacques Feyder |
| script | Jacques Feyder based on the novel of the same name by Jacques Viot |
| production | Louis Guyot |
| music | Hans Haug |
| camera | Michel Kelber |
| cut | Victoria Spiri-Mercanton |
| occupation | |
| |
A woman disappears is a Swiss feature film from 1942 by Jacques Feyder with his wife Françoise Rosay in the title role and in three other roles.
action
Fanny Helder is a celebrated stage interpreter. She is tired of the ovations and intends to retire from the boards that once meant the world to her. Fanny would like to nestle with her daughter Geneviève, who is married to the Geneva diplomat Robert Chardin. But his family environment is determined by a stiff stick that is far from art. The presence of a twice divorced woman, from the "world of jugglers" at that, provokes more than just wrinkles in the puritanical in -laws of Genevièves. There are tensions within the family, making life difficult for the celebrated grande dame of the theater world. When her fame even causes a "scandal", Chardin fears for his career. It breaks, and the Chardins suggest that they are no longer willing to tolerate them and that Fanny's departure would be welcomed.
A few days later, Fanny Helder is actually up and away, and an unknown woman's corpse is washed up on the shores of Lake Geneva . Three different "witnesses" believe they recognize the dead woman again: the Welsh winemaker Bourguinet identifies her as his maternal maid Tona, who disappointedly turned her back on him and his court when he went to the city with a woman from the city, his new wife Hof returned. Miss Lucie Delvé, who owns a girls' boarding school that is in massive financial difficulties, claims that the dead woman must be her sister Rose, who probably took her own life when her students turned away from her. The skipper Giacomo, on the other hand, says stiffly and firmly that the woman's body must be his wife Flora. There was a violent marital dispute between the two, whereupon his better half left the barge in anger and went ashore.
The investigating police commissioner Michel takes on the matter, but soon comes across inconsistencies. Too many statements do not match, and the women who disappeared (and believed to be dead) were too dissimilar to one another. Eventually he finds out that both Rose and Tona and Flora are still alive. Only Fanny Hero’s agent sheds light on the darkness: he documents with documents that the dead woman must actually be the once celebrated artist. Inspector Michel, who, like so many others, was once a great admirer of Fanny Hero’s theatrical art, destroys her police files out of respect for the dead.
Production notes
The shooting of A Woman Disappears began in September 1941 and ended on February 21, 1942. The interior shots were taken in the Basel-Münchenstein film studio, the exterior shots on Lake Geneva, in Lutry (Fonjallaz Castle), Clarens , Villeneuf (Hotel Byron), Geneva , Grimentz , Fully , in Val d'Anniviers , Ardon , Ascona , Morcote , Lugano , Rheinfelden, Dornach and Brunnen-Flüelen. The premiere took place in two cinemas in Geneva on April 25, 1942. In German-speaking Switzerland, A Woman Disappears for the first time on September 12, 1942 in the Rex cinema in Zurich. In Austria, the film was called in 1950 for its premiere on 18 August renunciation . The strip was never shown in Germany.
The film structures and costumes were designed by Jean d'Eaubonne . One of five assistant directors was director Fons Rademakers , who later made a career in his home country, the Netherlands .
A woman disappears is considered the first significant sound film contribution in French-speaking Switzerland. For Jacques Feyder, who was born in Belgium and was in exile here, this film should be his last cinema production.
For the mostly French film participants, it was initially difficult to leave their German-occupied country, especially since some of them were considered enemies of the Reich. The Vichy regime , on whose territory they were staying in 1941, initially refused to issue passports. It was only after Rosay's interview with the BBC and the threat of committing suicide in the case of refusal that Vichy let the film crew leave for Switzerland on August 7, 1941. The film team is said to have deliberately delayed the shooting in order to be able to stay as long as possible in Switzerland, which was liberated from the events of the World War and the associated shortages that otherwise prevailed in Europe. As a result, the estimated production costs of almost 200,000 francs also tripled. Despite offers from Vichy to return, the Rosay-Feyder couple decided to stay in Switzerland after the shooting. Feyder, inhibited by his increasing drunkenness, should subsequently no longer receive any directing orders or have gambled away through his own misconduct (as in the case of “Matura-Reise”, Switzerland 1942).
criticism
While the film was to be a great success in French-speaking Switzerland, it was virtually completely ignored by the German-Swiss audience. After all, it transported national pride in French-speaking Switzerland, and the critic Emile Gret called it in the Ciné-Suisse of August 1, 1942, "the greatest film ever made in our country." Nevertheless, numerous passages in the press were castigated as "non-Swiss", and the Ticino press in particular made fun of the caricaturing representation of the Italo-Swiss Flora and Giacomo.
Une femme disparaît is indeed an old work that recedes in the great filmography of its author. The fragmentation of the episodes of different quality damages the coherence. (...) The Valais part, controlled from start to finish, with never-ending accuracy in its descriptions of the milieu ... contrasts sharply with the popping Ticino “fantasia”, which is too focused on the mimic exuberance of its actors. At first sight , Une femme disparait is above all a «Françoise Rosay Gala», a fantastic pretext to document her amazing art of transformation.
Individual evidence
Web links
- A woman disappears in the Internet Movie Database (English)