In his third film based on a novel by Georges Simenon, after Les Inconnus dans la maison (The Strangers in the House, 1942) and L’Homme de Londres (The Man from London, 1943), the eclectic Henri Decoin, together with screenwriter Maurice Aubergé, completely reworked the novel in respect of the course of events, the temporal structure, the dialogue, and both the beginning and ending. However, he remained faithful to its spirit: recounting the motivations that lead an individual to commit a crime. Elisabeth Donge, known as Bébé(a masterful Danielle Darrieux), conceals behind a mask of impenetrable coldness the sufferings of a wife betrayed by her husband François and brutalised to such an extent that she decides to take revenge. In the film, only François (a surprising Jean Gabin, who reveals an unexpected vulnerability) is aware that he has been poisoned by his wife, while in the novel everybody blames her from the very start. Unlike Simenon, Aubergé and Decoin do not show the poisoning in flashback, and they hide the only striking piece of action in the story behind an ellipsis. Moreover, by condensing the time frame into seven days, they emphasise the dialectic between Bebe’s past love for her husband and the present, dominated by hate. The film also emphasises the woman’s self-destructive tendencies, while an equally significant innovation is the introduction of the character of Madame d’Ortemont (Gabrielle Dorziat), an incarnation of pure cynicism and spite. The mixing of genres is also original: the first flashbacks are quite comic in tone and reminiscent of a genre well suited to Decoin, who had already directed Darrieux in six comic excursions. In Italy, where it was given the misleading and moralistic title La follia di Roberta Donge [The Madness of Roberta Donge], the film was cut by eight minutes. This included the sequence in which the siblings François and Georges Donge (Daniel Lecourtois) meet Madame d’Ortemont, who “arranges” other people’s marriages. Also cut was the dialogue during the wedding ceremony: to the question as to whether he believes in God, François Donge replies: “Well, in principle, yes. But I don’t have the time”. In several sequences, the dialogue deviates from the original, sweetening the meaning of the original phrases, as was common for Italian versions of foreign films.

Roberto Chiesi