The greatest movie ever!

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

"Madeleine" is possibly David Lean's most underrated film, perhaps because of its slow pace and the miscasting of Lean's wife Ann Todd in the title role, (though I think she makes a fair stab at the part). Based on fact, it's the story of Madeleine Smith who stood trial for the murder of her lover in Victorian Glasgow. As her French seducer, Ivan Desny is excellent, as is Leslie Banks as her stern father and the film looks wonderful thanks to Guy Green's gorgeous black and white photography and John Bryan's set designs while Lean's direction is as impeccable as ever. If the film has a fault it's a certain stiffness in the telling. Not much seen nowadays but essential Lean nevertheless.

Enjoyed this 1950 true story about a young woman named Madeleine Smith, (Ann Todd) who lived in Glasgow, Scotland in 1857 and the story begins with the Smith family looking for a rather large home. Madeleine is very excited about a room in the basement of this house and I wondered just why she preferred such a location and of course the story will reveal the reasons for this decision. William Mennoch, (Norman Wooland) was an older professional man and was interested in Madeleine and wanted to marry her, but she kept putting off any discussions or decisions in this matter of marriage. However, the father and mother approved of William becoming their son-in-law. As the story moves along, you find out that there is another man that Madeleine is very much in love with and he is French and not very well off financially. This man's name is Emile L'Anglier and he was determined to climb into Glasgow's high social class and found that Madeleine and her family would be able to help him accomplish this task. This story holds great mystery in black and white and all the actors gave great supporting roles in this true story about a strange woman.

Ann Todd is "Madeleine" in this 1950 film directed by David Lean. The film also features Norman Wooland, Ivan Desny, Andre Morrell and Elizabeth Sellars. The film looks at the true story of the famous Madeleine Smith murder trial in the mid-1800s. Pressured by her upper class family to marry, Madeleine is in fact secretly intimately involved with a man from a lower class, L'Anglier (Desny) and has agreed to marry him. She doesn't want to tell her family, so she urges him to elope with her. L'Anglier was planning on marrying into the upper class lifestyle and insists instead that she tell her father (Leslie Banks) about their relationship. She can't, and believing that all L'Anglier wanted was her money all along, she breaks off with him and requests the return of her letters to him. She then agrees to marry William Minnoch (Wooland), who has been courting her.L'Anglier doesn't return her letters, and after she purchases arsenic, he dies of arsenic poison, having become ill at her house once before. Madeleine is arrested for murder.The film seems to follow the case quite accurately, but it's pretty cut and dried. There are some marvelous scenes - the two dancing in the moonlight is one, as an increasingly wilder dance goes on inside. The structure of the courtroom was interesting, as I had never seen a prisoner walk upstairs into the dock from what is almost a trap door in the floor. The view of all the faces looking down before she starts the climb gives an idea of what it's like to be put on trial.Ann Todd is a good actress, though an internalized one who comes off as rather cold. She was married to Lean, which may be the reason for her casting. At the time of the murder, Madeleine's father was displeased that she wasn't married, complaining that she had met many men but none of them have worked out. She was twenty when she took up with L'Anglier and 22 when she broke it off. Todd was 41 at the time this film was made. She was not carefully photographed and looked her age - way too old for this role. Andre Morrell is excellent as Madeleine's attorney. The rest of the performances are very good, with Banks a strong, intimidating father and Desny hinting at the slime that's below the surface of L'Anglier. Norman Wooland gives a charming and concerned performance as Madeleine's suitor, Minnoch.Lean's opinion of what happened is made very clear in the last moments of the film. Someone said the story needed Hitchcock's hand, but he was not successful with "The Paradine Case." There's something about these stories that is very detached and unemotional. Maybe Hitchcock could have cracked it; this early effort by David Lean doesn't quite make it.

Madeleine is one of a number of costume dramas produced around the late 1940s to focus upon psychological conflicts from a female perspective. Other notable examples are Vincente Minelli's Madame Bovary and William Wyler's The Heiress, both released in 1949. However, whereas those two pictures were based upon great literary works from the 19th century, Madeleine is a dramatisation (I would imagine a fairly liberal one given its melodramatic style) of actual events.Director David Lean was always one to immerse the audience in the psychological states of his characters, often through use of attention grabbing shots and expressive use of sound. There are some fairly routine examples of this in the first half of the film – eerie shadows of Emile twirling his cane, the blaring bagpipe music of a village dance at Emile and Madeleine's secret meeting, and so on.Another of Lean's characteristics was that, in order to tell a full story, the narrative would switch between the multiple points-of-view. This can be done fairly easily with a director who treats the audience as a passive, externalised viewer, but with Lean's constant involvement of the audience it could occasionally give his films a disjointed, unbalanced feel. This is somewhat the case with Madeleine, which begins as a psychological drama in which a young woman from a strict household must choose between her heart's desire and loyalty to her family. About halfway through however the story becomes a murder mystery and eventually a courtroom drama, and the narrative fragments as we see the points-of-view of various witnesses to supposed crimes. All the psychological set-up of the first forty-five minutes becomes forgotten.In spite of the fragmentary nature of the whole, there are some strong scenes and the occasional touch of class here and there. The pivotal scene in which Madeleine's father discovers his daughters affair, while at the same time Madeleine learns of Emile's death shows Lean's dramatic staging at its best. Intelligent use of space and positioning of actors in this scene best shows off the varying reactions. The final scenes in court are a carefully constructed blend of points-of-view and reaction shots, and Lean's background as a renowned editor is in evidence.A great cast was often a hallmark of a David Lean picture, but Madeleine suffers from a lack of classy actors. Having said that Ann Todd, whom I don't normally rate that highly, is not too bad here, emoting well in close-ups. Apart from that the only standouts are Andre Morell in a powerful performance as the defence counsel towards the end of the film, and an unfortunately brief appearance from Scottish character actor John Laurie as a fanatical mob leader.Madeleine has its moments, but all in all is a bit of a mediocrity. Lean was at his best when he could go all out on the emotional drama, but this foray into the courtroom is simply not enough of one thing or the other to be a really strong picture.