Therese Raquin (1953)

Well acted, but not faithful to Zola's tale. Spend your money on the book

Therese Raquin was a novel written by a young Emile Zola prior to penning the monumental Rougon-Macquart series. This film adaptation of the novel is a decent story in it's own right, but does not remotely convey the emotion or drama of the original story. If you don't know who Zola was, he was one of the two greatest French writers, an icon in France, whose work seems largely (and sadly) forgotten in the US. Therese Raquin (played by Simone Signoret) is a tale of a woman in an unhappy marriage to a man (Camille) we would today call a mama's boy. The couple lives with their mother-in-law. Camille is winey and subservient to his mother, but controlling to his wife and not much of a husband. Therese silently dreams of escaping her unhappy plight, but without any financial resources of her own, has little opportunity. Camille brings a friend home one night, a strong, confident truck driver who is smitten by Therese. They begin a secret tryst, but Therese refuses to leave with her lover. In a moment of passion and anger, Laurent throws Camille from a train to his death. Unfortunately there is a witness, and both Laurent and Therese must live with the murder hanging over their heads as they try to make a deal with the witness.

This film starts out faithfully to Zola's original novel, but degenerates into a relatively standard film noir story of murder and blackmail. The setting has been transformed from the pre-Sedan world of Zola to the post-WWII era. The film is extremely well cast and well acted. Raf Villone does a great job as the not-too-intelligent but love-starved working man. This may also be one of Signoret's best performances as her underplayed acting as Therese fits the part to a tee. The main drawback of this film is that the feel of Zola's tale has not been captured. The original story is about obsession and madness, this is a pretty standard film noir story of murder and revenge. Bottom line is that this is definitely worth watching (as a rental) if you like film noir, or simply for the performances of Signoret and Vallone, but if you are going to spend the money, my advice is buy the book, it's much better than this film. January 21, 2008

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