La vérité sur Bébé Donge (The Truth About Bebe Donge/The Truth of Our Marriage). 1952. France. Directed by Henri Decoin. Screenplay by Maurice Aubergé, based on the novel by Georges Simenon. With Danielle Darrieux, Jean Gabin, Jacques Castelot. North American restoration premiere. DCP. In French; English subtitles. 113 min.
MoMA pays tribute to the brilliant writer-director and critic Bertrand Tavernier with a pairing of two Georges Simenon adaptations: Tavernier’s Clockmaker of St. Paul, from 1974, and Henri Decoin’s The Truth of Our Marriage, from 1952, starring Jean Gabin and Danielle Darrieux. A decorated World War I pilot and Olympic swimmer who didn’t make his first film until he was 43, Decoin was a postwar French director whose reputation Tavernier took pains to rehabilitate from the dismissive attacks of the New Wave critics of Cahiers du cinéma. In this, his third adaptation of a Simenon novel (after The Strangers in the House in 1942 and The Man from London in 1943), Decoin and his screenwriter Maurice Aubergé deftly mix light wit and cruelty in capturing the interior thoughts of a murderer and her victim over seven tense days: an emotionally wounded Darrieux, who in flashback revisits her husband’s many betrayals, and Gabin, who silently but knowingly suffers the poison she has secretly given him. Tavernier observes that “The Truth of Our Marriage, starring [Decoin’s] ex-wife, Darrieux, is darker and bolder than Simenon’s novel. The last 20 minutes are as good as some of the best film noirs by Otto Preminger or Henry Hathaway…. [Decoin] loved American films and brought an American influence into French cinema before Jacques Becker. Like Becker he understood the importance of fluidity, tempo and inventive direction, avoiding an attempt to underline things in the film. His best works were at the level of the finest comedies by Howard Hawks.”
2K digital restoration by Gaumont at Éclair laboratory, from the original negatives. Funding provided by CNC – Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animé.