8 avril 1957 à Paris alors que la reine d'Angleterre est en visite officielle en France. Yvette Maudet cambriole une petite bijouterie avec sa copine Noémie. Le hold-up échoue. Elles se sauvent non sans avoir assommé la bijoutière. Sachant Noémie arrêtée, Yvette se présente chez Maître André Gobillot afin de lui demander de la défendre et lui propose ses charmes pour tout paiement.

Au désordre libre de la passion, Autant-Lara oppose le monde des conventions : des plus caricaturaux (l'avocat de la défense ou la secrétaire Bordenave à genou devant la reine et le prince Philippe) aux plus respectables (sa femme). L'amour sincère entre Yvette et André Gobillot défie les conventions non seulement par l'âge mais aussi par la liberté que s'accordent les amants (Yvette couche avec Mazetti et offre en contrepartie Jeanine à André). Cet amour, sanctifié par la naissance d'un enfant, n'est pas menacé par la société mais par la passion toute aussi forte de Mazetti.

Autant Lara illustre plus qu'il ne transcende le roman de Simenon. Gabin fait du Gabin, bien plus crédible en père protecteur qu'en amant passionné (il ne se défait jamais de son costume). Bardot a bien du mal à le rendre un tant soit peu naturel alors qu'elle excelle de charme et de sensualité seule dans le lit, faisant son numéro de soubrette, nostalgique devant le scooter.Le plan, final celui de Gabin sortant seul de l'hôtel derrière lequel se profile l'usine, dit quand même le tragique gâchis pour chacun des trois personnages.

The most controversial of Bardot's films…

Author: Righty-Sock (robertfrangie@hotmail.com) from Mexico
24 July 2005

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The phenomenal success of the Bardot myth, like that of James Dean which just preceded it, was very much the immediate response of the youth public to a need they felt in themselves and which Bardot was the first young girl to realize on the screen… In Claude Autant-Lara's film, Bardot came off as more than a sexual image, her persona giving life to the character she portrayed... The film contained of the most erotic scenes of her career: Brigitte was called on to raise her skirt in order to convince a skeptical lawyer to represent her case!

In her frank demand for sexual pleasure Bardot is without any feminine guile, and the film contrasts her 'honesty,' for what it is worth, with the sophisticated behavior of the 'woman of the world' played by Edwige Feuillère… Gabin and Feuillère, dubious at first of appearing with her, claimed subsequently to have found her charming and intelligent, but at the same time nervous, full of self-doubt, and uncertain both of her talent and her beauty…

Gets better with every viewing

Author: adrian290357 from Portugal
16 February 2009

This is not a particularly well known movie among the anglophone crowd but it is definitely very advanced for its year of production, 1958. Yvette Maudet ("maudit" means accursed in French) as portrayed by Bardot is a constantly split personality that seems utterly unable to decide whether she wants the wealthy but old and not overly attractive Gabin or the young and handsome, but poor, Gaston. The way she enlists the services of Gabin as her lawyer is memorable and the scene so graphic and far ahead of its time that it was cut!

Curvaceous 22-year-old blonde Bardot is to die for but it is Gabin that carries the film with a masterly performance. Look out for Feuillere in role of Gabin's wife. She is apparently liberal and allows the affair to unfold and develop in the belief that her husband will eventually come back and she will remain in control of the marriage. Watch how she puts away her glasses when he comes into her bedroom so she looks more attractive to him... even though she knows she cannot compete with the much younger and voluptuous BB.

Watch her loyalty to her husband as she sees him run after the mirage of young and callously carefree beauty, and she sees his business collapse and begin to affect her own life.There is more: There is the extremely competent direction, an engrossing screenplay, and bewitching photography from director Autant-Lara and his team. It provides no happy end but this film has so much to offer that I can only encourage you to not miss it, dear reader.

EN CAS DE MALHEUR (Claude Autant-Lara, 1958) ***

Author: MARIO GAUCI (marrod@melita.com) from Naxxar, Malta
24 January 2010

The film under review closes off nicely Claude Autant-Lara's impeccable 15-year run of noteworthy pictures that had begun with 1943's DOUCE (see my upcoming rave review); it is also notable for being an unlikely but fairly successful meeting between the biggest (Jean Gabin) and hottest (Brigitte Bardot) stars in French Cinema at the time i.e. just before the outbreak of the "Nouvelle Vague" brought along a horde of fresh and irreverent talent.

Adapted from a Georges Simenon novel, the plot of EN CAS DE MALHEUR is quite predictable and not entirely convincing but the consummate professionalism of all concerned smooths over any bumps that come up along the way. Bardot is an aimless youth who, together with her reluctant girlfriend, amateurishly attempts to pull off a small-time jewel heist that, inevitably, goes wrong and, eventually, picks up Gabin's name at random from a phone book to act as her defense counsel in court; not having the financial means to pay for his services, she elects to remunerate him in the only way she knows how: seduction.

Although this particular sequence, as shown in the finished film, is disappointingly chaste, the deleted clip reproduced at the end of the copy I acquired is, however, too crude to be seen at such an early stage of the film and, in my opinion, the director was wise to jettison it; in any case, he did contrive to gives us a good look at the gloriously naked body (solely from the back, of course) of the 23-year old Bardot later on when she rushes out of the bathroom and into bed (much to the chagrin of Gabin's mousy secretary) of the apartment that Gabin provided her with! Needless to say, Gabin is already married (to the formidable Edwige Feuilliere) and, although on the surface she appears to condone Gabin's latest flirtation, she is obviously none too happy about it.

To complicate matters further, Bardot is also seeing her irascible Italian lover (Franco Interlenghi) on the side and things come to a tragic head when she unwisely decides that loveless wealth is preferable to blissful poverty. Abetted by Jacques Natteau's noir-ish lighting and Rene' Cloerec's fine score, the colorful cast also includes three alumni from the films of Luis Bunuel, namely Julien Bertheau (appearing briefly at the very end as the investigating inspector at the scene of the crime passionel), Jean-Pierre Cassel (unbilled as an animated trumpeter, one of Bardot's casual lovers) and an unrecognizable Bernard Musson – and even Jacques Marin and Daniela Bianchi (also unrecognizable).

While the film's 122-minute running time would seem overgenerous on paper, it is only the belated (and unnecessary) introduction of the character of Bardot's maid that makes one realize this as we lay watching; I strongly suspect that the film-makers wanted to push the boundaries of censorship even further by hinting at a possible ménage-a-trois between her, Bardot and Gabin but, perhaps thankfully, this is not made all that clear in the few scenes they share together…which is just as well since the huge difference in age between on screen lovers Gabin and Bardot and the above-mentioned nude scene had already raised the proverbial conservative eyebrows! For the record, the film was remade 40 years later as EN PLEIN COEUR aka IN ALL INNOCENCE with Virginie Ledoyen stepping into Bardot's 'shoes'.