Review of Blanche

Not Borowczyk's usual sort of movie (he usually produces erotica), this one is a downright period tragedy with excellent actors. True, there is some gratuitous nudity, as the film opens with Blanche (Ligia Branice) stepping out of the bath. It's not clear why this is necessary, because she spends the rest of the film modestly dressed and cowled. The story goes like this: Blanche is a beautiful young woman married to an old man, the count (Michel Simon), who has a son, Nicolas (Lawrence Trimble) just back from the crusades. The king (George Wilson) arrives with a coterie of friars and a page, Bartolomeo (Jacques Perrin), who has a reputation as a seducer. He sets his eye on Blanche, but she turns out to be innocent and pure. The king, too, sets his eye on her, and sneaks off in the night, wearing Bartolomeo's cloak, to find her bedchamber, but he is challenged and wounded in the hand by Nicolas, who has sworn to defend his step-mother's honour. The page cuts his hand to cover for the king, and the king sends him away with a message. Before he can get very far, Nicolas challenges him, and Bartolomeo—strangely—disarms him. Then he tells Nicolas to forget Blanche and go back to court with him and he agrees. But as Nicolas returns to the castle to say goodbye to Blanche, Bartolomeo reads the king's message, fallen out of the sealed dispatch box in the fight. The treacherous king has ordered a troop of mercenaries with a battering ram and a fine litter to carry Blanche away, and has ordered his officers to place Bartolomeo in the tower. So off he goes to warn Blanche; he is hiding in her bedchamber when Nicolas declares his love for her, says goodbye, and faints, and then the Count comes, concludes Blanche is hiding a man, and everything falls apart. The count walls up the bedchamber and the king uses the room as a chapel. When the wall is torn down, the Count considers the unconscious man proof of his wife's dishonour, though Bartolomeo and Nicolas defend her. The King retrieves the undelivered note and contends with the Count for the page. A trial by combat ensues, in which Nicolas dies willingly, to prove her innocence. The King and Count contend for the page and the King allows him to stay behind for one day—during which Blanche poisons herself, the Count sends Bartolomeo to death by dragging behind a galloping horse, and he stabs himself in the heart as the king returns. The King prays and remembers Blanche, but it seems insufficient in the face of the terrible damage. As I said, the acting is very good, with one exception. Simon as the Count is massive, toad-faced, and alternately charming and repellent; the King is stately and incredibly selfish; Nicolas is handsome and upright, though strangely sensitive for a warrior; Bartolomeo is young and handsome and merry. But Ligia Branice, in the central role, is nearly a disaster—she has a good profile and big eyes and looks quite lovely. However, her acting consists of grotesque face-making, as when she expresses horror at affronts to her honour. She wears heavy make-up, lipstick and eyeliner, even after days in the dungeon. She's a mistake. The music is very good, faithful to the period, and the period costumes and decor are excellent, and even the story—a romantic pentangle—is pretty good.