La Symphonie pastorale (film)

For the French novel, see La Symphonie Pastorale.

La Symphonie pastorale
film poster
Directed by	Jean Delannoy
Written by	André Gide (novel)
Starring	Pierre Blanchar Michèle Morgan
Distributed by	Pathé Consortium Cinéma
Release dates	September 1946 (Cannes Film Festival)
Running time	110 min
Language	French

La Symphonie pastorale is a 1946 French language film drama directed by Jean Delannoy and starring Michèle Morgan and Pierre Blanchar.

The film is based on the novella La Symphonie Pastorale by André Gide and adapted to the screen by Jean Aurenche. The film score was by Georges Auric. At the 1946 Cannes Film Festival, it won the Grand Prix (equivalent of the Palme d'Or) and the Best Actress award for Michèle Morgan.

It was the film chosen to be shown at the opening gala of the Cameo cinema in Edinburgh, Scotland in March 1949, and a rare surviving print with English subtitles was shown there again in 2009 to celebrate the film's 60th anniversary, courtesy of the BFI.

Plot summary

The pastor of a mountain village adopts a small blind girl, Gertrude. As Gertrude grows up into an attractive young woman, the pastor, now middle-aged, realises that he is in love with her. To his chagrin, his adopted son, Jacques, is also in love with Gertrude, even though he is shortly to be married to another woman.

Jacques’s fiancée is jealous of Gertrude and arranges for her to see a doctor in the hope that she might be cured and to enable Jacques to choose equally between the two women.

Miraculously, Gertrude’s sight is restored and she returns to the village a changed woman. Unable to accept Jacques' love and disappointed by the pastor's affections for her, she realises that her former happiness has been lost forever.

This film supplies a second, deeper meaning. The blind girl comes to dominate the pastor's consciousness as he guides her from being the brutish creature seen in our first glimpse of her, into an accomplished and attractive young woman. His obsession with her damages his family life. There is no indication of carnal attraction between the pastor and her; she is his spiritual creation. This alternative interpretation, then, is that the blind girl is a kind of demon (as suggested by her first appearance) who takes over his consciousness, with the result of wrecking his family life and marring his surface saintliness. This meaning is cued for us by his wife's slowly growing worry.

External links

La Symphonie Pastorale at the Internet Movie Database
La Symphonie Pastorale at AllMovie
La Symphonie Pastorale at filmsdefrance.com

Films directed by Jean Delannoy

L'Éternel retour (1943)
La Symphonie Pastorale (1946)
Les jeux sont faits (1947)
Aux yeux du souvenir (1948)
Le Secret de Mayerling (1949)
Dieu a besoin des hommes (1950)
La Minute de vérité (1952)
Napoleon Road (1953)
Destinées (1954)
Obsession (1954)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956)
Marie Antoinette Queen of France (1956)
Maigret Sets a Trap (1958)
Imperial Venus (1962)
Les amitiés particulières (1964)
The Sultans (1966)
Children of Mata Hari (1970)

Palme d'Or winning films

1930s 1940s	Union Pacific – Cecil B. DeMille (1939) Iris and the Lieutenant – Alf Sjöberg (1946) The Lost Weekend – Billy Wilder (1946) The Red Meadows – Bodil Ipsen and Lau Lauritzen, Jr. (1946) Brief Encounter – David Lean (1946) María Candelaria – Emilio Fernández (1946) Neecha Nagar – Chetan Anand (1946) The Turning Point – Fridrikh Ermler (1946) La Symphonie Pastorale – Jean Delannoy (1946) The Last Chance – Leopold Lindtberg (1946) Men Without Wings – František Čáp (1946) Rome, Open City – Roberto Rossellini (1946) The Third Man – Carol Reed (1949)

1950s	Miss Julie – Alf Sjöberg (1951) Miracle in Milan – Vittorio De Sica (1951) The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice – Orson Welles (1952) Two Cents Worth of Hope – Renato Castellani (1952) The Wages of Fear – Henri-Georges Clouzot (1953) Gate of Hell – Teinosuke Kinugasa (1954) Marty – Delbert Mann (1955) The Silent World – Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle (1956) Friendly Persuasion – William Wyler (1957) The Cranes Are Flying – Mikhail Kalatozov (1958) Black Orpheus – Marcel Camus (1959)

1960s	La Dolce Vita – Federico Fellini (1960) The Long Absence – Henri Colpi (1961) Viridiana – Luis Buñuel (1961) O Pagador de Promessas – Anselmo Duarte (1962) The Leopard – Luchino Visconti (1963) The Umbrellas of Cherbourg – Jacques Demy (1964) The Knack ...and How to Get It – Richard Lester (1965) A Man and a Woman – Claude Lelouch (1966) The Birds, the Bees and the Italians – Pietro Germi (1966) Blowup – Michelangelo Antonioni (1967) if.... – Lindsay Anderson (1969)

1970s	MASH – Robert Altman (1970) The Go-Between – Joseph Losey (1971) The Working Class Goes to Heaven – Elio Petri (1972) The Mattei Affair – Francesco Rosi (1972) The Hireling – Alan Bridges (1973) Scarecrow – Jerry Schatzberg (1973) The Conversation – Francis Ford Coppola (1974) Chronicle of the Years of Fire – Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina (1975) Taxi Driver – Martin Scorsese (1976) Padre Padrone – Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (1977) The Tree of Wooden Clogs – Ermanno Olmi (1978) Apocalypse Now – Francis Ford Coppola (1979) The Tin Drum – Volker Schlöndorff (1979)

1980s	All That Jazz – Bob Fosse (1980) Kagemusha – Akira Kurosawa (1980) Man of Iron – Andrzej Wajda (1981) Missing – Costa-Gavras (1982) Yol – Yılmaz Güney and Şerif Gören (1982) The Ballad of Narayama – Shohei Imamura (1983) Paris, Texas – Wim Wenders (1984) When Father Was Away on Business – Emir Kusturica (1985) The Mission – Roland Joffé (1986) Under the Sun of Satan – Maurice Pialat (1987) Pelle the Conqueror – Bille August (1988) Sex, Lies, and Videotape – Steven Soderbergh (1989)

1990s	Wild at Heart – David Lynch (1990) Barton Fink – Coen brothers (1991) The Best Intentions – Bille August (1992) Farewell My Concubine – Chen Kaige (1993) The Piano – Jane Campion (1993) Pulp Fiction – Quentin Tarantino (1994) Underground – Emir Kusturica (1995) Secrets & Lies – Mike Leigh (1996) Taste of Cherry – Abbas Kiarostami (1997) The Eel – Shohei Imamura (1997) Eternity and a Day – Theodoros Angelopoulos (1998) Rosetta – Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (1999)

2000s	Dancer in the Dark – Lars von Trier (2000) The Son's Room – Nanni Moretti (2001) The Pianist – Roman Polanski (2002) Elephant – Gus Van Sant (2003) Fahrenheit 9/11 – Michael Moore (2004) The Child – Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (2005) The Wind That Shakes the Barley – Ken Loach (2006) 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days – Cristian Mungiu (2007) The Class – Laurent Cantet (2008) The White Ribbon – Michael Haneke (2009)

2010s	Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives – Apichatpong Weerasethakul (2010) The Tree of Life – Terrence Malick (2011) Amour – Michael Haneke (2012) Blue Is the Warmest Colour – Abdellatif Kechiche (with actresses Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux) (2013) Winter Sleep – Nuri Bilge Ceylan (2014) Dheepan – Jacques Audiard (2015)

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