Jeanne Moreau In Mademoiselle – Ironic Heroine

Tony Richardson’s Mademoiselle centres on Jeanne Moreau’s refined school mistress, tasked with educating the rural children of local villagers. They are mostly simple, farming folk, ill-equipped to perceive that Moreau’s austere, disciplined appearance masks a complicated and possibly catastrophic personality. Outwardly she is the prim and proper schoolmistress but inwardly she is deviant. She is an outsider in this rural picture and the locals respect her as a cut above the rest. But what they see is very different to what we see – witness as we are to the havoc Moreau wreaks on theses unsuspecting country simpletons. Far from prim she appears to us as a secret agent of chaos.

Writers on the film peg Moreau’s schoolmistress as some sort of sado-masochist or they say she is filled with “repressed desire” or some such. My contention however, is that Moreau’s character is something far more strange and far more interesting and far less tedious than simply a subversive or a frigid; that is, she uses chaos to bring about order. For there is another outsider in the village; an Italian woodcutter played by Ettore Manni. He, his son and a fellow woodcutter move from place to place, wherever they can get work, descending on the village each year to fell trees in the forest. Manni is a rugged, exotic presence in the village and he works his way through the villagers’ wives, sometimes brazenly in the forest. 

So how does Moreau use chaos to bring about order?

If we list Moreau’s literal actions in the film – boiled down to their simplest form – a first glance would define her as a catastrophe. However, a look at the net effect of her actions might suggest otherwise.

What does Moreau literally do?

1. She stubs her cigarette out on a flower. 
2. She opens the gate to flood the livestock. 
3. She humiliates Manni’s son, Bruno, in front of the other school children in class.
4. She sets fire to a barn, and one man loses his life. 
5. She poisons the livestock by putting arsenic in their drinking water. 
6. She frolics in the woods with Manni but when she returns home she lets the villagers believe he molested her. 

All through Moreau’s roll call of horror the locals suspect Manni. He is an outsider, but rougher, lacking Moreau’s refinement and he is seducing their wives. They are all too ready to believe Moreau and the townsmen beat Manni to death in a field. 

The final image of the film, however, reveals the truth of Moreau’s purpose. She departs the village in a taxi for the final time. Meanwhile, we see the schoolchildren inside the classroom recite their times tables in unison under the watch of a new teacher. Order and unity has been restored.

Both Moreau and Manni are outsiders. Moreau’s chaotic behaviour is transferred on to Manni who in turn pays the price, Moreau then departs the stage leaving the village now in a state of peace. Her work here is done. Therefore we can say Moreau is an agent of order not of chaos. An Ironic Heroine. 

FURTHER READING