''Mississippi Mermaid'' (french: La Sirène du ) is a 1969 French
romantic drama film written and directed by
François Truffaut and starring
Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Fabienne Dorléac (born 22 October 1943), known professionally as Catherine Deneuve (, , ), is a French actress as well as an occasional singer, model, and producer, considered one of the greatest European actresses. She gained recogni ...
and
Jean-Paul Belmondo
Jean-Paul Charles Belmondo (; 9 April 19336 September 2021) was a French actor and producer. Initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s, he was a major French film star for several decades from the 1960s onward. His best known credits ...
. Adapted from the 1947 novel ''Waltz into Darkness'' by
Cornell Woolrich
Cornell George Hopley Woolrich ( ; December 4, 1903 – September 25, 1968) was an American novelist and short story writer. He sometimes used the pseudonyms William Irish and George Hopley.
His biographer, Francis Nevins Jr., rated Woolrich th ...
, the film is about a tobacco planter on
Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean who becomes engaged through correspondence to a woman he does not know. When she arrives it is not the same woman in the photo, but he marries her anyway. Filmed in southern France and Réunion island,
''Mississippi Mermaid'' was the 17th highest-grossing film of the year in France with a total of 1,221,027 admissions. It was remade in 2001 as ''
Original Sin'', directed by
Michael Cristofer
Michael Cristofer (born January 22, 1945) is an American actor, playwright and filmmaker. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play for '' The Shadow Box'' in 1977. From 2015 to 2019, he played the role of Phillip ...
and starring
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie (; born Angelina Jolie Voight; June 4, 1975) is an American actress, filmmaker, humanitarian and former Special Envoy to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award ...
and
Antonio Banderas.
Plot
Louis Mahé (
Jean-Paul Belmondo
Jean-Paul Charles Belmondo (; 9 April 19336 September 2021) was a French actor and producer. Initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s, he was a major French film star for several decades from the 1960s onward. His best known credits ...
), a wealthy tobacco plantation owner on Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean, awaits the arrival of his bride-to-be, Julie Roussel (
Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Fabienne Dorléac (born 22 October 1943), known professionally as Catherine Deneuve (, , ), is a French actress as well as an occasional singer, model, and producer, considered one of the greatest European actresses. She gained recogni ...
), whom he has never met. They became acquainted through the personals column of a French newspaper and have been corresponding. At the Hotel Mascarin, he meets his business partner Jardine who accompanies him to pick up the ring. Louis drives to the dock to greet Julie who is arriving on the steamer ''Mississipi'' (spelled with one p according to the French spelling of the river at the time) from
Nouméa
Nouméa () is the capital and largest city of the French special collectivity of New Caledonia and is also the largest francophone city in Oceania. It is situated on a peninsula in the south of New Caledonia's main island, Grande Terre, and ...
, the capital of
New Caledonia. When they meet, he is surprised by her beauty and does not recognize her; she is not the woman in the photo that she had sent him. She explains that she sent the photo of a neighbor to ensure his sincerity. He confesses that he too has not told the complete truth, having hidden that he was wealthy.
They quickly marry, and his adoration makes him overlook inconsistencies between her comments and her letters. He gives Julie access to his bank accounts and prints her image on the cigarette packs his company manufactures. After receiving an angry letter from Julie's sister, Berthe Roussel (
Nelly Borgeaud), demanding to know Julie's whereabouts, Louis returns home to find that Julie has gone with nearly 28 million francs, all but emptying his bank accounts. Soon after, Berthe arrives and informs him that his wife was not Julie and that she saw her sister board the ''Mississipi''. They hire a private detective, Comolli, to track down the impostor.
On a flight to
Nice
Nice ( , ; Niçard dialect, Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes departments of France, department in France. The Nice urban unit, agg ...
,
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
, Louis collapses from exhaustion. While recuperating in the Clinique Heurtebise sanitarium, he sees Julie('s impostor) on television, dancing at a nightclub in
Antibes. He buys a gun and travels to Antibes where he breaks into her room at the Hotel Monorail, intent on killing her. When she returns and is confronted by Louis, she offers no resistance. Explaining that her real name is Marion Vergano, she tells him of her sordid past; of her years in prison and association with a heartless gangster, Richard, who was with her on the ''Mississipi''. She recounts that when they met Julie Roussel and learned of her forthcoming marriage, Richard fabricated a plot to kill Julie and send Marion in her place to rob Louis. Afterwards Richard forced her to go through with the robbery and then abandoned her. She tells Louis that she loves him, and Louis forgives her.
They buy a convertible and drive to
Aix-en-Provence, where they move into a house and spend their days traveling the region and making love. Their happiness is interrupted by Comolli, who has arrived in Aix on the trail of the impostor. After failing to bribe the detective to drop the case, Louis shoots him dead and buries him in the wine cellar. Louis and Marion flee to
Lyon
Lyon,, ; Occitan language, Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, third-largest city and Urban area (France), second-largest metropolitan area of F ...
, but she grows dissatisfied with their fugitive existence and longs for a life of luxury in Paris. Louis returns briefly to Réunion and sells his share in the plantation to his partner, Jardine. Upon his return he finds the police on their trail. Again they are forced to flee, leaving most of his money behind.
They head into the mountains where they find an isolated cabin. They hope to cross into Switzerland, but Marion is unhappy with their life on the run. Louis becomes increasingly ill and, after nearly collapsing, suspects that Marion has been poisoning his coffee. He attempts to escape, but Marion brings him back. As she pours him another glass of coffee, he reveals his knowledge of her plan, accepts his fate with no regrets, and expresses his love for her. Ashamed at her actions, Marion knocks the glass from Louis' hand and vows to make amends. She acknowledges that no woman deserves to be so loved, but assures him that she loves him, too, and that they can still go away together. Crying in his arms, Marion tells him, "I'm learning what love is, Louis. It's painful." After Louis regains his strength, they leave in a snowstorm and head toward the border.
Cast
*
Jean-Paul Belmondo
Jean-Paul Charles Belmondo (; 9 April 19336 September 2021) was a French actor and producer. Initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s, he was a major French film star for several decades from the 1960s onward. His best known credits ...
as Louis Mahé
*
Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Fabienne Dorléac (born 22 October 1943), known professionally as Catherine Deneuve (, , ), is a French actress as well as an occasional singer, model, and producer, considered one of the greatest European actresses. She gained recogni ...
as Julie Roussel / Marion Vergano
*
Michel Bouquet
Michel Bouquet (6 November 1925 – 13 April 2022) was a French stage and film actor. He appeared in more than 100 films from 1947 to 2020. He won the Best Actor European Film Award for ''Toto the Hero'' in 1991 and two Best Actor Césars for ...
as Comolli
*
Nelly Borgeaud as Berthe Roussel
*Marcel Berbert as Jardine
*Martine Ferrière as the Landlady
*Yves Drouhet as the Detective
*Roland Thénot as Richard
Production
Filming locations
*
Aix-en-Provence, Bouches-du-Rhône, France
*
Antibes, Alpes-Maritimes, France
*
Grenoble
lat, Gratianopolis
, commune status = Prefecture and commune
, image = Panorama grenoble.png
, image size =
, caption = From upper left: Panorama of the city, Grenoble’s cable cars, place Saint- ...
, Isère, France
*
Le Tampon
Le Tampon () is the fourth-largest commune in the French overseas department of Réunion. It is located on the south-central part of the island of Réunion, adjacent to Saint-Pierre.
In the early twentieth century, the town was the base for th ...
,
Réunion
*
Lyon
Lyon,, ; Occitan language, Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, third-largest city and Urban area (France), second-largest metropolitan area of F ...
, Rhône, Rhône-Alpes, France
*
Nice
Nice ( , ; Niçard dialect, Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes departments of France, department in France. The Nice urban unit, agg ...
, Alpes-Maritimes, France
*
Saint-Denis, Réunion
Saint-Denis (, , unofficially Saint-Denis de La Réunion for disambiguation; ) is the prefecture (administrative capital) of the French overseas department and region of Réunion, in the Indian Ocean. It is located at the island's northernmost ...
*
Sainte-Anne, Réunion
*
Sainte-Suzanne, Réunion[
]
Reception
Box Office
The film was the 16th most popular movie at the French box office in 1969.
Critical response
In his review in ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who served as the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in ...
wrote that the film "defies easy definition and blithely triumphs over what initially appears to be structural schizophrenia." Canby noted the performances of Belmondo, Deneuve, and Bouquet, which were "played with marvelous style."[ Canby concluded:
In his review in the '']San Francisco Chronicle
The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The ...
'' in 1999, film critic Edward Guthmann praised the film, writing:
The film had many detractors. Dennis Schwartz, wrote:
On Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film has an approval rating of 82% based on 17 reviews.
References
;Citations
;Further reading
*
*
*
*
External links
*
*
*
''Mississippi Mermaid''
at Le Film Guide
{{Authority control
1969 romantic drama films
Films based on American novels
Films directed by François Truffaut
Films set in France
Films set in Réunion
1960s French-language films
French neo-noir films
United Artists films
Films with screenplays by François Truffaut
Films based on works by Cornell Woolrich
French romantic drama films
Poisoning in film
1960s French films