The Love of a Woman (Jean Grémillon, 1953) (Patreon)

I watched Grémillon's The Love of a Woman without realizing it was his final film. So quite by chance, I participated in the pastime of hardcore auteurists, seeing exactly how an old master concludes their career, offering what is presumably a crystallization of all their artistic signatures. Until I watch a few more Grémillons, I won't be able to speak to that. But I can say that The Love of a Woman is a compelling artifact, a film that seems to have certain melodramatic tendencies but continually tamps them down, both formally and narratively.

This is a film about social change and how it affects one's sense of self, particularly as relates to centuries-old gender expectations. Marie Prieur (Micheline Presle) is a 28-year-old doctor from Paris who has taken a post in a small island village in Brittany. She is replacing Dr. Morel (Robert Naly), a grizzled old country doctor who has served the town for decades. And almost immediately upon arriving, Marie is quizzed by her maid Joséphine (Made Siamé) as to why a woman would want to be a doctor. Surely you want to be a wife and mother, and if a woman must take up work, wouldn't she rather be a baker or a florist? 

This sets the tone for pretty much all of Marie's early interactions, and what is interesting about The Love of a Woman right off the bat is that Grémillon consistently has the characters surrounding Marie articulate their conservative gender ideology very overtly. In a film from this period, we might reasonably expect that social mores will be quite different from our own. (Only the most extreme right-wingers would argue today that women have no place in the workforce.) But we are clearly aligned with Marie's point of view, to the extent that these challenges, which she handles with unfailing grace, become irritating.

Grémillon is doing something rather tricky here. The longer Marie is serving the village, the more acceptance she receives. The townspeople appreciate her kindness and above all her competence; she wins their respect and overcomes their initial sexism. But then Marie, after turning him down repeatedly, accepts a date with André (Massimo Girroti), an itinerant contractor from Italy who is in town with his crew building a bridge. When the townsfolk see that she's getting serious about him, they look askance, and at first it appears that the old sexism is back with a vengeance.

And there may be some of that. But mostly people think she's too good for him, that he's a drifter, and she shouldn't throw her life away for a fly-by-night romance. When Marie arrives, the first person to take her under her wing is Germaine LeBlanc (Gaby Morlay), the schoolteacher who is nearing retirement. She councils Marie to keep her career, arguing that she never married or had children, but had a very fulfilling life educating generations of kids on the island. But then, when LeBlanc dies unexpectedly, Marie has a sudden change of heart, deciding that she must prioritize her relationship with André. Upon retirement, Germaine had nothing, her life effectively over. And at her funeral, the townspeople paid their respects but, according to Marie, "no one shed a tear," leading her to think that LeBlanc threw her life away.

So she seeks out André and tells him that she wants to be with him and leave the island behind. And yet, when she tells him this, he reveals his latent conservatism, suggesting that of course she will give up medicine, stay at home, and be a wife and mother, just like his mother and her mother before her. She protests, he reluctantly says she can see a few patients here and there, and then reneges on that, insisting that if Marie really loved him, she would sacrifice her career in a heartbeat.

In the end Grémillon's title, The Love of a Woman, means something a bit different than we might have anticipated. When André draws his line in the sand -- him or medicine -- Marie must recognize that, for now at least, she can't have it all, and that in fact she loves being a doctor too much to give it up. This is a painful realization, hardly triumphant, and the final scene is a recapitulation of the film's opening, with Marie, the seasoned pro, helping out the young new teacher (Jacqueline Jehanneuf). Marie cries, wondering just what she has given up, and what she will get in return. 

Grémillon stages this conclusion with sufficient ambivalence that a conservatively inclined viewer might see The Love of a Woman criticizing Marie's decision, since she knows that medicine can never exactly love her back. But the structure of the film suggests otherwise. She didn't keep practicing medicine out of misplaced pride but because she liked being useful, and all the objections about why she was unsuited to be a doctor were eventually dispelled, all except André's. After all, if he is demanding to come first, second, and third in Marie's life now, when they are still in the heat of passion, what will their lives become? The Love of a Woman, I think, is pretty clear that it does not condemn Marie's decision, but the fact that she was forced to make it in the first place.