The Story of Adele H. (1975)

"I'm your wife. Forever. We'll stay together until we die..."

“You are so handsome, Albert. You deserve to have all the women on Earth…”

Two cracking, moody films for you this weekend. Both set in the 19th century, and based on true and tragic stories on the theme of obsessive love. First up is François Truffaut’s The Story of Adele H. (1975) (L’Histoire d’Adèle H.), starring Isabelle Adjani as the youngest daughter of Victor Hugo and Bruce Robinson (of Withnail fame) as Lieutenant Albert Pinson of the 16th Hussars.

‘Isabelle Adjani: a fantastic performance…’

The Story of Adele H. is based on Adèle Hugo’s diaries, written in 1853 but first published, I think, in 1968. Most of the film is set in Nova Scotia, the first colony in British North America to achieve self-governance. In 1861, the US Navy boarded a British mail ship, Trent, mid-Atlantic and seized two Confederate envoys (seeking recognition for the Confederacy) in breach of international law. The Trent Affair sparked a serious and significant diplomatic incident between Britain and the United States, and, in protest, Britain dispatched 11,000 troops to Canada, including one Lieutenant Pinson. Pinson had had a sort of earlier fling with Adèle, a beautiful, if highly strung, young woman on the verge of mental illness, and had even proposed marriage, which Adèle had turned down and later came to regret. Big Time. I mean, there’s nothing like having what you can’t get, is there? So in 1863, Adèle follows Pinson to Halifax, Nova Scotia. ‘Follow’ is probably the wrong word. ‘Stalk’ is more accurate. And you begin to feel sorry for the relatively innocent and harassed Pinson, with Adèle seemingly lurking behind every bush, shutter and street corner.

‘A psychological study of obsession, paranoia and mental decline...’

Isabelle Adjani, who was only twenty at the time, puts in a fantastic performance. A psychological study of obsession, paranoia and mental decline. By the end of the film, haunted by the death of her drowned older sister, she’s become a wretched, frazzled, unhinged Pre-Raphaelite heroine. She is, of course, also stunningly beautiful. Truffaut (understandably) fancied her rotten. And, according to that Trusty Sword of Truth and Shield of Fairplay, Wikipedia, made his move — even if, Adjani ‘rebuffed his advances’. And Robinson’s terrific (even if, on a horse, he’s a sack of potatoes); in the romantic, pukka, young British officer role. It’s a certain type, that — the stiff-upper-lip, chiselled jaw. Slightly rakish, slightly Byronic, like the shell-shocked Major Doryan (Christopher Jones) in David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter (1970): Evelyn Waugh’s ‘She saw him as Siegfried Sassoon, an infantry subaltern in a mud-bogged trench, standing-to at dawn, his eyes on his wrist watch, waiting for zero hour’. Another book (and film) is John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman, published in 1969. One does wonder if Fowles was influenced by Adèle’s story, the magnificent, obsessive love of an unbalanced woman for an army lieutenant? But as Fowles cites a Thomas Hardy poem, The Riddle: ‘Stretching eyes west over the sea…’ at the beginning of his novel, any similarities may be entirely coincidental.