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> The Story of Adele H. |
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Staring:
Isabelle Adjani,
Bruce Robinson,
Joseph Blatchley,
Ivry Gitlis,
Sylvia Marriott
Director:
Francois Truffaut
Average Customer Rating:  
List Price: $14.98
Our Price: $6.91
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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: DVD
Brand: ADJANI,ISABELLE
EAN: 9780792848479
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0792848470
Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2001-01-23
Running Time: 96
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Theatrical Release Date: 1975 |
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Description
A profoundly beautiful movie (The New York Times), The Story of Adele H. is a haunting film based on a true story about desire, devotion...and madness. OscarÂ(r)-nominated* Isabelle Adjani stars in this lush portrait of a woman whose obsessive passion sets the stage for oneof the most romantic films of recent years (Saturday Review). Adele, daughter of French author and patriot Victor Hugo, is beautiful, composed and filled with the same brilliant writing talent as her famous father. However, Adele is driven not by literary aspirations but by love. Impelled by a need that will not be denied, she has run away from home to follow her handsome, womanizing lover (Bruce Robinson) across an ocean to wintry Halifax, Nova Scotia. Wild with desire, she'llrisk everything to renew their brief affair. And if she can't win him back, there'll be a terrible price to pay. *1975: Actress, The Story of Adele H.; 1989: Actress, Camille Claudel
Amazon.com
François Truffaut's dramatization of the true story of Adele Hugo, the daughter of French author-in-exile Victor Hugo, and her romantic obsession with a young French officer is a cinematically beautiful and emotionally wrenching portrait of a headstrong but unstable young woman. Adele (Isabelle Adjani, whose pale face gives her the quality of a cameo portrait) travels under a false name and spins a half-dozen false stories about herself and her relationship to Lieutenant Pinson (Bruce Robinson), the Hussar she follows to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Pinson no longer loves her, but she refuses to accept his rejection. Sinking farther and farther into her own internal world, she passes herself off as his wife and pours out her stormy emotions into a personal journal filled with delusional descriptions of her fantasy life. Beautifully shot by Nestor Almendros in vivid color, Truffaut's re-creation of the 1860s is accomplished not merely in impressive sets and locations but in the very style of the film: narration and voiceovers, written journal entries and letters, journeys and locations established with map reproductions, and a judicious use of stills mix old-fashioned cinematic technique with poetic flourishes. The result is one of Truffaut's most haunting portraits, all the more powerful because it's true. --Sean Axmaker
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Smokin' hot!, 2008-01-17
Isabel Adjani may be playing a character with a loose screw. But I am telling you, the babe is smokin' hot!
Based on a true story., 2010-05-11
This movie will probably not resonate with very young girls. You must take into consideration the historical period in which this drama takes place in order to empathize with Adele H. This is definitely a chick flick. I enjoyed it for its genre.
Incredible story of Victor Hugo's daughter, 2010-04-02
This 1975 film by French director Francois Truffaut had been praised as great, profoundly beautiful and as 'one of the most romantic films of recent years' (Saturday Revue).
This film is a rich period piece with beautiful settings and average acting, but it is neither romantic, nor profoundly beautiful. It is the tragic story of the rapid decline into madness of a seriosly disturbed very pretty young woman, who happens to be a daughter of Victor Hugo, Adele .
There is nothing romantic about the obsession of a psychotic person who sinks deeper and deeper into her hell and the cruel rejection of her former suitor, a british hussar of questionable character. Adele has followed him from Guernsey, where the Victor Hugo family was in exile, to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and continues to display increasingly irrational behaviour. She is also vicious and scheming when she doesn't get her way.
She eventually ends up on Barbados/ West Indies in the streets where a native woman takes pity on her, and takes her back to France where Hugo has reappeared in the meantime, because the political situation in France had changed.
He has her institutionalized for the next 40 years. Adele eventually died at a ripe old age of 85 in Paris in 1915, which the movie doesn't show. We see her last in the West Indies roaming the streets in her red torn gown. This is not romantic.
One does indeed wonder why none of her family came to her rescue, but 'pere' Victor must have been too busy with in his many extra marital affairs and only sent 'du fric' (money) , and 'maman' was probably busy with the same, before she took ill and left this mortal coil. Adele's astounding ecapades and general behaviour fit better into the late 20th or early 21st century, rather than into the late 1800's, but they show again that there is nothing new under the sun, least of all, psychosis and questionable morality.
Drowning in an ocean of unrequited love., 2008-03-05
Adèle H, the daughter of French writer Victor Hugo, wrote in her journals that she would walk across the ocean to be with the lover who rejected her. François Truffaut's Story of Adele H chronicles that journey.
One of the founders of the French New Wave film genre, Truffaut is best known for The 400 Blows, Jules and Jim and the Adventures of Antoine Doinel (The 400 Blows / Antoine & Collette / Stolen Kisses / Bed & Board / Love on the Run). In 1975, he gained notoriety with The Story of Adele H (L'Histoire d'Adèle H.), starring Isabelle Adjani (Camille Claudel, Possession) in the title role. Set in the 1860s and anchored in the actual diaries and letters of Adèle Hugo, the emotionally powerful film chronicles her obsessive, unrequited love for a womanizing British naval officer, Lieutenant Pinson (Bruce Robinson), a doomed love which ultimately leads to her into madness. When it comes to love for Pinson, Adèle is the female counterpart of Don Quixote. The film follows Adèle as she trails Pinson through the streets of Halifax, through the woods, and even as she spies on him in the arms of his sexual conquests. At night Adèle dreams she is drowning. Adjani's performance carries the beautifully-shot film, a performance which earned her an Academy Award Nomination for Best Actress. (She should have won, in my opinion.) Truffaut makes a cameo appearance in the film as the soldier Adèle mistakes for Pinson. This is one of Truffaut's best films, shot in somber tones of black, blue, and brown, appropriate for a love story devoid of any happiness. Highly recommended.
G. Merritt
Tragic, True Story Bogged Down by Repetitiveness, 2007-07-26
This film tells the true tale of one of Victor Hugo's daughters who, obsessed in her love for a man who could seemingly care less about her, follows him to Canada and then to the Caribbean. She is a desperately unhappy and neurotic woman. If she were alive today she'd be on all sorts of mood altering drugs and receiving all sorts of therapy.
Her story is painful to watch as a result--it's not easy to watch someone spiral into madness. As a film, it's also somewhat difficult to watch because not much progress gets made. She starts out disturbed, she ends up disturbed, and she's disturbed all throughout the middle. The same point keeps getting made over and over again.
Of interest to those who love literature and like to know about great authors and their families, and to those who like period pieces and like to watch how different (and more difficult in many ways) life was back then. The acting is excellent overall, but the story pretty much is a one-note affair and, no matter how well that one note is hit, it can get wearisome to hear it over and over, esp. when it's so bleak.
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