Movie Screening & Discussion - Mademoiselle

Join Marcus Renna in the Scott Room for a screening and discussion of the 1966 dark drama film, Mademoiselle. Directed by Tony Richardson and starring Jeanne Moreau, Ettore Manni, and Keith Skinner, Mademoiselle was shot on location in central France.

Mademoiselle (Moreau) is an unmarried, seemingly prim, and secretly sociopathic schoolteacher in a small French village. While respected as an upstanding citizen by the rest of the villagers, she sets fire to houses, poisons farm animals, and ultimately causes a flood, despite not having any material reason for doing so. Out of prejudice against a foreigner and outsider, the villagers suspect an Italian woodcutter, the widower Manou (Manni), even though he has alibis for some of the crimes. Mademoiselle defends Manou to the police, but persecutes his son in her class. Sexual tension develops between Mademoiselle and Manou when she begins loitering around the woods where he works. The film comes to a head with a final act of cruelty and deception from Mademoiselle.

A psychologically compelling and sophisticated look at malice hiding in plain sight.