Jacqueline Audry Films | Jacqueline Audry Filmography | Jacqueline Audry Biography | Jacqueline Audry Career | Jacqueline Audry Awards

Jacqueline Audry?s career is significant not only because she was one of the rare female directors working in a motion-picture industry dominated by men, but because she created a body of work that consistently featured strong-willed and independent-minded female characters. Audry often depicted her heroines in psychological terms, with more than a few of her films touching on open sexuality or lesbianism. Yet while behaving in ways that were anything but conventional, her characters never were viewed as oddities or aberrations who needed to be roped in and tamed by good, strong males?unlike the propaganda found in countless postwar Hollywood films featuring self-reliant female characters who by the finale had to be taught that true happiness only came with subservience to men.

Audry?s heroines generally are perceptively and sensitively realized, with their alternative lifestyles becoming models of liberation. While she directed with a sure hand, however, her films on occasion are visually unimaginative; they lack the originality and flair that was to characterize the French New Wave that practically all of her films predated.

Most of Audry?s films are literary adaptations based on the work of both male and female writers, and were scripted by her husband, Pierre Laroche. Three of the more notable?each starring Dani?le Delorme?are from the writings of Colette (who worked closely with Audry and Laroche in developing the scripts). The first, Gigi, the story of a girl who is trained by her aunt to be a high-class courtesan but who rebelliously opts for love and marriage, was released nine years before the Academy Award-winning Hollywood musical version. While the title character chooses a traditional lifestyle, the point is that it is her option; she is active rather than passive as she goes against the teachings of her aunt and, in the process, reforms the playboy whom she weds. Minne, l?Ingenue libertine tells of a disaffected married woman who distances herself sexually from her husband and drifts into a pair of extramarital relationships as she searches for love. Because of its theme, and the depiction of its heroine, Minne, l?Ingenue libertine became the initial film to earn an ?X? certificate in Great Britain. In a New York Times review, it was noted that the film ?has been somewhat abridged, for reasons of moral discretion, from its original length.? Finally, Mitsou chronicles the predicament of a young, uncultivated chorus girl who seeks the help of an older and more experienced paramour in order to improve herself. Here, too, the female character does not remain submissive but chooses to take action to alter her life.

Easily Audry?s most notorious?and, arguably, best-known?film is Olivia, a landmark of lesbian cinema if only because it was produced during an era in which even hints of same-sex relationships were practically absent from the screen. Olivia (which was retitled Pit of Loneliness for its American release) is set in the late 19th century, and is based on an autobiographical novel by Lytton Strachey?s sister, Dorothy Bussy (which originally was published under a pseudonym). It is thematically reminiscent of M?dchen in Uniform in that it depicts the stirrings of a romantic relationship that develops between the title character, a new student at an all-girls? boarding school, and one of her headmistresses. Not surprisingly, the film was heavily censored; 11 minutes were snipped from it prior to its release in England. Another important Audry credit is her version of No Exit, based on Jean-Paul Sartre?s existential play about three individuals who have died, and who find themselves trapped in a hotel room where they are fated to remain together for eternity.

Additional Audry heroines include a blond gypsy who has become a celebrated dancer (in La Caraque blonde); a young woman who exerts her independence upon discovering her fianc? is cheating on her (La Gar?onne); a flirt who becomes celebrated throughout Paris after having an affair with a pianist (L??cole des cocottes); and a young hitchhiker who attracts many men while traveling from Belgium to the Riviera (Les Petits matins). The characters in each are placed in romantic or sexual situations. They may evolve in a Pygmalion-like manner, fall in love and are cheated on, have many sexual liaisons, or choose to forgo sex altogether until they find love. But again, their ultimate courses of action are theirs. And in her latter films Audry expanded her gallery of women, depicting them as revolutionaries (Fruits amers) and as being forced to pose as boys to win inheritances (Le Secret du Chevalier d??on).

As with so many other proficient but lesser-known film makers of both sexes, little has been written about Audry in the standard film references. Most certainly, her career is ripe for a further, deeper analysis.?ROB EDELMAN