The Woman Who Dared (1944)

The Woman Who Dared (Le ciel est á vou)
Directed by Jean Gremillion
Written by Charles Spaak and Albert Valentin
1944/France
Les Films Raoul Ploquin
First viewing/Hulu Plus

[box] Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail their failure must be but a challenge to others. — Amelia Earhart [/box]

A certain aspect of this film really got on my nerves but it also has many other saving graces, principally some great acting.

There is a title card informing the audience that this is a true story.  As the movie starts, the Gauthier family is being forced to move its home and garage business because the community is putting up an airfield in its place.  Pierre Gauthier (Charles Vanel – Jo in The Wages of Fear) is a skilled mechanic.  He also has experience in working on planes from WWI.  His wife Therese (Madeleine Renaud) keeps the books and deals with the clients.  Daughter Jacqueline is a talented young piano student, her most prized possession is her piano.  The piano is destroyed during the move but her father promises her a new one if their business succeeds at its new location.  They have a young son also named Pierre. The other member of the household is Therese’s mother, a chronic complainer and naysayer.

The business does indeed thrive.  Very early on, Pierre works all night to repair the car of a gentleman who needs to get to an important meeting in the morning.  The man decides he must have Pierre to run his own chain of garages.  Pierre is not ready to move yet again but Therese leaves the family for a time to sell cars in the man’s showrooms.  While Therese is away, Pierre goes out daily to the airfield and flies.  Therese can never find Pierre at home when she calls and goes there to give him hell.  He promises he will never fly again if she will come home, which she does.  But soon she believes he is cheating on her with a plane and goes out to the airfield to catch him in the act.  It is not Pierre who is in the air but the President of the Air Club who basically dares Therese to go up with him.  After five hours in a plane, Therese is absolutely hooked.

In the meantime, Jacqueline gets a new piano and starts taking lessons again.  Her teacher believes she should study at a music conservatory.  Not only does Therese insist that her daughter study to be a pharmacy assistant but she stops the lessons and locks up the piano so she can’t play.  I start getting very put out with Therese.

Therese and Pierre buy their own small plane and start flying together, winning many trophies at air shows.  Soon this is not enough to satisfy them.  Therese wants to start setting records.  The men’s records are not within reach with their plane but the women’s records are.  So Pierre and Therese deepen their friendship and their love by working together passionately to turn the plane into a record-beater.  This turns into a bottomless money hole.  When they are denied a loan by the town council, they decide to sell Jacqueline’s piano, over their daughter’s pleas, since “she isn’t using it anyway”. (Jacqueline has been sneaking over to the music teacher’s house to play.)  I am now totally disgusted with Therese.

The Gauthier’s dreams are almost dashed when a glamorous aviatrix takes off to beat the current distance record.  But she does so only by a few miles and on the spur of the moment, after they have both decided to sell the plane, Therese takes off for parts unknown without a radio.  Then follows a protracted wait to see what became of her with everybody blaming Pierre for allowing her to fly at all.

To start with the part that bugged me.  I hate injustice more than anything and the girl and her piano about killed me.  She was obviously a gifted pianist with a dream.  Her mother also has a dream but cannot appreciate one in her child.  That would all have been OK if only there had been some resolution to the piano story.  There was not.  It is made a great deal of and then totally dropped in favor of the flying story.

Charles Vanel is a fabulous actor.  No character could be farther from his Jo than Pierre, a good natured, loving, humble mechanic.  You believe him completely and empathize completely.  Renaud is also fantastic.  I think what I liked best about this picture was its portrayal of true married love, something we get precious little of in movies.  As can be seen from my protracted plot summary, I was caught up in the story the whole time.  All in all, I can recommend it.

On set footage showing trompe l’oeil scenery – no subtitles