La Symphonie Pastorale (1946)

Director: Jean Delannoy.
Writers: André Gide, Jean Aurenche, Jean Delannoy.
Stars: Pierre Blanchar, Michèle Morgan, Line Noro.    
Runtime: 110 minutes    

Plot: A minister falls in love with a blind young woman he sheltered, but so does his son.

Review: The story is of a man of God, who takes a poor blind orphan into his modest home. Slowly, as he teaches and assists this pathetic girl, his affections and spiritual attachments become deeply locked with hers, so that he is completely unconscious of the selfishness of his love when his own son becomes a rival and the girl's life-long blindness is cured.

Not without reason is this story called a "pastoral symphony." It has the expansion and development of a carefully scored musical work. Out of a situation and a group of people, a complexity evolves; it has volume, color, rhythm and extensive overtones. It grows with inexorable logic, accumulating dramatic power, and crashes to a climax of inevitable irony.

As the blind girl, Miss Morgan's performance is an exquisite piece of art—tender, proud, and piteous in its comprehension of the feelings of the blind—and Mr. Blanchar's incisive revelations of the pastor's soft and righteous moods are subtle but sure indications of one of the most difficult characters ever shown on the screen.

Reviewed by Mohaiminul Islam