La Marquise d'O...
| La Marquise d'O... | |
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| Directed by | Éric Rohmer |
| Produced by |
Klaus Hellwig Barbet Schroeder |
| Written by | Éric Rohmer |
| Starring | Edith Clever |
| Cinematography | Néstor Almendros |
| Edited by | Cécile Decugis |
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Release date
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Running time
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102 minutes |
| Country | West Germany/France |
| Language | German |
The Marquise of O (German: Die Marquise von O...) is a 1976 film directed by Éric Rohmer. Set in 1799, it tells the story of the Marquise von O, a virtuous widow, who finds herself pregnant and protests her innocence while possibly deserving to be exiled. The film was inspired by Heinrich von Kleist's 1808 novella Die Marquise von O. The film won the Grand Prix Spécial Prize at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival.
The story begins in a tavern, where two men are reading an announcement in the paper written by the Marquise of O saying that she is pregnant and wishes for the father of her child to present himself in order to marry him. The men are rather shocked by this announcement because she comes from an excellent family and her father is in charge of the citadel of their Italian town.
The next scene shows the Marquise's father's citadel being overrun by Russian forces. In the confusion, the Marquise finds herself about to be raped by a group of Russian soldiers. However, she is saved by the Russian commander of the attack, the Count, who reunites her with her children and has her put to bed. She is given a poppy seed tea on the insistence of her maid in order to help her sleep. The Count then finishes the attack on the Italians and the Marquise's father, the colonel, has to surrender to them.
When the Marquise awakes from her slumber she very much wants to thank the Count for having saved her, but the troops have already left so she is not able to. Her father reassures her that she will have the chance to thank him at a later date.
A few days later they receive news that the Count has been killed during a battle because of a chest wound. This greatly upsets the Marquise, who never got a chance to properly thank her rescuer. Shortly after this she starts to feel strangely and in one scene collapses, she has no explanation for this but figures that it is an effect of her traumatic attack, although it reminds her strangely of being pregnant with her daughter.
The reports of the Count's death turn out to be false, as some time later he appears at the family's house and asks for the Marquise's hand in marriage. They do not immediately give him an answer because the Marquise had previously resolved to not be remarried after the death of her husband and the family agrees that the couple hardly know each other. The Count is very insistent on her giving an answer immediately because he is supposed to be leaving to take a post in Naples. He decides to stay at their home much to the chagrin of the Colonel who does not think he should desert his post in Naples in order to win the hand of his daughter. He dines with the family and tells them his reasons for wanting to marry the Marquise, mainly being that he hallucinated visions of her while he was recovering from his chest wound.
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