La Voleuse (1966)
Directed by Jean Chapot

Film Review

Whilst the role of Sissi in a series if films she made in her native Austria in the mid-1950s had brought her instant fame, Romy Schneider was determined not to let this restrict her subsequent career, and this might explain the odd mix of films she appeared in during the decade that followed. In La Voleuse, one of the most overlooked films of this period, Schneider buries Sissi forever with her portrayal of a selfish and neurotic bourgeois woman who is so determined to get back a child she gave up for adoption that she is prepared to allow the boy's adopted father commit suicide.

The law is on the mother's side but our sympathies are directed more towards the working class family who took the boy in when the teenage mother chose to abandon him.  It's a classic class war scenario, typical of its time.  A bourgeois woman feels it is her right to take her son back, just as she would reclaim a pawned item of jewellery. Shots of Schneider stressing her privileged, trouble-free life are intercut with dramatic shots of Germany's smoky industrial landscape - two worlds, two classes.  As a piece of social commentary it's stark and bitter, but hardly subtle.

For his debut feature, Jean Chapot appears to be influenced by the French New Wave and early New German cinema, with a smattering of British social realism thrown in for good measure.  It is a strangely alluring synthesis of styles but the theatricality of Marguerite Duras's dialogue, which is painfully exaggerated by the over-theatrical manner in which several interior scenes are staged, jars somewhat with the fluid realism of the exteriors.  It would more than half a decade before Chapot would make his next film, Les Granges brûlées (1973), which brought together another pair of screen legends, Alain Delon and Simone Signoret.  After this, Chapot devoted himself exclusively to French television, distinguishing himself with some TV movies.

Schneider's performance - raw, compelling and skilfully nuanced - is the most notable thing about this somewhat contrived melodrama.  Here she is effectively partnered, for the first time, with another icon of French cinema whose career was likewise heading upwards, Michel Piccoli.  Schneider and Piccoli would appear alongside one another in several classic French films, most notably Claude Sautet's Les Choses de la vie (1970) and Jacques Rouffio's La Passante du Sans-Souci (1982), and the two actors have such an intense, natural rapport that, together, they make a mesmeric combination.  La Voleuse is hardly a great piece of cinema, but the interplay between Schneider and Piccoli is fascinating to watch, a power struggle that pits commonsense morality against the most selfish and basic of human instincts.  The fact that Schneider would later lose her own son in real life, and in the most tragic of circumstances, lends a cruel poignancy to this film and makes it seem horrifically prophetic.

Film Synopsis

Julia has been married to Werner Kreuz for two years when, one day, she reveals that she gave birth when she was 19.  Because of her circumstances at the time - she was single and unemployed - Julia was unable to keep the little boy, so she placed him in the care of a working class Polish couple, the Kostrowitzes.  Now, six years on, Julia feels an overwhelming urge to take the child back, and she persuades Werner it is for the best.  Knowing the law is on her side, Julia takes her son Carlo away from his adopted parents, but the Kostrowitzes insist that they have a claim to the child.  Believing that a legal battle would be futile, Herr Kostrowitz resorts to more drastic methods to get back the boy he believes is rightfully is.  He climbs to the top of a chimney at the factory where he works and threatens to jump to his death if the Kreuzes do not return little Carlo to him...