Mademoiselle Docteur (1937)
Directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst

Film Review

With WWII looming on the horizon, not as a vague possibility but as a near-certainty, it's hardly surprising that war films began to gain popularity towards the end of the 1930s, as much in France as in Great Britain.  Naturally, these looked back, to the previous global conflict, and more often than not were in the form of a spy thriller in the John Buchan line.  George Fitzmaurice's Mata Hari (1931) starring Greta Garbo provided a template for several of these films, with a cool-headed but seductive female secret agent risking her life (and often much more) in her efforts to pass on vital secrets that would determine the outcome of the war. 

Vivien Leigh was a worthy successor to Garbo in Victor Saville's Dark Journey (1937) - not just cool and seductive, but noble with it.  Then there was the enigmatic Edwige Feuillère in Raymond Bernard's Marthe Richard au service de la France (1937) - a kind of female proto-James Bond, whose sex appeal was surpassed only by her cunning.  Dita Parlo would appear to be an unlikely addition to this roll call of espionage princesses but she had her turn, in G.W. Pabst's Mademoiselle Docteur (1937), and proved she could be as devious, level-headed and seductive as all the rest, but with an added Germanic mystique.

One of the half a dozen or so films that Pabst made during his temporary stay in France in the 1930s, this hopelessly muddled tale of romance and intrigue adheres rigidly to the same crowdpleasing formula as Saville and Bernard's films and is pure hokum - you wonder why a director as creative and groundbreaking as Pabst would bother with such trivial fare.  The obvious point of connection with Pabst's previous films is the presence of a strong female character - the German spy played by Dita Parlo - who finds herself at the mercy of events that she has no control over.

It is the personal qualities of Parlo's character - resourcefulness, courage, tenacity and honour - that must have endeared her to Pabst and she becomes a typically Pabstian heroine, a martyr to man's destructive impulses and stupidity.  She is never given the saintly halo that Vivien Leigh acquires in her film, but she is more sympathetically dealt with, more recognisably human than Edwige Feuillère's secret agent.  Parlo's Anne-Marie Lesser is more than just your classic pulp fiction secret services operative; she is a symbol for all the women who will suffer in the coming conflagration, another devastating war caused by men.  The film's poignant coda implies as much. Poor Anne-Marie isn't even allowed a heroine's death - she is driven insane and loses all connection with the world, a world that has now regained its sanity, but only temporarily.

Dito Parlo's is just one crowd-drawing name among many in this film.  Mademoiselle Docteur has an extraordinary cast, with several major French stars of the period roped in to turbo-boost its box office appeal.  Pierre Fresnay plays Parlo's love interest, a dashing French officer as befitted his matinee idol status at the time.  With his inscrutable, chiselled features, Pierre Blanchar is a superb choice for the double-dealing agent who threatens to blow open Parlo's spy ring.  Looking every inch the John le Carré spymaster, veteran stage actor Charles Dullin has a sinister presence as Parlo's unflinching superior.  And then there's Louis Jouvet (in a fez), as cold and menacing as he would be in his subsequent Pabst film, Le Drame de Shanghaï (1938).

Viviane Romance adds spice as a sexy cabaret singer, providing the film with not only a show-stopping musical number but also an ignoble counterpart to Parlo's self-sacrificing spy.  Jean-Louis Barrault crops up at the start of the film in its weirdest scene, playing what is obviously a fugitive from a lunatic asylum with a worrying melon fetish.  Gaston Modot and Roger Karl, fine character actors who survived the transition from silent to sound cinema, complete a remarkable ensemble.

You're so overwhelmed by the cast that you scarcely notice the sloppy plot contrivances and technical shortcomings, although it's hard not cringe at the badly executed car chase at the end of the film.  Stylishly directed (but with little sign of enthusiasm) by one of Europe's great cineastes, moodily photographed by ace cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan, and with a cast to die for, Mademoiselle Docteur makes an enjoyable romp - although, lacking both character depth and originality, it is unlikely ever to rate as a classic.  This is the Bond movie equivalent for a 1930s audience, thankfully without all the tacky innuendo.  Who needs innuendo when you've got Dita Parlo and Viviane Romance?

Film Synopsis

During the First World War, Anne-Marie Lesser operates as a German spy under the pseudonym Mademoiselle Docteur.  Posing as an American journalist, she travels to Salonika in Greece at the request of her superior, Colonel Matthésius, to shore up an important spy ring.  The fact that several members of the ring have been arrested suggests that a traitor is in their midst - but who?   The man in question is Grégor Courdane, who has been captured by the French secret services and threatened with execution if he does not return to Salonka to help smash the spy ring.  On her arrival in the spy-ridden Greek town, Anne-Marie strikes up an acquaintance with a handsome French military man, Captain Georges Carrère.  Despite being on opposite sides, they cannot help falling in love...