Probably not.Melodrama is very hard matter to handle and it takes a lot of talent to pull it off.Denys De la Patellière is not the FRench Douglas Sirk,by a long shot.
During the Occupation at the end of WW2 ,a young man(Brialy) takes refuge in an old mansion in the country where an old maid (Darrieux) and her authoritarian mother (Rosay) live.Following an accident he became blind.
Do not let the "historical" background fool you.The vital question is :will the old maid find love at last?Danielle Darrieux is not well cast:how could she pass for an ugly woman?And Françoise Rosay,who plays her over possessive mother overplays as hell.Brialy,one of the few young actors of the era who work for both nouvelle vague directors (Chabrol,Godard) and their predecessors (Cayatte,Duvivier) is ill at ease.
Although he began in the mid-fifties ,as a contemporary of the early nouvelle vague,De la Patellière should be looked upon as a keeper of the flame ,a continuator of Duvivier,Clouzot,Decoin,Autant-Lara or Christian-Jacques.But those directors were genuine artists whereas he's only a drudge.Some elements for instance come at the most awkward moments ,the mother's intellectual ambitions for instance,or the "historical " events.
Later works do nothing but confirm De La Patellière's blatant lack of talent."Le tatoué" (1968) will be Jean Gabin's worst part.
