User Reviews

The most memorable scene in 'Mado', the 1976 film made by Claude Sautet stars Michel Piccoli and Romy Schneider. Piccoli is Simon Leotard, the main hero of the film, a real estate businessman past his early youth and after two failed marriages. Romy Schneider is Hélène, his ex-girlfriend, a woman with problems not very different from those of the actress at that time of his life. The two had been separated for about a year, and the scene of their meeting, in which they relive their feelings of affection but also the incompatibilities that had prevented them from continuing together, is beautiful. However, this scene that many will remember is very little related to the rest of the film. It is at most a counterpoint to the hero's sentimental life. As for Hélène, the spectators will meet her again only in a short scene, towards the end. This lack of connection to the rest of the narrative is one of the symptoms of a film that brings together many very good actors to bring to the screen a love story at a later age combined with a plot of corruption, a film that seems to develop in too many directions without deciding which of them is the most significant.

The relationships between the generations are interesting and somewhat strange in this film. Pierre (played by Jacques Dutronc) and Mado belong to the generation of those who took to the streets in 1968, but the plot is taking place a few years after the student riots. Now they have to adjust to life and earn a living in more or less honorable ways. Pierre is Leotard's accountant, while Mado is his young mistress who has similar relationships with several men at the same time. Society seems to accept without problems social relations in which wives mingle with young mistresses, and the generation of businessmen work side by side with young people in more or less legal businesses. The complication occurs when the middle-aged man seems to fall in love with the young woman who fascinates everyone around her. Late love or an extension of the spirit of ownership in the romantic realm? All these sentimental intrigues are combined with an intrigue of corruption and blackmail. Leotard tries to be different, sensitive in his sentimental life and fair in business, but is this possible in the world where the heroes live?

Two reasons make watching this film an interesting experience, even 46 years after its release. Michel Piccoli creates one of his solid roles at a peak period of his career. His magnetism makes his relationship with Mado credible despite his age difference. Italian actress Ottavia Piccolo fits well into a role in which Catherine Deneuve could have been cast about ten years earlier. Jacques Dutronc has a fairly extensive role but which does not give him enough opportunities to develop the character. Romy Schneider is excellent, but she has practically only one scene in the film. Nathalie Baye also appears, in one of her first more consistent role on screen, a prelude to the beautiful career that was to follow. Claude Sautet's qualities as a film narrator (both as a director and as a co-writer) are the second argument for the quality of this film. Sautet knows how to alternate intimate scenes with the thriller intrigue, and adds to the end a scene that wants to be symbolic, throwing his heroes after a steamy party in the mud, Fellini style. Even if it's not one of the director's best films, 'Mado' is worth watching or rewatching.

In some ways, Claude Sautet's Mado is an inversion of his earlier Max et les ferrailleurs, which followed a protagonist played by Michel Piccoli as his scheming leads him to personal disaster and isolation; Mado starts with a no-less-consumed Piccoli protagonist, Simon, but this time the journey leads to an extended and surprising vision of community. Just as with Sautet's Cesar and Rosalie, there's an apparent structural oddity in the title: Mado isn't the main character (she's a prostitute with whom Simon has a relationship that causes him as much angst as pleasure), and her fate isn't the film's predominant preoccupation. Rather, her role seems more that of catalyst, bringing disparate people together, allowing rebirths and realignments. The fact that the film's narrative is driven by financial difficulties of a very similar kind to those that drove Yves Montand's character in Vincent, Francois, Paul...et les autres provides another instance of the rich interconnection of Sautet's work during this (peak) period in his career. For a while, Mado seems cluttered and lacking in momentum, weighed down by the sprawling plot and the surfeit of characters, but this all peaks about half an hour before the end, when Simon executes a play that turns the table on his economic adversary, putting him in possession of a large expanse of development-ready land. The film then becomes an unexpected mixture of travelogue and celebration: a diverse, loosely-constituted group assembles to drive out and survey the territory, crashing a wedding celebration on the way back and then after an ill-advised detour getting stuck in mud and spending the night in dance, play and reverie (however, cutaways to the much grimmer, and directly-related fate, of another key character reminds us that such renewals are seldom without collateral damage). It's implied at the end that through these experiences, Simon is finally able to move on from Mado; the last scene hints at a truer relationship with an old acquaintance played by Romy Schneider, another echo of all the other films mentioned...

The glum Simon Leotard is a businessman who confronts the greed of the rapacious Lepidon.After the suicide of one of his business partners,Leotard must honor some credence,as the hole created by the late's mismanagement amounts to 600 millions Francs.In his free hours,the businessman meets a girl,Mado.Leotard has some confused aspirations and wishes about his relation with Mado;he is even jealous,in a brutal and harsh way.He falters.Through his mistress,Mado,Leotard finds Reynald Manecca,a disingenuous scorner,convicted in contumacy and able to help him bring down Lepidon. As a result,Mado (who has not a very good opinion about Leotard,whom she considers selfish and incapable of love) looses the man she most liked.

Michel Piccoli does a role that becomes him and that has been his usual employ in some movies:a somehow antipathetic and self-important bourgeois verging on disaster and in a juncture of collapse.Leotard saves his business and manages to find some things about himself (anyway,at least he seems to find out more than is the public able to get from Leotard's way through the financial maneuvers). P's performance in "Mado" is commendable.

I liked the warm colors of this movie.

Mrs. Schneider has a bit part;she got a scene of about 6 minutes.

As a whole,the movie is quite vapid,banal and verbose,not very well narrated;the pace could be improved,the empty scenes could be reduced.Quite bad constructed.The movie would be better if it only kept being a bourgeois plain story about business and women in the life of a lonely man.The title makes a promise that won't be kept.It tells a story about affairs and it pretends that it is speaking about Mado.The movie is heterogeneous and unsatisfactory;above all,it lacks poetry.

The treatment of the psychologies is shallow (but it should not be!) and narrow;it lacks insight and perspicacity.

With two exceptions (Mrs. Schneider,by the sheer intensity and force of her electrifying presence,although her part is that of a dizzy drunkard, and Charles Denner),the characters are quite anodyne,lukewarm and badly written.The story is not well delivered.