“Hécate – La Maitresse de la Nuit”…
Clothilde de Watteville…
Our young heroine…
Enigmatic… mysterious… beautiful… solitary… troubled…
Detached – fascinated with the power of seduction.
Lauren Hutton epitomized a stunningly sexual Clothilde…
She was perfection.
Daniel Schmid’s camera glides and “makes love” to every scene in this memorable film, adapted from the novel by Paul Morand “Hécate et ses chiens”.
Hécate is, in Greek mythology, a chthonic Goddess of the underworld and black magic – a malicious magician who weaves her spell at night, and is a devourer of men.
Clothilde de Watteville is a modern day “Hécate”.
The plot of this scenario takes places in the magical city of Fez in Morrocco, on the eve of “la Seconde Guerre Mondiale”…
A young “attaché consulaire” – Julien Rochelle – was looking for an outlet for escape from the boredom of the expat society’s “petit monde” of diplomats and “banquiers internationaux”.
Bernard Giraudeau’s “Julien” was passionate, intense, jealous, and at the end, going mad with unrequited love for his lover.
Bernard was a perfect Julien.
They met at a “soirée”…
Julien and Clothilde became lovers…
“Ce soir la”.
Only… our heroine was a liberated woman – her own woman… a free spirit – enigmatic and detached…
Julien, on the other hand, fell for her – he loved her madly… obsessively… he needed to own her – body and soul…
She did not succumb to his possessive love… nor his passion for her…
However, he was incapable of accepting nor comprehending a liberated woman…
A woman who refused to be possessed by him… or any other.
Clothilde, remained loyal to the mythical Hécate.
Her cold indifference to his passion tortured him, and made him descend into Hell…
Devoured by his jealousy…
His passion became… a nightmare.
Schmid presents an “archetypal image and mythical representation that is buried in the tortured abyss of the masculine subconscious”.
His films “possessed, from the outset, an operatic sensibility…
His – remains a cinema of playfulness and longing, of voluptuousness and strong feeling, equal parts illusion and delusion”.
Daniel Schimd revels in breaking down “walls” of daily reality.
This film mesmerizes with its hauntingly beautiful and mysterious Moroccan images of languid black-eyed young boys, sultry young women with long black hair, hips gyrating to the mythical and hauntingly beautiful music of the Orient…
Alternating with the memorable melody arranged by the amazingly talented “Carlos d’Alessio”…
All that – blended with the wailing of prayers at dawn – was divine.
An astonishingly magical film which we have watched over and over…
We were mystified and mesmerized every time…
It’s refreshing to witness a man – in this case – going mad with love – for a woman…
Rather than the usual rejection of a woman by a man…
We adored Schmid’s brilliance in every set and every shot of this splendid film…
The haunting music compliments it totally and completely…
Daniel Schmid…
Is a genius…
of cinema.
Carlos d’Alessio’s music…
Is – divine…
Together… they created…
magic.
a.