Madeleine

David Lean considered this his worst film. In his own words it was the worst thing he ever made, and he laid the blame directly on the writing. It failed with critics and at the box office; he would not be judged as harshly again for twenty years, until Ryan's Daughter. He made it because of his wife. Ann Todd proposed the Madeleine Smith case as a subject, having played the same part on stage a few years earlier. The case is real: in Glasgow in 1857, the young Madeleine Smith was tried for poisoning her lover Emile L'Anglier, and the jury returned the verdict peculiar to Scots law, not proven. Lean shot at Smith's own house at 7 Blythswood Square and used the actual trial transcripts for the courtroom scenes. That is exactly where the problem lies. The film never says whether she did it. Noël Coward summed up the objection plainly: you cannot end a film without knowing whether she killed him or not, you have to tip the scales one way. Who it is for: viewers who like period courtroom drama and guilt deliberately left unresolved. Who it is not for: anyone wanting resolution. It is the film's most criticised feature, and Lean did not defend it either.