Murmur of the Heart

Plot

Laurent Chevalier is a nearly 15-year-old boy living in Dijon in 1954, who loves jazz, always receives the highest grades in his class and who opposes the First Indochina War. He has an unloving father who is a gynecologist, an affectionate Italian mother, Clara, and two older brothers, Thomas and Marc. One night, Thomas and Marc take Laurent to a brothel, where Laurent loses his virginity to a prostitute before they are disrupted by his drunken brothers. Upset, he leaves on a scouting trip, where he catches scarlet fever and is left with a heart murmur.

After Laurent is bedridden and cared for and entertained by Clara and their maid Augusta, he and Clara check into a hotel while he receives treatment at a sanatorium. He takes interest in two young girls at the hotel, Helene and Daphne, and also spies on his mother in the bathtub. Clara temporarily leaves with her lover, but comes back distraught after their breakup, and is comforted by her son. After a night of heavy drinking on Bastille Day, Laurent and Clara have sex. Clara tells him afterwards that this incest will not be repeated, but that they should not look back on it with remorse. Afterwards, Laurent leaves their room, and after unsuccessfully trying to seduce Helene, spends the night with Daphne.

Production

Director Louis Malle wrote Murmur of the Heart in part as an autobiography. As Malle said, "My passion for jazz, my curiosity about literature, the tyranny of my two elder brothers, how they introduced me to sex— this is pretty close to home." Malle also suffered from a heart murmur and shared a hotel room with his mother during treatment. Aside from this, the film is a work of fiction, and takes place later than Malle's true childhood. The humorous and earthy Italian mother is also a fictional character, based more on a friend's mother than his own. Malle asserted in interviews that the incest, in particular, is fictional. He claimed that in writing the script, he had no intention to include incest, but ended up doing so as he explored an intense mother-son relationship.

Upon submitting his screenplay, the National Center of Cinematography raised objections to the perverse erotic scenes. Malle was surprised by the response. With the Censorship Board denying funding, the film was financed with the help of Mariane Film, a French subsidiary of Paramount Pictures. Given his love of jazz, and the fact that Laurent steals a Charlie Parker album at the beginning of the film, Malle employed Parker for the film score.

Release

In France, the film had 2,652,870 admissions. It was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1971 and also played at the New York Film Festival in October 1971.

On its re-release in the United States in 1989, it grossed US$1,160,784. In Region 1, The Criterion Collection released the film on DVD in 2006, along with Malle's other films Lacombe, Lucien and Au Revoir les Enfants.

Critical reception

 Roger Ebert awarded the film a four-star rating, favorably comparing it to "The 400 Blows" (1959). He noted that Malle approached the topic of incest with subtlety, transforming it into a depiction of simple affection. Judith Crist, in her review for New York magazine, lauded the "remarkable" performances by Lea Massari, Benoît Ferreux, and Daniel Gélin. Richard Schickel, contributing to Life magazine, expressed a "strange enthusiasm" for the film, praising its demonstration of "taste, charm, and the most winning sentiment." Variety staff complimented Ferreux and Massari's performances. Roger Greenspun wrote a negative opinion in The New York Times, claiming "it isn't very good" and "that it could probably have been made with as much distinction by any of those directors, all equally anonymous, who specialize in urban romantic comedy (or tragedy) of a sophistication that is supposed to be peculiarly French."

In 1989, Desson Howe wrote in the Washington Post that the film maintained its "fresh intelligence and delicacy" and "Malle's world of sarcastic, upper-middle-class brats seems to be Murmur's most enduring creation." In 1990, Richard Stengel gave the film an A- in Entertainment Weekly, writing "Almost everything about this coming-of-age story rings true, and Malle avoids any heavy-handed explanations of family behavior." Critic Pauline Kael called Massari "superb." In his 2002 Movie & Video Guide, Leonard Maltin gives the film three and a half stars and calls it a "fresh, intelligent, affectionately comic tale."

US director Wes Anderson cited Murmur of the Heart an influence, saying he loved the characters Laurent and Clara. Regarding the incest, he says, "The stuff between him and the mother feels more kind of romantic almost- but also taboo and scary in a way, which makes it even more seductive." US director Noah Baumbach also named the film as an influence. Rotten Tomatoes counted nine favourable reviews out of 10.

Accolades

Murmur of the Heart was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 1973 Academy Awards. It was also in competition, in the French part of the official selection, at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival.