One of the three features he made with and for his then wife, the actress Ann Todd, “Madeleine” is set in the Victorian era in a morally rigid Glasgow society. Todd’s Madeleine is an outsider, a woman who takes pride in and enjoys her sensuality, in defiance of the repressive social context.
In a full-fleshed portrait, Lean depicts Madeleine vis–vis the two crucial men in her life: Her bully French lover (played by Ivan Desny) and her patriarchal father (Leslie Banks). The film’s second half resorts to a courtroom melodrama, when Madeleine is accused of poisoning her lover.
At the time, some critics who didn’t think highly of Ann Todd claimed that a better, more sensitive and skillful actress would have emphasized the protagonist’s vulnerability and suffering rather than her deviance and determination to expose the stern, hypocritical mores