“Comparisons between Boule de Suif and Stagecoach reveal more than similar character types or the incorporation of Richard Hageman's award-winning score for the John Ford film into the French version. Both screenplays emanated from the same literary source, Guy de Maupassant.* But whereas Stagecoach situates itself in the elusive topography of folklore, Boule de Suif has a more immediate historical tie--to the German Occupation of France during World War II. French film theorist André Bazin has called it the ‘first film on the Resistance,' though the narrative context harks back to an earlier conflict, the Franco-Prussian War. The story concerns the misadventures that beset a stagecoach trundling along in the midst of that 1870s war. Notable among the voyagers is a prostitute (marvelously played by Micheline Presle), who purposely assuages some German libidos in order to save her fellow travelers, who nevertheless hold her in disdain. As one critic wrote: ‘This is a good commentary on German barbarism and on the hypocrisy of certain Frenchmen who played up to the Germans in both wars.' (New York Times) The clever script, Matras' landscape photography, and good performances make this one of France's most enjoyable early post-WWII film productions.” Laura Thielen
* According to a note by François Truffaut in André Bazin's French Cinema of the Occupation and Resistance, the story, “Stage to Lordsburg,” on which the Stagecoach screenplay is based, is itself based on the de Maupassant story, “Boule de Suif.” The Christian-Jaque film combines themes from two de Maupassant stories: “Boule de Suif” and “Mam'zelle Fifi.”