Independent Films, Film Profiles

The Story of Adele H.
by François Truffaut

The Story of Adele H. (also L'Histoire d'Adèle H.) is a 1975 film in French and English which tells the story of the real-life Adèle Hugo, the daughter of writer Victor Hugo, whose obsessive unrequited love for a naval officer led to her downfall. The film is based on her diaries. It stars Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Robinson and Sylvia Marriott.The movie was adapted by Jean Gruault, Frances Vernor Guille, Suzanne Schiffman and François Truffaut, with English adaptation by Jan Dawson. It was directed by Truffaut.The film tells the story of beautiful Adèle Hugo, the second daughter of Victor Hugo, who is devastated by the accidental death of her elder sister Léopoldine Hugo. Hugo is living in exile on the island of Guernsey where Adèle meets and is seized by an obsessive and unrequited love for a British officer, Lieutenant Pinson (Robinson). She follows him to Halifax, Nova Scotia, under the assumed name of Miss Lewly. While in Halifax, he rejects her, but she communicates to her parents, via letter, that she has married him. Her father urges her to return home, but she destroys Pinson's hope of happiness by claiming to his actual fiancee's father, a judge, that Pinson is married to her. She follows him to Barbados, West Indies, when he is posted and assumes the name of Mrs. Pinson, her clothes now torn. By the time he catches up with Adèle, she does not acknowledge or recognize him. Returned to Paris, the Third Republic now established, she is placed in an asylum by her father. She dies in Paris in 1915, in her 85th year.