In Case of Adversity

A petty criminal aged 22, the attractive Yvette is caught after robbing a watchmaker's shop with a toy pistol and felling his old wife. To defend her, she asks for André Gobillot, a leading member of the Paris bar. Telling him she has no money to pay him, she lifts her skirt to show him her goods. Accepting the deal, he arranges a false witness and after getting her acquitted instals her in a small hotel.

His childless wife Viviane realises what is happening but hopes the improbable affair will not last. Knowing nothing about the girl, Gobillot has first to wean her off drink and drugs. He also doesn't know that she is still entertaining her current lover, an impoverished medical student called Mazetti. As Gobillot's obsession grows, his wife gets more alarmed and an enquiry is opened into his bribing the witness who lied.

When Yvette tells him she is pregnant, he is overjoyed and books a holiday for the two of them. Before they leave, Yvette cannot resist one last visit to Mazetti's sordid room where, enraged with jealousy, he cuts her throat. It is not stated whether Gobillot's wife will take him back or if he will still be able to practise law.

• Jean Gabin as Maître André Gobillot
• Brigitte Bardot as Yvette Maudet
• Edwige Feuillère as Viviane Gobillot
• Nicole Berger as Janine - la bonne d'Yvette
• Madeleine Barbulée as Bordenave
• Gabrielle Fontan as Mme Langlois
• Jacques Clancy as Duret - assistant de Gobillot
• Annick Allières as Noémie - l'amie d'Yvette
• Suzanne Grey La fleuriste
• Edith Cérou as Himself (as Edith Cerou)
• Hubert de Lapparent as L'avocat du bijoutier
• Georges Seey as Le bijoutier (as Georges Scey)
• Julien Bertheau as L'inspecteur
• Jacques Marin as Le réceptionniste de l'hôtel Trianon
• Claude Magnier as Gaston
• Claire Nobis as Himself
• Franco Interlenghi as Mazetti

"Something is obviously missing in the French film that has been made from Georges Simenon's weirdly off-beat novel", wrote Bosley Crowther of The New York Times. He continued: "There are elements for shattering drama here. Yet, strangely, it doesn't develop. It all moves along in the groove of conventional nonconformance with the obvious social rules." Crowther called Autant-Lara "one of the best directors in France", but wrote that Bardot's performance "falls far short" and that "Jean Gabin misses, too".[4]

François Truffaut called it one of Autant-Lara's best films and compared it to the plays of Jean Anouilh, noting:

We come out of it with a mixture of disgust and admiration, a sense of satisfaction that is real enough but incomplete. It is 100 percent French, with all the virtues and vices that implies: an analysis that is at once subtle and narrow, a skill that is mixed with spitefulness, a spirit of unflinching observation directed at the sordid, and talented sleight-of hand that delivers a liberal message in the end.

He described how the film contrasts the scene where Bardot's character robs a backstreet watchmender's shop with the ceremonial on the same day of Queen Elizabeth II's state visit to Paris:

It's the girl who interests us and preoccupies us, not an anachronistic queen. It is precisely because Bardot is a girl who represents her time absolutely faithfully that she is more famous than any queen or princess … And it's why En Cas des Malheur is her best film since And God Created Woman — an anti-Sabrina, anti-Roman Holiday, anti-Anastasia movie that is truly republican.[5]

The film was thirteenth most popular film of 1958 in France, recording admissions of 3,152,082.[2]

• List of French films of 1958

• En cas de malheur at IMDb