Just so...so bad

Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Although director Robert Wise makes striking use of standing sets from RKO's Hunchback of Notre Dame to give us memorable images of the coach in the town, the lackluster studio scenes inside the coach, plus a disappointing performance from Simone Simon who plays with little of her usual fire and vigor; plus the very second-string support cast led by John Emery, Kurt Kreuger, Alan Napier, Helen Freeman and Jason Robards, Senior – hardly players that would induce even a mild stampede at the box-office; plus a screenplay that is not only far too talky but far too obviously is bending over backwards to make patriotic parallels; plus Robert Wise's disappointingly bland direction; plus niggardly production values. In all, a very disappointing movie from the Val Lewton unit, well below the producer's usual high standard on all counts, including script, direction, cast, and writing. Screenwriter Peter Ruric could do much better than this, e.g. "The Black Cat" and "Grand Central Murder".

Robert Wise directs this dramatic offering produced by Val Lewton, who strays from his string of low-budget horror flicks for RKO. In occupied France, a young French laundress(Simone Simon) refuses to give in to a small village's Prussian oppressors. She is given permission to travel to her hometown Cleresville and shares a coach ride through the snow with several socialites with strongly opposite political views than her own. The film's name comes from the nickname of one of the most brutal Prussian officers Lt. von Eyick(Kurt Kreuger)who is called 'Fifi'. Very good scenery depicting the WWII devastation. Others in the cast: Jason Robards Sr., Romaine Callender, Edmund Gover, Helen Freeman, Fay Helm and John Emery.

There is a good film waiting to be made out of de Maupassant's story, but this isn't it. (Stagecoach isn't either). We can understand it isn't Lewton and Wise's fault, it's just that the censorship wouldn't allow it to be done properly then.Thus, the central character gets turned into a laundress, and the climax comes when she... HAS DINNER with the sadistic Prussian officer!! (in the story, she was shunned by her fellow passengers for being a hooker, then she saves the day by going to bed with him)).Modern directors like Agnieszka Holland or M.L. Bemberg could make a really great movie out of this, but 1940's America was just not the place.

The film,"Mademoiselle Fifi" is a combination of two of Guy de Maupassant's patriotic stories: "Boule de Suif," the story of a patriotic French girl whose love for her country is misunderstood by those with whom she comes in contact; and "Mademoiselle Fifi,", a tale of a sadistic Prussian officer intent on breaking the will of conquered France, who has been nicknamed "Mademoiselle Fifi" by his comrades because of his constant use of the phrase "Fi fi done." The action takes place during the last part of the Franco-Prussian Way, the locale being occupied France from the city of Rouen, headquarters of the German Third Army, to a little village near the unoccupied territory.