Director Alexander Astruc and screenplay writer Roland Laudenbach take great care to preserve in End of Desire the mood of Guy de Maupassant's Une Vie. They translate novel into movie with a confident, graceful fluency. The picture does not show the strain to telescoping and rearranging that often ruins adaptations; End of Desire seems like a filmed transliteration of the original story. In Maria Schell's dolorous eyes, Maupassant's anguish over undeserved suffering arrives on the screen intact.

Maupassant's story sets loose a grim, helpless sadness that deepens and spreads until it dominates the picture. It begins with the marriage of a wealthy aristocrat's daughter to a farmer's son who is trying to get out of debt. The bride is a sentimental ingenue of classical stamp; the groom is a taciturn brute who resembles Melville's Ahab.

Shunning duty and emotion, Julien, the new husband, pulls aloof from his wife as soon as her adoration begins to threaten his freedom to shoot ducks and philander. "Why shouludn't life be easy?" he demands, and unencumbered by scruples, he sets out to prove that it is. Sullenly stalking pleasures, he leaves Jeanne, the young wife, to stifle her disappointment and cherish he rare audiences he permits her.

Bored by Jeanne's affection, Julien enlists the sensual services of a household maid. Jeanne, blandly innocent, forgives this transgression and more that follow it. But the marriage is hopeless. Put in motion by the pathetic mismatch between Jeanne and Julien, the relentless tragedy moves deeper and deeper into gloom, until it is both capped and cut short by a violent climax.

Maria Schell, by herself, is enough to carry the film. As the demure Jeanne, her wedding night smile fades artfully into the wistful gaze of the betrayed wife. The male lead is not as successful. Christian Marquand has all the rugged facial angles that a hunter and sure-fire seducer ought to have. Only once, however, when Julien grins at the thought the angles. Long before the end of the picture, his fierce teeth-clenching turns into tame stolidness and a suspicion of lockjaw.

If End of Desire had no merit save the pictorial beauty created by its celebrated photography director, it would still be regarded as a fine motion picture. When Claude Renoir opens the movie with a superb painting of yellow flowers, green fields, and turquoise sea, he sets up an artistic standard that is sustained throughout the picture. White and blue-gray winters, lugubrious shots of motley interiors, and overcast hunting scenes do at least as much to develop moods as the dialogue and acting. Though masterful in its own right, Renoir's delicate camerawork also does much to control the frail and precise despair that makers End of Desire an excellent movie.