CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
EN/FR
Search
Menu
Research dossier · Arts & Letters

The Poisoner

2006 film directed by Christian Faure

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ2397902 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Poisoner or Marie Besnard, l'empoisonneuse is a 2006 French-Belgium drama television film directed by Christian Faure. It stars Muriel Robin as Marie Besnard and it was broadcast on TF1 in 2006.

Plot

In 1947, in Loudun, Mary and Leon Besnard celebrate with their friends, eighteen years of marriage. Marie surprising gestures moved between Leo and her best friend, Louise. Soon after, Leo gets sick and dies. Louise confided to a friend that Leo was convinced he was poisoned by his wife. In Paris, Simone Roulier, a trainee journalist, decides to cover the case.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Poisoner” is 2006 film directed by Christian Faure. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Poisoner, film and directed, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2006, 1947—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Poisoner, film and directed is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “2006 film directed by Christian Faure” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2397902. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2006 and 1947.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Poisoner”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Poisoner primary sources, The Poisoner archive and Poisoner research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Poisoner”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Poisoner” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.