Nostalgic look at 1950's rural France
Author: Nicholas Rhodes from Ile-de-France / Paris Region, France
15 December 2005
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Maybe I have been overgenerous with my voting on this one but I must admit to being strangely attracted to films made by Gilles Grangier ! It's true this film is nothing over thetop, it's a story about truck drivers in Central France, ostensibly in the region of Clermont Ferrand ( Auvergne )and in particular where their lives meet up with those of a group of gangsters who ( wrongly ) believe that one of the drivers, played by Jean Gabin, has stolen booty from a dead man that he ran over. The harassement becomes more intense throughout the film until the end where finally Gabin gets all his truck-driver pals to close in on and "corner" the gangsters' in their car.
OK the story may be banal but I like this film for its nostalgic portrait of 1950's France. I like the films that Gabin made in this "entre deux ages", neither the fougue of his youth such as in la Belle Equipe nor the elderly patriarch figure of La Horse or Le Clan des Siciliens. In this film, as in Voici le Temps des Assassins, poor old Gabin is victim of circumstances beyond his control and he has to make the best of it. I like him in this type of role as he comes across as very natural, sincere and lovable.
His lady friend in the film, a schoolmistress played by Jeanne Moreau who looks absolutely sublime in the film brings a romantic and emotionally stabilizing element for a man who is in need of love and affection and is over worried about paying off instalments on his newly acquired truck.
The film contains numerous scenes of rural France in the 1950's and we see other well known actors such as the much missed Marcel Bozuffi and even Roger Hanin (very young ). I was ENTHRALLED by the musette waltz that starts off the film and which was composed by Jean Yatove, the first few minutes is filmed from the back of a moving truck and we see typical views of the roads of central rural France. Grangier had the knack of putting beautiful music in his films, as was further confirmed by "125 rue Montmartre".
Picture quality on the recently issued Rene Château DVD is excellent quality black and white though subtitles and other language tracks are sadly lacking.Once again this film,although one of his minor works, really confirms the status of Jean Gabin as one of the pillars of French cinema and indeed French popular culture. The film would deserve to be somewhat better known worldwide but I don't hold out much hope for this !
