Les patates

The sixties were a hard time from all the great directors who worked before the N. V . Autant-Lara's work in this era can be classified into two categories : the commissioned movies ("vive Henri IV Vive l'amour" ,"le comte de Monte Cristo " "le magot de Josepha") and the ones he was anxious to make ,dealing with taboo subjects : A conscientious objector in "tu ne tueras point" (1963) and abortion ("journal (et nouveau ) "journal d'une femme en blanc" (1965-66); so the great rebellious director of "douce" " le diable au corps" and "l'auberge rouge" was still present .

Like his precedent effort "le franciscain de Bourges " (1968) , "les patates ' takes place during the occupation ; comic singer Pierre Perret (who was also capable of deeply moving anti-racist songs as "Lily ") plays the lead and his jovial face fits the atmosphere like a glove .

This is a farce which put off many people at the time , but hindsight shows that his next-to-last movie was his swan song (as for the last ,"Gloria" ,if you can't say something nice...); in occupied France , people living in the country were not as starving as in Paris (as depicted in "la traversée de Paris" ) ,but in the forbidden zone, here les Ardennes , people were not sure to have something to eat when their supply run out .

Hence the necessity to get potatoes (check the title) ,which ,as the comedy turns to drama , becomes the hero's obsession ; Autant-Lara and his screenwriter Jean Aurenche do not pass over in silence the collaborators who stuff themselves with fine food ,but they also expose the selfishness of the hero , his property instinct hated by his fellow men ; all in all ,he's responsible for the final tragedy .