Un homme se penche sur son passé

Maurice Constantin-Weyer's novel, influenced by Jack London ,essentially depicts the upheaval which the railroad track caused in Canada, the disappearance of the cowboys ' and the trappers ' way of life ; the death of Lucie (the daughter who survives in the movie) becomes symbolic and represents the death of the prairie as they used to know it.

There's no train in Willy Rozier's adaptation which does no do the writer justice ,by long shot .An absolutely abysmal script , with an absurd Franco-German cast ...Directing is incredibly flat , giving the "adventure" side an inadequate treatment ( the death of the companion, the sacrifice of the husky) , with no sense of space (filming on location and color were rare in the French thirties, here the cinematography is amateurish ). The gist of the movie is the unfortunate love affair of the trapper (Jacques Bergerac , a French actor unknown in his native land and who essentially worked in the USA where he was featured in a good thriller "fear no more" ) and a woman of Canadian origin (Barbara Rutting ) ....

It seems the director has a change of heart ceasessly :now an adventures movie ,now a depiction of Canadian farmers (nobody but Helena Manson bothers to adopt the Quebec accent) everyday life ;now a melodrama (the wife always suffering cause hubby 's always gone hunting),now a thriller (the caribou hunt),you name it.

The novel was released in 1928,and in the film ,the screenwriters don't shrink from pure anachronism: Jean-Roger Caussimon sing two songs written by the great Felix Leclerc ("le p'tit bonheur" ,"moi, mes souliers" ).....circa 1950!!!The writer spent ten years in Canada ,between 1904 and 1914!

Jacques Bergerac is a trapper. Every summer he smuggles horses across the border from the US. Every winter he vanishes into the far north to bring back furs. On a horse-trading expedition, his partner is injured, so they put up at a farm, where Bergerac falls in love with Barbara Rütting and they are wed. Soon they have a daughter, but every winter Bergerac leaves them to go trapping. Meanwhile an old suitor of Mademoiselle Rütting buys a farm and calls on her while her husband is gone.

Willy Rozier's nordouestern-camambert (as I suppose it should be called) soon turns into a soap opera. Despite its length, it never examines anyone's motivations beyond the bare minimum. Michel Rocca's camerawork is adequate to show Bergerac's male beauty, but doesn't do much for the snowy landscapes he travels about, making me wonder why Rozier didn't make him a sailor, or some other trade that makes a man leave home for lengths of time. Well, I suppose that's because of the novel it is based on. Bergerac sings a couple of songs. A band performs some fiddle-led tunes.