Le grand pavois

So obsolete it's interesting as a museum item.This movie deals with life on the "Joan of Arc" warship in the fifties .The plot is insignificant(the problems of sailors who leave their wives or fiancees for a long time is quickly forgotten) and takes a back seat to documentary interest:the rituals,when the men cross the equator for the first time,the "funeral" for a subaltern (before he became a superior).

This seems too good to be true sometimes.Oddly,the storm scenes recall Ridley Scott's "white squall" (1996)(the other way about more like!)

At the beginning ,the girls often say :"I wish I were a boy".Nowadays,no problem: there are women in the navy.

They don't do movies like this one -actually ,in the fifties,that were not,as it has always been mooted , an artistic nadir for French cinema,it was already out of fashion-,hence its -relative- charm.