Le poulet

Claude Berri's Oscar-winning debut short introduced the world to a new filmmaking talent with a knack for the pleasantly comic. Taking advantage of its simple and clever plot in the most charming way possible, this film will likely provoke laughter and joy in most families that view it. It is a fine, funny little movie with hints of an art-house-type vibe. With its slow pacing it may bore some young viewers, but over the course of its 15 minutes it tells a humorous and heartfelt tale that soon springs into comic action. The structure and style may seem a bit odd to some mainstream moviegoers, so I recommend them to be patient with the brief movie and focus. This classic short family film is far slower than most of today's two and a half hour long action movies, but it is much better and much more enjoyable. even if this work is not stylistically appealing to you, one must admit that it has a heart of gold lacking any trace of the cinematic cynicism that has taunted theaters for years upon years.

This quaint 15-minute French effort won the 1965 Oscar for Best Live- Action Short and was equally recognized at the Venice Film Festival; I opted to keep the original title as opposed to the English moniker THE CHICKEN in view of the fact that I watched it without the benefit of subtitles.

That said, there is very little dialogue involved and, in any case, it proved quite easy to follow – with a plot dealing with a man acquiring a cock to fatten for an eventual dinner, which his son wishes to keep as a pet instead. The child even devises the ruse of its laying numerous eggs, which his parents initially concede as a mistaken in having been given a hen…until the next day's dawning, at which it instinctively starts to crow! By now, however, the boy's innocent tantrums have warmed the hearts of Mum and Dad (played by familiar rotund character actor Jacques Marin), so they decide to let the animal live after all.

Director Berri (whose debut this was) later graduated to features, eventually becoming one of the leading figures of his native cinema with such classy period pieces as JEAN DE FLORETTE and MANON DE SOURCES (both 1986) and GERMINAL (1993).

Like THE RED BALLOON (but funnier and less sentimental), a kid's film that appeals to adults as well.

In French,the "poulet" substantive has three meanings :1) a chicken 2) familiar: a cop 3)affectionate: my dear one ,honey, for a brat .

The first and the last meanings can apply to the short:see how the little boy is pampered by his parents,particularly in the morning when he jumps onto his parents' bed .

And of course there's a chicken ;and he is to be eaten on Sunday " eat,my pet,dad says ,when he feeds the chicken you don't know who is going to eat you".When the little boy,who ,after seeing ready-to- cook chicken on the butcher's display ,could never ,never in a month of Sundays ,eat his new "friend" ;yet he has learned that "they do not eat hens for they lay eggs" .....

Berris's short who was awarded two prizes was made just before his first feature film "Le Vieil Homme Et L'Enfant" ;more than the charming story ,it's the depiction of the average Frenchman in the mid- sixties: a true time capsule: the Deux Chevaux,par excellence the car of the early sixties, the (manual) coffee mill, and mainly ,mainly ,the hormone-fed chicken who led the consumers to buy their meat on the farms and to get corn-fed chicken ;it's not mentioned in the movie,but it's understood.