This is Jacques Becker's second effort and the first one that really counts.Along with "casque d'or" ,"rendez-vous de juillet" and "le trou",it may be his finest work,and for sure one of the classics of the French cinema,one of these that you can watch and watch again without being tired.
The scenarist Pierre Very,is,along with Boileau-Narcejac,the best French suspense writer,and he outdoes himself here,creating an absorbing plot,a magic atmosphere,and a dozen of colorful characters .Out in the sticks,lives the Goupi family:actually a clan who's got its own laws and in which strangers are looked upon pretty much as enemies.In this strange family,every member has got a nickname,each one of them beginning with Goupi:Goupi-mes-sous,Goupi-Muguet,Goupi-Tonkin,of course Goupi-mains -rouges (Goupi-red-hands),and more.One fine day,a young man arrives from Paris :this is the first time he has come in this lost country,to visit his family.His late mother had escaped the Goupi clan,being unable to stand this place cut off the world.Needless to say,coming from the City,he's not welcome.The plot thickens when a Goupi wicked woman is murdered and the patriarch has a stroke and is no longer able to indicate where the family pile is hidden.
Jacques Becker created a very strange atmosphere,mainly during the first part:when the young man arrives ,he's taken by his uncle Goupi-Mains-Rouges to a scary place full of stuffed animals and black magic. He has wonderfully depicted his peasant milieu,in which they all stand together ,and in which they would not betray one of them,even if the police investigates their home.
There is a first-class cast,including Fernand ledoux,Georges Rollin,Germaine Kerjean and Blanchette Brunoy ;but the stand out is Robert Le Vigan,who portrays a former legionnaire,slipping gradually into madness.The most famous scene of the film belongs to him:pursued by the police,he climbs upon a tree,higher and higher,trying to reach for this sun he used to know when he was a soldier in the Colonies.A similar character is featured in Becker's follow-up movie "Falbalas",but insanity is much more credible in "Goupi Mains Rouges".
Had Hitchcock directed a country thriller,that would have been this one.
