Troubled waters indeed!
Who will give Henri Calef the place he deserves ?The late forties were his time.ALL the movies he made during those years just after WW2 are terrific ."Jericho" "Les Chouans" " La Maison Sous La La Mer" and " La Souriciere " have to be ranked among the very best of the French production of the time (and should be considered classics).
"Les Eaux Troubles" might be his masterpiece ,a film almost nobody knows in France ;7 votes so far and a rating which won't urge the users to watch it!I insist:anyone interested in the past of the French cinema MUST see it.
First sequence:A woman (Ginette Leclerc) who 's just come back to her native place goes to the cemetery and meditates at her brother's grave. He died some years ago in mysterious circumstances ,nobody knows exactly who is responsible for his death,maybe his own father,an old man living in a seedy house in this part of Brittany ,near the Mont Saint Michel,where the tide rises like a galloping horse .
This is essentially what makes this film extraordinary: although the story takes place in a region with great tourist attractions,the director uses the landscape as something threatening:it is so flat that it seems infinite and that you can't distinguish the dry land from the sea .Sometimes a mist envelops the characters like a shroud.Two scenes are particularly remarkable: an one-armed person (Mouloudji) all dressed in black,alone on the boundless beach sardonically smiles as he watches children drowning in the tide; the boy,tied to a post ,watching his father destroying the nets.
Something ominous seems to hang over all the characters.Their words are sometimes unintelligible,even for a French viewer.The final flashback which reveals the truth precludes all forms of conventional sentimentality.I have rarely seen a tragedy filmed with such restraint.
Who will give Henri Calef and "Les Eaux Troubles" the place they deserve?
