Poil de carotte

Julien Duvivier is not only one the most important French directors ("Golgotha"), he is also one of the most important American directors there ever was ("Tales of Manhattan" and so many others). His "Poil de carotte", which I saw on French Ontario television tonight, is not only an immortal classic for its interpretation by a ten year old Robert Lynen, but also for its script, its photography - which didn't age at all since 1932 -, its sound and music and its general air of realism. It's about the suffering of unloved children. As such, it is certainly one of the inspirations behind Kubrick's and Spielberg's "A.I.". Many directors have borrowed from this film, notably Robert Bresson in "Mouchette" and Walt Disney in "Cinderella" (the scene where the wicked stepmother - here, the hero's real mother - sneaks up behind Cinderella to lock her up in her room).

If Truffaut had bothered to see this gem before penning his infamous essay in which he tarred master craftsmen like Duvivier (who wrote and directed this film), Carne, Renoir, Allegret, Jeanson, Bost, Aurenche, Prevert, etc with the same 'incompetent' brush he would not have had the gall to shoot even one frame of his own take on the subject, 'The 400 Yawns'. As it is Duvivier is still being revived after 70 years whilst with any luck the Truffaut-Godard drek will sink without trace long before that. Here Duvivier obtains an exquisite and heartbreaking performance from ten-year-old Robert Lynen (one of the few French actors to take an active part in the 'Resistance' for which he paid with his life) and it's difficult to imagine what Duvivier said or did to Lynen prior to shooting the scene in the barn where he trembles on the brink of suicide but whatever it was he should bottle it and make it available to directors everywhere. There have, of course, been 'child' actors before - one thinks of Bobby Henry in 'The Fallen Idol', Claude Jarman Jnr, in 'The Yearling', Brandon de Wilde in 'Shane' - and there will be again but it is doubtful indeed if one will ever eclipse Lynen. The story is unashamedly lifted from Cinderella and comes complete with two ugly siblings, one of each sex and a wicked Mother instead of a Stepmother, which Comedie Francaise actress Catherine Fonteney brings off to a fare-thee-well without resorting to chewing the scenery a la Charles Laughton. Harry Baur turns in sterling work as the father whose only crime is in failing to notice he has a young son whose life is reduced to misery by a cold, uncaring mother and two spoiled brats. Duvivier was a master director (he would use Lynen again first in his poetic La Belle Equipe with the great Gabin and later in Un Carnet de Bal with Raimu, Louis Jouvet and Harry Baur (also a victim of the nazis). In sum: a wonderful, lyrical evocation of a tainted childhood. 9/10

This is in my opinion one of the greatest French films, and yet the censors of the time in the UK banned it from being seen. And still in the UK it has not been available to see, and sadly I believe this is a great loss. Both of the lead actors were executed by the Nazis during WW2 and this adds an added poignance to the film. The essence of the film for me is how the red-headed boy contemplates and attempts suicide because he can no longer endure the frustrated wrath of his mother, and how his loving but weak father is unable to intervene and finally literally takes the rope from around his son's neck. The scenes of the child's despair still pack a punch at the audience, and my only wish is that this film should be restored by the BFI. If any film deserves it it is this Duvivier version of Jules Renard's novel from 1932.

The story itself is simple: a young boy is the odd one out. His parents are much older; his mother unmercifully picks on him, favoring his near-adult siblings, while his long-suffering father has withdrawn into the small pleasures of hunting and meeting with friends. Really, it's a sort of Cinderella: the wicked step-mother (only it's his real mother), the vain pampered older siblings, his having to work and slave for them, wearing tattered hand-me-downs. But it's told with a wonderful leisurely anecdotal naturalism, laced with delightful moments of surrealism (he's surrounded by double-exposure goblins when told to close up the hen house at night, for example). The greatest scene in the film combines the two, as the boy and a young girl "rehearse" a marriage ceremony, marching through the fields while the animals about them burst into song. The father, as delineated by Baur, and the maid, also immeasurably enriched by a subtle performance, are marvelous characters. The film was made during that brief period when the French countryside was a pre-technological world, yet technology was sufficiently advanced so that sound films could document that existence. Certainly there are "literary" story telling elements, such as the family being "introduced" by the father, the older maid telling the new maid what to expect, and the boy's school essay about his miserable family life. But the wonderful thing about the film is its ineffable technique and its enigmatic moments that are the purest styleless cinema. There are many visual joys, like the shot of boys playing leap-frog with the town spread out below them, that are presented with simplicity and unostentatious naturalism. All told, this is a film of the highest cinematic art, approaching the level of Renoir and Ozu.

I saw this film at the unlikely venue of the Walter Reade Theatre in New York. The film was introduced by David Grossman, a retired exhibitor who dedicated the showing to film historian and enthusiast William K. Everson. Grossman was so full of love for the film that he could hardly express himself. The print was his, cobbled together from several sources. The original US and British release was missing most of the wedding rehearsal and all of the scene where the boy swims while his uncle fishes (the latter because the boy is nude). He spoke of Duvivier's great love for making movies. The film, he said, ran a year in Paris in its initial release, unheard of during the depression. At the end of the film, he stood from his seat and stated that the actor who played the young boy was later executed by the Nazis for being in the resistance, and that Baur was also executed by the Nazis, only a few weeks before the liberation, for reasons not clear. He apologized for the poor subtitles (the reinserted scenes had none, and the rest had those intermittent titles that, as he said, was typical of the thirties), though he needn't have apologized since full translation was unnecessary. And he asked for comments from the audience in the manner of someone who's just taken a friend to see his very favorite film. and asks, "Well, wasn't it great?" A very appropriate introduction to this wonderful film.

This is a film that cries out for restoration and wider release. I wonder if the print shown on Ontario TV and the video offered on Amazon (probably the same) are complete.

Cruelty to a child can take a lot of forms, and to feel unloved while growing up is one of the worst things in the world. The young boy here has a mother who loves her other children, the older son especially, but seems to see nothing but the worst in the boy she had later in life, dubbing him "Carrot Top." At first we feel sorry for her, as she is also neglected by a husband who doesn't even deign to speak to her, but gradually we see just how mean she can be. Meanwhile, the father is practically indifferent to the boy, which is callous and unkind of him in a different way.

The story carries a lot of emotional power, helped considerably by strong performances and direction from Julien Duvivier that often felt modern. The editing is snappy, contributing to a good pace, and there are some beautiful shots in the countryside, giving the film atmosphere. The effects include transparent overlays, like the boy imagining a circle of ghostly spirits in the yard when he's forced to go out to do a chore at night, or when he imagines an alter ego talking to himself in his inner voice, telling himself that no one loves him.

It all leads to the boy becoming suicidal and some absolutely gut-wrenching moments at the end, played well by 12-year-old Robert Lynen (and as an aside, how incredibly sad that he would be executed by the Nazis for his role in the resistance just 12 years later). The only thing I didn't like as much was just how much was piled on the mother as the story resolved itself - I think a little bit more balance there between the parents would have been better, and not turning her into a caricature who literally says it would be just like the boy to kill himself to get attention. Overall though, another fantastic effort from Duvivier.