Malaire

"Malaire " aka "tempete sur Mauvent " is one of Charles Vanel's most obscure films ; his part is not unlike that of Edmond T Greville's "le vent souffle" .

An offbeat melodrama,set in the mountain ,in the middle of nowhere : even when WW2 is declared ,the gendarmes have to come to fetch the drafted son ,who had not a clue about the world's history ; the war may be raging ,the farmer in his den will know nothing about it,except for the son's fifteen-day furlough where he depicts the first months of the war as the history books tell it :the funny war , the phoney war or the sitting war:little warfare action occured and it led to the French/English defeat ;no hint at the war in the story afterward, except that the son, presumed kill in action was a POW.

The central character is the patriarch , Noguère whose concern is his sheep breeding till one day he shoots on a girl who was running away with her fiancé;She was only injured ; he lies to her ,telling her her man is dead.

The story is predictable , but the atmosphere is troubling ,notably the baby's funeral and this enclosed place with this ominous name : "Mauvents = "mauvais vents "(bad winds) ?Charles Vanel ,excellent as usual, portrays a selfish greedy breeder who won't be satisfied till he owns everything. Andrée Debar's androgynous beauty adds to this wild tale, Noguère's confession to a priest ,which makes the whole movie a long flashback.