Strange and short-lived career ! Philippe Condroyer began with "Tintin et les oranges bleues",unfortunately the
worst film inspired by Hergé 's character,carried on with an indifferent thriller and ended with a tortured soul's scream which ,although fictionalized , was based on a news item which was widely talked about in the French seventies .He can (and should) be remembered for this last theatrically-released effort before he eventually worked for TV,always the last refuge for accursed directors.
His film seemed to scare everyone and it was released in few theaters ,for a limited audience ;then he lost his control of the film which was sold by auction:it was 2015 before it was screened again ,two years before his director's death.
"My character's suicide is not an act of despair ,but an act of survival ,an assertion of the individual,it's also a bill of indicment" (Condroyer)
It may seem dated ;the long-haired boys who would scandalize the well-meaning bourgeois ,it's now a thing of the past ; but for the unfortunate hero of the movie, his hairdo is part of his personality ;Didier Sauvegrain ,then at the beginning of his career,gives a restrained but strong performance:his metamorphosis after the haircut and the look of haitred in his eyes is spooky .
These long-haired boys have no future ,and their fate is a dead-end ,much more than those of the lauded far beyond its station " passe to bac d'abord" ; one feels that André would have liked to carry on with his studies (his science book ,his talent as a painter ) but at the time , poverty was a brake on intentions. And around him ,the world is hostile,repressive ;the boss ,in his office ,is despising : André looks at his wife's photo ,a woman and her jewels which represent the privileged bourgeois he will never be part of. This powerful man acts like a fascist ;and police are on his side :when they are taken to the police station ,the four lads stand in front of a call-up poster ;the boss had already warned them:"when you are in the army ,you'll get your hair cut really short;and who will ask you?"
André's father ,a good man ,works in a mansion where time seems to have stood still: he talks to his master ,the count ,in the third person ; he's condescendingly treated in the noble' s study full of archives , father and son are the exploited persons ,and André does not want to become his father, an inescapable fate ;it's eventually the compassionate dad who, by his emotional blackmail , which triggers off the final tragedy; it's not only a matter of being long-haired ; it's denying a compromise , the possibility of being happy , with his girlfriend-turned -housewife ,after the de rigueur military service, the same bleak future as his father and his great grand father before him ,an indifferent society offers him.
