Adieu Philippine (1962) - film review

Michel is a young man who works as a trainee operator in television, a temporary job before his military service.   He meets and becomes friendly with two young women, Liliane and Juliette, aspiring actresses who lack the talent to land roles in anything greater than mediocre TV ads.  The three friends share a holiday in Corsica, which will be Michel’s last break before being drafted into the French army, most probably to fight in the war in Algeria.

Adieu Philippine is Jacques Rozier’s first film and probably the one film which captures most vividly the essence of the French New Wave.  It is a film that exudes the New Wave mentality in every scene, every shot.   Out-Godarding Godard with its frequent jump-cutting and introverted, self-referential humour, the film is charged with an energy and sense of daring that seems to be the sheer embodiment of Truffaut and Godard’s vision of the 1960s cinematic revolution.   It is inexplicable that a film which encapsulates so fully the spirit of the French new wave should be so overlooked nowadays.

The history of the film is itself interesting.  Adieu Philippine could not have arrived at a better time for the proponents of the New Wave.  Following the box office failure in France of Truffaut’s Tirez sur le pianiste, Godard’s Une femme est une femme and Chabrol’s Les Godelureux, the New Wave looked set to perish in its early infancy. Adieu Philippine was one of a number of films in 1962 which quickly managed to turn the tide and give the New Wave a sudden boost of popularity.

Whilst lacking in structure and having hardly any plot to speak of, Adieu Philippine is a great film because it challenges, with brazen truculence, the old guard of French cinema – the quality, studio-based films that Truffaut reviled so vehemently during his time as a film critic in the 1950s.   The film is as loud and colourful (even in black and white), and the photography is quite stunning – particularly the scenes set in the open Corsican landscapes.

Starting out in a bustling modern film studio, with 1920s jazz accompanying the frenzied positioning of cameras and sets, we are instantly transported into an era which seems so fresh, so full of life and energy.  Rozier’s genius is to capture the essence of the 1960s youth culture, replete with all its constraints, contradictions and difficulties, and to create a truly incredible film that is engaging, funny and strangely melancholic.

© James Travers 2000

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