Antoine et Antoinette (1947)

Antoine et Antoinette is a French film comedy-drama first released in 1947, directed by Jacques Becker.  The film stars Roger Pigaut, Claire Mafféi, Noël Roquevert, Gaston Modot and Made Siamé.  It has also been released under the title: Antoine and Antoinette.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


Antoine and Antoinette are a typical working class couple living in Paris in the immediate aftermath of WWII.  He works in a printing works; she is a lowly sales assistant in a busy department store.   They live in a cramped garret and their combined income is barely enough to survive on.  They dream of owning their own apartment and a motorcycle, but they both know that there is little chance of their dreams ever coming true.  But then Antoinette buys a winning lottery ticket and suddenly the couple’s fortunes appear to have changed for the better.   No longer will they have to endure a life of penury.  No longer will Antoinette have to put up with the unwelcome attentions of the grocer Monsieur Roland.  They can start a new life and live happily ever after...  But when Antoine goes to collect his winnings disaster strikes: he has lost the wallet containing the precious lottery ticket!  His hopes dashed, Antoine can barely bring himself to break the bad news to his wife...

Having strayed into the artificial world of haute couture in Falbalas (1945), director Jacques Becker had his feet firmly on the ground for his next film, made straight after the end of the Second World War.  Borrowing the central plot of René Clair’s 1931 musical farce Le Million, whilst paying homage to his erstwhile mentor Jean Renoir, Becker crafts a meticulously well-observed portrait of an ordinary working class couple struggling with the privations of post-war austerity.  At the time, French cinema appeared to have little interest in the problems of the working classes (there was no equivalent of the Italian neo-realist movement) and so Becker’s Antoine et Antoinette is one of the very few French films to accurately portray the life of the proletariat in the bleak recessionary gloom of the late 1940s, a time of extreme hardship for many French people, as the film amply demonstrates.

The plot of Antoine et Antoinette (a piece of pure whimsy) is far less interesting than Becker’s delicate handling of the main protagonists and his extraordinary attention to detail.  The cramped garret lodgings in which much of the drama takes place convey a real sense of the daily struggle to survive and lend the film a grim sense of confinement.  Little luxuries like coffee and edible food are hard to come by and Antoine has to line his shoes with scraps of newspaper because he cannot afford to buy a new pair.  So that he can listen to his radio, Antoine must risk his life by climbing up onto the roof and attaching a wire to an aerial, but a perilous rooftop ascent is nothing compared with what he risks in his day job, in those carefree days when employers were safe to inflict extreme bodily mutilation on their workers.   When the couple are dealt a stroke of unbelievable good fortune, we immediately share in their delight, as by this stage we know exactly what winning the lottery will mean to them.  Equally, we feel something of the hopeless despair that Antoine is plunged into when he loses the winning ticket and realises there is no easy escape from his present predicament.  Despite the obvious differences in tone and style, the film has something of the resonance of Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948).

If there is one defining characteristic of Jacques Becker’s cinema it is a deeply felt sense of involvement with the plight of his characters.  The film’s imaginative use of the subjective camera and the engaging performances from the leads (Roger Pigaut and Claire Mafféi) make it easy for us to enter the inner worlds of the protagonists and see the world from their point of view, and therein lies its charm and warmth.  How easy it is to contrast the romanticism of Antoinette (the devoted wife who values love far more than material comfort) with the practical materialism of her husband.   Fearing that flashy big name actors would detract from the film’s realism, Becker cast lesser known but talented actors, the most familiar face being that of Noël Roquevert, who is superb (and surprisingly sinister) as the flirtatious grocer.  Making fleeting appearances in two minor roles is Louis de Funès (he plays a grocer’s boy and a scene-stealing guest at a wedding reception), many years before he rose to prominence and became French cinema’s most popular comic actor.

Antoine et Antoinette proved to be a great hit at the 1947 Cannes Film Festival, where it was awarded the Grand Prize in the esteemed category films psychologiques et d’amour (a forerunner of the Palme d’or).  The critics were, however, divided by the film and some condemned it outright for its idealistic portrayal of working class life, which did nothing to stir the consciences of the bourgeoisie.  Despite the negative reviews in the leftwing press, the film was a major box office success and attracted an audience of over 3.6 million in France, making this one of Jacques Becker’s most commercially successful films.   The film, along with Becker’s subsequent realist dramas - Rendez-vous de juillet (1949) and Édouard et Caroline (1951) - would have a profound impact on the directors of the French New Wave, in particular François Truffaut, whose recurring hero (and alter ego) Antoine Doinel may well owe his name to the main protagonist of Becker’s 1947 film.

© James Travers 2012

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