Summary
Five impoverished unemployed labourers win 100,000 francs on the national lottery.
They agree to use the money to convert a run down chateau into an open-air riverside café,
which they will run as a co-operative enterprise. However, this idealistic
venture soon begins to turn sour, as a combination of bad luck and pettry rivalries begin
to break up this happy group of friends...
Review
La Belle équipe is one of director Julien Duvivier's most enduring and popular
films. Although it is not quite his best work, it has several moments of brilliance
which easily afford it the status of a masterpiece in the minds of many who watch it.
The film is easily identifiable as a product of the time in which it was made, reflecting
the significant social changes in France of the mid 1930s. The emergence of the
Popular Front lent great optimism in the consciousness working classes and co-operative
firms were seen as the model for the future. Duvivier manages to pick up on these
themes very well in this film, although his position as an auteur is curiously
ambiguious and the film perhaps lacks coherence and focus as a result.
If La Belle équipe has one fault it is the schizoid nature of the narrative.
The film appears to be unsure whether to promote the happy vision offered by the Popular
Front, or to undermine it by showing how easily this Utopian world can come unravelled.
This is most apparent in the film's ending, which teeters on a knife-edge between tragedy
and comedy, before finally opting for a somewhat unconvincing happy ending.
Originally, Duvivier had envisaged a dramatic tragic ending for the film, but he replaced
this with the familiar happy ending after taking a poll at a preview at which he showed
both endings. Given the mood of the time, Duvivier would probably not have
got away with anything other than an up-beat ending, although he perhaps should have taken
that into account from the outset and filmed a straight comedy rather than trying to go
down two paths simultaneously. Viewed in a more cynical and wordly wise era, the
flawed ending that Duvivier opted for feels distinctly false and contrived.
This unfortunate schizophrenia aside, La Belle équipe is an excellent film
and a genuine pleasure to watch. The film's darker moments offer a perfect contrast
to the lighter moments of optimism, both managing to trigger a profound emotional response
(a characteristic which is quite noticeable in French films of this period).
The film is distinguished by fine performances, particularly from Jean Gabin, Viviane
Romance and Charles Vanel. Gabin, who became identified as a hero of the working
classes largely as a result of his role in this film, gets to sing his most famous musical
hall ballad, the wondrously catchy "Quand on s'promène au bord de l'eau".
Although it does not always quite ring true, the film is very closely observed, conveying
a great deal about human nature. The things which unite and divide individuals is
probably what the film's central preoccupation. La Belle équipe has much
that today's more fragmented, inward-looking society can learn from - not the flawed ideology
of the Popular Front, but an example of how individuals can work together with mutual
respect to build a better world.
© James Travers 2000
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Quand on s'promène au bord de l'eau
Comm' tout est beau, quel renouveau,
Paris au loin nous semble une prison,
On a le coeur plein de chansons...
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