La Cage aux rossignols (1945) - film review

Clément Mathieu has written a book, La Cage aux Rossignols, which recounts his recent experiences as a teacher in a typical French boys’ school.  Having tried, in vain, to get the book published Mathieu succeeds in persuading a friend to print it in the newspaper he works for.  The story he tells moves the thousands of people who read it, but it has most impact on the woman who is shortly to be his wife.  In the 1930s, Clément Mathieu took up a teaching post at a school run with an iron fist by the authoritarian headmaster Monsieur Rachin.  Despite the brutal way in which the pupils are treated, they are undisciplined and waste no time trying to make Mathieu’s life a misery.   But Mathieu refuses to counter the boys’ unruliness with violence and abuse.  Instead, he gains their respect and affection by treating them with kindness and dignity, as though they were human beings, not animals.  He teaches the boys to sing and, within a few weeks, the untidy rabble has become a chorus of angels.  Despite this success, Mathieu is dismissed when he infringes one of the school rules.  The irony is that if he had adhered to the rules many of the youngsters under his charge would have perished in a fire.  But rules are to be obeyed...

Although it is often overlooked today and is virtually unheard of outside France, La Cage aux rossignols was one of the most successful French films of the 1940s.  Attracting an audience of over five million, it was the most popular French film to be seen in France in 1945, the year following the Liberation.  It was even more successful than Les Enfants du paradis, the other big hit of the year.  These two films could hardly be more different, yet both have the same subtext which could not have failed to inspire a nation emerging from the yoke of Nazi occupation.  Both films are about the triumph of humanity over tyranny and perfectly fitted the zeitgeist, with a nation reborn and looking forward to a better future.  The two films were equal recipients of the Prix Désiré, which was intended to be the French equivalent of the Oscars (in the event, only one award was ever offered).  La Cage aux rossignols also garnered an Oscar nomination for its screenplay, a rare occurrence for a French language film.

Up until the 1950s, the majority of state schools in France were run along similar lines to prisons.  Indeed, the school that we see in La Cage aux Rossignols is virtually indistinguishable from a prison, the bleak austerity of the building matched by the unfeeling severity of the school regime – not the most congenial of places to instill knowledge and civic values into youngsters.   The education reforms which began in the 1950s came about largely as a result of the pioneering work carried out a various educational establishments in the previous two decades.  One of these, the Ker Goat school, used innovative teaching methods, including the use of music, to counter juvenile delinquency.  It was the success of the Ker Goat initiative that provided the inspiration for La Cage aux Rossignols, which would be remade as Les Choristes almost sixty years later.

Although somewhat dated by its modest production values, La Cage aux Rossignols is an engaging film that still has an impact.  It effectively makes the point that children thrive better in an environment of mutual respect, where they are encouraged to develop their individual talents, rather than one in which they are brutalised and subjected to inflexible rules administered by unthinking automata with fascistic tendencies.  Reminiscent of the Ken Loach film Kes (1970), this is a film that has great social significance and is one that all educationalists, and indeed anyone who has the privilege of rearing children, should see.  The film may appear somewhat idealistic, especially in our hardnosed cynical age, but its underlying messages (of tolerance and respect towards the young) are still ones that our society could benefit from hearing and acting upon.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?