La Horse (1970)

La Horse is a French thriller film first released in 1970, directed by Pierre Granier-Deferre.  The film is based on a novel by Michel Lambesc and stars Jean Gabin, Danièle Ajoret, Michel Barbey, Christian Barbier and Pierre Dux.  It has also been released under the title: The Horse.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


Auguste Maroilleur sits at the head of a family of traditional French farmers on a piece of land in Normandy.  He lives with his two daughters and their husbands, to whom he intends to pass on his farm when he dies.  He is outraged when he discovers that his grandson Henri is mixed up with a band of drug smugglers who are using his farm as a hiding place for illegal drugs.  When one of the drug dealers appears on his land, Auguste kills him in cold blood.  In revenge, the dead man’s comrades attack the farm, killing the livestock and raping Auguste’s granddaughter.   The old landowner refuses to bring in the police.  This is one war he intends to win by himself…

Whilst much of the last decade of Jean Gabin’s career is generally pretty lacklustre there are a few films in which the actor distinguishes himself with some pretty remarkable performances.  Foremost of these is La Horse, in which Gabin plays a character who is very much close to his own heart, a patriarchal landowner who is anchored in the ways of the past.  At the time, Gabin had settled with a substantial holding in rural Normandy and regarded himself more as a simple farmer than a film actor.  In La Horse, Gabin is at his most forceful and compelling, and the film’s impact is largely down to his impressive contribution.

La Horse was directed by Pierre Granier-Deferre who is noted for bringing gritty realism into his thrillers and film dramas, whilst rigorously expunging any trace of sentimentality.  One of his best films is Le Chat (1971), which again starred Jean Gabin in another extraordinary performance. La Horse is not, it has to be said, Granier-Deferre’s best work. Whilst the film has some magnificent set pieces (for example, the horrific scene where a herd of terrified cows is mowed down by a car), it is an awkward mixture of melodrama and conventional thriller. With all of the drama in the first half of the film, the second half feels painfully empty and concludes with a predictable and generally disappointing ending. Another cause of irritation is Serge Gainsbourg’s music, which seems to have been written for an entirely different kind of film; here it appears intrusive and grotesquely inappropriate, laughably trying to inject dramatic impact where there clearly isn’t any to be had.

© James Travers 2004

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Very good and very timely movie. It could have been shot at this very moment. The problem of La Horse (i.e. Heroin) is the same problem of today. I think Jean Gabin was an excellent artist.
Aad Wolffers (Holland) 

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