Les Patates (1969) - film review

France, 1942.  During the Nazi Occupation, the Ardennes falls in the "forbidden zone" between the German Occupied North and the Vichy governed South.  Its inhabitants face starvation as movement of people and supplies into the area are strictly controlled.  To save his family, Clovis risks his life crossing the boundary to get hold of potatoes which he intends to plant in a patch of unused land.  Knowing that his family’s survival depends on the success of his scheme, Clovis becomes increasingly obsessed with his crop of potatoes…

In the twilight of his career, director Claude Autant-Lara returned to the subject of one of his earlier great films, La Traversée de Paris (1956).  Both films portray life under Nazi occupation with a curious mixture of harsh realism and wry humour, and both provide an uncompromising testimony of the hardship and humiliation endured by most ordinary French people at that time.  Although Les Patates is a modest work in comparison with Autant-Lara’s earlier achievements, it is not without its charms.  When it was first released, the director’s popularity had waned considerably (thanks largely to negative press from the reactionaries on Les Cahiers du cinéma, Truffaut et al.), and the film was ridiculed by the critics, somewhat unfairly.

© James Travers 2007

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