Uranus (1990)

Uranus is a French film comedy-drama first released in 1990, directed by Claude Berri.  The film is based on a novel by Marcel Aymé and stars Michel Blanc, Gérard Depardieu, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Philippe Noiret and Gérard Desarthe.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


Little by little, normality returns to a small French town after World War II.  The town is as scarred by the petty recriminations between its inhabitants as by the very evident signs of bombings.  Dr Archambaud shares his apartment with those whose own homes were destroyed in the bombing – the idealistic schoolteacher Watrin, who sees nothing bad in human nature, and Gaigneux, a militant Communist.  With his school in ruins, Watrin is forced to give his lessons in a café owned by the alcoholic Léopold, who discovers an ardent passion for poetry.  Abused by Léopold, Rochard, a Communist railway worker, resolves to have his revenge.    He gets his chance when he learns that someone in the town is sheltering a former collaborator, Maxime Loin.  Rochard denounces Léopold to the police, who waste no time throwing him in jail.  In fact Loin is in the care of Dr Archambaud, who fears the consequences for his family if ever the police should learn the truth...

Based on a controversial 1948 novel by the eminent writer Marcel Aymé, Uranus exposes some unpalatable truths about France’s experiences under Nazi Occupation.  Contrary to the popular notion that everyone bar a handful of nasty collaborators was a resistance fighter who spent all day blowing up trains of Nazi convoys, Uranus tells a very different story, one which is far nearer the truth.  

Whilst Claude Berri’s adaptation doesn’t quite do justice to the original novel, with most of the characters reduced to eccentric caricatures, it does get its message across very effectively.  The post-war purges, which saw hundreds of French men and women executed for alleged collaboration, may not have been on the same scale as the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis, but they are equally as shameful - particularly when many thousands of collaborators switched sides as soon as it became clear where the war was going to end.  

Uranus is a poignant and thought-provoking period drama which offers an insight into a dark period of French history which the French would prefer to forget.  A lavish production, its main pleasure are the deliciously bravura performances from some of French cinemas greatest actors, including Gérard Depardieu and Philippe Noiret.

© James Travers 2009


Claude Berri’s Uranus examines how the inhumane conditions of life can make the human soul crumble, deform and deteriorate.  The film returns us to France at the end of WW2 but draws analogies with life today in Europe and the US whilst depicting how the intensification of economic fight and socio-political hatred can have a devastating influence on the morality of the population, be it during wartime or so-called peaceful times.  Berri makes us observe that when war ends it continues - more, it intensifies and multiplies.  Uranus fully resonates with experiences of Americans today, who have for years lived amidst multiple wars of different kinds - wars in which soldiers and civilians are killed, and also economic, political and cultural wars within the US.

Berri offers a classification of the types of psychological degradation that occur when people in the face of death, impoverishment and uncertainty regress to hate and start to betray and fight one another in a more and more unrestricted fashion.  Berri provides a typology of the members of the French Communist party who use their ideology to justify their hate and mistrust, of individuals with rightwing ideologies who try to keep their power over the population intact, and of intelligent and educated people who try to neutralize their inhumane impulses with attempts to keep human decency.

The film elaborately criticizes both collaborationists and communists: Berri sees the same moral and psychological degradation in both mutually antagonistic camps involved into a hateful fight for the unconditional victory of their side.  The film is acted with exceptional emotional power and diagnostic eloquence in describing human characters trapped in impossible situations. The depiction of the murder of Leopold - the pub owner (Gérard Depardieu) by the police - (according to the suggestion of multibillionaire Monblat) is one of the best-acted scenes in the history of intellectual cinema.

© Victor Enyutin (Seattle, US) 2012

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This is a chapter of post-war French history which many Frenchmen prefer to neglect.  In contrast to what they want us to believe, most countrymen were not members of the Resistance, committing acts of sabotage everyday against the Nazi occupiers.  Claude Berri makes a distinction between Communists and Socialists, between collaborators and war profiteers. As life in this destroyed town gradually gets back to normal, many of the inhabitants still have a score to settle and this cannot be accomplished without bloodshed.  Mainly due to Gérard Depardieu’s overwhelming performance as a landlord who drinks and fights and now reaches a phase in which poems constantly come to his mind, this is a most remarkable film. Next to him and just as convincing is Philippe Noiret as a romantic dreamer who believes in every man’s goodness and who keeps watching the stars.
Martin Zopick (Würzburg, Germany)

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