Au grand balcon (1949)
Directed by Henri Decoin

Film Review

The immense popularity of Jean Grémillion's Le Ciel est à vous (1943) was no doubt the cause of a short-lived craze for aviation-themed melodramas that hit French cinema in the late 1940s, early 1950s, presumably as a substitute for the action war films that audiences craved but which directors were apparently reluctant to make in the immediate aftermath of WWII.  Au grand balcon exemplifies this kind of trashy crowdpleaser, one of Henri Decoin's more flagrant attempts to cash in on a passing trend and make a typically bad job of it.  Technically it is not a bad film, but its wafer-thin characterisation, dawdling pace and lack of a worthwhile narrative (to say nothing of the blatant piece of propaganda for Air France at the top of the film) hardly make it a classic.

The film was scripted (with a noticeable dearth of both flair and imagination) by Joseph Kessel, whose own aeronautically themed novel L'Équipage is many times more involving, although this had already been adapted twice for cinema - by Maurice Tourneur in 1928 and then by Anatole Litavak in 1935.  Kessel's attempts to make us interested in a group of mail delivery boys (which is effectively all they are, and a bland, uninteresting lot at that) fail spectacularly, even when one of these valiant men of the sky is played by someone as charismatic and likeable as Georges Marchal, Jean Marais's butch French screen rival of the period.

Marchal was at home in the French action movie and rarely disappointed in full-on swashbucklers such as André Hunebelle's Les Trois mousquetaires (1953), where he made a superb D'Artagnan.  He also excelled in a number of straight dramas, in particular Luis Buñuel's Cela s'appelle l'aurore (1955).  In Au grand balcon, all the actor is required to do is look suitably tough and heroic, which would have been fine if Kessel had at least made some attempt to give his character some depth and charm in addition to these noble qualities.  Saddled with a weak script, Marchal looks as wooden and uninteresting as he was capable of being, although Pierre Fresnay very nearly trounces him with a performance that is best described as pure cardboard.

At this stage in his career, Henri Decoin had almost given up trying to be a serious film director.  Having helmed a series of dark and innovative dramas throughout the 1940s - Les Inconnus dans la maison (1942), Le Bienfaiteur (1942), Non coupable (1947) - and toyed with neo-realism - La Fille du diable (1946), Les Amants du pont Saint-Jean (1947) - inspiration was fast deserting him by the end of the decade.  Au grand balcon marks the beginning of his gradual decline into mediocrity, although there were one or two impressive works still to come: La Vérité sur Bébé Donge (1951), Razzia sur la chnouf (1955) and La Chatte (1958).

Film Synopsis

In 1920, Gilbert Carbot manages a small aviation company in Toulouse which he is eager to expand.  To that end, he takes on several new recruits, airmen who served in the last war, one of these being Jean Fabien.  The pilots find accommodation at Le Grand Balcon, a boarding house run by two kind spinster sisters, Adeline and Françoise.  Fabien is the best of Carbot's pilots, but there exists between the two men a mutual distrust.  Carbot 's cold detachment and reluctance to enter into friendly relations with his employees begins to trouble Fabien, especially after a colleague of his is killed in the course of one of his errands.  Morale amongst the pilots sinks even lower when Fabien himself goes missing, but is miraculously saved after crashing his plane.  The news of Fabien's rescue provides some welcome publicity for Carbot, who is quick to exploit this to his advantage.  But further tragedy is in store when the youngest pilot, who happens to be Adeline and Françoise's beloved nephew, is killed.  Fabien is convinced that his employer had something to do with his death...