Gribiche (1926)
Directed by Jacques Feyder

Film Review

No filmmaker directed children better than Jacques Feyder, and the truth of this is at once apparent in Gribiche, a film so authentic in its expression of the trauma of early adolescence that it almost makes François Truffaut's Les 400 coups (1959) appear heavy-handed and mawkish by comparison.  Gribiche was first screened in France a year after the silent film for which Feyder is most widely revered, Visages d'enfants (1925), another intensely involving film that evokes the cruelties of life from a child's keenly felt perspective.  Before this, Feyder had made another film with a prominent child protagonist, Crainquebille (1922).  In each of these three films, the pivotal child character was played by Jean Forest, and it is his performance, sensitively moulded by Feyder, a man with a privileged insight into the mysteries of child psychology, that imbues them with such charm, truth and poignancy.

Jean Forest was just nine years old when Feyder found him by chance playing in the streets of Montmartre in Paris.  The charismatic, waif-like little boy was a gift to celluloid - a picture of angelic innocence one moment, the model of impish mischief the next - and he was perfect for the role of the urchin La Souris in Feyder's 1922 film Crainquebille.  The director had no qualms over giving him the central role in two subsequent films.  Gribiche was the last time that Feyder and Forest worked together (the collaboration was not an entirely happy one), although they remained close friends for many years afterwards.  With the onset of adolescence, Forest's career soon petered out and he ultimately turned his back on cinema in the mid-1930s.  After this, he pursued a long and very successful career on radio.   

Visages d'enfants may have been a critical triumph for Feyder but the film struggled to find an audience.  Its failure at the French box office added to the impression that Feyder was a profligate filmmaker who lacked the common touch - earlier successes (L'Atlantide, Crainquebille) did little to arrest the career decline of a director who had started out with so much promise.  It was in the wake of another failure - L'Image (a.k.a. Das Bildnis) (1923) - that Feyder accepted an invitation to work for Alexandre Kamenka, a successful financier who had founded his own film studio in Paris, Albatros, expressly for Russian émigrés fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution.  When several of his leading Russian filmmakers (Victor Tourjansky, Alexandre Volkoff) deserted him, Kamenka began hiring prominent members of the French avant-garde who were struggling financially.  As well as Feyder, Albatros benefited from the genius of Jean Epstein (Le Lion des Mogols), Marcel L'Herbier (Feu Mathias Pascal) and René Clair (Un chapeau de paille d'Italie).

Based on a novel of the same title by Frédéric Boutet, Gribiche was the first - and easily the best - of the three films that Feyder made for Albatros.  For a studio that was renowned for its lavish productions, the film was made fairly economically (apparently it was shot in just thirty days and fifteen nights) and yet it made a healthy return - enough to give Kamenka the confidence to allow Feyder to embark on another of his mad extravaganzas, Carmen (1926).  This, cinema's most overblown adaptation of Prosper Merimée's famous story, proved to be a spectacular failure, and after one more film - Les Nouveaux messieurs (1929) - Feyder left Alabtros and was soon on his way to Hollywood.

Whether it was Kamenka's tight control over the purse strings or Feyder's grudging acceptance of the need to make a film more like to find favour with the cinema-going public, Gribiche is certainly a film of limited ambition, but its simplicity and modesty are what make it one of Feyder's most enchanting films.  In the hands of a lesser director, this could have been a routine melodrama or a trite farce, but Feyder, coming at it from his customary humane, moralist angle, turns Boutet's slight novel into an effective mix of social satire and modern fable, making light of that oft-repeated adage that 'the road to Hell is paved with good intentions' whilst warning us of the threat posed by society philanthropists and their supposed 'good deeds'.

Gribiche wasn't just intended as a vehicle for the captivating child prodigy Jean Forest.  It was also to serve as a springboard for Feyder's wife, Françoise Rosay, who was now keen to make a career as an actress having already appeared as an extra in several films.  With her natural matriarchal bearing and aristocratic coolness, Rosay was perfectly suited to play the dubious benefactress Madame Maranet, and her performance achieves precisely the right balance of humour and gravity.  After this impressive debut, other directors were soon beating a path to Rosay's door to make use of her formidable acting talents - and Feyder himself cast her in the lead role or a substantial supporting role in many subsequent films, including Le Grand Jeu (1934), Pension Mimosas (1935) and La Kermesse héroïque (1935).

It is a credit to Rosay's performance that her character turns out to be anything but the naive caricature that is initially presented to us.  At first, Madame Maranet strikes us as the living embodiment of that breed of compulsive do-gooder that is obsessed with inflicting its narrow idea of generosity on humanity, heedless of the misery and confusion caused along the way.  How we cringe when the Maranet menace snatches a little boy from his devoted mother and imprisons him in her cathedral-sized mansion, not only forcing him into the most ridiculous clothes (which make him look like a pint-sized Bertie Wooster) but also inflicting on him private lessons with the most grotesque species of tutor a caricaturist can conceive.

Naturally, drunk on the moral superiority that is the main form of sustenance to the pathologically self-righteous, Madame Maranet cannot resist boasting about this sublime act of generosity to her society friends.  Every time she recounts the tale of how she rescued poor bedraggled Antoine from the gutter and made him a proper little gentleman the story becomes increasingly embellished, until it finally ends up as the most farfetched of third-rate melodramas (Feyder clearly takes a cruel delight in mocking his cinematic forebears).  Yet, terrible though Madame Maranet is, Rosay never allows us to dislike her, or even to see her merely as a figure of fun.  Rather, what emerges is a poor misguided woman who gets to realise the error of her ways, her humanity winning out over her vanity in the end.  Feyder's faith in human nature ultimately prevails over his cynicism.

In a similar vein, Antoine's mother Anna scarcely conforms to the melodramatic archetype and, far from being the martyred mother, a more believable character soon comes to the fore.  Whilst a few fleeting shots betray Anna's understandable distress at the prospect of losing her son to a stranger, it is apparent that this is something she must accept for his own good.  Within no time, she is getting on with her life - the absence of a son is quickly relieved by the acquisition of a good-looking fiancé and husband.  Anna is simply doing what most people would do in her predicament - just making the best of the hand that fate deals her.

And then there is Antoine, the most baffling of the three main protagonists.  When he first enters the picture, he is a suspicious cove. From the way his hungry, cat-like eyes furtively peer around a busy department  you'd swear he was a shoplifter - or worse.  But then he does something totally surprising - he shows himself to be a beacon of virtue.  A few minutes later, he is abandoning his mother and hooking up with a rich woman he knows nothing about.  It would be hard not to mistake sweet baby-faced Antoine for a calculating little opportunist at this point - but he soon gets us back on his side.  After being forced to re-enact the role of Mary Pickford in The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917), Antoine comes to his senses and sees that material comfort is no substitute for maternal affection.

The impression that the boy is totally out of his natural environment is taken to ludicrous extremes when he is dropped, a puny little thing in knickerbockers, into the grandest of sets -  magnificent Art Deco creations from designer Lazare Meerson (who would achieve marvels on subsequent films by Feyder and his contemporary René Clair).  Eerily presaging Truffaut's Les 400 coups (which features another wayward pre-adolescent, curiously with the same forename, rebelling against parental authority), Antoine then goes walk-about.  Alone, homeless and visibly bereft, he pounds the streets of Paris like a stray dog, his solitariness magnified to tear-jerking proportions by the revelry taking place around him.   It is only near the end of the film that the boy's secret motive for leaving his mother is revealed - and again it proves to be another case of misguided goodness.  Ah, imagine how much misery could be avoided if people gave up trying to 'do the right thing'...

Gribiche never achieves the heights of dramatic intensity of Visages d'enfant, nor is it as visually interesting, but it is just as poignant and no less memorable.  This is a much more understated and intimate piece which allows Feyder to develop further one of his favourite themes - adults' inability to understand children - as he delivers a caustic moral, gently mocking the lack of compassion in those who are driven to 'improve' society.  The subtlety of Jean Forest's performance, helped by some insightful writing and direction, makes Antoine Belot, a.k.a. Gribiche, possibly the most well-rounded and believable child protagonist to have appeared on the silver screen up until this point.  No one wrote children better than Charles Dickens, and no one filmed them better than Jacques Feyder.

Film Synopsis

12-year-old Antoine Belot, nicknamed Gribiche, lives with his mother, a war widow, in modest but comfortable lodgings in Paris.  The boy is running an errand for his mother one morning when he finds a lost purse in a crowded department store.   Dutifully, he picks up the purse and hands it over to its owner, Madame Maranet, a wealthy American widow who preoccupies herself with many worthy causes.  To the latter's surprise, Antoine refuses to accept a reward and reluctantly gives the widow his home address.  Madame Maranet later calls on Madame Belot and offers to adopt her son, promising him the best education money can buy.  The war widow allows Antoine to make up his own mind and does not protest when he opts to accept Madame Maranet's kind offer.  It isn't long before Antoine begins to hate his new life.  The routine of baths, private lessons and long walks with his governess bores him.  How he misses the companionship of other boys of his age and the affection of his devoted mother!   Most of his benefactor's servants despise him - only her chauffeur makes an effort to befriend him.  When Madame Maranet forbids him to join in the Bastille Day celebrations one evening, Antoine slips away from the mansion that has become his prison and revels in his newfound freedom.  As the night wears on, he begins to feel alone and abandoned, but then who should he meet but his mother and her new husband...