Film Review
Adapted from a play by Pierre Brasseur and Marcel Dalio,
Grisou feels heavily laden with the
poetic realist pessimism of Marcel Carné's films but it was in
fact directed by a far less significant filmmaker, Maurice de Canonge,
who spent most of his career directing bland populist fare such as
Dernière heure, édition
spéciale (1949) and
Boum
sur Paris (1954). Had Carné directed the film
it would doubtless have been a far more substantial, and possibly far
grimmer work, but Canonge does a reasonably good job, bringing genuine
feeling and urgency to a somewhat staid and predictable melodrama.
Although they get top billing, Pierre Brasseur and Madeleine Robinson
do the film few favours - Brasseur is wildly over the top, Robinson
unconvincing as the archetypal 'bad woman' (Viviane Romance would have
been a far better choice). On the acting front, it is Raymond
Aimos who steals the show, so true to life that you'd swear he'd spent
his entire life chewing coal dust at the bottom of a mine shaft.
One of the great character actors of French cinema, Aimos had a knack
of fitting so comfortably into the setting of a film that you can
hardly imagine him in any other place. Who can forget his
'Tintin' in Duvivier's
La Belle équipe (1936)
or Quart Vittel in Carné's
Le Quai des brumes
(1938)? Whilst Aimos contributes most to the film's realism and
poignancy, and makes most of the rest of the cast pretty redundant,
Odette Joyeux deserves a passing mention (although married to Brasseur
in real life, she plays his sister in the film), along with an
instantly likeable Bernard Blier at the start of his career.
Another notable name in the cast is Lucien Gallas, who famously owned a
cabaret frequented by German soldiers during the Occupation - something
that had grave consequences for both him and his partner, Ginette
Leclerc, after the Liberation.
Filmed partly on location at a functioning mine in the northern French
town of Lens, with ample footage of mine workings,
Grisou has a raw documentary feel
that ties in well with the fictional drama. The title translates
as 'firedamp', the flammable gas that is one of the main perils of
underground mining, as is apparent in the film's most dramatic sequence
depicting a succession of firedamp explosions in the mine.
Grisou doesn't quite have the
searing impact of other mine-themed dramas, such as G.W. Pabst's
Kameradschaft
(1931) and Carol Reed's
The Stars Look Down (1940), but
it is an effective testimony to the fraternity among miners and the
appalling dangers of their profession.
In 1942, during the Occupation, the film was re-released in France as
Les Hommes sans soleil (presumably
because its portrait of the noble proletarian chimed with
Pétainist sentiment), but with one notable change. In
1940, the Vichy government had set up the Comité d'Organisation
des Industries du Cinéma (COIC, the forerunner of the Centre
National de la Cinématographie) to regulate France's film
industry. Part of the COIC's remit was to issue professional
identity cards that effectively barred Jews from working in the
industry. For existing films, scenes with Jewish actors were
excised and the names of any Jews removed from the credits. The
extent of this is powerfully brought home when you watch the
'sanitised' opening credits for
Grisou
- excluding the cast, about half of the names appear to be blacked out,
including that of Marcel Dalio, one of the film's authors.
© James Travers 2015
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
In a mining town in the north of France, the women lead dull,
uneventful lives whilst their sons and husbands eke out a modest
existence, slaving all day in dangerous conditions in the mines.
Hagenauer and Demuysère are two miners who, through the hazards
of their job, have become the closest of friends. When Hagenauer
is injured in a rockfall, Demuysère insists that he recuperates
in his house, cared for by his wife, La Loute. Little does
Demuysère know that La Loute is tired of her life and longs to
run away to start over again. Mistaking La Loute's interest in
him for love, Hagenauer becomes fiercely jealous when he suspects she
is having an affair with Tony, who manages the pit office. In
fact, Tony is interested in Hagenauer's sister,
Madeleine...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.