Film Review
For a man who is probably the most revered in France in living memory,
i.e. Abbé Pierre, it is unfortunate that his name should be
associated with two mediocre films which do not even begin to do
justice to his achievements, let alone his complex personality.
Robert Darène's
Les Chiffonniers d'Emmaüs
(1955) suffers from being too reverential and sentimental, but this is
a far more palatable proposition than Denis Amar's even more sickly
Hiver 54, l'abbé, which
starts from the assumption that Abbé Pierre is a living saint
(which, at the time the film was made, was pretty well the case).
The casting of Lambert Wilson as Abbé Pierre is the latter
film's one touch of genius, and Wilson repays the honour by turning in
one of the most respectable performances of his career (one that earned
him his third César nomination). Wilson, unlike the
director, instinctively knew how to pitch the film and portrays
Abbé Pierre not as a beatified superhero but as an ordinary man
of the people, driven by an extraordinary compassion for his fellow man.
Unfortunately, Wilson is alone in his striving for historical
authenticity. Director Denis Amar is more concerned with knocking
up what looks suspiciously like a kitsch 1980s homage to Marcel
Carné's idea of poetic-realism, an effect that is totally ruined
by some over-ambitious camera set-ups and a lack of restraint in just
about every department. Claudia Cardinale's scene-stealing
presence in what ought to be a low-key drama immediately signifies that
something is wrong, and this impression is merely confirmed when not
one hint of subtlety is detected in any of the performances (Lambert
excluded). It doesn't help that the script is unbearably tacky in
places, so mechanical and so stuffed with clichés that you
wonder if a human being ever went anywhere near it. The film is
as theatrical as it is shallow.
Today
Hiver 54, l'abbé Pierre
looks unbearably twee and dated but, when it was first released in
1989, with Abbé Pierre a national hero in France, it was one of
the big box office hits of the year, attracting an audience of around
two million. It is worth watching the film to remind ourselves of
its protagonist's achievements and the remarkable media coup he managed
to pull off in the long cold winter of 1954, but as a piece of cinema it
leaves much to be desired - a pitifully mishandled tribute to someone
who surely ranks as one of great humanists of the 20th century.
© James Travers 2014
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Film Synopsis
France, 1954. With the country's economy still in a parlous state
since the end of the Second World War, housing is not the government's
number one priority. As a result, homelessness has attained
epidemic proportions, with whole families of poor people forced to live
on the streets. In the winter months, as the temperature plummets
to minus fifteen degrees, it is not unusual for some of these
unfortunates to freeze to death. Abbé Pierre is the one
man in France who is committed to bringing an end to this scandalous
state of affairs. He accommodates as many people as he can in his
large house in Neuilly and has founded a charity, Emmaus, which raises
money to help the homeless. The death of a baby goads Abbé
Pierre into writing an open letter to the minister of housing.
When this gets him nowhere, he makes an historic appeal on Radio
Luxembourg and achieves far more than he could ever have hoped for...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.