Le Cinéma de papa (1970)
Directed by Claude Berri

Film Review

Le Cinéma de papa is the most heartfelt and mostly shamelessly sentimental entry in the series of strongly autobiographical films that Claude Berri made early in his career, many years before he garnered worldwide acclaim for his overblown blockbusters as Jean de Florette (1986) and Germinal (1993).  An affectionate, albeit deeply nostalgic, portrayal of family life, this film is less about the young Berri discovering his vocation in life and more about his intense and ambiguous relationship with his father.  Indeed, Berri almost allows himself to be reduced to a supporting character, his father - magnificently portrayed by Yves Robert - taking centre stage for most of the film.  With three full-length films and an Oscar-winning short already under his belt, Berri was by now a confident filmmaker, popular with both critics and audiences.  François Truffaut was especially fulsome in his praise for Le Cinéma de papa, maybe because it chimed with his own earlier Les 400 coups (1959) and revealed in its author a kindred spirit - an introverted man who was passionately devoted to cinema and who was obsessed with his parental influence.

Picking up where Berri's earlier Le Vieil homme et l'enfant (1967) left off, the adorable child actor Alain Cohen reprises his role as Berri (bearing his real name Claude Langmann) in his early teens for the first part of the film, which has the young Berri living out his own version of Les 400 coups, giving up on school so that he can nurture his burgeoning passion for cinema to his father's inconsolable dismay.  It is a portrait of childhood that is as tender as it is brutal, and in one scene we are shocked when the young Berri is badly beaten up by his (justifiably provoked) father.  Half an hour in, the story fast-forwards to the late 1950s, with a now grown-up Berri (played by the man himself) trying hopelessly to live his dream, supported by an over-indulgent father who hasn't the heart to force his infantile offspring into getting himself a proper job.  Our sympathies lie more with the hardworking furrier struggling to support his family than with the layabout son who spends most of his time in a fluffy daydream.  If Berri had had a less supportive father not only would his personal history have been very different, but French cinema of the 1980s through to the 2000s might have altered beyond recognition, robbed of such diverse and cherished offerings as Trois places pour le 26  (1988), La Reine Margot (1994), Astérix & Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre (2002) and Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (2008).  French film fans owe a great deal to Hirsch Langmann and it is fitting that his son should offer up this tribute to him.

Berri's early humorous mishaps as an actor preoccupy a fair chunk of the film's middle section and here he comes across as a Gallic Mr Bean, destined to fail at everything he turns his hand to.  After suffering the indignity of being thrown into a river, he is summarily ejected from one film set because of his inability to speak English.  A Chaplinesque pathos accompanies Berri as his amorous escapades end as dismally as his attempts to break into cinema and you wonder how someone who is so congenitally useless and unlucky could ever end up as one of France's most commercially successful film directors and producers.  It is ultimately Berri's love for his father, and equivalently his father's love for him, that redeems him and sets him on the right road after countless false starts.  As happened in real life, Berri and his father are seen working together on a script which would ultimately see the light of day as the film we are watching.

The two men's separate attempts at re-writing history (they clearly do not share the same memory of events) send the film off in a weird direction with conflicting realities causing us to wonder whether we should take any part of the film seriously, but what emerges is how utterly devoted to each other the son and father were.  Berri not only adored his father, he absolutely idolised him, evidenced by his determination to have him play his larger-than-life self in Le Cinéma de papa.  Alas, Langmann Senior died before this dream could be realised, providing the film with a much more poignant ending than its author had originally intended.  Before choosing Yves Robert to play his father, Berri approached several other actors for the role, including Louis de Funès and Peter Ustinov - a measure perhaps of how highly he regarded the person who had the greatest influence on him and made it possible for him to pursue his dream right through to the end.

Film Synopsis

In 1946, 12-year-old Claude Langmann lives with his parents, Jewish immigrants, and newborn sister Arlette in a busy district of Paris.  He is already experiencing the pains of early adolescence, although this is eased by his growing love of cinema.  His father Hirsch, the owner of a thriving fur business, has high hopes that he will make a success of his life, but Claude has no aptitude for schoolwork and fails his end of primary school exam.  Whilst working as an apprentice for his father, Claude nurtures ambitions of becoming a great actor, like his idol Jean Marais, but twelve years on he is still living with his parents and still waiting for the film role that will make him a star.  Acting seems not to be Claude's metier, so he decides instead to become a theatre producer, with money supplied by his father and his father's friends to mount a production of a stage play by an unknown writer.  It proves to be yet another calamity, but shortly afterwards Claude has his moment of epiphany.  He will tell the story of his life, emphasising his recent amorous disappointments, in a film in which he will play himself.  The script appeals to one producer, but Claude is none too pleased when the lead role is given to a more experienced and better looking actor.  Bruised but not beaten by this latest comedown, Claude then comes up with his masterstroke: he will write a film devoted to his father.  Just when the young man is confident of success, tragedy strikes...