Le Fils (1973)
Directed by Pierre Granier-Deferre

Film Review

In the early-to-mid 1970s, Yves Montand's screen career was at its apogee, with eminent film directors queuing up to make use of his talents, whilst profiting from his status as an icon of French cinema.  After demonstrating his versatility in a range of dramatic and comedic roles for Jean-Pierre Melville (Le Cercle rouge), Gérard Oury (La Folie des grandeurs) and Jean-Luc Godard (Tout va bien), the actor was a natural shoe-in for the role of the world-weary ex-hoodlum who falls foul of a Corsican vendetta in Le Fils, the ninth feature directed by Pierre Granier-Deferre.

A fairly typical kind of French thriller for its time, Le Fils was Granier-Deferre's second foray into the genre, the first being his earlier collaboration with Jean Gabin, La Horse (1970).  What these two films have in common is their unbearable sustained tension, an unrelenting sense of anticipation which, after an agonisingly slow build-up, is paid of explosively in the final act.  In this respect, Le Fils can't help reminding us of Montand's earlier great film, Le Salaire de la peur (1953).

The lead actor's well-worn features and naturally introspective persona, coupled with an aura of battle-hardened resilience, make him well-suited to play a jaded gangster boss who is suddenly confronted with his murky past and his own mortality.  As in Le Cercle rouge, Montand's portrayal has far more substance to it than the conventional gangster stereotype, and as the film develops his character acquires ever great depth and complexity.  Le Fils may not be one of the actor's most memorable films, but his performance must surely rate as one of his finest.
 
The film's fairly anodyne B-movie plot is somewhat less impressive and lacks the sophistication and dramatic thrust of similar French thrillers of this period.  The characters, who include a pair of homicidal property developers, are thinly sketched and the ending is, sad to say, painfully predictable.  Whilst the thriller plot strand offers few surprises, a secondary storyline, which focuses on Montand's re-acquaintance with his former girlfriend and family, is more substantial and far better realised, injecting a dose of humanity that the film badly needs.  Le Fils is pretty tame compared with Pierre Granier-Deferre's other noteworthy films - La Métamorphose des cloportes (1965), Le Chat (1971) and La Veuve Couderc (1971) - but it holds your attention and allows Yves Montand to once again demonstrate his remarkable range as an actor.

Film Synopsis

Ange Orahona is a renowned gangster who decides to take a break from his criminal exploits in New York and returns to his rural hometown of Montemaggiore on the island of Corsica.  When he arrives he is surprised to find that his mother is on her deathbed and that his former girlfriend, Maria, has married his younger brother, Baptiste.  Ange's nostalgic reunion with his happy past is abruptly curtailed by the discovery that his father was shot dead a few months earlier.  No one in the locality seems willing  to talk about the killing, except to say that it was a hunting accident.  Ange's intuition that foul play was involved in his father's death appears to be confirmed when he realises that he is being trailed by two suspicious-looking men.  Before he knows it, he finds himself the next target in a deadly vendetta ...