Le Garçon sauvage (1951)
Directed by Jean Delannoy

Film Review

In one of Jean Delannoy's more controversial films, the Oedipus complex serves as the main driver in a dangerous love triangle in which an emotionally fragile young boy competes for his mother's attention with her good-for-nothing lover.  Adapted from Edouard Peisson's 1950 novel of the same title, Le Garçon sauvage gave a tremendous boost to the career of its lead actress Madeleine Robinson, here cast against type as a selfish, middle-aged prostitute, and marked an auspicious screen debut for 12-year-old Pierre-Michel Beck, who gives the film a potent authenticity with his portrayal of Robinson's 'wild child' offspring.  After this, Beck would appear in just two more films, taking the lead role of a similar precocious youngster in Claude Autant-Lara's Le Blé en herbe (1954), before giving up acting altogether.

Later in the decade, Jean Delannoy would become the bête noire of firebrand critic François Truffaut, and so it is strange that Truffaut's own film about childhood rebellion, Les 400 coups (1959), should have such a strong resonance with Delannoy's Le Garçon sauvage.  Delannoy's film is far less appreciated today than Truffaut's but its depiction of the traumas and injustices of childhood is just as engaging, and arguably more perceptive.  Simon's gradual awakening to his mother's infallibility ought to diminish his love for her, but it doesn't.  His love for the mother who abandoned him after he was born and neglects him after she resumes her life with him is unconditional, so he directs his loathing elsewhere, towards the unworthy rival he sees in her lover - an odious lout who passes off forged banknotes and openly carries on an affair with another woman.  The characters in Le Garçon sauvage have a depth and tragic reality that make those in Truffaut's film appear shallow.

Whilst it is hard to fault the performances (Madeleine Robinson is particularly praiseworthy, excelling in one of her most nuanced character portrayals), it is Henri Jeanson's script to which the film owes its psychological depth and narrative power.  That tendency that adults have to ignore children in their presence is pointedly referenced in a few memorable scenes, such as the one where Marie appeals to her lover to return to her whilst being totally oblivious to the presence of her son, who has just returned to her after a suicide attempt.   Delannoy was never a sentimentalist, so the film never becomes mawkish and, as a result, it engages with the spectator's feelings at a much deeper level.  Truffaut's portrayals of childhood are tame compared with what Delannoy presents in this film and in his later, even more provocative, coming-of-age piece, Les Amitiés particulières (1964).

Film Synopsis

Marie earns a comfortable living working as a prostitute in the French port of Marseilles.  Now that she has some stability in her life, she decides to take charge of her twelve-year old son Simon, whom she has placed in the care of kindly shepherd.   At first, Simon is overjoyed to be reunited with the mother whom he worships.  But the boy's delight soon turns to dismay when he realises how she derives her income.  He is even more disgusted by her current boyfriend, Paul, a drunken layabout who seems to be invested with the worst of human vices...