Le Trésor de Cantenac (1950)
Directed by Sacha Guitry

Film Review

For Le Trésor de Cantenac, a rare departure into whimsical fairytale, Sacha Guitry adopts a similar style of storytelling to his earlier Le Roman d'un tricheur (1936).  For the most part, the film resembles a silent film, with Guitry narrating large chunks of the story with a characteristically tongue-in-cheek voiceover.  The film's rural setting and colourful cast of characters (played by actors whom Guitry takes a full six minutes to introduce in a lengthy preamble) would be more at home in the oeuvre of Marcel Pagnol, and there's a curiously Chaplinesque feel to the tone and style of the film.  The sympathetic idiot who provides much of the humour looks more like a Chaplin creation, as does the mischievous centenarian played so memorably by Marcel Simon.  The seriousness and scathing wit of Guitry's previous films are entirely absent here and, as you watch this engaging little modern fable, you can't help wondering what prompted the director to make it.

For a French cinema audience keen to put behind it the privations of the 1940s, Le Trésor de Cantenac would have been a welcome piece of escapism. It is the story of a world-weary baron who finds a fortune and uses it to revive a derelict village.  On his arrival in the village which bears his name, the baron finds an unhappy place where nothing ever happens and no one has a kind word to say about anyone else.  The chance discovery of a lost family fortune allows the baron to revitalise the village and bring an end to years of disharmony between the villagers.  The film leaves us with the baron taking up the trade of his illustrious forebear, a glass-blower, and the whole community apparently united by bonhomie and mutual respect.

On the face of it, it's not the kind of scenario you'd expect Guitry to be inclined to come up with, let alone turn into a full-length film.  Rather than tell the story he presumably wanted to tell, Guitry resorts to the kind of allegorical subterfuge that was not unknown amongst other filmmakers during the Occupation.  Le Trésor de Cantenac does a fairly convincing job of passing itself off as an innocuous piece of fun but its real purpose is for its author to firmly assert his intention to continue in his chosen craft, unbeaten by the slew of misfortunes that befell him in the latter half of the 1940s. 

Branded a collaborator immediately after the Liberation, Guitry had spent two months in prison.  He did not receive a formal acquittal until 1947, by which time his reputation was badly tarnished, and his health and morale suffered as a result.  When he started making films again, a darker, more introspective Guitry is apparent, and when he tackled comedy it was usually with a bitter edge.   It may have been a sudden awareness of his own mortality that led him to make Le Comédien (1948), a homage to his father, and in Le Diable boiteux (1948) Guitry likens himself to Talleyrand, the misunderstood historical personage who devoted his life to serving France in the 18th and 19th centuries, only to be remembered as a political turncoat.  Likewise, Le Trésor de Cantenac sees Guitry playing a character, a philanthropic baron, who is clearly intended to be a model of himself.

When we are introduced to the baron at the start of the film, he is a worn-out and impoverished old man who knows he has outlived his usefulness.  Alone and forgotten, he is about to put a bullet in his heart when he sees a picture of a village which awakens feelings of nostalgia within him.  Of course, the unhappy village of Cantenac is intended to represent France, a nation that now lacks pride and unity after being put through its most shameful and demoralising decade.  By playing the benevolent baron who changes an unhappy village for the better, Guitry imagines himself as his country's redeemer, proud in his intent to devote what remains of his life to the glory of France.  Just as the baron returns to the trade of his forebears, so Guitry resumes the métier he was born for, unscathed and seemingly unbothered by the slings and arrows of his outrageous detractors.  Guitry's self-confidence would soon turn out to be justified.  Some of his most ambitious and most popular works were yet to come.

Film Synopsis

After losing everything he possesses, an old baron has just one wish before he dies, to see the village of his forebears, Cantenac.  Many centuries ago, one of the baron's ancestors constructed a magnificent castle in the village, creating a happy little community as he did so.  Since the Revolution, the castle is no more and the inhabitants of the village live separate lives, contemptuous and mistrustful of each other.  The only thing of any significance to happen in Cantenac these days is the death of one of the unhappy villagers.  On his arrival in the village, the baron meets a hundred-year-old man who admits to being the custodian of a vast treasure which belonged to the baron's noble forebears.  It is the baron who is now the rightful owner of the treasure, but rather than keep it for himself he decides to use it for the benefit of the villagers.  His ambition to build a magnificent house brings prosperity to Catnenac, ending the animosities and petty rivalries that have endured for so long...