Film Review
Director Joseph Losey followed his critically acclaimed wartime drama
Monsieur Klein (1976)
with this more modest piece set on the eve of President Franco's death
in 1975. It is a film that invites us to contemplate the virtues or otherwise of political
struggle when the desired outcome is a certainty whatever action is taken. It raises
interesting philosophical questions - for example, if Hitler had triumphed in WWII would
his Fascist regime have naturally collapsed within a few decades with minimal loss of life,
as the Soviet Union did in the late 1980s?
The film is to some extent a continuation of the themes of
Losey's previous
The Assassination of Trotsky (1972),
but it more naturally follows on from Alain Resnais's
La Guerre est finie (1966),
not least because it was scripted by the same writer, Jorge Semprún, and features
the same lead actor, Yves Montand, both politically engaged individuals who were
fervent opponents of Franco's regime.
Les Routes du sud is one of Losey's last films and shows little of the
directorial panache of his earlier work, which includes
The Go-Between (1970)
and
The Servant (1963). In fact, it is a mostly plodding
piece which struggles to engage with its subject matter - even Semprún
himself described it as a 'half-failure'. A victim of McCarthyism, forced
into exile in Europe to continue his filmmaking career, Joseph Losey
has much in common with the central protagonist played by Montand,
a political exile living in France, but he appears far from enthused by
the subject and it is considered one of his weaker films.
© James Travers 2000
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Joseph Losey film:
Don Giovanni (1979)
Film Synopsis
It is 1975. The Spanish dictator Franco is dying, but his regime still holds on
to power. Amongst those who support the communist resistance against Franco are
Jean and Eve, exiles living in France. The couple are enjoying a holiday with their
twenty-something son Laurent when Eve is called to Spain to participate in some clandestine
activity. This creates friction between Jean and Laurent, the latter vehemently
criticising his father for adhering what he sees as a futile cause. Their relationship
worsens when Eve is subsequent reported to have been killed in a road accident...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.