Maître après Dieu (1951)
Directed by Louis Daquin

Film Review

Having garnered critical acclaim for his revelatory realist drama Le Point du jour (1949) about the lives of miners in northern France, director Louis Daquin ventured onto more controversial territory with this adaptation of Jan de Hartog's stage play Schipper naast God, written just after WWII. Maître après Dieu is one of the earliest films made in France (and one of only a handful made before the 1970s) which contains any reference to the Holocaust - understandably given France's reluctance to face up to its far from honourable involvement in Hitler's Final Solution.  By today's standards, Hartog's play feels artificial and mawkish, and Daquin's well-meaning but ponderous adaptation (scripted by Hartog) gives the same impression.

With its poorly constructed sets and over-reliance on back projection, Maître après Dieu looks like a cheap production, not much better than what we might expect from Hollywood's Poverty Row studios in an earlier decade.   This is not, however, the film's most off-putting aspect.  What is far harder to stomach is its far from convincing portrayal of one man's conversion from mercenary sea crook to beatific Christian.  Even for an actor of the calibre of Pierre Brasseur, this transformation is a hard sell, and the inference, that to be a good man you must first discover God, is one that will stick in the craw of any humane non-believer.  Fortunately, for those who are prepared to look a little more deeply, there is far more to this film than this somewhat toe-curling surface impression.

Maître après Dieu does have its flaws but, despite this, it still manages to be an involving drama.  Daquin doesn't quite succeed in disguising the film's theatrical origins but the confined setting (most of the drama takes place in a cramped boat) serves to heighten the tension and our concern for the plight of the Jewish refugees, who are presented not as one anonymous mass of humanity but as individuals we can readily identify with.  The ill-treatment of Jews by the Germans and their allies comes as no surprise, so the film's real shock comes when they are repulsed by an American nation that has yet to wake up to the horror of Nazi Germany.

If Pierre Brasseur was attempting to give an authentic portrayal of a man's spiritual awakening then it's quite evident that he fell somewhat short of his objective.  The scene where his character, a loutish pirate for whom the word 'lugubrious' was clearly invented, sits down and starts reading the Bible (and doesn't stop until he's digested every last word) is only slightly easier to swallow than the Atlantic Ocean after an all-night binge.  What Brasseur's character is really experiencing is not a religious conversion as such, but rather a desperate attempt to pin religion on to the terrifying discovery that he has started to engage with the problems of other people.

This becomes increasingly apparent as the supposedly reborn Knipper goes chasing after a God, believing Him to be a bearded old man living in the clouds somewhere off the east coast of North America.  In the film's most powerful scene, an old Rabbi reveals to Knipper the place where God, if He exists, is to be found, but the seadog fails to comprehend and goes on clinging to his childish delusions.  It is only at the end of the film that Knipper appears genuinely transformed, by performing the most selfless act of which he is capable.  Only then do we appreciate the genius of Brasseur's portrayal - he is not pretending to be a man who discovers God; rather he is a man who, despite himself, ends up finding himself.  Like a long sea crossing in another century, Maître après Dieu risks losing most of its audience en route, but for those who survive the stomach-churning passage it is a journey well worth making.

Film Synopsis

1938.  By passing himself off as a missionary, a boorish pirate named Joris Knipper manages to extort a large consignment of coconuts from an African village.  On his arrival in Hamburg, he is offered a generous sum of money if he will transport 150 Jews to Alexandria.  At first, Knipper regards his passengers as little more than cattle but when he becomes aware of their suffering he starts to show them compassion.  When he reaches the Egyptian port, Knipper is instructed by the authorities that he cannot land and must return to Hamburg.  At this moment, the old pirate has a sudden religious awakening.  Realising what awaits his passengers in Nazi Germany, Knipper heads west with the intention of dropping them off on the east coast of the United States.  His faith is soon to be tested by the determination of the Americans to drive away unwelcome refugees...