Port d'attache (1943)
Directed by Jean Choux

Film Review

One of the last films to be directed by Jean Choux (a filmmaker who is regrettably all but forgotten today) is this amiable rural melodrama which provides a perceptive but subtle commentary on a divided France during the Nazi occupation.  The film was scripted by René Dary, who takes the lead role at a time when he was seriously considered as a replacement for Jean Gabin after the latter's 'defection' to Hollywood in 1940.  This was Dary's second bid at stardom, having found fame at the age of three in a series of short films directed by Louis Feuillade, in which he was credited as Bébé Abelard.  Despite his intensely engaging personality and skill as an actor, Dary never became a great star, although he enjoyed a successful career as a supporting artist.  Port d'attache is one of the few films in which Dary takes centre stage and clearly relishes every moment of it, but never once stealing the limelight from his equally talented co-stars, Michèle Alfa, Édouard Delmont and Alfred Adam.

Port d'attache is effectively a 1940s version of Julien Duvivier's La Belle équipe (1936), albeit one with a slightly more positive, Utopianist, slant.  The community of unemployed outsiders who come together for their mutual benefit has an obvious Communist sentiment to it, an impression that is reinforced by the ensemble of mean-spirited villagers who spit venom as they bemoan the invasion of 'foreigners' into their provincial backwater.  Port d'attache is clearly attacking the petty-minded bigotry that was rife in France in the early 1940s, exacerbated by the occupation which divided the nation into supporters and opponents of the puppet president Maréchal Pétain.  René's happy community of hardworking youngsters would seem to be the living embodiment of Pétain's endlessly repeated mantra 'travail, famille, patrie', but the fact these are the outsiders, despised by the deeply conservative and mistrustful locals, lends this an ironic twist.

Film Synopsis

After the armistice, a young sailor named René sets out to find work in France.  Passing through the countryside, he meets an old farmer, Garda, who struggles to keep his farm going after being deserted by his son and daughter.  At first Garda is unwilling to accept René's help, but an accident forces him to allow the young man to take over the running of the farm.  René is helped out by Ginette, a local girl, and a band of unemployed Parisians, and within no time the farm is a thriving enterprise once more.  This is not to the liking of Ginette's supposed fiancé Bertrand and the villagers, who resent the intrusion of 'foreigners'.  Determined to win Ginette back, Bertrand contrives to break up René's happy little community...