La Guerre des boutons 1962

La Guerre des boutons (War of the Buttons) is Yves Robert's 1962 comedy about two gangs of boys from neighbouring villages, Longeverne and Velrans, who fight a war every school year. This year Lebrac, the leader of the Longeverne boys, has an idea: cut the buttons and braces off every prisoner, so that the enemy goes home with his trousers falling down and gets a hiding from his parents. To avoid the same fate, the Longeverne gang fights naked and keeps its trophies in a hut in the woods. It is based on a 1912 novel by Louis Pergaud, who was killed in the First World War. In France the film is a national favourite, and one line spoken by the smallest boy, Petit Gibus, has become a proverb.

Longeverne against Velrans

The story is simple and grows in stages. Insults are shouted across the fields, there are ambushes, captures and raids. Lebrac, played by André Treton, is the strategist of Longeverne; his opposite number in Velrans is L'Aztec, played by Michel Isella. The boys' slang and insults are a large part of the fun, as are their grand speeches about honour.

The war becomes more serious as it goes on. A traitor sells the location of the hut, the treasure is stolen, the parents join in with belts and threats, and the two leaders end up at the same boarding school.

"Si j'aurais su, j'aurais pas v'nu"

Petit Gibus, played by Martin Lartigue, is the youngest member of the Longeverne gang, constantly losing his trousers, his breath and his temper. His complaint, "Si j'aurais su, j'aurais pas v'nu", roughly "If I'da known, I wouldn't have come", is grammatically wrong in a way every French schoolchild recognises. The line is not in Pergaud's novel. It has passed into everyday speech in France.

The children and the adults

Yves Robert cast young, mostly untrained boys from the countryside, and their natural awkwardness is the film's great strength. The adults are played by well-known character actors: Jean Richard as Lebrac's father, Michel Galabru as a peasant father, Jacques Dufilho as L'Aztec's father, who finds his tractor wrecked at the end.

The adults are no wiser than the children. They shout, threaten and settle their own scores, and the film quietly suggests that the boys' war copies the habits of their fathers.

Pergaud's novel

Louis Pergaud won the Prix Goncourt in 1910 for animal stories, De Goupil à Margot. La Guerre des boutons was published in 1912. He was killed in action in 1915. His writing was marked by a strong distrust of militarism, which gives the novel's comic battles an edge.

Awards and remakes

The film won the Prix Jean Vigo and was a major commercial success. It was remade in Ireland in 1994 as War of the Buttons, and twice in France in 2011, by Yann Samuell and by Christophe Barratier, two rival versions released within a week of each other. That rivalry would have suited Lebrac and L'Aztec.

The 1962 film is still the one families watch together. For more French comedies, see the best French comedies; for the decade, the best French films of the 1960s.