Les Grandes Manœuvres 1955

Les Grandes Manœuvres is René Clair's 1955 romantic comedy-drama, released in Britain as Summer Manoeuvres and in the United States as The Grand Maneuver. In a garrison town in the French provinces before the First World War, Armand de la Verne, a dashing cavalry lieutenant and notorious seducer, bets his fellow officers that he can win any woman they choose by lot before the regiment leaves for its summer manoeuvres, a month away. The name drawn is Marie-Louise Rivière, a divorcée from Paris who has opened a milliner's shop. Armand begins a calculated campaign and ends up genuinely in love. Gérard Philipe and Michèle Morgan play the couple. It was Clair's first film in colour, and one of the biggest French box-office hits of the 1950s.

The bet

Armand, played by Philipe, is the star of the officers' mess of a dragoon regiment. The bet is made among his fellow officers: a name will be drawn by lot, in secret, and they will judge the result.

Marie-Louise, played by Morgan, is an outsider in the town. As a divorcée running her own business, she is watched and gossiped about. She is also courted by Victor Duverger, a serious and respectable local man played by Jean Desailly, who would offer her security and a place in society. She knows Armand's reputation and keeps him at a distance, which only makes him try harder.

Love that arrives too late

The comedy turns as Armand realises he has fallen for the woman he was supposed to conquer for a wager, while Marie-Louise discovers her own feelings for him. The film's tone shifts from light satire of provincial manners to something sadder. The question is not whether they love each other, but whether she can forgive the way it started, in a small town where everyone talks.

A lighter parallel story follows Armand's friend Félix, played by Yves Robert, and his courtship of Lucie, the young daughter of a photographer. Lucie is played by a young Brigitte Bardot, a year before Et Dieu… créa la femme made her world famous.

Clair in colour

René Clair had been one of the great names of early sound cinema with Sous les toits de Paris (1930) and Le Million (1931), and had worked in Britain and Hollywood. For his first colour film he chose a soft, controlled palette: the uniforms of the dragoons, pastel dresses, the light of a provincial summer. The film looks back on the years before 1914 with affection and irony.

Clair said that the film's only real concern was love, and that it was one more variation on the theme of Don Juan. An alternative ending was shot at the same time as the official one; the official ending is the one in release.

Philipe and Morgan

Gérard Philipe was the romantic star of the period and had already worked with Clair on La Beauté du diable and Les Belles de nuit. Here he is charming and then wounded, and his charm becomes the problem. Michèle Morgan, who had been the girl in the beret in Le Quai des brumes, gives Marie-Louise a reserve and dignity that make her the real centre of the film.

The film was seen by over five million people in French cinemas. For more romance, see our selection of French love stories; for the decade, the best French films of the 1950s.