Poil de Carotte 1932

Originally made by Julien Duvivier in 1925 as a silent film, he again took on the task of making this moving film about a troubled adolescent in 1932. The story as they say has legs, and there were several more versions of the story filmed. The young boy in the story is troubled not by anything he has done but mainly by his mean heartless mother who would today be brought to justice for child abuse. Her mean nickname for him is carrot top because of his red hair. The nickname sticks and everyone in the rural village he unhappily resides in with his miserable family calls him that. I suppose the nickname could have been affectionate but coming from the mouth of his mother its mean. Several of the other characters who have affection for him also called him by this nick name but it is used like a kiss and not a sword.

He seems at the beginning of the film to be smart and pleasant but with a sassy mouth he uses at his school. A typical boy who in an essay writes “A family is a group of people forced to live together under one roof and who can't stand each other” this sets up the story to follow as he will soon be returning to his tortured home for the summer holidays and his easy going demeanor and outlook changes. He is harassed both verbally and physically by his mother, largely ignored by his father and put upon by his two older siblings who rob money from their stingy mother and blame “carrot top” for their crimes.

His only affection comes from his Godfather a good kindly farmer, a young female child who adores him, and his caring housekeeper. That's it. At times the heartbreak of his life was almost unbearable for me to watch and he is finally driven to extreme actions mainly because of the behavior towards him from his terrible mother who is loathed not only by him but also her husband. She is also ridiculed by her other two children who have no use for her. Any of us who grew up in hostile households will sadly relate to this story.

The performance by Catherine Fonteney as the mother is too broad and extreme and is the weak link in this otherwise great and touching film. The father played by the esteemed actor Harry Baur is distracted and empty because of his loveless marriage to this shrew of a woman but we can see he has affection for his son. Its easy to hate the mother, and it would have been better if the actress was more subtle and nuanced in her performance. She is so over the top that she becomes a cartoon, a cliché of a bad woman and mother. A shame because it is a rich and complex role that calls for a much better actress than Fonteney.

The young actor Robert Lynen who plays the lead is brilliant and moving. He pretty much destroyed me in his acting of this sad put upon decent young boy who has to wear hand me downs, and is refused a desert of melon by his bitch of a mother. Lynen simply broke my heart and this is one of the great performances in cinema.

The sadness was also in his actual life. In the early 40's he joined the French resistance and was betrayed by a fellow fighter to the Nazi's who jailed and tortured him, finally killing him and 13 other members of the resistance in 1944 in front of a firing squad ,throwing his body in an unmarked grave. The sadness also reached Harry Baur who was also arrested by the Gestapo because he was married to a Jewish woman. He was later released but died in a mysterious fashion in 1943 no doubt due to the torture he endured from the Gestapo.

The director Julian Duvivier had a long career beginning in 1919 right through the late 60's and no doubt he would have continued to make films if he had not died in a car accident at the age of 71. Duvivier was part of the French classical cinema that was sometimes referred as “poetic realism” and one of his most famous films of this school is “Pepe Le Moko” which made an international star of the great Jean Gabin, who Duvivier worked with several times. He also worked in Hollywood an usual stint for “foreign” directors at this time and also did an adaption of Anna Karenina in England that starred Vivien Leigh. Sadly the young turks of the French New Wave including Godard and sadly Francois Truffaut who should have known better, Mercilessly attacked Duvivier and other directors of the romantic period of French poetic realism in the pages of film magazines especially in Cahiers du Cinema. I won't go into my feelings on this here, but I would think that if Truffaut was alive now he would change his tune. I'm including a link to the best critique and biographical piece of Duvivier if anyone is so inclined to learn more about him. Some of his films from this early period are now available to stream on the Criterion Channel.

https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/great-directors/julien-duvivier/