Ramuntcho is "Basque" for Raymond.
A second version was released in 1937, remake of a silent movie (de Baroncelli,1918) by obscure director René Barbéris.
Based on Pierre Loti's famous novel , it takes place in the "pays Basque" the writer would call his country of adoption ; but Basque people's objections remain : their region is depicted as a heavenly land where the young men spend their time playing Basque pelota (like in AJ Cronin 's "the Spanish gardener),singing ,dancing ....and smuggling
So Pierre Schoendoerffer's is the third version ,it was his debut as a full-fledge director (his first effort "la passe du diable " was a collaboration )
The main problem is that the novel was published in 1897 ,and the action was transposed to the fifties ,at the time of Indochina war (although there's no war scene, the director was to champion military honor in many of his works ).
But in the fifties , things had changed : Gracieuse 's attitude could make sense fifty years before, but to enter the convent because your mom does not want you to marry an illegitimate child (who's the son of a man who left her for his mother ,before walking out on both of them), it was a thing of the past :it's all the more unlikely since Gracieuse is played by Mijanou Bardot (yes, BB's sister ,her career suffered accordingly and she quit acting after the sixties ).
I have a tendency to prefer the black and white version ; the color one is too slow-moving (the walk to the convent notably is filler);François Guérin is a bland hero, lacking the outcast side of the character and the supporting cast (Roger Hanin and mainly Gaby Morlay) effortlessly blows him off the screen .
The book was watered down indeed : its denouement has nothing to do with that of the movie I won't reveal : desperate , when he returns from Indochina, Ramuntcho tries to abduct his beloved one, who has become a nun ,with the help of her brother ;and he fails ; sad story indeed.
Schoendoerffer would continue with another Loti 's novel "pêcheur d'Islande", but it was another failure ; his third film,"la 317 ème section " finally got critical acclaim and put him on the map.
