Humain, trop humain

Even for a filmmaker like Louis Malle, who tried his hand at so many different genres over his career, this feels like a bit of an oddity. And here I thought his 1969 documentary 'Calcutta' was stripped down; what is more plainspoken than footage inside an automobile manufacturing plant, of the production process? What's more plainspoken than a documentary with no narration or interviews - only incidental, casual conversation heard in passing? Coming off like an extra long and unorthodox episode of 'How it's made,' I think it's safe to say this is a picture that's likely to appeal only to especial fans of Malle, or perhaps of Citroën, or maybe the most ardent of cinephiles. Even at that, 'Humain, trop humain' is an interesting peek inside the industry as we get some detailed glimpses of auto production that are commonly taken for granted.

In some measure I admire the film's approach that lets the content speak for itself, a somewhat educational experience. True, explanatory language of some nature could help to enrich the movie; for everything that we see, it's not always entirely clear what a particular car part does or represents - the modern industrial equivalent of trying to determine the purpose of a totem uncovered during an archaeological expedition. Narration might have provided a through-line to further elucidate the imagery. Yet, to that point, I think it speaks well to this 1973 picture that one is made to wonder specifically how the manufacturing process has changed in the past fifty years. No doubt many of the facets of auto production seen here have been updated (for better or for worse, where either safety standards or automation are concerned, respectively), and an enterprising filmmaker today might do well to try their hand at 'Human, trop humain,' Part Two. My interest is piqued, and that alone says much.

Like the works of Werner Herzog, in some sense this film also communicates fascination with People in all their complexity, both good and bad. Only by especially looking inside an auto plant does one get a real sense of how big the operation is: the number of jobs, the variety of jobs, the hard-working folks that are required to fill them. Any viewer who shares that curiosity and interest in humanity might also find a kinship in Malle's movie. With that said, I do think it's a fine choice to include footage from a crowded showroom floor, seeing people react to the complete Citroën models on display. As far as this feature goes, however, I'm not so sure about the sequencing; that the showroom footage is inserted in the middle of observation of the production line rather breaks up the flow of the runtime. I suppose that break could be taken as either a good thing or a bad thing; I'm inclined to think it's a smidgen off-putting, and the interval should have been shuttled to either the beginning or the end.

Maybe all this verbiage is beside the point, though. The premise couldn't be any simpler, and what it suggests is exactly what we get, with no frills whatsoever. I would say that the most meaningful deficiency with 'Humain, trop humain' is the total lack of narration - but then again, there's something oddly enchanting about the earnest directness of the material as we see it. I can quite understand how such a title won't appeal to a lot of people, and it's most recommendable if one has a particular impetus to watch, or even just looking for something light and low-key with no need to actively engage. Either way, this is well done and reasonably interesting as it is, and a decent way to send a mere 70-some minutes.

It documentary is quite daring. It has no narration, no interviews or text to guide you. It is in fact directed according to the rules of the silent films. The story is visual. It is about the workers of a Citroen auto factory in Rennes, Brittany. This may sound like Modern Times - The Documentary but that is not the feeling I got when I saw it. The film is quite meditative. I even sometimes got the feeling that I was watching a religious ceremony when they where putting the cars together.

The cinematography is fantastic. Malle focuses on small things like how the feet move while people work, or how a girl moves her eye. Even though the film shows us how much work goes into making a car, I would not say that that was the point of the film. The film is much more about humanity, the human face and the human touch behind the cars people buy. We seldom think about the many hands that slaved putting our car together. The community and lives we are connected to when we step into a car.

This is one of the best edited documentary I have seen, and it is in fact the seamless and rhythmic editing which contributes greatly to the hypnotizing effect of the film, almost to the point of leaving one with a religious feeling.

This is a beautiful, meditative and poetic documentary.

Thorkell A. Ottarsson, who posted a review on 13 September 2009, called this film "beautiful, meditative and poetic." It is indeed meditative. With a steady series of "snapshots" depicting the production of automobiles at a Citroën factory, it follows the rhythm of the assembly line, and this suggests a poetic meter.

Beginning with a woman manoeuvring a travelling crane over a vast stockpile of rolled steel sheet, we don't know what is being manufactured until the first recognizable component appears in the frame: the hood of the car is flipped over and inspected by a young woman in a red vest.

We follow the process for the first quarter of the film. The pieces are fitted together, slowly building the automobile. Sometimes more interesting than the procedure is the ingenious jig or fixture that has been created to hold the workpiece or guide parts together. At each stage inspectors feel for correct alignment or smooth finish, peer into corners and consult clipboards. The overall impression is of a huge number of people busily involved in the manufacturing process.

After we see the finished cars being driven onto rail transport, the second quarter of the film shows people checking out the cars at an auto show. Here we see the result is an amazingly complex, highly refined machine— looking like a jewel box under the bright lights. An amazing variety of people pick over, peer at, explore, and comment on the finished product, completely oblivious of the many individual human beings who contributed to its existence.

The second half of the film returns to the assembly line. Now we see it at the level of the individual workers, often seen framed by their own machine or the components around them, so they appear alone, integrated with their machine. The process is mesmerizing. The camera lingers this time on individuals. Some stand at a work station and perform their task with a steady rhythm of repetitious motions. Others move in steady rhythm around components that move slowly, inexorably along the assembly line. We may watch them perform several different tasks as a car body moves along, then pick up their tools and walk back up the line to begin on another car body. No one talks. All focus on their assigned task.

What we see is a tremendously complicated task that has been highly organized into many small tasks each handled by one individual. A scene showing seat upholstery being sewn suggests how many components have come from yet another assembly line that we do not see. Some of the tasks are very simple: one person's role is to place washers on a pair of studs; an exquisitely-sculpted jig allows one woman to bend tubing into an intricate configuration in a few simple motions. Some tasks involve more craftsmanship: spot welding in the right places, filling and smoothing a body seam, hammering and levering until a hatchback door closes perfectly aligned.

We see the manufacturing process in roughly reverse order. The film ends with a freeze frame of the young woman in the red apron inspecting newly-welded hoods. We are left to wonder if mass production reduces the contributions of individuals to such small parts that they are usually forgotten. They become insignificant, and the public at the auto show refer to the car as a product of a corporation. The vehicle has features and changes that "they" have decided on.

We are also left perhaps to wonder if a mass produced article retains a part, albeit a minuscule part, of each individual who has contributed to it, and whether or not the sum total of all that is equivalent to what is in a work completed by a single craftsperson.

A look at the Citroen factory and the workers that inhabit it. The film is done entirely without narration, and in fact the only audible dialogue occurs during the auto show (which, curiously, happens in the middle of the movie) as potential customers vacuously dissect the workmanship of the cars. The workers themselves are voiceless automatons, laboring at their repetitive, compartmentalized tasks. Malle gets right up in their faces as they go about their jobs, capturing a humanity that's on the verge of being swallowed by the process, often framing them in a manner that suggests they're trapped by the machinery. However, although I get that the drudgery is kind of the point of the film, 72 minutes of this gets to be a little tiresome and the fascination starts to wear off. Still, the measured rhythms of the film can be hypnotic.

This documentary is an interesting look at the people who work on the assembly lines of French automobile factories.

To the credit of cinematographer Etienne Becker and director Louis Malle, several details of the assembly line, the input of each worker, the body movements (lilt of a heel or the pouting of lips) are captured honestly and seemingly unobtrusively. To Malle's credit, the sound is limited to production sound--the workers seem to be mute. Voices invade the film once during the segment on the sale of the cars to customers at a car show.

Malle's film, screened as part of a Malle retrospective at the 11th International Film Festival of Kerala, is a veiled comment on automation and its effects on people. The film ends with a frozen shot of a woman worker absorbed in the life within the factory. The life outside seems to be deliberately snipped off--but we know it exists. Malle was probably stating that human beings are getting to be dehumanized and living the life of "an assembly line." That said, the film could have said the same things in a third of the total run-time. Compare Malle's film to Bert Hanstra's documentary on glass blowers called "Glas" (1958). Made 16 years before "Humain, trop humain", Bert Haanstra's work, which uses music, is far superior to this one on a somewhat similar subject.

The title has evidently been used by Malle, after being influenced by Nietzsche's book "Human, all too human: a book for free spirits" (1878). The film needs to be interpreted from that perspective as well.