A play which had already been filmed in the silent era , "le chemineau" is,like Fernand Rivers's works ,pure melodrama .
A vagabond arrives in a village where he works for a rich landowner,Master Pierre ;he seduces one of the girls ,gets her pregnant and hits the road again,without knowing of her condition. Twenty years later , the illegitimate son falls in love with Pierre's daughter ,but the master will not hear of it:he's an illegitimate son and he'll never marry my dear Aline . At this juncture ,the young man's real father ,the vagabond, comes back to be confronted with the son he's never known ;he intends to bring happiness to him.
Reportedly filmed on location ,in the "beautiful landscapes of France "as a line reads at the end of the cast and credits, it includes good scenes of the peasant at work,when agriculture was not yet mechanized. Aristocratic Victor Francen is cast against type as a "chemineau ", a vagabond who goes from to town to town , a character who belongs to the past;directing is rather mediocre ,particularly the rescue when Toinet is drowning in the river.
Based on Aesop 's fable "the wolf and the dog" , which inspired French poet La Fontaine : the boy recites the latter's work he learned at school. But the ending is different :is the wolf so happy to run free?
