Le blé en herbe

I must agree with this previous reviewer. As a Freshman student at NYU Washington Square I spent more time in the local "art" cinemas than I did in the classroom. This film did more than anything else to direct me on my future path and I'm not sure why. I'd really like to see this film again. To make a long story short, I dropped out of NYU, went to France as a GI, and returned to NYU to earn a PhD in French literature. It was a toss-up between film-making and the academic track for me in those days. My 17 year old French bride incarnated the French cinema scene for me and I follow it ever since. Somehow this film captures an essential spark of life.

Claude Autant-Lara possessed the knack of rattling cages, both as a director and later as a member of the European Parliament representing the National Front. The title of his autobiography 'Rage of the Heart' is singularly appropriate.

Three of his films in particular were denounced from pulpits and caused outrage among the self-appointed guardians of public morality not least this beautiful adaptation of Colette's novel of 1923. The controversy over its theme of an adolescent boy initiated into the pleasures and pains of love by a woman 'entre deux ages' as the French so delicately put it, certainly did the film no harm at the box office and it went on to win the Grand Prix du Cinéma before it became the César as well as challenging the concept of 'prior censorship'.

It has been said that her performance as Madame Dalleray is Edwige Feuillere's finest but this is just one of many given by one of France's greatest artistes. She is simply superlative here as a character whose need of love is probably just as great as that of the teenage Phil and her heartbreak at their final parting is film acting of the highest quality. Pierre-Michel Beck shows great promise as the youth whose hormones are throwing their weight about but he did not progress to film adulthood. His relationship with the equally youthful Vinca offers a perfect balance dramatically and she is beautifully played by the ill-fated Nicole Berger.

Turning his back on the arrogant, know-it-all members of the New Ripple brigade did Autant-Lara no favours and 'En cas de Meilleur' which also featured Mlle Feuillere, was to be his last film of note before the inevitable downward slope.

Mention must be made of the screenplay by Messieurs Bost and Aurenche and a beautiful score by this director's favoured composer René Cloerec.

This is essentially an early 'rite of passage' movie handled with typical Gallic finesse and elegance in which suggestion matters far more that depiction.

The greatest accolade came from Colette, no stranger to controversy herself: "The magic of cinema has brought my characters before me".

When the movie was broadcast for the first time on French TV ,it was shown with a thing of the past ,the "carré blanc" (=white square" )on the low right of the picture,which meant that the work was strictly reserved for adults ;today,it would not scandalize a nun.

Which is not to say the movie is bad ;time has passed since and we've seen worse!Claude Autant-Lara was one of the best French directors of all time and progressive at that ;Colette was a feminist writer ,ahead of her time ,whose books were often transferred to the screen by feminist director Jacqueline Audry ,the only woman directing in the pre-Varda days :and like it or not ,Autant-Lara and Audry were more feminist than Varda( see "Le Bonheur" for that matter) :In "La Garçonne ",Audry depicted what one should call a playgirl (in the fifties) ; in "Le Blé En Herbe ",Colette reverses the roles : the still majestic Edwige Feuillère uses Philippe like as a sex object : when she leaves him ,she tells him so :"you'll be a nice vacation souvenir".No more ,no less; people frightened of the rising woman power -which was to blossom in the late sixties- depicted the movie as the initiation of a young virgin lad ... A woman such as Madame Dallery made her way through the fifties thriumphantly , with a whiff of scandal (what she does was only allowed to men at the time);the Office catholique Du Cinema made no mistake when they forbade this "trash " to their flock.

And it had just begun :in the sixties ,Autant -Lara devoted two movies to abortion (still illegal in the French mid-sixties).

A note about the young actors : Pierre-Michel Beck's career was short-lived,but Nicole Berger carried on with her career through the sixties when she was killed in a car crash;

We're definitely on the fringe of 'classic' country here. A screenplay by those two masters Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost adapting in turn a novel by Colette, direction by Claude Autant-Lara and in the lead role the legendary Edwige Feuillere, a combination just made to upset Francois Truffaut and needle him into throwing his toys out of his pram. Tough, Francois; too bad you didn't take a closer look at how the big boys do it before inflicting your juvenilia on us. But enough of poseurs let's get down to the nitty-gritty. Watching today it seems incredible that at the time (1954) this caused something of a scandal dealing as it does with love, to say nothing of sex, between a callow teenager and the effortlessly elegant, chic, sophisticated and dare I say it, beautiful and luminescent Feuillere. Questions do occur, mostly why, when she is all these things, is Feuillere actually available for teenage initiation, why isn't she fending off at least a dozen admirers, and why does she pick on someone as unprepossessing, gauche and scrawny as Philippe (Pierre-Michel Beck) and, if it comes to that, how come someone as nerdish as Beck has a delectable girlfriend of more or less his own age in the shape of Vinca (Nicole Berger). Ultimately it doesn't matter because the combination of great writing, direction and acting from 'the lady in white' make this a movie to treasure.

I saw this film in early 1955 at the Golden Bough Theater in Carmel CA. I was a GI stationed in Monterey, studying Russian in the Army Language School. The film simply poleaxed me. It offered Edwige as the ultimate "older Continental Woman" and a deliriously gorgeous young woman in competition over a young French nerd even less knowing and commanding as anyone in my cohort. Later, in European Military Intelligence, I met a few kindred who had seen La Ble en Herbe. Their reaction was identical to mine. Yet it is impossible to see it today. Why? I hear that Autant-Lara and his star were considered politically embarrassing. And that it was not in the aesthetic line of Godard and Truffaut. Now really: who cares? When you see the garbage that is now given superb DVD immortality -- how can this film be denied even VHS recognition of its existence? I remain furious over the disappearance of this film.