Les brûlés

This is a 1958 film - not 1952 - of the National Film Board of Canada. From the start, that was a TV Serie, but the NFB make it into a two hour film. While Quebec regular movies of the fifties were really a mess, this one was very different. For me, it's truly the first very good film produced in Quebec. It's about a group of courageous men and women going up north to the Abitibi region to be farmers, in a land were there's nothing but forest, forest, and forest! It was in the 1930's, when a lot of poor urban people were out of work. So the governement says : Go to the Abitibi and you will have a lot of work to do, you'll be saved by the farming! So there they are, facing nothing, like pioneers of a new world. Famous comedians of Quebec's fifties are all there, portraying very warm human beings. It looks a lot like a John Ford movie. In recent years, I have the chance to go three times in Abitibi, and everybody's out there knows this film. 40 years later, they are still proud of it, because it shows the courage of their fathers and mothers, grand-fathers and grand mothers.

This is a very good French-Canadian movie about the colonization of Abitibi. It shows the hard life of the pioneers in a region where everything was to do. The «promised land» turned out to be not so great after all. Trees, trees, trees, and they told the guys that it was going to be a great farm land!

It's also interesting to see the society of the time, with the Roman Catholic church at the center of daily life.

Félix Leclerc, the great French-Canadian singer, had a role in this one and also sings a few songs.

8 out of 10.