A very interesting melodrama ,reflecting the ideology of the dark hours of the government of Vichy.
A remake of silent movie (1912)based on a forgotten writer ,Georges Ohnet (1885) , whose contemporary colleagues do not speak highly of; Jules Lemaitre , notably,gave a perfect depiction of the writer's young hero: a brilliant commoner with a string of academic titles.
That's exactly what Pascal is : a lawyer who, in the trial scenes , is larger than the courthouse ;generally , in the occupation years ,it's the story of the bad boy (or the bad gal) ;here, and it gets off the beaten track : father and son reverse the roles ; the papa (Fernand Ledoux , true to form) is a nouveau riche ,hard on his fellow men ,who bears the chatelaine a grudge ,and whose greatest desire is to do away this noble family he despises from their valuable property "la grande Marnière "; this marquis is also a scientist and should be Pascal 's father.
A double romance : Pascal falls in love with the noble daughter (Micheline Francey)whereas her brother Robert has a crush on a poacher's daughter (Ginette Leclerc,par excellence the bad gal of the French cinema at the time,here cast against type as a sexy but wise peasant girl). When she's strangled , Robert is arrested on a charge of murder ;so for Pascal ,the fresh daring chivalrous lawyer,opportunity knocks ,and it pits him against his father-usurer ; the boy will teach a lesson or two in morality to his wicked papa and show him the significance of the family. The first part of the trial ,almost treated as a comedy , is very pleasant to watch :the witnesses (in the pay of the nouveau riche) are so dumb and so ludicrous ,that it looks like a travesty of trial ,which it is, anyway. The old (noble) auntie steals the show during her intervention.
Besides the rebuilding of a family ,and the union with another one, the film praises the virtues of the field labor (it's almost a mini-doc inside the action) which is followed by the harvest fete ,with the crowning of Queen Harvest.
Like "le val d'enfer' or "le voile bleu" ,it's dated ,but dated works are sometimes enticing.
