La traversée de Paris

A interesting story: blackmarket during the second world war in Paris.Two men , one very smart and the other a little shy, have to cross Paris with pork meat. A film with a touch of suspense and also of black humour. What about the actors ? Gabin and Bourvil are then famous actors and in this film their performances are excellent. Lasst point, the black and white gives the film a very good atmosphere of mystery and suspense.

I can think of no other director at the time with the exception perhaps of Julien Duvivier, who would have dared to make this film other than the 'bourgeois anarchiste' Claude Autant-Lara.

The subject of black market profiteering during the Occupation together with the suggestion that French resistance was anything but unified was strictly taboo but its hard-hitting honesty struck a chord with Gallic audiences and the film was a huge success. Even the arrogant young critic of Cahiers du Cinéma, Francois Truffaut, one of this director's staunchest detractors, was surprisingly full of praise, citing the film's 'insistent ferocity.'

The black market is matched by the black humour of the screenplay by Pierre Bost and Jean Aurenche, adapted from Marcel Aymé's story. Even Autant-Lara could only go so far however and the original story's grim ending has been changed to one that is far happier.

The popularity of the film must surely lie in Autant-Lara's casting of the two protagonists Jean Gabin and Bourvil. This was their only film together and the pairing is inspired. Bourvil's innate naiveté contrasts with Gabin's world-weary cynicism and their artistry is superlative.

The film is also of great interest technically as the pair's eight kilometre curfew-defying odyssey across Paris carrying four cases stuffed full of black market pork, is filmed almost entirely in the studio but this works courtesy of Max Douy's sets and Jacques Nattier's 'noirish' lighting. Indeed the lighting of the scene where Martin and Grangil are arrested reminds one very much of German Expressionism.

There are no heroes here, just fallible human beings with all their vices and virtues, trying to survive as best they can. Everyone has to eat after all and as George Bernard Shaw observed: "There is no love more sincere than the love of food'.

Gabin a great comic? That's not the image that springs to my mind when I think of Gabin, but then neither do I think of Bourvil as a dramatic actor - until I stick 'Le Circle Rouge' in the machine for the nnnth time. Whatever, the two were teamed brilliantly in this post-war nod to the Black Market in Paris during the occupation. The 80 minute running time is just about right for this romp that obliges regular Black Marketeer Bourvil to work with a dep, Gabin, and transport valises stuffed with pork from arondissment to arondissment under the eyes of the Germans. The movie is kick-started via a cameo from all-time great French comic Louis de Funes and it seldom lets up. Although the soundtrack is replete with Parisian underwold slang the thing is so visual that even non French speakers could follow the story in the original, non-subtitled version. The denoument, such as it is, that Gabin is really a celebrity (artist) and is doing the gig for kicks rather than money, is fairly irrelevant, and the last scene, with Bourvil, now a railway porter, toting Gabin's bags is neither here nor there. Even today, half a century after the events, the French are still sensitive to anything apertaining to the Second World War and the French movies that address those feelings, whether sentimental, frivolous, or dramatic, are among the best movies of any country. This is no exception. Five stars in anyone's solar system.

Claude Aurent-Lara was one of the best directors France ever produced. A good director takes a similar harmless story and elevates to high art. A bad one cannot. It is in the way he frames a shot, builds the tension and especially the transition shots that define one. In that case, Aurent-Lara ranks up there with the likes of Eisenstein and Hitchcock. The man was an ultimate craftsman who understood cinema. Shame on Truffaut who just showed his ignorance for slamming him and his movies. This movie also known as four full bags teams two of France's biggest stars of the era, Jean Gabin and the one name Bourvil in a delicious comedy with a human heart. It is WWII and occupied France is running short of pigs thus creating a black market for it. Bourvil's job is to get the already killed pig's carcass aka pork in four cases and deliver it to the seller who will take it to the market. He meets and enlists the "homeless" Gabin to assist. They must outwit scared Parisiens and Nazis on the night watch to achieve this deceitfully simple task. That is all you need to know to enjoy this war time romp. The laughs come at a clip a minute, mainly from the garrulous and belligerent Gabin with Bourvil, the straight man in their Lawrence and hardy relationship. Before the night is over and daylight comes, we shall meet dogs, drunks, experience the fear of an occupied people who hope for a better tomorrow all done with a airy touch. And the last scene will make any cinema lover and human being rejoice. I love this movie so much, I think though it is not as complex as Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove shares its agony and eccentricity of the nature of war.

It's interesting how quality is just quality. It doesn't matter that you might be a millennial watching this film from France, from the 50's, it's just as good as any more contemporary or culturally relevant top drawer picture.

The best feature in this is efficiency. It's short and sweet (just about 1hr20min), no scene ever stalls the movie, no line in the dialogue branches out into its own thing. It's tight, focused, and efficient. It knows exactly what it's about.

It's both fantastical in its concept and terribly realistic at the same time. Both lead actors were perfect for the cast and play their roles perfectly, while Louis de Funes is also excellent in a more secondary but not any more quiet role.

The film dishes out bits of life lessons here and there, forces a bit of thought and perspective, but never feels self-complacent or happy about itself. It delivers the goods, with a super simplistic plot, a bit of humor, a bit of wisdom, a bit realism, a bit of fantasy; it's a little tragic, but also quite light... and it does it damn well.