Le grand Meaulnes

Filmed in cinemascope, and making full use of the aspect ratio, watching this film is like being immersed in another world. For much of the first quarter of the movie, we're at a strange party at a country house, and very little in the way of dialogue is spoken to explain things. We are simply there, and the camera prowls through the crowd and around the house and grounds, and we follow, seeing what it sees, and trying to piece it all together. It's a bravura opening, and the film stalls a little afterwards, until it once again establishes its rhythm. It's a tale of a young man, wandering, searching for a path in life, and the constantly mobile camera expresses his wanderlust, just as the beauty (and sometimes strangeness) of the shots expresses his amazed and youthful eye on the world. It's too bad that this film is not available in its original, uncut length, indeed that it's totally unavailable anywhere (except, perhaps, France?), because it is a hidden treasure. Anyone who cares for the art and craft of movie-making should watch this film. Not only is it expertly made, it packs an emotional punch too. It's not to be compared to the novel, because film works differently. But the spirit of the book is intact, and the translation into visual terms is as stunning as the original prose.

After years of looking, I found the DVD of Le Grand Meaulnes sitting on the shelf in Virgin Megastore on the Champs Elysees in Paris. It seems to have been recently published. It's in French of course and without sub titles but if you know the film, then you know the book too and don't need the English. There is some biographical material about Alain-Fournier on the DVD plus the original cinema trailer (and even a bonus second DVD, La Fille aux Yeux D'or, also by Albicocco).

I saw the film of Le Grand Meaulnes back in 1973/4 and again sometime during the Eighties at a London screening. It is still as fresh, original and magical now as it was then. In some respects, the 1972 Nicholas Roeg film of Don't Look Now, also a classic of its kind, has some echoes of this Albicocco masterpiece - mainly in the use of light and its effects, but also in some scenes: a red brooch is held to the light, the passing boats on the lake, Yvonne de Galais falling in the stream, the time shifts in the narrative.

It is a tragedy that this quite remarkable film remains virtually unknown and unobtainable. I have a VHS version that plays in B&W without subtitles. bought at the Alain-Fournier museum in France. It crops up at art houses as The Wanderer and may be obtainable on DVD under this name. It has never, to my knowledge, been shown on British television.

This film changed my life. The first time I saw it, back in about 1983, I sat through it twice in a row. I subsequently read the book, visited the locations in the film, all of them connected with the author, and wrote one of the several stage musicals based on the work.

What is most remarkable about the film is not just the visual intensity and dream-like camera-work - Vaseline on the lens for the strange domain itself - or the romantic and memorable score , but the quality of the performances from a largely unknown, in some cases amateur cast. Not only the luminous Brigitte Fossey, but a stunning performance from the young Alain Libolt, who appeared recently in Erich Rohmer's A Tale of Autumn. Meaulnes himself is unforgettably personified by a young man from Bourges hand-picked by the author's niece, Madame Isabelle Riviere, who oversaw the production. His name: Jean Blaise. He may to my knowledge have made only one film, but it is a performance that few trained actors could ever hope to equal. The final scenes are especially moving.

If you get a chance to see this, drop everything and go.

Andrew Lowe Watson

Though now something of a curiosity piece, the DVD version of this 1967 film was worth tracking down (via Price Minister).

Director Jean-Gabriel Albicocco provides a pretty faithful rendering of the plot of Alain-Fournier's classic novel and, more importantly, captures something of its elegiac tone - even if he is a little heavy-handed in blurring his lenses during the scenes at the mysterious party at the lost domain. The landscapes and settings, so important in Fournier's poetic imagination, evoke both the magic and the desolation of the novel. The film is also superbly lit.

Jean Blaise was a real find as the protagonist, as he possesses the intensity necessary to Meaulnes's charisma. Brigitte Fossey occasionally teeters perilously close to a simpering quality, but at other points succeeds in conveying the elusive and fragile beauty of the fabulous Yvonne De Galais.

It will be fascinating to compare Albicocco's vision with the version due for release in France in 2006.

I saw LGM in French with subtitles (and two years of high school French!). It felt like a pleasant dream (visual, ideas), and I remembered it quite well -- but I had forgotten the title. I described it to a French friend several years later, and he named it for me right away. If I see it advertised for a theatre again, I'll definitely go, now that my French is a little better and my appreciation of fantasy much enhanced.