La traversata di Parigi

I guess all over the world, moviegoers know this film, for its cast and dialogues. Typical French cinema at its peak, far far better than LES VISITEURS crap made in the nineties. Jean Gabin, Bourvil and Louis De Funès - then still a supporting character, not very well known yet - are absolutely unforgettable in those fantastic roles. The story takes place in Paris, under German occupation, during WW2. You can easily watch this film without getting tired, you can watch it over and over again, you enjoy it more and more. Like a good wine, the more you wait to watch it between your movies sessions, the better it is. One scene in particula, between Gabin Bourvil and De Punès is particularily terrific and funny in the same time, a concentration of talent of the most important actors that French movie industry has ever had. An absolute must see. Claude Autant Lara's masterpiece, and best know, worldwide known film.

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.

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'.

Marcel Ayme's original story goes this way. Martin and Grandgil hire out to a corrupt wholesaler, Jambier, in wartime Paris. They agree to transport about 200 lbs of pork in four suitcases to a butcher who is waiting to receive this contraband (rationing is in effect, remember). Grandgil through his histrionics, increases the fee to 5,000 francs from the original 900. They encounter some fascinating and corrupt people along the way. Martin kills Grandgil at the latter's studio: he's enraged by the artist's lack of concern for the value of work and the concept of honor. Martin delivers the pork finally and is arrested for murder.

Well, you wouldn't recognize the story that Aurenche and Bost created out of this sour little saga. They have given it a happy ending. I am not going to tell you what happens to Gabin and Bourvil, but it is a crowd pleaser. I have stated my reserve about late-period Gabin in the past, but here he is terrific. The rant at Jambier's store is very funny: "Jambier, 45 rue Poliveau, my price is a thousand francs!" Bourvil is a great foil for him; he's more rational and less risk-taking than Gabin, if also less imaginative.