La giumenta verde

I saw this film at the Paris Theatre in Brighton in 1960. I was 15 at the time, and illegal. I got in through the side door when the earlier sitting came out.

I have little memory of the story, except that it is set in an all-purpose earlier age, some time in the mid-1700s, and in deep rural bliss.

At one point, the heroine, wearing a full-length dirndl dress, squats in the barnyard and has a long pee. This shocked and amazed for two reasons. One, it instantly conveyed that the young woman was 'going commando'. Two, it depicted something in full-colour that would never, ever have been shown in a Hollywood or UK picture of the time. Kenneth More would have died!

In the context of heavily hung stallions mounting mares and other barnyard themes, it was entirely appropriate, and I am sure that French audiences of the day did not bat an eyelid. It proves how deep the shallow English Channel really was in those days.

And yet, only a few years later, certainly partly inspired by this randy, amusing and engaging film, Tony Richardson was making the ground-breaking Tom Jones.

There's a legend in my country about "la Jument Verte" .They say it had a PG 21 when it was released!One thing for sure,the Catholic Office of Cinema did not like the film ,that's putting it mildly.I quote them: "disguting scenes, defamation of the peasants ".

Today the movie would not get a PG 12.Has this saucy farce worn that much well?I have my doubts."L'Auberge Rouge" was sometimes verging on slapstick but the lines were witty,the cinematography dazzling and the cast wonderful.

A cast against type Bourvil portrays a definitely repellent character:his mother was raped by a Prussian during the 1870 war ,because of his neighbor's denunciation.Since the two families have become deadly enemies.

Although Aurenche wrote the dialog,although it was a Marcel Aymé book -Marcel Aymé who wrote "les Contes du Chat Perché" maybe the best French book for children of the twentieth century-, Autant-Lara's work is not funny anymore:we have seen worse since,and enough is enough:this accumulation of daring jokes,of salacious puns ,of "disgusting scenes" reduces the peasants on the level of animals .The Christian press was perhaps not that much wrong after all.

The best of the movie is its beginning:it 's a faux fairytale ,told by a female voice over (which is very rare,generally it's a male one).Once upon a time ,there was a farmer who had a green mare ...it could almost be Charles Perrault telling his "Peau d'Ane" (Donkey Skin) tale.Alas ,in spite of the title,the green mare plays a very small part in the story ....

Maybe Autant-Lara whose films between 1959 and 1961 were blatantly (or should I say) basely commercial,needed money to make his accursed movie (and still waiting to be brought of oblivion) "Tu ne Tueras Point" (aka

"l'Objecteur").

For its period, provocative. Today, only nice. As an old family picture. Because it reminds a sort of humor, classic conflicts and theirs solve, a young Bourvil and cliches about country life. All - in French manner, with aspect of moral lesson and comfortable adults fairy tale. A film about families, conflict, love , truth and lies. Little bitter. But seductive. And that is the most important thing.

I'm scratching my head, trying to understand how a couple of reviewers have called Bourvil 'miscast' in this film. The part of Honore suits him to a T; he mostly played peasants, shopkeepers and a few small time criminals (La traversee de Paris, one of his very best films). One look at that long head, the slightly stunned expression, and you know he's no mental giant. The story is not the finest to come out of France; this is not a Renoir or Carne subject. Autant-Lara gets enough mileage out of satirizing the inbred life of the peasants (the bull mounting the cow gets a few laughs from the cast), but this is no classic. Bourvil, Francis Blanche as his brother Ferdinand, and Valerie Lagrange as Honore's daughter Juliette are all effective.