Tire au flanc

"Tire -au -flanc" belongs to a genre which is really an acquired taste,the coarse comedy.It reached its peak in the thirties when Raimu and Fernandel starred in "les Gaietés de l'Escadron" or "Ignace" ,not those two actors at their best.

It's not because a movie was made by Jean Renoir (or..... fill in the blank)that it must be looked upon as an immortal masterpiece.Although they did not take place in barracks ,"la chienne" and even "on purge bébé" had a stronger anti-militarist feel.Here,when Jean Renoir regains his humor,his wit and his rebellious spirit ,it's principally in the subtitles :his lines (and cartoons)seem to possess something the pictures sometimes lack.

Of course,there are funny scenes: the girl's presence in the barracks is good fun.But the last pictures are finally a capitulation;after all,-I quote the colonel- the Army succeeds in making men! Is that really funny to press-gang young men into a relatively comfortable army?Opinions differ.

I love Tire-au-flanc for the gentle crazy anarchy Renoir pictures in this movie. This is not just another stupid satire on army life. The army is the utmost symbol of the order in a society. The disorder comes from the people operating in that order and there is a sweet conspiracy in this movie between the servant (played by Simon) and his rich master. Both have to go to the army. The valet adapts better to the situation than the master who is a dreamer and a poet, so by definition crazy!

After a fight between the poet and the bully of the dormitory both end in jail. The servant will help his master with food and good advice: you have to make sure that the others respect you because after all they are not bad kids. The poet at that moment really is at the end of his rope because his fiancée is seduced by an officer (fantastic scene in the prison window where the officer offers the girl a flower growing at the window, the poet jumps to see what is happening because the flower disappears and witnesses the kiss, so a betrayal of his own feelings by members of his own social group). He'll follow the advice of his servant and both will create amok during the colonel's feast. The complete chaos that follows is such that there is no punishment possible! In the meantime the bully gets what he deserves. The chaos is rewarded by a double marriage: the servant marries the maid and the poet marries the sister of his former fiancée who had a secret crush on him all the time. The closing shot is fantastic. First you see the celebration of the servants and then Simon goes to the other room to poor wine at the dinner table of his master who is also celebrating his own marriage. You can't help wondering on the nature of the future evolution of their relationships.

The beautiful window scene (it is amazing how important windows are in the Renoir movies, with inner and outer perspectives on events) reminds of the German cinema. The craziness of other scenes is tributary to the American slapstick silent movies. Renoir unites all elements to create his own universe. The same concerns will surface and will be translated in other movies.

TIRE AU FLANC shows Renoir to be a master of comedy and farce, with this tale of a rich, flaky poet and his servant (Simon) who both join the army and wind up in the same barracks. There's a wealth of great comic performances and witty ensemble playing, and a healthy sense of anarchy which, as Truffaut says, must have influenced Vigo's ZERO FOR CONDUCT. There's a lot going on, including landing in the brig, romantic mix-ups and some hilarious amateur theatricals at the army ball (the poet plays pan and Simon is a lady angel strung from a wire). The action is inventive and the timing is impeccable. The original sight gags are on a par with the great silent American comedies.

The visual style is audacious. There are tracking shots throughout, panning across details, pulling back for long shots, following people through crowds, etc. The opening farewell party sequence has many flash-pans, from one room to another (taken from the connecting hall), from one face to another, from one action to another. When Simon's girl sneaks into the barracks to say goodnight, the utter pandemonium is filmed with a rolling, tossing hand-held camera right in the center of the action, and lots of quick cutting that creates a sense of confusion, although it's almost always clear exactly what's happening. But when troops on maneuvers are fumbling about blindly because they have on gas-masks, they're filmed with stationary long-shots that are held for a long time, allowing nothing to distract from their antics.

A very funny film, and another masterpiece from Renoir.

Although some of the stylistic choices in directing constrain, there are flourishes of Renoir's dominant stylistic system at work in Tire au Flanc (Shirkers). The opening shot of a close up on a painting is overtly tableau and the unilateral dollying back and forth from midground to foreground can induce motion sickness. In addition, the camera merely tilting and panning to reframe shots does little to construct the space of the diegesis. It is certainly a far cry from the long take mobile framing of Regle or M. Lange. However, Renoir is beginning to form his dominant stylistic system in this film. Characters stand in archways demarcating three layers to the staging of the shots while the camera allows obstructions at the edges of the frame to help construct a real sense of space. For those driven to understand Renoir as a humanist, Tire becomes a solid film-these. The military officer class is juxtaposed with the working class raw recruit, yet both suffer from unique and profound ineptitude. But is the film about an "I'm OK, you're OK" philosophy or is the film text purporting something more pragmatic and utilitarian? I conjecture that there is indeed a humanist impulse in this film. Human beings naturally fall into line and take on roles within systems structured around power, but they just as naturally resist, struggle with, struggle against and condemn such systems and adopted roles. Thus humans are compulsive creatures. But Renoir puts forward (in my own linguistic interpretation now) that "the worn out soldier sleeps heavy, while the worn out guard sleeps like a rock". And so people are activated by what interests them more (and most) and will be more-or-less inefficient when forced to do what is of no interest to them. As much as these observations, lessons and credos on human nature get a treatment through the film using the example of war, I do not believe that Renoir is necessarily looking to be exhaustive in his means. Perhaps, this idea of creative freedom ("toujours le poete" ) was Renoir's method of communicating with other sectors of the film industry. Although, the French film industry formed into a cottage industry (as opposed to a studio system), there would surely have been a lot of resistance and shuffling around of professional alliances at the level of production and distribution during the time when Renoir was directing his first set of films. In Hollywood today, there is no real pressure on the creativity of the director or screenwriter because there are clear expectations of toeing a line formed and enforced by the economics and business of the industry (and if you don't like it, go indie), however, France at this time may have been struggling to understand the boundaries and realms of art and business within the medium of film. All my conjecture and supposition aside, there are some final interesting points to be made about Tire au Flanc... unique extreme long shots that defy tableau definitions but also defy strict character psych-pov (perhaps shots like these are the roots of Renoir's dominant stylistic system showing), a film bereft of french impressionist film editing techniques, ambiguous pov shots which are at times obtrusively constructing space and of course the spectacle of a young-ish Michel Simon in drag (a rare treat!).