Le cheval d'orgueil

Unusual Chabrol movie is a period drama depicting (and celebrating) a simple, rural milieu, beautifully set and photographed, all well-intended, but somehow misses the point it wants to make.

Based on a novel by Pierre-Jakez Hélias. A small Breton community before and during the First World War – mostly very idyllic, despite periods of hard luck, poverty and despair (la chienne de monde). The young couple (both blessed with lovely smiles) and their child, the narrator. Many sweet and funny scenes, as well as a few sad ones. The soft-hearted postman cannot bear to read letters bringing bad news. The title comes from a family saying; they're too poor to own a horse, but they have the horse of pride – the child rides on his father's shoulders. Better than any horse, the boy says at the end. There is tension in the schools about speaking French, not Breton. The family are reds, proud and liberty-loving. Beautiful pace, photography, costumes...

Critically speaking ,this Chabrol film , released between "Violette Nozières" and "Les Fantômes du Chapelier " ,was greeted with a poor reception in France and it flopped at the box office .Obviously,the director had tackled a subject which was unfamiliar to his usual world,although he had depicted a rural background with talent in the past ("le beau serge" and his masterpiece "le boucher").

Objections to his adaptation of a best-seller remain : the costumes look too brand new, the opening scene of the wedding look like a tourist folklore show, complete with dances ,songs ,binious (Breton bag -pipes)and bolées (bowlfuls of cider);never ,in a month of Sundays,you feel the (real) poverty of Brittany at the turn of the century ,before WW1 broke out.There's something worse: the Britton language is almost never used ,hence their culture is passed over in silence .Chabrol's depictions are overpolished ,and even when the "chienne du monde" (destitution) sweeps on them,the director contents himself with making a woman say to a beggar 'I've got nothing".

Detailed retrospection illumines different aspects of the movie,which were overlooked by the critics of the time of issue. You must remember it's not really a story ,but a chronicle of Britton slices of life.

The stanglehold religion had on this region ,even after the separation of the Church and the State in 1905 : the coming of the smug député (member of the parlament,congressman)is revealing :the school is par excellence secular ,its language is French ,and its God the Republic.The third republic,which ,in fueling the revenge spirit of the 1870 defeat, prepared the union sacrée (united front presented by the FRench against the enemy in 1914);In Brittany ,the most famous bard ,Theodore Botrel, was a diehard patriot who would sing "a French must live for her (France),for her a Britton must die ".And die,they did ,en masse, even though Chabrol 's depictions are not very convincing , except for the hard labor women left alone had to face .

Chabrol comes out best when he depicts the outcome of the religious stranglehold on the peasants : "the Relevailles" (churching) : a woman who just gave birth to a child had committed "a fault " and had to stay in bed for a certain period of time ,because she "took a bite of the apple " and "still smells of the fruit "; the wedding night is extremely modest , they sleep on lits- clos ( box beds). One learns that ,though their region borders on a sea and on an ocean , the Britton cannot swim :the reason is that they can't undress ,because "Eden is far away" . The first thing they do to celebrate the end of WW 2 is a procession to thank the Lord and the Blessed Virgin.

Taken in isolation of the costumed Brittons which recall postcards they sell to today's tourists ,Jean Rabier's cinematography is splendid indeed when he films the landscapes (his work on previous " Le Boucher" has remained memorable).

If you're going to watch this movie and to appreciate it in several respects,you should forget everything you know about Chabrol's body of work.

This is a thoroughly wonderful movie made, unfortunately, for a steadily shrinking audience. Pier-Jakes Helias' Chevel d'orgueil is not a novel, but a memoire that recounts not just one child's life, but the entire culture in which he lived, inland Brittany (l'Argoat) primarily before World War I. The movie has no plot as such. It is a series of vignettes that illustrate, very well, different aspects of Breton inland life at the time. The dialogue is sometimes in Breton, sometimes in French, depending (largely but not always) on what language the characters would actually have spoken in a given situation.

The unfortunate thing about this very good movie is that it really doesn't explain the culture it presents, it just presents it. As a result, if you are not already familiar with the culture it presents, a lot of it will not mean very much to you. While I generally don't like voice-over commentary, this is one movie that, for most non-Breton viewers, would greatly benefit from one.

So, a wonderful movie. But, I concede, one that will not mean a lot to those not already immersed in inland Breton culture.

Though I watched this in French, without the benefit of subtitles even in that language, I have to say that it emerges as the least Chabrol ever! While occasionally changing tack completely from the thrillers he was best-known (and admired) for, this pastoral drama in a period setting was as far removed from his 'comfort zone' as could be imagined.

Consequently, it is hard to fathom what the director thought he was doing here or intended in the first place – given that the end result is plot less, excruciatingly dull and comes with an obscure title to boot! Maybe Chabrol was after some prestigious award, which were not so freely handed out to the essentially commercial fare he usually dabbled in.

Anyway, what we get is an irrefutably meticulous and reasonably affectionate recreation of a particular past era – Brittany at the time of WWI – but, in spite of its (expected) appealing photography, at almost two hours, the documentary approach is positively deadening. The simple events in the daily life of the inhabitants hardly elicit a response from the viewer, other than as a waste of time alas. Frankly, the image that has stuck with me a week after viewing this is the fact that, for no discernible reason, the peasants involved sleep in hanging cupboards!