Goupi Mains Rouges

This is Jacques Becker's second effort and the first one that really counts.Along with "casque d'or" ,"rendez-vous de juillet" and "le trou",it may be his finest work,and for sure one of the classics of the French cinema,one of these that you can watch and watch again without being tired.

The scenarist Pierre Very,is,along with Boileau-Narcejac,the best French suspense writer,and he outdoes himself here,creating an absorbing plot,a magic atmosphere,and a dozen of colorful characters .Out in the sticks,lives the Goupi family:actually a clan who's got its own laws and in which strangers are looked upon pretty much as enemies.In this strange family,every member has got a nickname,each one of them beginning with Goupi:Goupi-mes-sous,Goupi-Muguet,Goupi-Tonkin,of course Goupi-mains -rouges (Goupi-red-hands),and more.One fine day,a young man arrives from Paris :this is the first time he has come in this lost country,to visit his family.His late mother had escaped the Goupi clan,being unable to stand this place cut off the world.Needless to say,coming from the City,he's not welcome.The plot thickens when a Goupi wicked woman is murdered and the patriarch has a stroke and is no longer able to indicate where the family pile is hidden.

Jacques Becker created a very strange atmosphere,mainly during the first part:when the young man arrives ,he's taken by his uncle Goupi-Mains-Rouges to a scary place full of stuffed animals and black magic. He has wonderfully depicted his peasant milieu,in which they all stand together ,and in which they would not betray one of them,even if the police investigates their home.

There is a first-class cast,including Fernand ledoux,Georges Rollin,Germaine Kerjean and Blanchette Brunoy ;but the stand out is Robert Le Vigan,who portrays a former legionnaire,slipping gradually into madness.The most famous scene of the film belongs to him:pursued by the police,he climbs upon a tree,higher and higher,trying to reach for this sun he used to know when he was a soldier in the Colonies.A similar character is featured in Becker's follow-up movie "Falbalas",but insanity is much more credible in "Goupi Mains Rouges".

Had Hitchcock directed a country thriller,that would have been this one.

27-year-old Georges Rollin get called back from Paris by his father to their farm/inn, none of which he has seen for 25 years. He doesn't know why, but it turns out his father wants to consolidate the fortune of both branches of the family by marrying him to his cousin Blanchette Brunoy, despite the fact she and another cousin, Robert Vignon are getting it on. On arrival, he's scared out of his wits by an uncle, discovers his great-grandfather's corpse, is accused of murdering an aunt and stealing the mysterious family fortune.

A typical French country family, you'd say, particularly if you're fond of TOBACCO ROAD. Every one of them has a nickname that everyone in the town knows about to exclusion of actually knowing their real names: Goupi Monsieur or Goupi Le Loi or Goupi Mains Gauches and they don't get along particularly well, but unite against outsiders. As the movie went along, it got darker and darker, and I thought director Jacques Becker had made a Clouzot-style picture. Was he trying to get himself banned, too?

Well, you'll have to see how it turns out. It's certainly entertaining, and familiar enough if you come from a large family.

Adapted by Pierre Véry from his own novel and directed by Jacques Becker this is a splendidly low key satire on rural life and a highly unflattering portrait of cunning Charentais peasants whose family name is Goupi and whose family values are based upon the making and hoarding of money.

Although verging on the caricature the performances are by a cast that is wonderfully 'true' and whose quality is one that it would be virtually impossible to replicate now, notably Fernand Ledoux as the title character, Arthur Dévere as Goupi-Mes sous and the infamous but brilliant Robert le Vigan as the deranged Goupi-Tonkin.

It is a mixture of murder mystery and black comedy and despite being gloriously subversive for its time, one can only assume that it was spared the same fate that befell the equally subversive 'Le Corbeau' by virtue of the final scene which artfully espouses the Pétainist values of 'Travail, Famille et Patrie'.

This is the third of Becker's thirteen films, the best of which are among the best that French Cinema has to offer and for what it's worth he became one of the few Old Guard directors to be given the seal of approval by the New Ripple brigade.

An effective dark comedy and satire, that sort of reminded me of a warped, angry Gallic 'You Can't Take It with You'.

An outsider, in this case a son who left years ago, returns to his family, who are a strange and twisted lot indeed. Funny, but unlike the Capra film there is a tone of creepy decadence and potential violence underlying this group of only somewhat endearing eccentrics.

There are echoes too of Renoir (for whom Becker long served as an assistant) in it's pithy, insightful look at group and class dynamics. It flags at moments, and can't compete with Becker's later and greater films, but this a rarity worth seeking out.

French cinema from the era of the Occupation not surprisingly continues to remain relatively unfamiliar territory, along with French rural life in general. In 1943, however, two major postwar directing talents, Jacques Becker & Henri-Georges Clouzot attracted attention with their second feature films, both rural melodramas as far from Marcel Pagnol as you could get: Becker's 'Goupi Mains Rouge' and Clouzot's 'Le Corbeau'.

Although the opening strongly reminded me of Will Hay arriving at Buggleskelly in 'Oh, Mr. Porter!', what follows is neither as funny, as dramatic - considering that someone gets murdered - or as rural as I had been expecting; with much of the action consisting of talk in the hotel occupied by the grotesque Goupi clan, presided over by the extremely elderly Emperor (played by Maurice Schutz).

As one expects from a Becker film, the acting is consistently good, including the veteran stage actor Fernand Ledoux in the title role, Robert Le Vigan (who ended his days in Argentina after fleeing the fall of Vichy France) as the craziest of the clan, and a young Albert Rémy, best remembered as Antoine Doinel's father in 'Les Quatre Cents Coups'.

I found most of this interesting but strangely uninvolving, and suspect it probably resonates more with a French audience.