Adieu Philippine (1962)
Directed by Jacques Rozier

Film Review

When it was finally released in 1963 after a troubled production, Adieu Philippine was enthusiastically received by the critics and immediately singled out as one of the most emblematic films of the French New Wave. Yet it wasn't directed by one of the established pillars of the Nouvelle Vague - François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard or Jacques Rivette - but by an unknown, first-time film maker Jacques Rozier, who would always remain a peripheral, almost forgotten figure of the movement and aesthetic that his debut film so perfectly epitomised.  The importance of Adieu Philippine isn't that it encapsulates the French New Wave, but that it reflects so much of the character of the era in which it was made.  With its spontaneous celebration of youth and life, it vividly evokes the joie-de-vivre and freedom of the 1960s, but there is also an underlying and unmistakable sense of melancholia through its discrete allusions to the Algerian War.  As in Agnès Varda's Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962) and Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964), Rozier's film leaves us with a tragic awareness of the transience of youth.

Rozier began work on Adieu Philippine in 1960, backed by the independent film producer Georges de Beauregard who had previously bankrolled Godard's first feature À bout de souffle (1960). He envisaged making a film about the war in Algeria but, this being too sensitive a subject at the time, he was steered towards a more anodyne story about a young man enjoying his last few months of freedom in the company of two pretty young girls before taking up his military service.  With minimal resources, Rozier encountered no end of problems whilst making the film and at the end of a gruelling twelve-month shoot he was shocked to discover that he had lost the entire soundtrack for the film.

As virtually all of the dialogue had been improvised there was no script to fall back on, and so Rozier had to painstakingly reconstruct the dialogue from scratch, trying to get as near a synchronisation with the lip movements of his actors as he could.  Meanwhile, de Beauregard had totally lost confidence in the film and sold it back to Rozier, to do with it whatever he chose.  Two years after beginning work on the film, Rozier was able to present the completed film at the Cannes Film Festival in 1962, where it received a rapturous welcome.  Despite the critical acclaim that came its way, Adieu Philippine was not a great commercial success and Rozier would have difficulty financing his subsequent films.  His output as a filmmaker was modest in scale but it reaffirmed his standing as one of France's most committed auteurs.  His later films Du côté d'Orouët (1973), Les Naufragés de l'île de la Tortue (1976) and Maine Océan (1986) are all significant achievements and mark Rozier out as an auteur apart.

With its frenzied jump-cutting, exuberant jazz track and euphoric cinéma vérité style of mise-en-scène (the entire film was shot in real locations in natural light with non-professional actors), Adieu Philippine positively sizzles with energy and authenticity throughout, and it genuinely does feel like Rozier has somehow managed to distil the whole of the French New Wave into a single, one hundred minute feature.  The obvious technical imperfections add to the film's striking impressionistic feel - Rozier's intention clearly was not to make a polished piece of cinema, but to seize life as it is, in a similar 'sur le vif' manner to the painters Monet and Renoir, showing us not just the vitality and insouciance of youth but also its trepidations and uncertainties.  The main characters' sojourn in Corsica is shot with breathtaking artistry and is devastatingly poignant as we see all too clearly what it signifies:  the last days of youth slowly fading from view, never to return.  The final shot leaves us mourning the fact that Michel's sweet summer is over - he will soon be on his way to Algeria, to face the horrible realities of war in a strange and hostile land.  The bitterest adieu of all is the one which we must bid to our youth.

Film Synopsis

Paris, in the summer of 1960.  Michel is a young Frenchman who, just before he is due to start his military service in Algeria, works as a television studio trainee.   This is how he comes to meet two attractive young women, Liliane and Juliette, two aspiring actresses who, alas, have only enough talent to appear in the worst kind of television programmes.  To make the most of the summer before he is drafted into the French army, Michel decides to take a long holiday on the island of Corsica.  The two girls agree to accompany him and share his last few weeks of freedom...