Chiens perdus sans collier (1955)
Directed by Jean Delannoy

Film Review

One of the principal objections against contemporary French cinema held by François Truffaut and his fellow critics on the Cahiers du cinéma in the mid-1950s was its apparent lack of relevance to modern society.  The so-called cinéma du papa was looking increasingly detached from the present realities of post-war France and rarely, if ever, had the guts to tackle serious social issues, instead regurgitating the same old crowd-pleasing menu of stilted melodramas, imitative swashbucklers and trite comedies.  Three directors Truffaut was most contemptuous of in his articles lambasting his perceived failings in French cinema were Marcel Carné, Claude Autant-Lara and Jean Delannoy, the standard bearers (at least in his eyes) of a style of cinema that was well and truly past its sell-by date.  But in writing off these three highly regarded (though not by Truffaut and his co-horts) filmmakers as out-of-touch stuck-in-the-muds, the hot-heads on the Cahiers were entirely mistaken.  For the latter part of their respective careers, Carné, Autant-Lara and Delannoy all made frequent attempts to engage with contempory themes, and did so with considerably more commitment and compassion than the bourgeois-preoccupied Truffaut ever did when he started making his own films in the late 1950s.

Jean Delannoy's social concerns are first apparent in his 1951 film Le Garçon sauvage, which has some powerful resonances with Truffaut's subsequent (and far more revered) Les 400 coups (1959), both dealing with the subject of childhood abandonment and rebellion with startling conviction.  Delannoy followed this up with an even more hard-hitting social drama, Chiens perdus sans collier (a.k.a. The Little Rebels), adapted from a recently published novel by Gilbert Cesbron.  It is the kind of film that should have instantly won Truffaut's approval, a genuinely heartfelt and uncompromising account of society's inability to deal effectively with the problem of parental neglect and juvenile delinquency.  The film is poignant, well-observed and highly effective as a piece of social commentary, but Truffaut loathed it and saw nothing in it to cause him to reappraise his pathologically contemptuous assessment of a filmmaker that he despised.   

Chiens perdus sans collier is a comparatively minor entry in Jean Delannoy's impressive filmography, completely overshadowed by his hauntingly poetic fantasy-dramas L'Éternel retour (1943) and Les Jeux sont faits (1947) and lush period pieces Marie-Antoinette reine de France (1956) and La Princesse de Clèves (1961).  Yet it is an important work, one that reveals the director's human side more than perhaps any other film he made, with the possible exception of his subsequent Les Amitiés particulières (1964), a provocative but humane coming-of-age drama (one of French cinema's first attempts to treat homosexuality in a sympathetic way).  Jean Gabin is ideally suited to play the dour but likeable judge who commits himself to rescuing an estranged teenager from a future life of crime, his character's seemingly irrational actions casting a grim light on the social conscience that was singularly lacking in France at the time the film was made.

Scripted by Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost (a highly successful writing team that Truffaut reviled even more than Delannoy), the film is compelling and powerfully moving in parts but doesn't quite have the impact it deserves - perhaps because its authors are a little too anxious about it descending into pathos or miserabilism, the usual failing of this kind of well-meaning conscience-stirrer.  Marcel Carné would be moderately more successful with his strikingly gritty social drama Terrain vague (1960), a somewhat more courageous film with its blistering indictment of a self-interested society that has failed its underprivileged youngsters totally.

Film Synopsis

With no relatives of his own to take care of him, little Alain Robert ends up being placed in the care of a farming family in the country.  They bully and abuse him;  when they are away he sets fire to their barn and runs away.  He is picked up by the authorities and taken before Judge Lamy, who has him sent to an observation centre for juvenile delinquents.  It is here that Alain becomes friends with an older boy, Francis Lanoux, who was taken into care when he was found living in abject squalor with his alcoholic grandparents.  Francis has no intention of remaining a prisoner in the centre.  He intends to run away so that he can join his girlfriend Sylvette, who, unbeknown to him, is pregnant with his child.  Not having heard from Sylvette since he was taken into custody (all of her letters have been intercepted), Francis breaks out of the centre with Alain.  They go their separate ways - Francis setting off to find his girlfriend whilst Alain goes in search of his missing parents.  Both will end up being cruelly used by Fate...