Grisou (1938)
Directed by Maurice de Canonge

Film Review

Adapted from a play by Pierre Brasseur and Marcel Dalio, Grisou feels heavily laden with the poetic realist pessimism of Marcel Carné's films but it was in fact directed by a far less significant filmmaker, Maurice de Canonge, who spent most of his career directing bland populist fare such as Dernière heure, édition spéciale (1949) and Boum sur Paris (1954).  Had Carné directed the film it would doubtless have been a far more substantial, and possibly far grimmer work, but Canonge does a reasonably good job, bringing genuine feeling and urgency to a somewhat staid and predictable melodrama.

Although they get top billing, Pierre Brasseur and Madeleine Robinson do the film few favours - Brasseur is wildly over the top, Robinson unconvincing as the archetypal 'bad woman' (Viviane Romance would have been a far better choice).  On the acting front, it is Raymond Aimos who steals the show, so true to life that you'd swear he'd spent his entire life chewing coal dust at the bottom of a mine shaft.  One of the great character actors of French cinema, Aimos had a knack of fitting so comfortably into the setting of a film that you can hardly imagine him in any other place.  Who can forget his 'Tintin' in Duvivier's La Belle équipe (1936) or Quart Vittel in Carné's Le Quai des brumes (1938)?  Whilst Aimos contributes most to the film's realism and poignancy, and makes most of the rest of the cast pretty redundant, Odette Joyeux deserves a passing mention (although married to Brasseur in real life, she plays his sister in the film), along with an instantly likeable Bernard Blier at the start of his career.  Another notable name in the cast is Lucien Gallas, who famously owned a cabaret frequented by German soldiers during the Occupation - something that had grave consequences for both him and his partner, Ginette Leclerc, after the Liberation.

Filmed partly on location at a functioning mine in the northern French town of Lens, with ample footage of mine workings, Grisou has a raw documentary feel that ties in well with the fictional drama.  The title translates as 'firedamp', the flammable gas that is one of the main perils of underground mining, as is apparent in the film's most dramatic sequence depicting a succession of firedamp explosions in the mine.  Grisou doesn't quite have the searing impact of other mine-themed dramas, such as G.W. Pabst's Kameradschaft (1931) and Carol Reed's The Stars Look Down (1940), but it is an effective testimony to the fraternity among miners and the appalling dangers of their profession.

In 1942, during the Occupation, the film was re-released in France as Les Hommes sans soleil (presumably because its portrait of the noble proletarian chimed with Pétainist sentiment), but with one notable change.  In 1940, the Vichy government had set up the Comité d'Organisation des Industries du Cinéma (COIC, the forerunner of the Centre National de la Cinématographie) to regulate France's film industry.  Part of the COIC's remit was to issue professional identity cards that effectively barred Jews from working in the industry.  For existing films, scenes with Jewish actors were excised and the names of any Jews removed from the credits.  The extent of this is powerfully brought home when you watch the 'sanitised' opening credits for Grisou - excluding the cast, about half of the names appear to be blacked out, including that of Marcel Dalio, one of the film's authors.

Film Synopsis

In a mining town in the north of France, the women lead dull, uneventful lives whilst their sons and husbands eke out a modest existence, slaving all day in dangerous conditions in the mines.  Hagenauer and Demuysère are two miners who, through the hazards of their job, have become the closest of friends.  When Hagenauer is injured in a rockfall, Demuysère insists that he recuperates in his house, cared for by his wife, La Loute. Little does Demuysère know that La Loute is tired of her life and longs to run away to start over again.  Mistaking La Loute's interest in him for love, Hagenauer becomes fiercely jealous when he suspects she is having an affair with Tony, who manages the pit office.  In fact, Tony is interested in Hagenauer's sister, Madeleine...