La Ferme du pendu (1945)
Directed by Jean Dréville

Film Review

If there is one film that confounds the popular misconception that Jean Dréville was merely an adept journeyman rather than a gifted contributor to the seventh art that film is surely La Ferme du pendu.  Dréville's incredible productivity (he had helmed almost thirty features before this), together with his willingness to turn his talents to cheesy crowd-pleasers as well as more serious fare, made him an easy target for the critics on the Cahiers du cinéma on the eve of the French New Wave.  It was largely down to the barrel-loads of contempt heaped on him by the future directors of the Nouvelle Vague in the 1950s that led Dréville to being written off as little more than a competent hack, with the result that even today (many decades after his misguided detractors altered their views) most of his best work languishes in obscurity.  It is an injustice that still remains to be corrected.

Dréville's achievements were in fact recognised at the mid-point of his career, when he received the Prix Louis Delluc for his film Les Casse-pieds (1948).  Just a few years before this, he had achieved a massive box office hit with La Cage aux rossignols (1945), which was subsequently remade as Les Choristes (2004).  Throughout the 1930s and '40s, Dréville was one of the standard bearers of French cinema's quality tradition (a term that had contemptuous connotations for Truffaut and his pals), his output including some stunning big budget productions (Le Joueur d'échecs (1938)) and sharp-toothed satires (Les Affaires sont les affaires (1942)).

It was during the Occupation, that Dréville's artistry reached its zenith with the epic melodrama Les Roquevillard (1943).  La Ferme du pendu came after this, a similar kind of naturalistic rural drama that has the same outstanding visual impact, achieved by some highly imaginative use of lighting and camerawork.  With its unusual camera positions (sometimes at or below waist-height), undulating tracking shots and smooth slow zooms into powerful big close-ups, the film is pictorially stunning in parts, almost totally unlike anything seen in French cinema at the time.  Panoramic shots of the austerely picturesque Vendée setting, with roughly-hewn peasant folk in the distance visible through long grass in the foreground, provide other flashes of cinematic genius, fleetingly evocative of such marvels as Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu monogatari (1953).

At the end of the film, an achingly beautiful sequence depicting the main character struggling to plough a field looks as if it might have been lifted from a John Ford film of the 1940s.  Such moments of sublime poetry punctuate a film that is so visually expressive it scarcely needs dialogue to tell its story.  Dréville's use of the camera somehow manages to endow the raw rural landscape with a soul of its own, one of ever-changing moods that holds the fate of the protagonists in its unforgiving hands.  What Zola does with words in La Terre Dréville accomplishes with images in his magnum opus.

La Ferme du pendu differs markedly from other rural dramas made in France around this time, not only in its daring fluidity and stark visual compositions, but also in its relentlessly pessimistic tone.  After a sombre opening depicting a funeral, the mood brightens for a short time with a lively wedding party sequence, the sense of joie-de-vivre heightened by camera motion and skilful editing that are perfectly synchronised with the movement within the frame.  After this, the mood takes an ever downwards trajectory into the abyss, a series of calamities leading to a tragic conclusion that is all too predictable - although the film does finally end on a note of optimism.

In its bleak assessment of country life, La Ferme du pendu echoes Jacques Becker's Goupi mains rouges (1943), but without the thriller plot contrivances and scurrilous caricaturing that this earlier film resorts to for comic effect.  It also calls to mind another popular rural drama of the time, Pierre de Hérain's Monsieur des Lourdines (1943), although this offered a far more romanticised take on working the land, one that was in line with Maréchal Pétain's patriotic philosophy encapsulated in his slogan 'Travail, famille, patrie'.  On the face of it, Dréville's film would appear to take a distinctly anti-Pétainist line, with its central character - a frighteningly authoritarian landowner (with Nazi overtones) - prepared to sacrifice not only his family, but also the line of succession, simply to prevent his farm from slipping from his grasp in his own lifetime.

Arguably, it is Charles Vanel's lead performance that makes this such a powerful and gripping piece of film drama.  Barely halfway into his remarkable eight-decade spanning acting career, Vanel was at the height of his powers, and as on Dréville's earlier Les Roquevillard he grabs both our attention and our sympathy with what must surely rate as one of his greatest performances (surpassed only by his gut-wrenching turn in H.G. Clouzot's Le Salaire de la peur a decade later).  As the eldest of the three Raimondeau brothers, the ardent traditionalist who governs his household along lines that a contemporary audience would have regarded as Fascistic, Vanel's character would seem to have nothing to endear us to him.  His tyrannical behaviour results in the gradual dismemberment of his family and almost leads him to kill an innocent victim, and yet Vanel somehow compels us to pity him.  In the film's final segment, you can hardly help but be moved by François's fumbling attempts to connect with his estranged sister, and when the cruel Hardy-esque denouement finally strikes it is with a profound sorrow that we witness the character's hard-earned comeuppance.

The film's other stand-out performance is provided by Alfred Adam, another prolific character actor who is just as well-suited for his role as the more odious of the three brothers - his loathsome behaviour (particularly his abhorrent treatment of the fair sex) amplified ten-fold when set beside the unwavering goodness of the youngest brother, played by an almost saintly Guy Decomble.  Unlike Vanel's stony-faced patriarch, who retains a certain nobility throughout, Adam's Grand Louis is a detestable villain to his core, a fact that is shockingly borne out by his barbaric rape of the servant girl Marie.  It is curious that Dréville chose to underplay the brutality of the implied assault by following it with the film's most serene sequence, the camera slowly panning across a deserted farmyard, finally fixing our gaze on the prostrate form of Marie, lying like abandoned rags on a pile of straw.  'It's all part and parcel of country life', seems to be what the film's author is implying - a newly violated young girl lying in abject disgrace among farm animals who are going about their business in total ignorance of the horror that has taken place.

La Ferme du pendu was the first screen adaptation of a series of regional novel by Gilbert Dupé (others include Christian Stengel's Le Village perdu (1947) and Jean Stelli's La Foire aux femmes (1956)).  At the time, Dupé was married to the actress Lucienne Laurence, who played the role of Marie, the ill-used servant girl, in the film.  Another notable cast member is Bourvil, the first time the actor was credited under this name, although he had made a few film appearances prior to this as an extra.  Although he is on screen for just a few minutes, Bourvil makes his presence felt, particularly in the euphoric wedding sequence where he gets to sing Les Crayons, the song that became a national hit and made him a household name in France.  The runaway success of later films such as André Berthomieu's Pas si bête (1947) quickly established Bourvil as the leading French comic actor of his time.

As for Jean Dréville, by 1950 his best work was behind him, although he did go on to direct a few more interesting films.  He worked with rising star Jeanne Moreau on La Reine Margot (1954) and Orson Welles on the stylish historical blockbuster La Fayette (1962), whilst still churning out more brazenly populist fare such as À pied, à cheval et en spoutnik (1958), although the less said about this risible comedy the better.  If there is to be a serious retrospective of Dréville's work, we can expect his rural masterpiece La Ferme du pendu to figure prominently in it.

Film Synopsis

The scene is the Vendée, an agricultural region of France in the 1930s.  After the death of his father, François Raimondeau has one thought in mind - to prevent the family farm from being broken up and sold.  To that end, he coerces his two younger brothers - Grand Louis and Bénoni - and sister Amanda into agreeing never to get married.  It isn't long before Amanda reneges on her promise.  When her eldest brother refuses to hand over her share of the inheritance, she turns her back on the farm and heads off to Nantes to open a café with her husband-to-be.  Realising he needs a woman to replace his sister and take on all the household chores, François engages a timid orphan girl Marie as a servant.

Marie carries out her duties with the utmost diligence but she is ill-rewarded for her efforts when Grand Louis, a notorious womaniser, decides to add her to his long list of amorous conquests.  On hearing that Marie has got herself pregnant, François is driven to desperate measures.  His attempt on the young woman's life ends with Marie losing her unborn child and sustaining an injury that results in her being dismissed.  The brothers' abominable treatment of Marie reaches the neighbouring villagers, who turn on Grand Louis with a vengeance just as he is about to bed another woman.  With the mob heading his way, the philanderer tries to defend himself with his rifle and is then driven to hang himself. Bénoni, the most sympathetic of the three brothers, is so appalled by François's actions that in the end he can take no more.  He too leaves the farm to start a new life elsewhere, leaving François alone and childless to persevere with the running of his farm.

Eleven years later, Marie returns to the farm, desperate for her brother's support after being abandoned by her husband.  It is with genuine fondness that François receives his sister and her ten-year-old son.  Increasingly aware of his mortality, the ageing farmer is anxious to have an heir to whom he can pass on his land, so he hopes he can persuade Amanda and her son to stay on the farm and take it over after his death.  Unfortunately, Amanda has no appetite for country living and intends taking her son with her when she returns to the city.  François accepts his abandonment with calm resignation and continues his old life, not knowing that his time is fast running out.  At the moment of his passing, Amanda's son suddenly appears on the farm, an eager successor to his Raimondeau forebears.