Film Review
Having garnered critical acclaim for his revelatory realist drama
Le Point du jour (1949) about the
lives of miners in northern France, director Louis Daquin ventured onto
more controversial territory with this adaptation of Jan de Hartog's
stage play
Schipper naast God,
written just after WWII.
Maître
après Dieu is one of the earliest films made in France
(and one of only a handful made before the 1970s) which contains any
reference to the Holocaust - understandably given France's reluctance
to face up to its far from honourable involvement in Hitler's Final
Solution. By today's standards, Hartog's play feels artificial
and mawkish, and Daquin's well-meaning but ponderous adaptation (scripted by Hartog) gives
the same impression.
With its poorly constructed sets and over-reliance on back projection,
Maître après Dieu
looks like a cheap production, not much better than what we might
expect from Hollywood's Poverty Row studios in an earlier
decade. This is not, however, the film's most off-putting
aspect. What is far harder to stomach is its far from convincing
portrayal of one man's conversion from mercenary sea crook to beatific
Christian. Even for an actor of the calibre of Pierre Brasseur,
this transformation is a hard sell, and the inference, that to be a
good man you must first discover God, is one that will stick in the
craw of any humane non-believer. Fortunately, for those who are
prepared to look a little more deeply, there is far more to this film
than this somewhat toe-curling surface impression.
Maître après Dieu
does have its flaws but, despite this, it still manages to be an
involving drama. Daquin doesn't quite succeed in disguising the
film's theatrical origins but the confined setting (most of the drama
takes place in a cramped boat) serves to heighten the tension and our
concern for the plight of the Jewish refugees, who are presented not as
one anonymous mass of humanity but as individuals we can readily
identify with. The ill-treatment of Jews by the Germans and their
allies comes as no surprise, so the film's real shock comes when they
are repulsed by an American nation that has yet to wake up to the
horror of Nazi Germany.
If Pierre Brasseur was attempting to give an authentic portrayal of a
man's spiritual awakening then it's quite evident that he fell somewhat
short of his objective. The scene where his character, a loutish
pirate for whom the word 'lugubrious' was clearly invented, sits down
and starts reading the Bible (and doesn't stop until he's digested
every last word) is only slightly easier to swallow than the Atlantic
Ocean after an all-night binge. What Brasseur's character is
really experiencing is not a religious conversion as such, but rather a
desperate attempt to pin religion on to the terrifying discovery that
he has started to engage with the problems of other people.
This becomes increasingly apparent as the supposedly reborn Knipper
goes chasing after a God, believing Him to be a bearded old man living
in the clouds somewhere off the east coast of North America. In
the film's most powerful scene, an old Rabbi reveals to Knipper the
place where God, if He exists, is to be found, but the seadog fails to
comprehend and goes on clinging to his childish delusions. It is
only at the end of the film that Knipper appears genuinely transformed,
by performing the most selfless act of which he is capable. Only
then do we appreciate the genius of Brasseur's portrayal - he is not
pretending to be a man who discovers God; rather he is a man who,
despite himself, ends up finding himself. Like a long sea
crossing in another century,
Maître
après Dieu risks losing most of its audience en route,
but for those who survive the stomach-churning passage it is a journey
well worth making.
© James Travers 2014
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
1938. By passing himself off as a missionary, a boorish pirate
named Joris Knipper manages to extort a large consignment of coconuts
from an African village. On his arrival in Hamburg, he is offered
a generous sum of money if he will transport 150 Jews to
Alexandria. At first, Knipper regards his passengers as little
more than cattle but when he becomes aware of their suffering he starts
to show them compassion. When he reaches the Egyptian port,
Knipper is instructed by the authorities that he cannot land and must
return to Hamburg. At this moment, the old pirate has a sudden
religious awakening. Realising what awaits his passengers in Nazi
Germany, Knipper heads west with the intention of dropping them off on
the east coast of the United States. His faith is soon to be
tested by the determination of the Americans to drive away unwelcome
refugees...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.