Patrie (1946)
Directed by Louis Daquin

Film Review

"A country that wants to be free is already free."  It's a great line and one that you would expect to hear in a film that is a naked allegory of the state of France under Nazi occupation.  Patrie, the film in question, originates from a much earlier work, a stage play of the same title written in 1869 by the celebrated French playwright Victorien Sardou.  With its account of a Flemish revolt against Spanish rule in the late 16th century, Sardou's play would almost certainly have had a powerful resonance for a nation that had just been released from the yoke of Nazi tyranny.  Skilfully adapted by Charles Spaak, Louis Daquin and Pierre Bost, the play does far more than draw parallels between two historical events; it also becomes an incitement to punish traitors, and thereby a flagant justification for the anti-collaborationist purge that blazed across France immediately after the Liberation.  Even the film's title has an ironic edge to it, mocking the glib mantra of the Vichy government: Travail, famille, patrie.

Actively involved in the Resistance in the latter years of the Occupation, Louis Daquin resumed his filmmaking career after the war by making some short films for the Communist Party before embarking on what was to be his most ambitious film.  Despite the scarcity of resources (film stock, electricity and building materials were all severely rationed in France after the war), Daquin managed to craft a lavish period piece which hardly looks as if it was filmed in a studio.  Daquin's flair for realism - revealed in his two previous noteworthy films Nous les gosses (1941) and Premier de cordée (1944) - gives Patrie a biting authenticity that steers it well away from full-blown melodrama.  Nicolas Hayer's moody cinematography heightens the drama throughout and brings a stark reality to the film's grim final sequences.  The film makes an interesting contrast with Jacques Feyder's La Kermesse héroïque (1935), which deals with the Flemish revolt in a more light-hearted vain.

It is fitting that the hero of the piece - the leader of the uprising against the occupying power - should be played by Pierre Blanchar, as the actor was later revealed to have served with honour in the French Resistance.  Blanchar has a natural air of nobility and incorruptibility that make him the ideal casting choice for the part of the doomed Count Rysoor.  (After this film, Blanchar would play a similar self-sacrificing hero in Bataillon du ciel (1947), one that was closely modelled on a real combattant of the Liberation.)  First revealed in Daquin's Le Voyageur de la Toussaint (1943), Jean Desailly reaffirms his talent as Blanchar's flawed lieutenant Karloo, a weak and indecisive character that seems to embody the attentiste mentality of the majority of the French population during the war.  By contrast, Maria Mauban's calculating Countess de Rysoor is an unequivocal collaborator who gets what she deserves, once Desailly's Karloo has found the moral courage to act and put duty before desire.  After this, Daquin made one other notable film, Le Point du jour (1949), but subsequently had difficulty finding backing for his films and faded gently into obscurity.  Patrie is probably the closest he came to making an outright masterpiece.

Film Synopsis

Flanders in the late 16th century.  With his country under occupation by the armies of the King of Spain, the nobleman Count Rysoor enters into a pact with William of Orange to lead a revolt that will free his people from Spanish rule.  On the eve of the uprising, Rysoor discovers to his horror that his young wife Elizabeth has been having a clandestine affair with his loyal lieutenant, Karloo.  Fearing that her lover will be killed in the impending battle, Elizabeth betrays her husband by revealing his scheme to the Duke d'Albe, the town's governor.  Rysoor is duly arrested, along with his fellow conspirators, but Karloo is spared at Elizabeth's insistence.  Before his execution, Rysoor gets Karloo to swear to avenge his betrayal...