Peau de pêche (1929)
Directed by Jean Benoît-Lévy, Marie Epstein

Film Review

Portraits of the tyranny of childhood are not hard to come by in French cinema - François Truffaut's Les 400 coups (1959) is so widely known that it is considered the definitive example of its genre.  Jean Delannoy's Le Garçon sauvage (1951), Maurice Pialat's L'Enfance nue (1968) and Agnes Varda's Jacquot de Nantes (1991) are three equally worthy offerings in the same line.  Peau de pêche, a far less well-known film made in the dying days of the silent era, deserves a place on this list, its first half offering a child's eye view of the world that is extraordinarily moving, the brutal realities of life experienced by an orphan boy softened by his tendency to romanticise everything around him.  This was the most significant of the silent films made by Jean Benoît-Lévy and Marie Epstein, a directing partnership that is remembered today for its subsequent sound feature La Maternelle (1933) but which is otherwise criminally overlooked.  By contrast, Marie Epstein's brother Jean (with whom she also collaborated) is considered one of the great auteurs of French cinema.

Taking as their starting point a novel by Gabriel Mauriere, Benoît-Lévy and Epstein craft a work of exceptional warmth and humanity by masterfully combining the conventions of fairytale and melodrama into a strikingly realistic comedy-drama.  Lacking the hard edged pessimism of La Maternelle, which was intended as a powerful indictment of France's education system, Peau de pêche has a sunny delicacy and tenderness that make it hard to resist.  That said, beneath this engaging crowd-pleasing surface, there are some pretty dark and subversive undercurrents, with unmistakable allusions to society's appalling ill-treatment of children and the unbearable human cost of war.  A dedicated pedagogue with around 400 films to his name (mostly educational shorts), Jean Benoît-Lévy often used his art to communicate the social and moral themes that most greatly concerned him. That he does so with such charm and subtlety, avoiding overt didacticism, is greatly to his credit, and therein lies the power of his cinema.

Peau de pêche is a film of contrasts, where opposing realities and opposing feelings are continually played off against one another, the light and shade of life as we all experience it.  Dramatic shifts in location, the use of dialectic montage, changes in cinematographic styles - these are all employed to great effect to convey the changing moods of the protagonists in the drama in response to the events that impact on their lives.  Influenced by both expressionistic and impressionistic techniques of the time, Benoît-Lévy and Epstein's approach allows us to connect with their characters at a deep level by revealing their inner states through fleeting external impressions.  The most apparent example of the use of contrasts is the dramatic change of location twenty-five minutes into the film, moving from the beating heart of Paris to an achingly picturesque rural backwater.  The transition is so sudden, so jarring that we have a real sense of how this move would have affected the boy protagonist as he experiences it.  Like him, we feel a surging sense of release, a new zest for life at being planted in the countryside after enduring the stifling oppression of the milling metropolis for two and half reels.

The dichotomy of light and dark that runs through the entire film is reflected in the split identity of the main character himself, so it is apt that both share the same name.  The squalid external reality into which Peau de pêche was born - the precarious, loveless life of an unwanted orphan - differs markedly from the boy's insouciant sunny inner world.  An inveterate dreamer, he exists in a rose-tinted fantasy.  His days consist of wandering without a care around the wide open spaces of Montmartre; his nights are a hellish imprisonment in a foster lodging where he is routinely abused by his resentful Thénardier-like guardians.  Peau de pêche's seraphic beauty and sunny disposition contrast with the troll-like ugliness and grumpiness of his tormentors, this being how he would naturally see himself in a Grimms' fairytale.  Played by the incredibly talented, highly photogenic child performer Jimmy Gaillard (who started his career at the age of seven and didn't retire from screen acting until the 1950s), this cheeky little scamp immediately endears himself to his audience, much as Jackie Coogan did in Chaplin's The Kid (1921) a few years earlier.  Like Coogan, Gaillard was a highly expressive child actor who was worshiped by the camera, so it is with consummate ease that we are drawn into his character's inner world and succumb to his amusing flights of fancy.

Psychiatrists will no doubt argue that the boy's romantic delusions are nothing more than a defence mechanism, to shield him from grinding poverty and the monstrous abuse he receives at home.  Indeed, Benoît-Lévy's keen interest in child psychology may have been one of the motivating factors behind making this film.  The boy's nick name Peau de pêche (translating as Peach Skin) alludes to his extreme fragility - like his soft fruit namesake, he is all too easily bruised on contact with the outside world.  In the film's darkest passage the bruise is so unbearable that the boy sees a self-inflicted death as a better alternative than dishonour in the eyes of the princess he adores.  Later in the film, the grown-up Peau de pêche is ready to throw away all the happiness he has gained to avoid causing harm to the two people he most loves.  The point the film's authors appear to be making is that the bruises of infancy, once acquired, never go away, and so even in adulthood, Peau de pêche retains his sensitive nature, apparent in his habit of over-thinking situations and acting impulsively out of an exaggerated sense of nobility.  'A damaged child becomes a damaged adult' is one way to read the film. 

What is most extraordinary about this film is the harrowing degree to which it makes us connect with its central protagonist.  As they would later demonstrate to devastating effect in La Maternelle, Jean Benoît-Lévy and Marie Epstein have a particular aptitude for drawing us into the world of the children we see on screen, forcing us to see things from their respective.  One of their trademarks is the abundant but judicious use of large close-ups, with expressive young faces - pictures of perfect innocence or impish cheekiness - filling the entire frame.  In one sequence in Peau de pêche, close-ups of children playing with bullets and cutting up photographs of soldiers are inter-cut with fleeting allusions to the horrific consequences of war, including a brief shot of a war veteran walking on two wooden peg-legs.  In a happier sequence later on in the film, Peau de pêche entertains a crowd of country children with his brilliant impersonation of Maurice Chevalier.  The delight of the assembled throng is reflected in the expressions of joy on their faces - joy that all too quickly switches to naked aggression as the boy entertainer gets into a fierce scuffle with an envious onlooker.

Peau de pêche's attempt at suicide is a torment to watch but it provides a felicitous turning point in the protagonist's fortunes.  Recuperating in bed, the boy has a strange visitation in which he first sees his beloved princess leading her bridal procession, and then he imagines himself on a turntable surrounded by shop display manikins (the film's most eerie use of superimposition).  This delirium of the imagination is like the breaking of a fever, after which the boy suddenly finds himself in happier surroundings, under the roof of a more benign foster family in the depths of the French countryside.  The psychological impact of this sudden switch in location is powerfully rendered by the film's dramatic change of tone.  The oppressive prison-like ambiance of Paris, with its crowded streets and towering man-made edifices, is banished, and in its place is a rural Eden, where Peau de pêche discovers for the first time the full beauty of existence through his life on a farm and his nascent friendship with a lad of his own age, La Ficelle.  The sequences depicting the two boys playing together, narrowly avoiding a second tragedy by drowning, are the most exquisitely photographed in the film, and the influence of Jacques Feyder's equally sublime Visage d'enfants (1925) is immediately felt.

Yet even in this bucolic haven the darker realities being played out on the wider stage are felt.  The tranquillity of the countryside is disturbed by the sounds from the WWI battlefields just over the horizon.  The farmer's wife, Peau de pêche's adopted aunt, is visibly distressed by the fact that her young son is away fighting at the Front.  When the news comes that the son has been killed, a pall of unutterable sorrow descends on the household, and you can easily feel the heartache of the ten-year-old boy as he accompanies his distraught aunt to the grave of the fallen soldier.  The film's anti-war message is powerfully but subtly rendered by a passage in which an array of crosses marking the last resting places of the war dead is superimposed over a shot of the farmer sowing wheat seed in the fields.  What Abel Gance took a whole film to communicate in his J'Accuse (1919) is expressed with equal force in this one brief aside by Benoît-Lévy and Epstein.

At the film's grief-laden mid-point the narrative fast-forwards by ten years and a more upbeat Borzagean melodrama takes over, although there is still plenty of authentic human feeling to be experienced along the way.  Now Peau de pêche is a sympathetic twenty-year-old, played by Maurice Touzé, who had previously worked with Benoit-Levy and Jean Epstein on Pasteur (1922), playing Louis Pasteur as a child.  In what was to be his final film appearance, Touzé effectively picks up the baton from Jimmy Gaillard and turns in a sensitive portrayal of a post-adolescent who is still subject to the romantic delusions that he nurtured in childhood.  Peau de pêche's friendship with La Ficelle has developed into a brotherly bond with a distinct homoerotic edge to it, their mutual regard keeping them safe from any possible early involvement with the fair sex.  The inevitable rupture is ominously presaged by a shot in which the upside-down reflection of a girl appears between the two young men as they enjoy each other's company by the river.  As the shot implies, it is not the actual girl, Lucie, who threatens the friendship, but another false impression - Peau de pêche's incorrect assumption that La Ficelle loves her as much as he does.  Just as he did when he was a boy, the hyper-sensitive dreamer allows himself to be carried away by a misguided sense of chivalry to tear everything up rather than stay and face down a difficult situation.

Before Peau de pêche's impulsive departure for the metropolis, there is an even greater moment of crisis (of the kind likely to appear in a Marcel Pagnol film a few years later) when the village's water supply dries up and is then miraculously restored.  This provides a tragic-comic interlude  in which there is a public gathering to attend a radio broadcast, with sounds coming from around the world (an odd thing to include in a silent film).  Some zany superimposition adds to the jollity of this digression, the point of which becomes apparent when the river starts to flow again and the villagers depart their seats in a stampede of jubilation - local incident will always trump world events.  The impressive spectacle of water gushing along parched riverbeds reflects the emotional surge that takes hold of Peau de pêche and propels him off to Paris.

The unlikely reunion of our hero with his erstwhile princess is the film's most egregious contrivance but, it is photographed and performed with such delicacy that you can hardly fail to be moved by it.  Equally stirring is the sequence that this inevitably leads to, where the kindly Madame Desflouves (a delightfully winsome Denise Lorys) repays her admirer's faith in her by undertaking a frank heart-to-heart with the girl who is so obviously intended to be his wife.  The closing shot of Lucie breast-feeding her newborn baby, under the affectionate gaze of Peau de pêche (no longer the hypersensitive dreamer but a contented grown-up father) provides a perfect fairy tale conclusion - a promise of the continuation of life and the human saga.  This is the harvest that is man's destiny, the film's authors conclude, but only if he has the sense to follow the path of peace.

Film Synopsis

Peau de pêche is a ten-year-old orphan boy who spends his days living as free as a bird in the streets of Montmartre.  He owes his name to the fact that he blushes so readily when he becomes emotional.  One day, the boy witnesses a wedding party emerge from a church and develops an immediate fascination for the attractive bride.  As the procession moves on, Peau de pêche finds a small crucifix on the pavement and, guessing who its owner is, he hurries off to return it to the happy bride, whom he reckons to be a princess.  He accepts no reward for this chivalrous act, but to show her gratitude the bride - Madame Desflouves - buys him a new set of clothes.

Peau de pêche's insouciant life on the streets is a world away from what he has to endure in his present home.  He lives with an impoverished mean-spirited couple who, resentful of being burden with him, make a habit of beating and berating him.  These two miserable rogues are furious when the boy tells them his story - surely he deserves a greater reward than a few new rags on his back!  After selling the new clothes, the vile foster mother calls on Madame Desflouves, hoping to wheedle some money out of her.  As she does so, she secretly helps herself to an expensive wristwatch.  Peau de pêche is mortified when he hears of this and, fearing that his princess will blame him for the theft, he throws himself under the wheels of a passing car.  He survives but ends up in bed, badly bruised and shaken.

After a period of convalescence, Peau de pêche is sent to the countryside to live with a kindly farmer and his wife.  Far from the bustle of Paris, the boy soon falls in love with his new home in the village of Charmont-sur-Bruisarde and its pastoral surroundings.  He develops a close friendship with a boy of his own age, La Ficelle, a bond that is cemented when the latter saves Peau de pêche from drowning after they go swimming together in the River Bruisarde, a vital water source for the village.  It is during the First World War that these events take place, and the sound of the raging conflict can be heard even in this idyllic spot.  The boy's adopted aunt and uncle have a son, Jean, who is presently away at the Front.  The news of Jean's death comes as a terrible blow to his parents, but they take comfort from the fact that they have a substitute son in the little boy from Paris.

Ten years later, Peau de pêche has turned into a hardworking agricultural worker, happily settled in his new life with his adoring aunt and uncle.  He remains the closest of friends with La Ficelle, but their friendship comes under strain when the two young men begin to show an interest in the same young woman, Lucie.  Although he has strong feelings for Lucie, Peau de pêche cannot bear to take her from his friend, so he leaves the farm and heads back to Paris.  He visits his former princess and she sees a way to intervene in his favour.  Madame Desflouves drives the overwrought young man back to his home in the country and has a heart-to-heart talk with Lucie.  It turns out that La Ficelle is in love with another girl, so there is nothing to stop Peau de pêche and Lucie from marrying.  A year later, they have a baby of their own, and so the cycle of life continues.