Monday, January 14, 2019
573 - The Sky is Yours (Le Ciel et a Vous), France, 1944. Dir. Jean Gremillon.
A shepherd leads his sheep across the field. The sheep are wearing white wool.
A mass of orphans move across a field. Singing. The orphans are wearing black wool.
They start off playing in concentric circles, moving in opposite directions. When the priest blows a whistle, they pick up their own capes and put them on, line up, put their right hands upon the shoulder of the boy in front of them, and march, and sing.
"No, my daughter, you shall not go dancing." "No, my daughter, you shall not go dancing."
We are in the PLAY AREA OF THE VILLENEUVE ORPHANAGE. A wide expanse of land with freshly cut rough grass and smoke fires in isolated places.
Meanwhile, the Gauthiers are moving. From their house and their mechanic's garage where they have lived for ten years. Their property has been expropriated. Purchased to turn into an airfield.
Pierre Gauthier himself was a pilot in WW1, and as a mechanic he loves airplane engines as much as he does car engines. Therese Gauthier is a hardworking wife and mother, and a helper in the garage. Jacqueline, the big sister, plays the piano and shows promise. Her teacher in town believes in her. Robert, the little brother, is along for the ride.
On their first night in town in the new house above the garage, the Gauthiers receive their first customer. A man's car has broken down, and he must be able to use it first thing in the morning to make an important trip. The Gauthiers stay up all night to fix his car. Pierre works on the car while Therese cleans and organizes the garage, putting away all the items they have just moved. The next morning, the man is so impressed and appreciative that he begins a steady effort to get Pierre to come work for him.
The airfield will be built.
The family will get involved.
Pierre goes for a plane ride. Therese begs him never to fly again.
Until she flies.
And she is hooked.
The two of them begin to fly together and use their garage to build a plane. They want to do something magnificent--break a speed record, break a distance record, something to put them on the map.
But they realize that with their limited resources and Pierre's age, they will not be breaking any records.
At least for men.
Hey, maybe Therese could fly the new plane. Maybe she could break a new record.
The film tells us up front that the characters are not fictional but rather based on real people who were still alive and now living hardworking lives in the south of France.
So what happens in the film really happened. Either Therese will try for it or she will not. And if she does, either she will succeed or she will not. She will end up a hero, or as someone who tried and failed, or as a body at the bottom of the ocean.
Along the way, Pierre and Therese love each other, support one another, and believe in each other.
If Therese does die, Pierre will be heartbroken.
She is his life.
* * * *
Charles Vanel had already acted in 104 movies before starring as Monsieur Jo in Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear (1953), the fourth movie we saw in our blog, on Wednesday, January 4, 2017. In that intense adventure of male bonding, he teams up with fellow Frenchman Mario--played by international star Yves Montand in his first starring role--to drive a truck filled with nitroglycerin over miles of ever-changing rough terrain under the threat of sudden explosion.
The next day, Thursday, January 5, we saw Vanel again in Clouzot's Diabolique (1955), only two years later and already his 112th film. He made six other films between the two. In that one he plays inspector Alfred Fichet in a role we considered a prototype of Peter Faulk's Columbo, about as different from Monsieur Jo as one might imagine.
The Wages of Fear (1953)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/01/004-wages-of-fear-1953-france-dir-henri.html
Diabolique (1955)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/01/005-diabolique-1955-france-dir-henri.html
We have seen Charles Vanel twice again since then. Just recently.
Twenty-something years earlier, in his 49th film, he played Corporal Breval in Raymond Bernard's Wooden Crosses (1932). Five films and two years after that, in his 54th film, Vanel played the major role of Inspecteur Javert in Bernard's four-hour epic Les Miserables (1934).
Wooden Crosses (1932)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2019/01/562-wooden-crosses-france-1932-dir.html
Les Miserables (1934)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2019/01/563-les-miserables-part-1-france-1934.html
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2019/01/564-les-miserables-part-2-france-1934.html
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2019/01/565-les-miserables-part-3-france-1934.html
For our film today, Venal is midway between these two stages, in his 90th film, in 1944--eight and ten years after his work with Raymond Bernard, and nine and eleven years before his work with Henri-Georges Clouzot.
In 1930 Vanel wrote and directed himself in his 41st film, Dans la nuit. He played Napoleon three times, and he played Lancelot, among many other memorable roles. In a career spanning 71 years, from 1917 to 1988, Venal played in a total of 157 feature films.
Americans know him as Bertani in Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief (1955).
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