If Marcel Pagnol had made Le Corbeau it might have turned out like this great movie of provincial life which is not so much warts and all as a surfeit of warts. There's a lovely irony at work here inasmuch as when a travelling circus visits the village in question - which it does every thirty years or so - instead of the circus putting up a sign saying 'Bearded Lady' it's the unfeeling villagers who erect a sign pointing the way to its resident centenarian (a standout performance by Marcelle Geniat). Full of age, wisdom and regret, this wonderful lady brokers a marriage between the lion-tamer and a village girl in lieu of the one she lacked the courage to undertake in her own youth and in so doing lends a symmetry to a movie in which the first shot shows the circus approaching the town from Right to Left whilst the final shot shows it leaving from Left to Right. This for me is a major discovery and puts me deeper in debt to my very good French friend.
Review of Le briseur de chaînes
