45 years of The Old Gun
On August 22, 1975, Robert Enrico's film "Le vieux fusil (The Old Gun)" was released in French cinemas.
The script for the film is based on the events that occured in a French village Oradour-sur-Glane on June 10, 1944.
We should note that the film "Le vieux fusil (The Old Gun)" practically did not gain any significant festival success. Yes, there were 9 nominations for the French César Award, of which three were won, including the most important one for Best Film. But let's not forget that this is a "home" award. And outside of France, the film, or rather, the leading actor in it - Philippe Noiret - received the Italian David di Donatello Award for Best Lead Actor. And that's all.
Despite the fact that, according to one of the most authoritative Russian film critics, Sergei Kudryavtsev, "This French film was released on the 30th anniversary of the end of the Second World War and was widely recognized by critics and viewers", I did not find particularly "wide recognition among critics and viewers". For example, in France, this film was watched by approximately 3.4 million people, something about 6.5% of the population. It cannot be said that it is not enough, but it can hardly be called "wide recognition of the audience".
As for critical acclaim, for example, the French film critic Jérémy Gallet wrote in his review: "An apology for self-defense, the feature film is based on detestable arguments: Dandieu uses the same procedures as his enemies, until they steal a flamethrower to immolate the leader of these assassins. Thus, the stakes of the war are clearly evoked by privileging a cathartic diagram, where the good Frenchman gets rid of the bad German, the goal being to caress in the direction of the hair the good conscience of a country whose official government collaborated with the occupant. Here, emotion invades everything, determines each gesture, each shot, each word, to build a sort of infernal tear blackmail."
Not a single positive review on the Rotten Tomatoes website. And Dennis Schwartz, who can be called a "aggregator" of reviews, since he kind of summarizes the reviews of a large number of reviewers, wrote about this film: "Though a classic in France, whose memories of the occupation are haunting and filled with such unpleasantness, the film doesn’t transfer well to those out of the loop. The long flashbacks added an awkwardness and incoherence from which the film could never recover from and get its feet back on the ground."
The well-known Russian film critic Evgeny Nefyodov gives his explanation for the ambiguous perception of the film: “The film became the subject of controversy, first of all in France itself, where, by the way, it also caused a noticeable audience resonance: the approach of the filmmakers did not seem to everyone to be indisputable from an ethical point of view. ... Together with that, the fate of Julien (the main character of the picture - FG) in a sense personifies the fate of the whole country, which too quickly (and, to be honest, shamefully) capitulated to the Third Reich - and by no means showed monolithic attitude towards the Nazis afterwards. supporters of the Nazis, but the overwhelming majority of the population took a wait-and-see attitude, secretly hoping that the troubles and hardships that befell other peoples, primarily the Soviet people, would bypass them."
In the Soviet Union, the film was released in 1977 when I was a student. The film shocked me. And not only me. We can safely say that, as they say, "the film has become a noticeable phenomenon in the cultural life of the country." And you can probably understand Dennis Schwartz, who says that "the film doesn’t transfer well to those out of the loop." And, therefore, on the contrary, it is perceived by those who are in the loop. Like Soviet people.
I remember that at a seminar on philosophy, when we went through the topic "Existentialism," one of my fellow students brought this film as an example of an existentialist work. Someone disagreed. As a result, the whole seminar we discussed only this film. There was no general agreement, and I still do not know if this film represents a philosophical movement called "existentialism" or not, but the film was remembered and loved for the rest of my life. And yet - in this film I first saw Romy Schneider.
And with regard to Romy Schneider, I completely agree with Sergei Kudryavtsev, who writes: "A real pleasure is the opportunity to admire this delightful woman with the main character. Romy Schneider, alas, bypassed by the attention of French film academics, is truly magnificent as a wife, full of charm and extremely open, one might say, wide open outward - towards life, emitting joyful light, generously giving smiles and looking at the world with cheerful, sparkling eyes. Her face is simply illuminated with love - for her husband and daughter, for that happy pre-war time when everything seemed full of amazing peace and tranquility ... And in the episode of the massacre there is a completely different person in front of us ... it is this close-up of an innocent victim who does not take his face away from the hell that is happening around, will never disappear from memory and may be the only one moral redemption both for the protagonist of "The Old Gun" and for the audience who can understand and forgive him merciless revenge, in the implementation of which a person should first of all fear his own dehumanization. "
Perhaps not everyone knows this, but the parents of this wonderful Actress were close to the Nazi regime. And therefore the role itself, and, in particular, the episode with the flamethrower became for Romy Schneider both a moral feat and a mental trauma. She later admitted that she did not play the character, she was the character. By the way, in West Germany, whose filmmakers participated in the creation of the film, the picture was shown without a flamethrower episode.
The evaluation of the film by modern cinema audiences is quite high: 66% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave the film ratings from 8 to 10, and 25% (every fourth) rated the film with the highest score - "ten". Taking this into account and the above, the rating of Robert Enrico's film "Le vieux fusil (The Old Gun)" according to FilmGourmand's version was 7,864, making it the 903rd place in the Golden Thousand.
