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The first camera movement is deliberately stiff in a boxed-in, monochromatic composition, then a switch to ripe Eastmancolor and a spacious circular pan tilted toward the branches of mighty olive trees. "Monde nouveau, humanité nouvelle," the biologist who will be President of Europe (Paul Meurisse) and his Teutonic fiancée (Ingrid Nordine) at the formal outing, "symbolic of symbolic union." On the other side the bucolic paterfamilias, the peasant to whom gender equality means his wife gets to spray the grapevines for him, and the earthy fille (Catherine Rouvel) who wants a child despite having little use for men. (A "pure dolichocephalic, Mediterranean type," she can't stop giggling while her measurements are taken.) A bit of wind mixes it up, just a gust summoned up by the goatherd's flute to unchain satyrs and inflame nymphs, mousy housewives are soon crying for orgies. The professor steps behind the bushes with the farm girl, joins revelers astride scooters, and can find no proper scientific explanation. "Happiness is perhaps submitting to natural order." Pierre-Auguste Renoir territory, Jean evokes it most lushly. The test-tube future is put to the ultimate test, a fertility montage of flowing rivers and undulating reeds—an update of Partie de Campagne but also a companion piece to Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier, the dilemma of body and mind harmonized. The Girl Scouts military march, Rousseau the butler, Rouvel's Bardot turn. A rich Hawksian vein (Ball of Fire, Monkey Business) richly mined, with a special nod to McCarey's Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! The pun in the end rests between "évolution" and "révolution," "a safety valve for some of our instincts." Renoir's impressionistic incantation, one of the few works to truly capture the glow of sunlight, an autumnal beauty for Cahiers eyes to gawk at. With Fernand Sardou, Charles Blavette, Marguerite Cassan, Jacqueline Morane, Robert Chandeau, Frédéric O'Brady, Jean-Pierre Granval, Micheline Gary, Paulette Dubost, and André Brunot.
--- Fernando F. Croce |