Prince Pierre of Monaco Foundation - Press Release No. 5

La Vie Château © DR - Coll. AAPM

Cinema

"A Novel, A Film"

Tuesday 11 October 2016 –Variety Theatre – 8.30 p.m.

A Tribute to Daniel Boulanger,

Prince Pierre Foundation Literary Prize 1979.

First part:

Programme of archive films on Daniel Boulanger

La Vie de château (A Matter of Resistance)

France – 1965 – Black and white – 92 mins.

Directed by:  Jean-Paul Rappeneau

Script:  Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Alain Cavalier and Claude Sautet.

Dialogue:  Daniel Boulanger.

Images:  Pierre Lhomme.

Sound:  Jacques Maumont.

Music:  Michel Legrand.

Sets:  Jacques Saulnier.

Editing:  Pierre Gillette.

Production:  Les Productions de La Guéville, Cobela Films, Ancinex.

With:  Catherine Deneuve (Marie), Philippe Noiret (Jérôme), Pierre Brasseur (Dimanche), Mary Marquet (Charlotte), Henri Garcin (Julien), Carlos Thompson (Klopstock), Marc Dudicourt (Schimmelbeck), Donald O'Brien (the American Officer) and Robert Moor (the Gardener).

Plot

It's the end of the Occupation, in Lower Normandy. Likeable Marie, wife of the farmer Dimanche, is married to Jérôme, son of the lady of the manor, who owns the farm.  She would like to live in Paris, but her husband keeps her shut away in the castle.  She accuses him of being a stay-at-home type, who doesn't keep her amused.  One evening, an adventure comes to her in the form of a young resistance fighter, who is parachuted into the area to undertake a survey of the park, into which, on the appointed day, parachutists will be dropped.  This is something to spice up Marie's life!

Reviews

La Vie de château isnot a comedy film;  however, it comes close to comedy with its misunderstandings, unfaithful spouses, cantankerous mother-in-law and loud-mouthed father-in-law …  Some people might exclaim virtuously that we shouldn't mess with such subjects, and refer to the heroism of the resistance fighters and liberators.  They would be wrong, because history, which is life, is not a monolithic block from which official sculptors carve out monuments to the dead.  Because of the film's script, the elegant and personal way in which the film is directed, the casting, the way the actors are managed and its gentle irony, Jean-Paul Rappeneau was considered, quite rightly, as a worthy winner by the jury of the Delluc prize;  he was therefore awarded what is (rightly or wrongly) called "The Goncourt of the Cinema."

Georges Sadoul in Les Lettres françaises of 3 February 1966

A guy who has a way with words – that's Daniel Boulanger, writer of the dialogue in La Vie de château.  This man is a poet, it's quite obvious, and instead of buying annoying things like the Goncourt Prize (I know that this year no-one is buying the Goncourt Prize, but the situation will become clear), people would do much better to buy Daniel Boulanger's latest book, La Mort à cheval and the next one, Le Chemin des Caracoles;  at least they would feel as if something is happening.  I assure them, Daniel Boulanger, then, who has a way with words, knows that words are difficult, temperamental, they'll leave you on a whim, and he will excuse me, with his friend Rappeneau, for not knowing what to write about La Vie de château.

Michel Cournot in Le Nouvel observateur of 27 January 1966.

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