Le Ciel est à vous
1944 Drama
Credits
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Summary
When their home is bought up to make way for an airfield, mechanic
Pierre Gauthier and his wife Thérèse are forced to move,
with their two children and elderly mother, to a nearby town.
Although Pierre makes a success of his new garage business, he soon
begins to get bored and joins the local flying club. When she
hears of this, Thérèse is incensed but it isn’t long
before she too is smitten by the flying bug. Sacrificing
everything they have, even their daughter’s piano, the couple devote
themselves to building an aeroplane that will enable
Thérèse to break a long distance flying record.
Shortly after take off, Pierre’s optimism soon turns to pessimism and
he becomes convinced that he will never see his beloved wife again...
Review
Considering that it was made during a bleak and distressing period for
France, Le Ciel est à vous
is an astonishingly uplifting film with a message of unfettered hope
for the future. It is not difficult to read director Jean
Grémillon’s allegorical call to arms behind the rather anodyne
tale about a Lindbergh-esque exploit, based on the real-life story of
Andrée Dupeyron, the wife of a garage owner in
Mont-de-Marsan. Released in February 1944, a few months before
the Liberation, the film was enormously popular in France, galvanising
the efforts of the Resistance and their covert supporters with its
inspiring subtext. Although Jean Grémillon would go on to
make three more notable films, Le
Ciel est à vous was his last commercial success, the
highpoint of his career before a rapid decline into obscurity. Le Ciel est à vous is significant for two reasons. Firstly, it is a rare example of a French social drama, using a strikingly neo-realist approach, with real locations and down-to-Earth characters to convincingly depict a French community in the mid-1940s. This makes a stark contrast with the contrived studio-bound melodramas which were far more prevalent at the time. More significant is its distinctly feminist slant, which is unusual, if not unprecedented, for a film of this era. As in many of Grémillon’s previous films, it is a woman who is the prime mover in the story whilst the main male character plays a lesser, more subservient role. This portrayal of women is in direct opposition to the opinion of the Vichy government, which insisted that the woman’s place was in the home, looking after the husband and children. In this film, the woman, Thérèse Gauthier (magnificently portrayed by Madeleine Renaud), is a free spirit who dominates her husband and neglects her children in order to pursue her own dream. Whilst this is perhaps not the most positive portrayal of female independence, it effectively makes the point that women have a right to be accorded equal status with men and, like their male counterparts, should be allowed to pursue their ambitions rather than feel obliged to tie themselves to the kitchen sink. It’s a provocative statement when you consider that, in France, women were not eligible to vote until July 1944, some months after the film was released. © James Travers 2009 Write a review for this film... User Comments
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