L'École buissonnière (1949)
Directed by Jean-Paul Le Chanois

Film Review

In 1945, Jean Dréville's La Cage aux rossignols was not only a phenomenally successful film, it also stirred the national conscience to the extent that a wholesale reform of France's outdated education system became a pressing public concern.  When, four years later, director Jean-Paul Le Chanois released L'École buissonnière, a film promoting the revolutionary teaching methods of Célestin Freinet, change was inevitable and the film added further impetus to the educational reforms that would transform state education in France in the 1950s.  The film's popularity established Le Chanois as one of the most important politically engaged filmmakers in France at the time, and Le Chanois followed this up with films dealing with other important social themes including single motherhood (Sans laisser d'adresse), pain-free childbirth (Le Cas du docteur Laurent ) and housing (Papa, maman, la bonne et moi).

Jean-Paul Le Chanois conceived the film with Célestin Freinet, and even made use of a story outline provided by his wife, Élise Freinet, but nowhere in the film is the name Freinet mentioned.  The omision was far from an oversight.  After Freinet fell out with the Communist Party, the film's main backer (La coopérative générale du cinéma français) was ready to cancel the film, but with production well under way the only option was to remove any reference to Freinet from the film.  Freinet subsequently filed two lawsuits against the film's producers, one for not giving him due credit, the other for exploiting the child actors.  After a long legal battle, Freinet was awarded half a million francs in damages but it was too late for the film's credits to be amended on prints already in circulation.

L'École buissonnière is not a great film but it is a film of some historical importance, popularising as it does an approach to learning that was revolutionary for its time but proved to be hugely influential.   In addition, the film advocates something even more radical: the rights of the child.  Central to Freinet's teaching methods is respect for the child and an emphasis on developing his or her own particular aptitudes, rather than just treating all children alike and forcing knowledge into them as if they were machines.  In the film's most powerful scene, an examiner is dismayed when a schoolboy (the supposed school dunce) is unable to furnish him with the date of the Declaration of the Rights of Man.  The boy has no head for dates (he can't even remember the date of the Battle of Waterloo!) but he can quote almost verbatim the contents of the document that is the foundation stone of western democracy.  "It is better to speak with the heart than with the memory", the boy says, putting his examiner to shame.

Bernard Blier was a surprising choice by Le Chanois for the role of the forward thinking teacher who is clearly modelled on Célestin Freinet.  Prior to this, Blier had been cast almost exclusively in roles that matched his distinctive physical appearance - an unflattering repertoire of losers and stooges.  In this, and his subsequent films for Le Chanois, Blier's screen persona would be transformed, made far more sympathetic, with the result that the actor would soon become one of the best loved in France.  In L'École buissonnière, Blier it at his most likeable and, as the dedicated inspirational teacher, he is every bit as inspiring as Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver (1988) and Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society (1989).

Strongly influenced by Italian neo-realism, Jean-Paul Le Chanois shot most of the film using real locations in sunny Provence and employed a fair number of non-professional actors (including pupils from Freinet's own school).  Among the professional actors, some (Édouard Delmont, Henri Poupon and Marcel Maupi) had featured in Marcel Pagnol's films, a close cousin of neo-realism.  Somewhere between documentary and drama, L'École buissonnière has a picturesque naturalism of the kind that was common in Italian cinema of this time, but exceedingly rare in French cinema.  The sentimentality is laid on a bit thick in places, and this dates the film a little, but is there anything more heart-warming than seeing children suddenly enthused by the process of learning, guided by someone who understands that education is about developing minds and personalities, not the mechanical absorption of arbitrary facts?  It is not hard to account for the film's popularity and why it still continues to have an almighty resonance.

Film Synopsis

In 1920, Monsieur Pascal, a veteran of the First World War, arrives in a small Provençal town to take up a teaching post.  Dispensing with the old and ineffective teaching methods of his predecessor, Pascal soon gains the respect and friendship of his pupils, who discover for the first time that learning can be both fun and rewarding.  Having set up a printing press, Pascal's students begin publishing their own newspaper containing articles written by themselves.  Not everyone approves of Pascal's teaching methods, however.  The town's councillors are up in arms and threaten to dismiss the radical teacher.  Monsieur Pascal's only hope is that every child in his class will pass the end of year exam, including Albert, the dunce...