Les Premiers outrages (1955)
Directed by Jean Gourguet

Film Review

After the unexpected success of Maternité clandestine (1953), Jean Gourguet directed several similar films focused on the experiences of young people.  Of these, the most engaging is Les Premiers Outrages, a bittersweet but true-to-life depiction of teenagers coping (pretty ineptly as it turns out) with their first encounter with love.  Although criminally overlooked today, Gourguet was one of the great trailblazers of 1950s French cinema, his modest work anticipating the seismic changes to come with the arrival of the French New Wave at the end of the decade.  Filmed mostly in real locations (in common with much of Gourguet's work), Les Premiers Outrages has a gentle naturalism that calls to mind the films of Marcel Pagnol, the most obvious influence on Gourguet's cinema.

Although he admired established actors (evidenced by the presence of Rellys and Louis Seigner in this film), Gourguet had a preference for inexperienced actors, and it is these fresh-faced newcomers - a fair number of whom would become well-known in later years - who give his films their distinctive character.  Having debuted in Maternité clandestine, Maurice Sarfati proves to be the star of Les Premiers Outrages, and with an engaging mix of innocence and rebelliousness he bears an uncanny resemblance to Jean-Pierre Léaud in Truffaut's Les 400 coups (1959).  If Sarfati is the likeable hero of the film, the villain is Françoise Vatel, frighteningly convincing as the mixed up teenager with obvious psychopathic tendencies.

A decade before her memorable appearance in Luc Moullet's Brigitte et Brigitte (1966), Vatel brilliantly evokes the confusion and torment of early adolescence, although it's nigh on impossible to sympathise with her character.  Having tried to rape Sarfati, she concocts an evil scheme to disgrace him and then very nearly drives him to an early grave - there's nothing deadlier than a teenage girl with the hump.  In his first credited screen role, Marc Michel is scarcely noticed and it would be five years before he made his next film appearance, in Jacques Becker's La Trou (1960), which led Jacques Demy to cast him in his most famous role as Roland Cassard in Lola (1961).  Jean Gourguet's eye for talent always served him well and whilst the film may fall short of perfection in some areas (the narrative is uneven and a little contrived in places, a musical number seems totally out of place), Les Premiers Outrages is easily redeemed by the unadorned authenticity of the performances.

Film Synopsis

In her exercise book, Bichette, a girl in her mid-teens, records her first amorous experience.  The object of her juvenile infatuation was a handsome lad named Kiki, the son of the innkeeper in the little village where she spent her summer holidays.  Disappointed that his son has failed his baccalaureate, the innkeeper persuades one of his neighbours, Monsieur Arnaud, to give him private tuition at his house.  This is how Kiki encounters his first true love, in the form Simone, one of his tutor's relatives.  When she realises that Kiki has no feelings for her, Bichette wastes no time spreading the rumour that he has spent the night with an older woman.  It is an innocent party, the maid Françoise, who takes the blame and is sent packing.  Guilt-stricken, Kiki hastens after her but has a close brush with death when he tries to save her honour...