Les Amants du pont Saint-Jean (1947)
Directed by Henri Decoin

Film Review

Les Amants du pont Saint-Jean was a brave but probably ill-considered attempt by Henri Decoin to take the rural film melodrama that, at the time, was incredibly popular in France, and give it an extreme neo-realist makeover, just as Jean Renoir had done over a decade previously with his film Toni (1935).  By now, neo-realism had already begun to make its mark in Italian cinema, with Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945) and Vittoria De Sica's Shoeshine (1946), so Decoin was entirely justified in trying the experiment in France.  Unfortunately, the rural melodrama was starting to go out of fashion and French audiences had little appetite for harsh realism at a time when, amid the privations of post-war austerity, more diverting fare was called for.  Decoin's film - along with his earlier La Fille du diable (1946), a similar excursion into location-based naturalism - was a misguided attempt to revitalise a dying form of melodrama.

In his leads, Gaby Morlay and Michel Simon, Decoin is handsomely served, both actors turning in colourful portrays of believable individuals, two likeable misfits living according to their own rules in open defiance of the conventions of their time.  Scriptwriters Jean Aurenche and René Wheeler are so preoccupied with these interesting characters that they neglect all of the others and overlook the small matter of the plot.  As a result, the film feels somewhat lacking in narrative content, and none of the secondary characters makes the slightest impact.  What plot there is consists of a lame and not terribly convincing reworking of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

With a depressing dearth of ideas on the scripting front, Les Amants du pont Saint-Jean essentially boils down to the Morlay and Simon Show, and this is the limit of its appeal.  Decoin and his cinematographer Jacques Lemare make a good stab at reproducing the raw naturalism of their Italian contemporaries, although the film can't help looking more like a crude imitation of Marcel Pagnol than Rossellini or De Sica.  After this foray into new and risky territory, Decoin rapidly returned to ones he knew best with his next films - studio-bound melodrama (Les Amoureux sont seuls au monde) and noir thriller (Entre onze heures et minuit).  It would only be a few years after this that his inspiration would desert him completely.

Film Synopsis

On the banks of the River Rhône, Alcide Garonne ekes out a modest existence as a ferryman and poacher.  He lives in a threadbare abode with his partner Maryse, an extravagant vagabond from Paris who is drunk most of the time.  Their son Pilou is in love with Augusta, the daughter of the town's strait-laced mayor, Amédée Boiron.  They want to marry, but the mayor refuses to sanction the marriage until Pilou's parents have themselves tied the knot and started to live like a respectable married couple.  Reluctantly, Garonne and Maryse agree to marry for the sake of their son's future happiness.  But before they do so, Pilou and Augusta elope and, after a brief happy time together, they realise they are not right for one other and separate.  After Pilou's return to their home, Garonne soon realises that he has no reason to marry Maryse.  In a state of drunkenness, the later wanders off and falls to her death.  Heartbroken, Garonne decides he must follow her...