Hollywood during the Depression: Le Belle Equipe
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
7:30pm $5 at the door
Le Belle Equipe
Portage Theater
4050 N Milwaukee Ave,
chicago, IL 60600
Click here for location info
LA BELLE EQUIPE
Directed by Julien Duvivier • 1936
Five factory stiffs, led by Jean Gabin, win the national lottery and find themselves with 100,000 francs between
them. They agreed to put all the proceeds towards a workers’ open-air dance hall on the banks of the Marne. Made
during the very brief moment when such a gesture sounded both guileless and politically-charged, La belle équipe
exemplifies the cinema of the Popular Front, France’s short-lived, pan-leftist solution to mounting fascism. (It’s a
tribute to the emotional and social complexity of La belle équipe that it records the optimism of the period while
also acknowledging its mundane frailty.) Scripted by Charles Spaak, the French film industry’s most committed
scenarist, La belle équipe was briefly eyed as a project by Jean Renoir, whose own collaborations with Spaak
include Les bas-fonds and La grande illusion. Prolific director Julien Duvivier, a friend of Renoir’s, proved quite
capable of helming the picture. Once a classic of college film societies under the generic and uninvolving title They
Were Five, this is exceedingly rare and undervalued these days—a real missing link in thirties French cinema. (KW)
In French with English subtitles.
101 min. • Ciné-Arys • 16mm Print from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs
http://www.northwestchicagofilmsociety.org/calendar/archives/classic/2012-april-august/
About the artists:
Le Belle Equipe
LA BELLE EQUIPE
Directed by Julien Duvivier • 1936
Five factory stiffs, led by Jean Gabin, win the national lottery and find themselves with 100,000 francs between
them. They agreed to put all the proceeds towards a workers’ open-air dance hall on the banks of the Marne. Made
during the very brief moment when such a gesture sounded both guileless and politically-charged, La belle équipe
exemplifies the cinema of the Popular Front, France’s short-lived, pan-leftist solution to mounting fascism. (It’s a
tribute to the emotional and social complexity of La belle équipe that it records the optimism of the period while
also acknowledging its mundane frailty.) Scripted by Charles Spaak, the French film industry’s most committed
scenarist, La belle équipe was briefly eyed as a project by Jean Renoir, whose own collaborations with Spaak
include Les bas-fonds and La grande illusion. Prolific director Julien Duvivier, a friend of Renoir’s, proved quite
capable of helming the picture. Once a classic of college film societies under the generic and uninvolving title They
Were Five, this is exceedingly rare and undervalued these days—a real missing link in thirties French cinema. (KW)
In French with English subtitles.
101 min. • Ciné-Arys • 16mm Print from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs
