« Emergency Declaration | Main | When Tomorrow Comes »

August 16, 2022

The Burned Barns

Les Granges brûlées
Jean Chapot - 1973
Cohen Media Group BD Region A

The Burned Barns is one of those French films that never got a stateside release in spite of having two of France's biggest stars. Not directed by anyone even tangentially connected with the Nouvelle Vague, nor fitting in with more easily exportable broad comedies or policiers, it is easy to see why this film has been relatively unknown until its recent 4K restoration.

The film takes place in a small town near the eastern border of France, near Switzerland. The men operating an early morning snowplow discover a woman's murdered body on the road near an abandoned car. A young judge, Larcher, on his first case, is assigned to go to the village to investigate. The available clues point to one of the sons of a farming family that lives the closest to the scene of the crime. Larcher has to work with, and around, Rose, the matriarch of the family.

Larcher takes a longer than usual time in his investigation in his search for the identity of the murderer and any conclusive pieces of evidence. The town is the kind of tight knit community where everyone knows everyone else. The film shifts into being how the presence of the outsider, Larcher, disrupts both Rose's family as well as this remote village where everyone is described as honest and hard-working. This is more of a deliberately paced character study than a standard mystery. The whodunit aspect is resolved, although there is no sense of catharsis for the viewer. The French title both refers to the brown farmhouses of the area where the film takes place and also is slang for people who are metaphorically burned.

Jean Chapot is better known for working in television films. The Burned Barns was his second and last theatrical film. The supplement with this blu-ray, from 2004, is the recounting of a troubled production. As told by Chapot's production assistants, the director felt intimidated by his two stars as well as by the logistics of making a film on a larger scale than his previous work. While it is is not detailed how much of the film was actually directed by Alain Delon, it is established that Chapot did temporarily abandon the film, only to return to the set when Delon left to work on another production. Judging from his career and credits, Chapot was stronger as a writer than director, and may have been more comfortable with the lesser demands of directing television movies.

Of interest is that the cast includes Miou-Miou in one of her early roles, Signoret's daughter, Catherine Allegret, as Rose's daughter, and Renato Salvatori, an Italian actor whose face is familiar if you have seen enough French or Italian films from the '60s and '70s. The Burned Barns also features the first film score by Jean-Michel Jarre composed expressly for the film, mostly synth music, with abstract vocals in the opening and closing credits.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at August 16, 2022 06:25 AM