Following his demobilization at the end of WWI, Garris (Jacques Gamblin) wanders around country France, until the day he meets an old man (Jacques Dufilho) living in a marshland and lets himself be talked into dropping his swag and tasting life as a free man. Very soon Garris becomes de facto mentor to his immediate neighbours, Riton (Jacques Villeret), a devoted father with a penchant for the bottle, his wife and three children. The rest of the story is told by Cri-Cri, the youngest of Riton’s children, and through the audience is introduced to the many characters and threads of life that constitute the town bordering on the marshlands: Amedee, the jazz-loving dandy, Jo Sardi, boxer with a rather nasty streak, Marie, the maid who captures Garris’ heart, and above all Mister Richard (a.k.a Pepe la Grenouille), a former marshland resident turned industrialist who yearns to return where his heart truly belongs. This is a work of openly declared nostalgia for irretrievably vanished days. Veteran filmmaker Jean Becker declared that this adaptation from a novel by Georges Montforez was not targeted at an elderly audience, rather he made this film for his grandchildren, to show them a world before Internet and Nintendo. Presented in letterbox version to retain the original widescreen format. Cast also includes Michel Serrault, Andre Dussolier, Eric Cantona and Suzanne Flon. In French with English subtitles.
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How to watch
Collection
In ACMI's collection
Credits
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
312730
Languages
English
French
Subject categories
Advertising, Film, Journalism, Mass Media & TV → Foreign language films
Anthropology, Ethnology, Exploration & Travel → France - Social life and customs
Feature films → Feature films - France
Food, Health, Lifestyle, Medicine, Psychology & Safety → Nostalgia
Sound/audio
Sound
Colour
Colour
Holdings
VHS; Access Print (Section 1)