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 Posted:   Dec 19, 2021 - 10:19 AM   
 By:   Sehnsuchtshafen   (Member)

René Cloërec – Le Blé En Herbe (The Game Of Love) (1954)

“Le Blé en herbe” (English title: “The Game of Love” – the literal translation of the French title is “Ripening Wheat”) is a 1954 French film by Claude Autant-Lara based on the 1923 novel of the same name by French novelist Colette. Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost and Claude Autant-Lara adapted her novel into a screenplay.

The film stars Edwige Feuillère, Pierre-Michel Beck (as Philippe), Nicole Berger (as Vinca Ferret), with Robert Berri and Louis de Funès in supporting roles.

The film was shot in black and white by cinematographer Robert Le Febvre. René Cloërec composed the original score which has never been released on record. Autant-Lara’s film was awarded the 1954 Grand Prix du Cinéma Français.

The plot involves the relationship between a young man and an older woman, or in one critic's summary, "an older woman ... introduces a teenager ... to the mysteries of love".

Phil is sixteen and Vinca fifteen. Like every year, they spend their holidays on a Breton beach, in a house shared by their families. They are like brother and sister, but this summer their relationship becomes something else, without them really being aware of it yet. However, Phil meets the elegant Mrs Dalleray, thirty years older than him and spending the holidays alone on the coast where she has a house. She invites the young man to come in for a while and then persuades him to return. We see her touched and moved by the charming freshness of this flowering young man. Phil, flattered by the attention of this beautiful and sophisticated woman, who is the same age as his mother, allows himself to be seduced and soon pays her secret nocturnal visits... which Vinca promptly discovers and holds against him.

This adventure will in fact encourage the expression of the love that the two teenagers were already feeling for each other without really admitting it, as the summer holidays are coming to an end.

About the film’s reception in France and elsewhere:

"With “Le Blé en herbe”, Autant-Lara finds his main enemies. Fundamentalists of all kinds went on the attack. Thus, an association called "Cartel d'action morale et sociale à Paris" sent him this "scathing" text: "Your project, based on Colette's work, displeased us because of the harmful moral repercussions that such a film would have on the youth of our country. Moreover, we were already thinking of reporting it to the authorities when we learned through the press that you were giving up the production of this film, due to Edwige Feuillère's state of health. Unfortunately for our self-proclaimed censors and fortunately for the cinema, the film was made in 1953 with Edwige Feuillère in robust health. Colette, who attended the first public screening, did not hide her satisfaction. The critics were not enthusiastic about the film, but young people rushed to see it. In the mid-fifties, Le Blé en herbe did much to awaken the sexuality of teenagers "stuck" in a France that was still quite puritanical.
— Francis Girod, Speech given at his reception in the French Academy of Sciences in homage to Claude Autant-Lara

In the United States it was subject to a series of attempts to prevent its screening. It received a Class C or "condemned" rating from the Roman Catholic National Legion of Decency. The film was banned in Massachusetts until a court ruling in July 1955 considering the case of “Miss Julie”, a 1951 Swedish film, held the state's motion picture censorship law unconstitutional. Boston officials were unable to ban it but termed it "unwholesomely immoral". A similar ban in Baltimore was overturned by a Maryland court. The film's distributors sued unsuccessfully in federal court to overturn Chicago's ban. Eleven of the twelve jurors who viewed the film with U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Sam Perry supported his assessment that the film was "immoral and obscene". After the Court of Appeals upheld that ruling, the distributors, the Times Film Corporation, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in November 1957 that the film did not meet the standard the Court used for determining obscenity, that is, appealing to prurient interest. The justices viewed the film and upheld Chicago's obscenity statute but objected to its application to this film.

Promotional materials for the film presented it as "the story of two adolescents' love affair and its interruption by an older woman" and called attention to the controversy the film had generated in France. Edwige Feuillère was born in 1907, Pierre-Michel Beck in 1938.



Générique début (Main title):




Original 1954 French Trailer (Bande annonce):






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See also these René Cloërec topics:

- Sylvie Et Le Fantôme (Sylvie And The Ghost) (1946)
https://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=146874

- En Cas De Malheur (In Case of Adversity, aka Love Is My Profession) (1958)
https://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=146510

- Les Régates De San Francisco (The Regattas Of San Francisco) (1960)
https://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=146970

- Le Meurtrier (Enough Rope) (1963)
https://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=146127

- René Cloërec Interview (1995)
https://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=146829

 
 
 Posted:   Jan 11, 2025 - 1:52 PM   
 By:   slint   (Member)

I was listening to the (music & effect) score this morning, and this is another favourite. It is quite romantic, with the original use of steel guitar. I was reading that the composer studied with Albert Roussel, and I think it shows in this score.

The other score he did for Autant-Lara in the same year, Le Rouge et Le Noir (1954), is also quite good, although a bit more conventional 18th century period classical.

 
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