The Good Crew

La belle équipe

France

1936

101 Min

Black and White

1.37:1

French

Currently 4.1/5 Stars.
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SCR Julien Duvivier, Charles Spaak

CAST Jean Gabin, Charles Vanel, Raymond Aimos, Viviane Romance, Jacques Baumer, Marcelle Géniat, Raymond Cordy, Charles Granval, Micheline Cheirel, Rafael Medina, Charles Dorat, Robert Lynen, Robert Ozanne, Robert Moor, Marcel Maupi, Marcelle Yrven, Fernand Charpin

Made during the gathering storms of war, economic collapse, and social unrest—and in the same radical cinematic year as Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey and Jean Renoir, Jacques Becker, et al.’s La vie est à nous—La belle équipe has long been considered a celebration of Popular Front ideals of working-class solidarity and universal brotherhood. But the director’s preferred tragic ending renders this one of Duvivier’s bleakest masterpieces. Five penniless workers win the lottery and are able to realize their dream of opening a guinguette (café and pleasure garden) on the banks of the river Marne. Duvivier uses beautifully fluid camerawork, pastoral settings, and popular song to mark the escape of the five men from the crushing defeat of poverty—until their noble enterprise is sabotaged by a crime of passion. —BAM/PFA

Director

Julien Duvivier

Briefly enrolled at the University in his home town of Lille, France, Julien Duvivier dropped out to study acting in Paris. Hired by Andre Antoine’s Theatre Libre, Duvivier was retained as Antoine’s assistant when the latter began directing films in 1916. After apprenticing under several notables of the French cinema, Duvivier was allowed to direct his first feature, Haceldama ou le Prix du Sang (1919). Working steadily and successfully throughout the 1920s, Duvivier emerged as one of the major French film talents of the early talkie era. He was particularly adept at handling multi-storied films, all-star efforts in which several short vignettes were tied together by a central theme. His two biggest European hits, Un Carnet du Bal (1935) and Pepe le Moko (1937), won Duvivier his first Hollywood contract. He made his American bow with a stylized and heavily romanticized biography of Johann Strauss, The Great Waltz (1938). Duvivier’s best-remembered Hollywood efforts of the 1940s were… read more