The Red Head

Poil de carotte

France

1932

91 Min

Black and White

1.37:1

French

Currently 4.1/5 Stars.
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SCR Julien Duvivier, Jules Renard

CAST Harry Baur, Robert Lynen, Louis Gauthier, Simone Aubry, Maxime Fromiot, Colette Segall, Marthe Marty, Christiane Dor, Catherine Fonteney, Colette Borelli

PROD DES Lucien Aguettand, Lucien Carré

Returning to Jules Renard’s novel, which he had previously adapted in a 1925 silent film, Duvivier exquisitely renders the tale of a sensitive red-haired farm boy—nicknamed Poil de Carotte (Carrot Top)—who is abused by a malicious mother and an indifferent father and driven in despair and loneliness to attempt suicide. With its justifiably famous scene of Poil de Carotte’s “wedding” to a little country girl, this astonishingly sophisticated early sound film is a visual poem of innocence and grace that would inspire René Clément’s Forbidden Games twenty years later. “In a rare example of a remake surpassing its memorable original,” notes film historian and critic Lenny Borger, “Duvivier gave definitive form to this classic chronicle of childhood. Harry Baur plays the father with all his subtle authority and young Robert Lynen cuts deep to the desperate pathos of lonely Poil de Carotte. A film of great tenderness and lyricism, with a final reconciliation scene between Baur and Lynen to force a sob from the stoniest breast.” —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