Fathers’ Day
 

PostED ON 21.10.2023

A recurring theme in Denys de la Patellière's films: fathers in conflict with their offspring. Let's play the seven daddies game.

THE FIRST FATHER
(Pierre Fresnay in Les Aristocrates, 1955)

He’s an aristocrat but a landowner, close to his tenant farmers yet inflexible with his children. The Marquis de Maubrun, played by a stern but apt Pierre Fresnay, is the first patriarch of Denys de la Patellière's cinema, with no doubt a strong autobiographical element. Firmly attached to his nobility, he sees the younger class rebel against his management of family affairs. Who will win, the old world or the new?

THE SICK FATHER
(Jean Debucourt in Le Salaire du péché, 1956)

He suffers from a heart condition, but you'd swear that beyond the atria and ventricles, the organ has been broken by disowning his own daughter (Danielle Darrieux, no less), who has gone off with a penniless cad... A captain of industry who made his fortune in the fisheries of La Rochelle (Simenon is not far off), here he is, torn, from his bed of suffering, between paternal love, hatred of all forms of pleasure and well-tempered stinginess. One suspects which side the femme fatale nurse, irresistibly portrayed by Jeanne Moreau, will choose...

LE PÈRE CRUEL
(Jean Gabin in The Possessors, 1958)

A biting satire of the big business world, adapted from part of Maurice Druon's novelistic saga: this portrait of a tribe of academics, ecclesiastics, military men, etc. is dominated by the wealthy patriarch (played by Gabin with a touch of proletarian slang that's a little out of sync with his lineage, but no matter). He is prepared to do anything, even kill his own offspring, in the name of the god of money. The most terrifying of de la Patellière's works.

The Possessors, 1958  © DR

THE ABANDONED FATHER
(Jean Gabin in Rue de Paris, 1959)

When he returned from Stalag, he found a baby that could not have been his, left to him by his wife, who had died in childbirth. He brought him up without saying a word, just like his two eldest children. And now these two are on the verge of disowning their old father, one a boxing schemer, the other in love with an old snob. And what if the bonds of love were stronger than those of blood? Gabin plays a small-time working-class man with principles as big as his heart and vocabulary (the latter courtesy of Michel Audiard).

THE ECCENTRIC FATHER
(Michel Simon in Emile’s Boat, 1962)

There are two fathers in Emile's Boat, adapted from a short story by Simenon: one a patriarch and businessman played by Pierre Basseur; the other a rather atypical one, brother of the first, played with relish by Michel Simon. A former fighter who has returned to the family home ill, he causes a scandal, pesters the nurses and threatens to pass on his fortune - his share of the family business - to his illegitimate son, played by Lino Ventura, who is deemed unworthy of the "noble family".

THE ADOPTIVE FATHER 
(Jean Gabin in God’s Thunder, 1965)

Gabin, act III. Misanthropic, alcoholic, and cranky, this father has no children of his own and dies a slow death tormenting his wife (the magnificent Lilli Palmer). Then he takes in a little street flower (played by Michel Mercier) from the slums of Nantes and moves her into the château. And there she is, befriending the farmer next door. Enough to turn Captain Haddock into one hell of a grandfather? Once again, according to Denys de la Patellière, it's better to have the family you choose than the one you have to put up with...

THE WORRIED FATHER
(Fernandel in Father’s Trip, 1966)

When his eldest daughter doesn't come back for her sister's birthday, the preoccupied father leaves the mountains for the big city to search for her, from whom he’s had little news. Flanked by Laurent Terzieff, the unlikely schoolteacher fiancé, Fernandel, distressed and therefore rather subdued, wanders the streets of Lyon, which has become a strange capital of despair. Society is changing, but do fathers still have a say? Father’s Trip is based on a novel by Bernard Clavel, who himself left his native Jura to become a writer in Lyon. 

Aurélien Ferenczi

SCREENING

The Possessors (1958, 1h32)
Lumière Terreaux - Sunday, October 22, 11am