Humain, trop humain (1974) User Reviews

Beautiful, meditative and poetic

[thao · 7/10 · 13 September 2009]

It documentary is quite daring. It has no narration, no interviews or text to guide you. It is in fact directed according to the rules of the silent films. The story is visual. It is about the workers of a Citroen auto factory in Rennes, Brittany. This may sound like Modern Times - The Documentary but that is not the feeling I got when I saw it. The film is quite meditative. I even sometimes got the feeling that I was watching a religious ceremony when they where putting the cars together.

The cinematography is fantastic. Malle focuses on small things like how the feet move while people work, or how a girl moves her eye. Even though the film shows us how much work goes into making a car, I would not say that that was the point of the film. The film is much more about humanity, the human face and the human touch behind the cars people buy. We seldom think about the many hands that slaved putting our car together. The community and lives we are connected to when we step into a car.

This is one of the best edited documentary I have seen, and it is in fact the seamless and rhythmic editing which contributes greatly to the hypnotizing effect of the film, almost to the point of leaving one with a religious feeling.

This is a beautiful, meditative and poetic documentary.

Good, but too long

[JuguAbraham · 6/10 · 8 December 2006]

This documentary is an interesting look at the people who work on the assembly lines of French automobile factories.

To the credit of cinematographer Etienne Becker and director Louis Malle, several details of the assembly line, the input of each worker, the body movements (lilt of a heel or the pouting of lips) are captured honestly and seemingly unobtrusively. To Malle's credit, the sound is limited to production sound--the workers seem to be mute. Voices invade the film once during the segment on the sale of the cars to customers at a car show.

Malle's film, screened as part of a Malle retrospective at the 11th International Film Festival of Kerala, is a veiled comment on automation and its effects on people. The film ends with a frozen shot of a woman worker absorbed in the life within the factory. The life outside seems to be deliberately snipped off--but we know it exists. Malle was probably stating that human beings are getting to be dehumanized and living the life of "an assembly line." That said, the film could have said the same things in a third of the total run-time. Compare Malle's film to Bert Hanstra's documentary on glass blowers called "Glas" (1958). Made 16 years before "Humain, trop humain", Bert Haanstra's work, which uses music, is far superior to this one on a somewhat similar subject.

The title has evidently been used by Malle, after being influenced by Nietzsche's book "Human, all too human: a book for free spirits" (1878). The film needs to be interpreted from that perspective as well.

Emphatically low-key; duly interesting

[I_Ailurophile · 7/10 · 1 February 2023]

Even for a filmmaker like Louis Malle, who tried his hand at so many different genres over his career, this feels like a bit of an oddity. And here I thought his 1969 documentary 'Calcutta' was stripped down; what is more plainspoken than footage inside an automobile manufacturing plant, of the production process? What's more plainspoken than a documentary with no narration or interviews - only incidental, casual conversation heard in passing? Coming off like an extra long and unorthodox episode of 'How it's made,' I think it's safe to say this is a picture that's likely to appeal only to especial fans of Malle, or perhaps of Citroën, or maybe the most ardent of cinephiles. Even at that, 'Humain, trop humain' is an interesting peek inside the industry as we get some detailed glimpses of auto production that are commonly taken for granted.

In some measure I admire the film's approach that lets the content speak for itself, a somewhat educational experience. True, explanatory language of some nature could help to enrich the movie; for everything that we see, it's not always entirely clear what a particular car part does or represents - the modern industrial equivalent of trying to determine the purpose of a totem uncovered during an archaeological expedition. Narration might have provided a through-line to further elucidate the imagery. Yet, to that point, I think it speaks well to this 1973 picture that one is made to wonder specifically how the manufacturing process has changed in the past fifty years. No doubt many of the facets of auto production seen here have been updated (for better or for worse, where either safety standards or automation are concerned, respectively), and an enterprising filmmaker today might do well to try their hand at 'Human, trop humain,' Part Two. My interest is piqued, and that alone says much.

Like the works of Werner Herzog, in some sense this film also communicates fascination with People in all their complexity, both good and bad. Only by especially looking inside an auto plant does one get a real sense of how big the operation is: the number of jobs, the variety of jobs, the hard-working folks that are required to fill them. Any viewer who shares that curiosity and interest in humanity might also find a kinship in Malle's movie. With that said, I do think it's a fine choice to include footage from a crowded showroom floor, seeing people react to the complete Citroën models on display. As far as this feature goes, however, I'm not so sure about the sequencing; that the showroom footage is inserted in the middle of observation of the production line rather breaks up the flow of the runtime. I suppose that break could be taken as either a good thing or a bad thing; I'm inclined to think it's a smidgen off-putting, and the interval should have been shuttled to either the beginning or the end.

Maybe all this verbiage is beside the point, though. The premise couldn't be any simpler, and what it suggests is exactly what we get, with no frills whatsoever. I would say that the most meaningful deficiency with 'Humain, trop humain' is the total lack of narration - but then again, there's something oddly enchanting about the earnest directness of the material as we see it. I can quite understand how such a title won't appeal to a lot of people, and it's most recommendable if one has a particular impetus to watch, or even just looking for something light and low-key with no need to actively engage. Either way, this is well done and reasonably interesting as it is, and a decent way to send a mere 70-some minutes.

The Sum of Its Component Parts?

[billheron53 · 1 September 2011]

Thorkell A. Ottarsson, who posted a review on 13 September 2009, called this film "beautiful, meditative and poetic." It is indeed meditative. With a steady series of "snapshots" depicting the production of automobiles at a Citroën factory, it follows the rhythm of the assembly line, and this suggests a poetic meter.

Beginning with a woman manoeuvring a travelling crane over a vast stockpile of rolled steel sheet, we don't know what is being manufactured until the first recognizable component appears in the frame: the hood of the car is flipped over and inspected by a young woman in a red vest.

We follow the process for the first quarter of the film. The pieces are fitted together, slowly building the automobile. Sometimes more interesting than the procedure is the ingenious jig or fixture that has been created to hold the workpiece or guide parts together. At each stage inspectors feel for correct alignment or smooth finish, peer into corners and consult clipboards. The overall impression is of a huge number of people busily involved in the manufacturing process.

After we see the finished cars being driven onto rail transport, the second quarter of the film shows people checking out the cars at an auto show. Here we see the result is an amazingly complex, highly refined machine— looking like a jewel box under the bright lights. An amazing variety of people pick over, peer at, explore, and comment on the finished product, completely oblivious of the many individual human beings who contributed to its existence.

The second half of the film returns to the assembly line. Now we see it at the level of the individual workers, often seen framed by their own machine or the components around them, so they appear alone, integrated with their machine. The process is mesmerizing. The camera lingers this time on individuals. Some stand at a work station and perform their task with a steady rhythm of repetitious motions. Others move in steady rhythm around components that move slowly, inexorably along the assembly line. We may watch them perform several different tasks as a car body moves along, then pick up their tools and walk back up the line to begin on another car body. No one talks. All focus on their assigned task.

What we see is a tremendously complicated task that has been highly organized into many small tasks each handled by one individual. A scene showing seat upholstery being sewn suggests how many components have come from yet another assembly line that we do not see. Some of the tasks are very simple: one person's role is to place washers on a pair of studs; an exquisitely-sculpted jig allows one woman to bend tubing into an intricate configuration in a few simple motions. Some tasks involve more craftsmanship: spot welding in the right places, filling and smoothing a body seam, hammering and levering until a hatchback door closes perfectly aligned.

We see the manufacturing process in roughly reverse order. The film ends with a freeze frame of the young woman in the red apron inspecting newly-welded hoods. We are left to wonder if mass production reduces the contributions of individuals to such small parts that they are usually forgotten. They become insignificant, and the public at the auto show refer to the car as a product of a corporation. The vehicle has features and changes that "they" have decided on.

We are also left perhaps to wonder if a mass produced article retains a part, albeit a minuscule part, of each individual who has contributed to it, and whether or not the sum total of all that is equivalent to what is in a work completed by a single craftsperson.

Humain, trop humain (1975)

[MartinTeller · 7/10 · 12 January 2012]

A look at the Citroen factory and the workers that inhabit it. The film is done entirely without narration, and in fact the only audible dialogue occurs during the auto show (which, curiously, happens in the middle of the movie) as potential customers vacuously dissect the workmanship of the cars. The workers themselves are voiceless automatons, laboring at their repetitive, compartmentalized tasks. Malle gets right up in their faces as they go about their jobs, capturing a humanity that's on the verge of being swallowed by the process, often framing them in a manner that suggests they're trapped by the machinery. However, although I get that the drudgery is kind of the point of the film, 72 minutes of this gets to be a little tiresome and the fascination starts to wear off. Still, the measured rhythms of the film can be hypnotic.

An Effectively Dramatic Record Of Truly Mundane Behavior.!!

[JoeKulik · 10/10 · 27 August 2015]

Louis Malle's Humain, trop humain (1973) is an extraordinary documentary in so many ways, a documentary focused on the actual mass production of automobiles, and their subsequent display for sale at an auto show.

This documentary is unique because of its lack of speech. The scenes in the auto plant, which consume most of the film, are devoid of any speech whatsoever, allowing the viewer to observe the silent workers doing their particular minor task in the long, assembly line process. There is speech heard by the viewer in the scenes at the auto show, but these aren't words spoken to the camera at all, but are words spoken between potential buyers, and between potential buyers and salesmen. Even in the auto shows scenes, the speech heard by the viewer seems to have been surreptitiously recorded through hidden microphones pre-positioned strategically inside of cars, and around the cars, to record naïve conversations au naturel. All the people at the auto show seem completely unaware that they are even on camera, suggesting even surreptitious pre-positioning of cameras before the auto show began. Overall, this film gives the viewer the experience of being a totally "invisible" bystander to all the human activity transpiring before him. As a doc fanatic, that is a very unique viewing experience for me.

The film is divided into three distinct segments: 1) We see chronologically arranged scenes of a complete auto being manufactured from the scene of a warehouse filled with giant rolls of sheet metal, all the way to the completed autos being driven out of the plant. 2) We see potential buyers, and salesmen at the auto show in various stages of the auto purchase process. The auto show scenes are particularly striking for me, coming after the auto manufacturing scenes, because the discussions and negotiations of the potential buyers reveal a total lack of understanding, and appreciation of the intricate and extended process of actually manufacturing the auto they are presently considering. The speech of the potential buyers, and the salesmen is all centered the issues of the features available on a certain auto, and the price of the various features, and the price of the auto as a whole. 3) The viewer returns to the auto manufacturing plant to again observe assembly line workers going about their silent tasks, but the scenes now are more selective, and not at all reflective of the whole manufacturing process, as was the case in segment 1. This third segment seems to be focused on selective assembly line tasks that are particularly dehumanizing, such as the repetitive placement of the same part on the same place on a chassis, or tasks that are particularly distasteful, such as a painter covered head to toe in a protective suit, and wearing a protective mouthpiece, all the while plying his task in a spray booth filled with a noxious fog of aerated paint. This third segment seems geared to display the dehumanizing, and distasteful existence of the common worker in a modern industrial setting in general, with the auto plant being a specific example.

Overall, this film is an incredibly detailed record of mundane human behavior, yet, in a way that I just can't explain, really portrays the drama of human existence quite effectively, and even quite poignantly.

Film about the monotony of a car assembly line is monotonous

[dbborroughs · 4/10 · 16 September 2007]

A film about the monotony of building a car on an assembly line.

This 72 minute film is a chore to get through, even at high speed. Sue me for giving in to the temptation to hit the fast forward button but I couldn't not do it. Even the mid point intermission where we see the Cintron cars at an auto show and watch and listen to the public talk about the product doesn't help much since many of the people are candidates for being slapped. Then we switch back to the assembly line and I began to nod off.

Interesting to a point the lack of narration and music just make this worse than being on the assembly line since the only thing worse than doing a repetitive job is watching it being done.

The film may obscure or even distort more than it reveals

[philosopherjack · 3 July 2020]

The act of observing industrial production is inherently political, inherently provocative, susceptible to radically different readings based on context. Watching Humain, trop humain's images of workers engaged in menially repetitive tasks constituting tiny incremental steps in the production-line process, notions of exploitation of dehumanization run rampant, especially as the film barely shows any interaction between the workers, any expressions of pleasure or satisfaction. And yet, watched at almost fifty years' remove, these may strike us as the "solid" blue collar jobs for which there's so much (no doubt distorted) nostalgia. Actually, any such nostalgia is probably less for the jobs as such than for the communities built around them and the life structures they facilitated, an aspect of the "big picture" absent from Malle's film. He does however include a long section in a trade show, including the only dialogue in the film (and a lot of it) as potential customers come out with their questions and criticisms and past grievances, all of it of course directed by individual desire, disconnected from any consideration of what might be involved in satisfying it. Obviously the film's omissions are greater than its presences (which perhaps is only to say it's not as big as the world), and it's well-established that filming such structures constitutes its own intersection of chillingly abstracted beauty and fundamental ugliness. The final freeze frame of a woman's blank face seems like a final testimony on the spiritual emptiness of her lot in life, but we might also recall Kuleshov's experiment, and reflect how little we know about her, and how ill-equipped we are to make any judgment on the basis of such minimal exposure and investigation. All of which leaves us with a film which most of us would reflexively describe as (say) "valuable" or "interesting", and yet which may obscure or even distort far more than it reveals.