La ferme aux loups (1943) User Reviews

A sense of mystery

[dbdumonteil · 28 January 2008]

The late thirties/early forties were a time when many French directors possessed a sense of mystery: it was the time of Lacombe-Clouzot's "Dernier Des Six ",Tourneur's "La Main Du Diable" ,Siodmak's "Pièges " (remade by Sirk as " lured" ) Becker's "Goupi Mains Rouges" Chenal's "Maison du Maltais" the list is endless....

"La Ferme aux Loups" by Richard Pottier ,a director whose work was largely ignored for a long time and who was the first ,along with Andre Cayatte to broach euthanasia ("Meurtres" ,probably his masterpiece) long before Amenabar ("Mare Adentro") and John Badham "Whose life is it anyway?".Pottier shows ,in "la Ferme aux Loups" not only a sense of mystery but his obvious talent when it comes to create a disturbing atmosphere .The central segment (the country drive,the forest ,the mysterious farm,the dead body) climaxes the film and it equals all the best sequences of the aforementioned films.

"La Ferme aux LOups" has a far-fetched screenplay ( no Steeman or Very are here to lend a helping hand).Combination of circumstances best describes it: how can the two journalists (Meurisse and Périer) wind up in THAT place where the dead body seems to have emigrated?And what about the photograph their lady friend finds in the same house?And what about her mother who had a love affair during the Russian Revolution ?

And in spite of a rather weak screenplay,it works,because,as I wrote above, at the time,the French cinema used to know how to film a murder mystery and make us shiver.

Hold The Front Page

[writers_reign · 8/10 · 4 January 2008]

Given their open admiration of Hollywood and sometimes slavish imitation, often improving on the prototypes, it's surprising that the French filmmakers were slow to tackle the newspaper pic; virtually all the Hollywood icons played at one time or another a reporter, editor, photographer and some of the films in question - The Front Page, It Happened One Night, Five-Star Final, The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday - became equally iconic. Hardly surprising then that I relish the irony that it took a German company, Continental, to turn out a great French newspaper story in La Ferme aux loups. The joint leads, reporter Francois Perier and photographer Paul Meurisse, are two of the finest and most dependable French actors, both with long and distinguished careers but virtually unknown outside France. Perier even gets the girl, Martine Carol, making an early appearance in a leading role. The plot is serviceable; the news-hounds cover a routine story involving the body of a tramp, a little later their car gets stuck in country mud and they seek shelter in an OLD DARK HOUSE and, guess what, there's the same tramp, stiffer than a Laurence Harvey performance. Turns out it's twins, revenge, the whole nine yards in fact but it's lotsa fun.