Le caporal épinglé (The vanishing corporal)

After the June 1940 armistice, French soldiers held prisoner by the Germans decide to escape. Their first attempt fails, but one of them, a corporal, remains determined. After many unsuccessful efforts, he is sent to a disciplinary camp.

A Renoir film is first appreciated on the level of the senses. Both film and characters define themselves immediately in terms of impressions, of which the most important are of heat and cold. Le Caporal épinglé is a cold, lucid, abstract film about characters in search of heat, of fraternity. The black- and-white photography (except for the Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier, it is Renoir’s only black-and- white film since The River) and the dreary, gray climate emphasizes the point of the film: the need for the sun and its warmth. [...] The film is intended as a reflection of a man in the year 1961 facing the end of a world, ours, and the beginning of an era of transition and combat. It confronts the collapse of Western civilization and speaks of the necessity, in the resulting chaos, of rethinking our attitudes about life. Liberty is its sole subject. Renoir has never been more to the point than in this work.

André Bazin, Jean Renoir

PRODUCTION: Les Films du Cyclope and Société Nouvelle Pathé Cinéma

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