I'm glad I got the chance to see this movie - courtesy of a very generous French guy who, knowing how much I love French films, especially those made by the Old Brigade, very kindly sends me copies of the rarer titles that appear on French TV and are unlikely to be shown in the UK - because it combined the writing of Jean Aurenche with the direction of Claude Autant-Lara, not perhaps in the same league as Jacques Prevert-Marcel Carne but neither a million miles away. Everyone can have an off day but Autant-Lara made 50 films beginning at the very start of the 'talkies' and his is an honourable CV boasting as it does such gems as Ciboulette, Fric-Frac, Douce, Le Diable du corps, L'Auberge Rouge, Le Ble en herbe and La Traversee de Paris so perhaps we can forgive what might seem a lapse of taste, an appeal to the lowest common denominator which is what, alas, we have in The Green Mare. One of the two other posters has suggested that this film inspired Tom Jones; if he means the FILM of Tom Jones - which was released approximately five years later - he may have a point but I wonder if he realizes that the novel Tom Jones on which Tony Richardson based his film was written some two hundred odd years ago. Like Tom Jones The Green Mare is set a few centuries back and somehow, especially when the setting is rustic rather than urban, we find it easier to accept lewd, coarse, or even vulgar behaviour than in our own times. I doubt if a badly miscast Bourvil would have given this a prominent position in his CV but no film collaboration between giants like Autant-Lara and Aurenche can be totally ignored so we buffs salvage what we can, shake our heads sadly and THEN remember all the really GREAT stuff that has gone before.
Review of The Green Mare
