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Excellent but underrated film

Brilliant and touching

Best movie ever!

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

This is absolutely beautiful movie that depicted brilliantly life of working class in France in the late 19th century. It is based on Emile Zola's novel L'Assommoir.The main protagonist is perfectly portrayed by amazing Maria Schell and we can see well into all of Gervaise's virtues, but frailties as well and understand her emotions and struggles she endures constantly in her troubled life. The ending leaves Gervaise in full misery and the director Rene Clement turns our attention to her little daughter Anna - called Nana - that will be the protagonist of another, even more famous Zola's novel of the same name.

Maria Schell plays the titular character in this film adaptation of Emile Zola's novel L'Assomoir. This is like the saddest movie ever. I seriously wept for twenty minutes after it finished, and every time I think of it I start to tear up again. Schell plays a poor washerwoman with little luck in men. Her first man, who never married her, leaves her with two young boys for another woman. Her next man, her first husband (played by Francois Perier), becomes a slave to wine, chronically unemployed and defying his wife and family at every turn for another drink. Sure, this is your typical suffering woman narrative, but, Hell, women have suffered throughout history, and this is a downright powerful story. The characterizations are very complex, and every actor in the film is absolutely perfect. L'Assomoir came in the middle of a cycle of twenty novels. Gervaise's daughter, Nana, was the focus of a later novel in the series (Jean Renoir adapted that novel, called Nana, in 1926).

This film reminds me so much of my mother who also was a hard working social striver and had a string (or was it serial monogamy) of useless lovers, one of which was my father. My mom was also was trying to "move up" but this time from her "petit bourgeois" background. Her parents were shopkeepers but she wanted to be an educated professional.The only reason my mother was successful professionally and did not fall into drink or drugs was that her compulsion was precisely that of being a workaholic and she also dumped the men instead of holding onto them. Perhaps we have made some progress.After reading so many excellent reviews and comments on the artistic and social merits of the film. I can only add that what we have at the base of this story is the basic yin and yang of the optimistic hardworking person who attracts a series of losers into a miasma that eventually bring her down.Today its called co-dependency.I disagree with many other reviewers who believe the film is about alcholism, as any drug or obsessive behavior could be substituted for alcohol. Alcohol is just a part of the social context, the drug of choice for the working class.As for the social angle, we see the political changes coming in this film, but when they come they will not solve everything either. Today we have a social net that would "welfarise" these people but still will not cure them of their tragic fall from being productive members of society into complete degeneracy.Is this a tragic fatalistic view of society -- as it appears on first consideration. Are they saying we can never win? Is the "individual" actually able to break through..? Please everyone be aware that the film at no time says "this must to happen to you.." I think it is only Zola and Clement saying that when this is happening it will look like this.We know life is hard. Gervaise seriously lacked integrity, emotional honesty and was hopelessly co-dependent. Her ever-optimistic point of view was a trap that overlaid her wretched world with kind tolerance, blind spots and small sentimental indulgences that would lead her down the garden path to ruin. Her positivity attracted psychic vampires.Beware all that believe a positive attitude will fix everything. In the belle epoque, in the postwar years the film was made in, and in the world of today, it still takes a little more.

This as far as I know is the only film version of a very famous story by a French Novelist called Emile Zola. It is "L'Assommoir" and is the story of how drink and alcohol can ruin lives and kill. The film is extremely well acted but seems a bit "short" compared to the book which has far more lurid details concerning the downfall of each of the characters. The story takes place behind the Gare du Nord in the Northern Sector of Paris in what is called today the "Quartier de la Goutte d'Or". Unfortunately that area today bears absolutely no resemblance to that portrayed either in the book or the film and is extremely dangerous and violent - any visit of it is strongly advised against. Anyway the story is very moving but be warned the outcome is not a happy one. One other thing, the book is one of a series written by Zola about a family called "Les Rougon-Macquart". The series also includes the book "Germinal" which has several times been made as a film. But of all the films of Zola's books I have see, L'Assommoir (Gervaise ) is my favourite !