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Farrebique, or the Four Seasons
Farrebique, the first feature-length effort of French documentary filmmaker Georges Rouqier, is widely regarded as his finest film. Rouqier concentrates on a single French farm family, following them through the four seasons. As in the works of Robert Flaherty, the human characters and the land surrounding them are "one", and Rouqier never misses an opportunity to parallel their lives with the eons-old phases of nature. The final symbolic images of Spring, achieved through time-lapse photography, are almost unbearably beautiful. The winner of several festival awards, Farrebique nonetheless did not immediately result in an outpouring of financing for Rouqier's follow-up films (this was a common problem in the financially strapped French film industry of the 1940s). Perhaps as a result, Rouqier did not make his sequel, Biquefarre (filmed in the same region, with some of the same "actors"), until 1983.
| Release : | 1973 |
| Rating : | 7.2 |
| Studio : | Écran Français, Les Films Etienne Lallier, |
| Crew : | Camera Operator, Director of Photography, |
| Cast : | |
| Genre : | Documentary |
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Reviews
Save your money for something good and enjoyable
I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.
This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
"Farrebique" is a phenomenon.Nothing can be compared to it in the forties.Partly a documentary,partly a meditation on life and death ,partly a poetic celebration of the nature,which many critics compared to Flaherty's films,it has nothing to do with the other country stories of the time such as Becker's "Goupi Mains Rouges" or René Clément's "Jeux interdits" .The story of a family of peasants during a whole year,following the circle game of the seasons (An idea Bertolucci will make his in "Novecento" ).The dialog is barely comprehensible for those farmers speak patois which even a French person cannot understand :subtitles are not needed however,for there's no real plot.It shows the rural life in France just after WW2 as it was.Not a comfortable one;electricity is coming and it improves a bit their harsh live;the children go to school -but unfortunately,we do not see them at school-;religion plays a prominent part : a scene on the farm shows the whole family praying the Lord;another one takes place in the church where the whole congregation sings the Kyrie in Greek (!) then listens to the priest's Latin words.It's certain that catholicism has lost much of its prestige after the council of Vatican II .Rouquier waxes lyrical about Spring,which he depicts in a vivid style: speeded-up motions which make the buds burst ,trees coming into bloom,season of love for the animals,and on the farm a new baby born to carry on.In direct contrast to that ,with the coming of the Fall, the father 's death ...and the younger's son impending leaving for the town,for the " eldest boy's task is to follow his father's traces whereas the younger's is to move on and set up home somewhere else."Farrebique" -which was followed by "Biquefarre" ,some forty years later-in spite of its obsolete symbolism was something drastically new in the FRench cinema.
