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Sorry, this movie sucks

Just what I expected

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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.

There's a legend in my country about "la Jument Verte" .They say it had a PG 21 when it was released!One thing for sure,the Catholic Office of Cinema did not like the film ,that's putting it mildly.I quote them: "disguting scenes, defamation of the peasants ".Today the movie would not get a PG 12.Has this saucy farce worn that much well?I have my doubts."L'Auberge Rouge" was sometimes verging on slapstick but the lines were witty,the cinematography dazzling and the cast wonderful.A cast against type Bourvil portrays a definitely repellent character:his mother was raped by a Prussian during the 1870 war ,because of his neighbor's denunciation.Since the two families have become deadly enemies.Although Aurenche wrote the dialog,although it was a Marcel Aymé book -Marcel Aymé who wrote "les Contes du Chat Perché" maybe the best French book for children of the twentieth century-, Autant-Lara's work is not funny anymore:we have seen worse since,and enough is enough:this accumulation of daring jokes,of salacious puns ,of "disgusting scenes" reduces the peasants on the level of animals .The Christian press was perhaps not that much wrong after all.The best of the movie is its beginning:it 's a faux fairytale ,told by a female voice over (which is very rare,generally it's a male one).Once upon a time ,there was a farmer who had a green mare ...it could almost be Charles Perrault telling his "Peau d'Ane" (Donkey Skin) tale.Alas ,in spite of the title,the green mare plays a very small part in the story ....Maybe Autant-Lara whose films between 1959 and 1961 were blatantly (or should I say) basely commercial,needed money to make his accursed movie (and still waiting to be brought of oblivion) "Tu ne Tueras Point" (aka"l'Objecteur").

I saw this film at the Paris Theatre in Brighton in 1960. I was 15 at the time, and illegal. I got in through the side door when the earlier sitting came out.I have little memory of the story, except that it is set in an all-purpose earlier age, some time in the mid-1700s, and in deep rural bliss.At one point, the heroine, wearing a full-length dirndl dress, squats in the barnyard and has a long pee. This shocked and amazed for two reasons. One, it instantly conveyed that the young woman was 'going commando'. Two, it depicted something in full-colour that would never, ever have been shown in a Hollywood or UK picture of the time. Kenneth More would have died!In the context of heavily hung stallions mounting mares and other barnyard themes, it was entirely appropriate, and I am sure that French audiences of the day did not bat an eyelid. It proves how deep the shallow English Channel really was in those days.And yet, only a few years later, certainly partly inspired by this randy, amusing and engaging film, Tony Richardson was making the ground-breaking Tom Jones.