In 1971 Philip Larkin wrote "They mess you up your mum and dad / They don't mean to but they do / They give you all the faults they had / And add some others just for you." Cayatte's film, made in 1953, has the same theme. It starts with four young people on trial for robbery, manslaughter and murder; they're all under 17, and the girl (Marina Vlady) is only 15. As the film develops we see how they got there. Robert and Liliane are in love. His father was an enthusiastic collaborator, and spent five years in prison after the war; now out of work, the father blames the Jews for all his misfortunes. She has a liberal, pacifist father (and a really tiresome Communist brother.) Philippe's dad is a businessman, determined to protect his wealth and survive the war everybody fears, while his mother is desperate to cling on to her beauty and her lover, who's losing interest. Jean is the ultimate weak mummy's boy, and is obviously in love with Daniel, a Jewish boy whose parents perished in WW2. I hadn't realised that ten years before the Cuban Missile Crisis there had been similar fears of WW3 erupting, this time over the Korean War. The youngsters dream of escaping to a South Sea island, but to finance this pipe dream they need a lot of money, and that leads to tragedy. Robert, in the most shocking scene, turns from a sympathetic character to one his father would be proud of, even sporting the black leather coat favoured by the Gestapo. Although the film is long, it never drags. My only quibbles came near the end. The jury's verdict on Liliane made no sense, nor did Robert's assertion "We didn't steal." None of the young male actors made much impression in films, but the adults are top-notch : Blier, Balpetre, Frankeur and Castelot feature strongly in other Cayatte films. This is the ninth I've seen, and for me only "Shopgirls of Paris" was a dud. I'm grateful to dbdumonteil for arousing my interest in this director, and to Movie Detective for making so many of his unjustly neglected films available, with good prints and English subtitles.
Review of Before the Deluge
