Les granges brûlées (1973) User Reviews

Barnstormers

[writers_reign · 8/10 · 10 November 2005]

If all you knew about this prior to watching it was that the title translates as The Burning Barns you might be forgiven for anticipating a touch of the Southern Gothics, especially if you were on nodding terms with Faulkner and Tennessee Williams both of whom have written about barn burning as if it were a minor Art form requiring both skill and finesse and at worst a semi-respectable/legitimate occupation. You would, however, soon be disabused because what we have here is yet another story in a rural setting - in this case the Jura - involving a large family headed by matriarch Simone Signoret who owns a farm named The Burning Barns. The body of a young woman is discovered on land owned by Signoret and serves as a springboard to put the somewhat dysfunctional family under a microscope. Alain Delon arrives to head the investigation and the fun/fascination is watching two generations of French actors teaming up again in the wake of the previous year's success Le Veuve Coudroc. There's little in the way of thriller, mystery element but Signoret and Delon are augmented by the likes of Paul Crachet (who appeared with Signoret in L'Armee des Ombres), a young and almost unrecognizable Bernard Le Coq, Miou-Miou and Signoret's real-life daughter Catherine Allegret. It's very watchable and definitely recommended.

Signoret/Delon round 2

[dbdumonteil · 13 August 2004]

This odd pairing had already happened once the year before with "la veuve Couderc" ,a George Simenon adaptation ,with fair results.

Like the first one,"les granges brulées " (=the burned barns :nothing burns in the movie ,mind you,it's the name of Signoret's farm)takes place in a rural area ,to be precise in the Jura Mountains,in the Franche-Comté.Signoret is cast again as a tough farmer who dominates her whole family (her daughter is played by her own daughter Catherine Allégret).A woman's corpse is found near the farm.And a judge (Delon) comes to the place to investigate .The family provides the usual suspects and on with the show.

Well,the detective plot is never exciting and its solution devoid of interest.What matters is the depiction of the family's clannishness (which Jacques Becker had brilliantly tackled in "Goupi Main Rouges" thirty years before ),the beautiful snow-covered landscapes and the young ones 'longing to leave their native mountains for the city.Delon and Signoret are both good and give sensitive performances.But most people think they did a better job in "la veuve Couderc".Nice score by Jean-Michel Jarre.

Good performances, disappointing ending

[gtamaniak-16300 · 4/10 · 29 August 2021]

Yeah both Delon and Signoret play brilliantly here. With Signoret in this film being the dominant member of the family that takes almost all the decisions and not hesitating to confront the judge at any time while at the same time respecting some of her family members' decisions to move on and do something on their own in their lives, meaning she cares for them. This film is a whodunnit about a corpse found in a small village in France and Delon's character suspects that the family might be involved. The places of cinematography are very few. Only the house of the family, The Hotel in which Delon resides, the snowy countryside and Raul's bar. It's a little bit tiresome watching Delon leave the family house then comeback the next day etc etc. And yes the movie does have a very slow pace. It's length is 98 minutes but it feels like it has an additional hour of runtime. There are some interesting scenes but they don't make the film rewatchable again a second time. Especially with that extremely underwhelming ending that seems as if it was placed on the script at the last moment. Good drama and acting but I really don't want to watch this film again.

Good cast, beautiful scenery, dull and disappointing murder mystery

[gridoon2024 · 4/10 · 20 March 2022]

"Les Granges Brûlées" has a good cast, eye-massaging snowbound locations and a promising start (a dead body is discovered in the very first scene), but soon turns out to be a dull and disappointing murder mystery nonetheless. Alain Delon wanders around looking glum, and does no real investigating or deducting like his character is supposed to be doing; at two different points, even other characters in the film comment on the fact that he is just spinning his wheels. A terrible resolution to the mystery drags an already poor movie even further down, to a *1/2 out of 4 rating.

a meeting

[Vincentiu · 19 June 2014]

not the story is important in this case. but only the new meeting between Signoret and Delon. a woman and her family in a small community. a murder. a judge. and an artistic meeting who becomes revelation, maybe not surprise but splendid exercise of use the characters nuances. two great actors and inspired music, beautiful images and the atmosphere of a village are ingredients of a film about values, choices, family spirit , justice. Simone Signoret is the same and this fact is, in same measure, a virtue and a sin. Delon gives a good sketch for a tired man , part of his job and shadow of his life. a film who reminds many others. but who remains special for the tension who defines it after the lost of story details.

An exercise in complementing star images

[philosopherjack · 4 August 2023]

Jean Chapot's Les granges brulees revolves around an investigation of murder in a rural community, located close to a struggling family farm overseen by long-married couple Paul and Rose; an investigating judge, Larcher (Alain Delon), turns up from the city, installing himself in a local inn and slowly working to crack local codes of silence and suspicions. Given that Larcher's approach seems to consist largely of showing up at the farm and hanging around Rose, the film often evokes one of those episodes of Columbo where the detective seems to many observers irrationally (but ultimately correctly) fixated on a single suspect. Of course, those interactions were defined largely by garrulousness, whereas Delon's Larcher barely has as much dialogue in the whole movie as Columbo might have had in a single scene; the actor's performance is an absolute master class in steely, unblinking silence, and as Simone Signoret embodies Rose with equal self-containment, it's tempting to read the whole thing primarily as an exercise in juxtaposing complementing, distilled star images. Although the film is set in the then-present, it often seems lost in time: there are many references to WW2 and its legacy, and "the city" is referred to as if to some unattainable dream; as if confirming the extent to which the community resists any kind of outside influence, the mystery's ultimate resolution comes out of nowhere, from a source unrelated to Larcher's investigation. While the film suggests that the judge nevertheless feels strangely informed and elevated by the experience, the film provides only a slight indication of what form this takes: in the closing moments, Rose demonstrates an utter certainty that he won't follow up on a crime committed by one of her sons, for the sake of closure and some broader sense of equilibrium. It seems likely that she's correct, but the film provides no space for celebration on this point, nor on any other.