Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1977
The Old Country Where Rimbaud Died
Buy The Old Country Where Rimbaud Died now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
'The Old Country Where Rimbaud Died' is a 1977 French-Canadian feature from Jean Pierre Lefebvre. The second film in his Abel Gagn trilogy, preceded by 'Don't Let It Kill You (Il ne faut pas mourir pour a)' in 1967 and followed by 'Now or Never (Aujourd'hui ou jamais)' in 1998,Juliette Ruer, [https://voir.ca/cinema/1998/10/14/aujourdhui-ou-jamais-vol-planant/ "Aujourdhui ou jamais : Vol planant"]. 'Voir', October 14, 1998. the film follows Abel (Marcel Sabourin) on a journey to France to visit the land of his ancestors.
Synopsis
Abel leaves Montreal for a visit to France, the country of his ancestors. In Paris he encounters several people, from a taxi-driver to a 'haute bourgeoisie' family. He visits Jeanne (Myriam Boyer), a young widow who lives with her daughter (Viviane Lesser) and works in a garment factory. When Jeannes mother hangs herself they leave for Charleville, their hometown and Rimbauds birthplace, where Abel meets Jeannes drunkard father (Roger Blin). Abel leaves for the Cote dAzur where he meets Anne (Anouk Ferjac), a childrens court judge whose relationship with her husband (Franois Perrot) has deteriorated. They have an affair, during which Anne confesses her unhappiness. Abel returns to Quebec.
Cast
* Marcel Sabourin : Abel
* Anouk Ferjac : Anne
* Myriam Boyer : Jeanne
* Roger Blin : Jeanne's father
* Franois Perrot : Anne's husband
Importance
The 2001 Toronto International Film Festival presented a Lefebvre retrospective in conjunction with the publication of 'Jean Pierre Lefebvre, Vidaste' by Peter Harcourt. In the program notes for the film Harcourt wrote, Conceived as a continuation of Lefebvres 'Il ne faut mourir pour a', 'Le Vieux pays o Rimbaud est mort' tells the story of Abel, who travels to France on a personal quest. Enraptured by the cultural aesthetics of Rimbaud and Czanne, Abel longs to discover the link, if any, between the glories of France and his uncertain identity as a Qubcois. On his journey to the locations where Arthur Rimbaud was born, lived and died, Abel encounters a variety of French people who represent in their different ways the various regions of their nation. These encounters put into context for Abel the place, or placelessness of his own identity.
'Le Vieux pays o Rimbaud est mort' remains a poetic commentary on how Canadians are perhaps still fighting the old colonial battles with European powers.
Reception
This official Canada-France co-production, which was shown in competition at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival, is certainly one of the directors accessible films, but it did less well in commercial distribution than it deserved. Made as the Parti Qubcois came to power, it was unfashionably critical of Quebecs colonial relationship to France.
Film skirts banality in its mixture of satirical and mainly black and white looks at France by this fairly simple and direct Quebecoise of French origin. But there is a certain charm and perceptiveness, in broad strokes, about the mixture of French generosity and lack of it. 'Variety'
By turns gay and sad, and for the most part languorously beautiful, its beauty remains as separate from its Quebecois hero as the Czanne paintings on the museum walls. The France of his ancestors, the France he has come to find, exists only in the museums and in his imagination. And it is Lefebvres genius that he has invented a visual language for describing this shadowy terrain between the public gallery and corridors of the mind. 'Take One'
References
Buy The Old Country Where Rimbaud Died now from Amazon
<-- Return to movies from 1977