User Reviews

"Boissière" is a war melo by Pierre Benoit (during WWI, and just before WWII), and it's interesting how this movie anticipates the next german invasion in France.

A rich woman living in the castle of Boissière meets the son of the man that helped her getting out of the gutter, she ruined that man who killed himself. Strange destiny will occur.

If the story is very interesting, the casting could have been better, maybe director Fernand Rivers wasn't a good director for actors, just see Pierre Renoir as a german officer, he doesn't match at all, pity, it could have been a nice movie.

During the thirties ,Pierre Benoit was a trendy writer whose works were often transferred to the screen ("L'atlantide " by Pabst being the more memorable) .They have not worn well and the author has sunk into semi-oblivion today.

"Boisière" is a war melodrama and it follows the rules of the game dutifully.Don't even try and look for plausibility .But the action is so dense that there's never a dull moment .There are many coincidences , but as a whole ,it works: the film is a long flashback .

Directing is not as effective as his colleague (and sometimes collaborator/producer) Abel Gance ,whose thirties efforts were often melodramas ("le roman d'un jeune homme pauvre " the subject of which is not far from "Boissière,"paradis perdu" "la vénus aveugle"),but it has his moments : : the sequence when the young teenager is told he's got to be courageous because his father took his own life segues into an almost obscene scene in which his mistress lives it up with other lovers ; the beginning of WW1 is filmed in successful succint style: soldiers hollering "la Marseillaise" ,then "la Madelon" ; the soldier telling he will be home for Xmas (in 1914, everybody thought that the war would be very short ).

There's a problem ,however ,with Pierre Renoir's character : you won't believe he is a German officer a single minute: what? Not the slightest Teutonic accent? And in his would be first language, he is not convincing either :"unglaublich! schrecklich!";his part is actually reduced to a deus ex machina ,no more,no less.

All in all,if you enjoy war melodramas, you may get something out of it