by Allan Fish
(France 1946 90m) DVD2 (France/Belgium only)
Aka. Farrebique, ou les quatre saisons
A world untouched
d/w Georges Rouquier ph André Danton ed Madeleine Gug m Henri Sauguet
In 1983 Georges Rouquier made a return pilgrimage to Aveyron and Goutrens. It was 38 years since he’d first gone to the region in 1945 to make Farrebique. His new film would be called Biquefarre. It’s an important document in itself but few would argue that it was as good as its predecessor. Biquefarre marked a sort of diaspora, a leaving behind of the old ways of farming life documented in Farrebique. It felt like we were watching something slipping by, while Farrebique was about continuation, a tale of the four seasons as they had been for countless generations. Biquefarre opens with a shot of the old Farrebique farmhouse, now closed up, its family now moved into a purpose built modern house on adjoining land. Even Biquefarre is now being sold up by its owner because maintaining it is no longer practicable.
Biquefarre and Farrebique were neighbouring farms. In Farrebique we are shown an Ivens-style map shot showing Biquefarre as a smaller farm to the north-west of Farrebique. Farrebique owes much to Epstein, Flaherty and Storck and looks ahead to Artavazd Pelashian and the Taviani brothers among others, but it has a distinct feel of its own. On one level it’s about the passing of a year in the lives of a family of farmers in rural France just after the liberation. On another it’s a documentary about a way of life, a marking of a time and place. These farmers are simple but devout people – stone pillars marking entrances are topped with semi-ornate crosses in the French style, the family say their prayers in front of the fireplace very night before retiring as a matter of course, Catholic priests make their visits on foot. It also documents how the family disperse, to Montpelier, Avignon and, in the case of some daughters, to convents. Only the eldest son will inherit the farmstead. The rest of the family must make their own way.
We are given the daily ritual of farming and what needs doing throughout the year, the endless ploughing with their oxen, milking their cows, and the overhanging problem of house and barn maintenance. Both need not so much extending as rebuilding but the patriarch cannot commit to doing it and the son doesn’t seem really bothered enough himself. Equally pressing is the necessity to finally convert to electricity and rid themselves of reliance on unreliable and inadequate oil lamps and looking to the future. But if they commit to that, the rebuilding will have to wait.
There are glimpses of a broader world beyond the farmstead – at the local church, in the war memorial to village dead in the Great War, and in the local pub where farmers gather to share wine and song. The main body of the film, however, is about the microcosm of the family, the passing from generation to generation, from the elderly patriarch to the grandson Raymond who will eventually inherit (as would be confirmed in the opening minutes of Biquefarre). The family has to feed itself from the land, even baking their own bread in an oven in the barn, bread which can get so thick and hard that it can only be cut off in pieces with a sharp knife and only digested broken up into thick soup.
The aforementioned cinematic influences may be transparent but there are also literary antecedents, not least Zola. It’s hard, watching the old patriarch – now retired and awaiting a death that will come all too soon as if having no purpose beyond his work – walking over his land with a sense of desolation that recalls the unfortunate père Fouan in La Terre. It was a sensation in its day, winning an award at Cannes in 1946 and more acclaim when generally released in February 1947. It had been out of circulation for many years, but the recent French DVD – thankfully English friendly – should ensure it regains its place amongst the most seminal rural paeans of French cinema and, equally, restore Rouquier as a name to place with Storck, Ivens and co. in the upper echelon of European documentarists.
