Ceux des champs


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  • Andre titler: Those from the countryside
  • Genre: Documentary film
  • År: 1952
  • Varighed: 00:20:00
  • Beskrivelse: In Limousin, the action of the farmers against the low prices of meat for sale. After footage of the work on the fields and farms in winter (collecting leaves for bedding, ploughing, cutting wood, milking cows, water supply...), "Ceux des champs" (Those in the Fields) shows a scene of a fair in Saint-Léonard where the merchants, taking advantage of the abundance of animals and the low prices, impose particularly low prices on the farmers. Butchers and the state also take their share. On the market, the farmers can nevertheless talk to the communist deputy of the Haute-Vienne, Jean Tricart, "a man who listens to you and explains how things work, a man of the country." From farm to farm, meetings - reconstituted - are being organized (where people vote by show of hands). An action is planned on market day. The farmers, determined and calm, meet; barricades are being set up. Trunks, carts and dumped manure block the roads. The last sequence is devoted to the clumsy intervention of the C.R.S. - whose uselessness and ridiculousness are underlined by the commentary - in front of the mocking farmers. Even though "government radio" deliberately conceals this large-scale action of the farmers, the government is forced to grant 9 billion for a fund to clean up the meat market. The denunciation of the radio's bias is briefly illustrated by a scene in which we see an old woman - whose modest home is decorated with a photo of Henri Martin - smile and turn off her radio. After a final sequence showing, from the inside, a car pulling up in front of confident and determined farmers, "Ceux des champs" ends with views of ploughing and the song of the Pauvre Laboureur. Filmed in a rural area with a strong communist tradition and aimed at farmers, "Ceux des champs", very well produced and efficiently constructed, with an often literary commentary, seems to achieve some of the goals generally aimed at by communist propaganda: effective participation of the farmers in scenes that are mostly reconstructed, linearity of the narrative, positive ending, valorization of collective action, of the elected officials and of the communist press (La Terre), denunciation of the government radio... "Ceux des champs" testifies to the implantation of the French Communist Party in certain layers of the French peasantry.
  • Nøgleord: Agriculteur / Agriculture / Ferme (bâtiment) / La Terre (journal) / Labour / Limousin / Martin Henri / Métier de l'agriculture / Ouvrier agricole / Thésaurus / Travail à la ferme / village / police officer / peasant / small group / poverty / fair / carriage / protest / cattle / countryside / radio / VICTOR-E project / Jean Tricart / France
  • Udbyder: Ciné-Archives
  • Rettigheder: In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted / Ciné-Archives
  • Farve: Black & White
  • Director: Bertrand Dunoyer
  • Sound: With sound
  • Language: fr