A young Piedmontese officer tries to escape the Austrian secret police. Crossing the border into France, he has two simple ambitions : to escape his pursuers and to reach a town where Italian dissidents have created a small community. Unfortunately, he arrives straight into a cholera epidemic of catastrophic proportions. His ever more chaotic travels and escapes bring him into contact with a large variety of people : the kind, the treacherous, the greedy, the passive, the silly, the brave. His travels will take on the nature of an initiation into the mysteries of love, horror and death...
"Le hussard" offers romance and adventure in the grand manner, set against the background of a general catastrophe. Our protagonist (who is handsome, dashing, gallant and - at times - thunderingly stupid) grows to full manhood by observing and confronting the extremes of goodness and evil of which the human race is capable. The movie must have been made with a giant budget, since the sets, locations and costumes are out of this world. At the risk of sounding like a press release : this is truly a sweeping, immersive epic.
I've never read the book on which the movie is based, but if I were to make a guess I would suppose that the author, Jean Giono, witnessed a great deal of sorrow and injustice in his own life. Many of the scenes have a disquieting ring of truth about them, such as the scene where the protagonist, an innocent man, tries to drink from a water fountain and is accused of being a poisoner and sorcerer. What follows is a near-lynching where screaming villagers, made crazy by ignorance and fear, accuse him of every crime and turpitude under the sun. As one of the characters states, correctly : the cholera may be a terrible disease, but what the name causes in the human breast, that's where the real horror lies...
Very striking : the recurring motif of the black carrion birds such as crows and ravens. One understands where expressions such as "a murder of crows" came from...
"Le hussard" offers romance and adventure in the grand manner, set against the background of a general catastrophe. Our protagonist (who is handsome, dashing, gallant and - at times - thunderingly stupid) grows to full manhood by observing and confronting the extremes of goodness and evil of which the human race is capable. The movie must have been made with a giant budget, since the sets, locations and costumes are out of this world. At the risk of sounding like a press release : this is truly a sweeping, immersive epic.
I've never read the book on which the movie is based, but if I were to make a guess I would suppose that the author, Jean Giono, witnessed a great deal of sorrow and injustice in his own life. Many of the scenes have a disquieting ring of truth about them, such as the scene where the protagonist, an innocent man, tries to drink from a water fountain and is accused of being a poisoner and sorcerer. What follows is a near-lynching where screaming villagers, made crazy by ignorance and fear, accuse him of every crime and turpitude under the sun. As one of the characters states, correctly : the cholera may be a terrible disease, but what the name causes in the human breast, that's where the real horror lies...
Very striking : the recurring motif of the black carrion birds such as crows and ravens. One understands where expressions such as "a murder of crows" came from...