Jean Gremillon, in his study of the elements and “people of the elements”, creates at the very end of the German occupation a film in which the atmosphere becomes an alluring and attractive force, which seems so disembodied and weightless, but it is worth climbing into the air by plane, and the force of attraction and the weather conditions themselves turn it into a formidable rival to the human desire to get off the ground.
The earth, by the way, is almost completely associated with the philistine ideal of a quiet life, not involved in the Big Time. The hint is clear: those who want to conquer the sky are the future of France as free, but the unspoken convention of the silent majority contributes to the fact that such a future may not come. Nevertheless, the main characters, seemingly choosing at the very beginning of the film a bird in the hand rather than in the sky, the further away, the more they go against such an attitude.
That is, these characters are not the first time Gremion characters medial, existing on the boundaries of the elements. The attempt to close on the mythologem of the house as a kind of anchor stops growth and destroys dynamics. But then a gradual transition is inevitable, eventually involving almost the entire region and even going beyond the borders of the country. Gremillon prefers to move to the final open, in a variety of senses of the word. Therefore, the air element in this film is preferable even to his favorite water: the finale is open, as the Big Time restarted in reality, which is clearly stated by the epigraph to the tape.
8 out of 10