Germinal (1993)

Director:

Claude Berri

Writers:

Claude Berri (writer)
Arlette Langmann (writer)

Release Date:

March 1994 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Plot:

It's mid 19th century in northern France. The story is about a coal miner's town. The workers are exploited by the mine's owner. One day, they decide to go on strike, and the authorities repress them.

Plot Keywords:

Strike | Coal Miner | Mine | Coal | France

Awards:

2 wins & 10 nominations

Cast

Miou-Miou	...	Maheude
Renaud	...	Étienne Lantier
Jean Carmet	...	Vincent Maheu dit Bonnemort
Judith Henry	...	Catherine Maheu
Jean-Roger Milo	...	Chaval
Gérard Depardieu	...	Toussaint Maheu
Laurent Terzieff	...	Souvarine
Bernard Fresson	...	Victor Deneulin
Jean-Pierre Bisson	...	Rasseneur
Jacques Dacqmine	...	Philippe Hennebeau
Anny Duperey	...	Madame Hennebeau
Gérard Croce	...	Maigrat
Frédéric van den Driessche	...	Paul Négrel
Annick Alane	...	Madame Grégoire
Pierre Lafont	...	Léon Grégoire

Runtime:

160 min | South Korea:144 min

Country:

Belgium | France | Italy

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

Iceland:16 | Spain:13 | UK:15 (cut) | South Korea:15 (cut) | Australia:M | Argentina:13 | Chile:14 | Germany:16 (w) | Sweden:15 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Nord, France

Company:

AMLF

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Near the end of the film, when Etienne and Catherine are looking for the way out of the mine, we see the shadows of the lamps on the right wall of the tunnel. It's to be supposed that the only light inside the mine came from the lamps.

Quotes:

Coal mine owner: A strike is a disaster for everyone. Within a week you'll all starve. Then what will you do?

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Ça commence aujourd'hui (1999)

a difficult task

Reducing Zola's masterful but monstrously long novel to a movie is the problem that Claude Berri does not seem to have resolved. He sticks close to Zola's text, which means that we get lots of undeveloped snippets of what were very developed scenes in the novel. If you don't know the novel, this probably causes a certain sense of confusion. If you do know the novel, and it is well-known in France, you have the sense that you are just skimming the surface. I think that Berri would have done better to be less faithful to the novel, or at least less comprehensive in his adaptation of it.

That said, there are most certainly good things in this movie. Miou Miou delivers, in my opinion, the movie's best performance. No, she is not at all the earth mother that Zola's la Meheude is. But she acts with her face, saying far more with a facial gesture than many words would have said. In a movie that skims over a lot of material, that makes for very effective acting. Depardieu is sometimes very good - physically he is perfect for the part of le Maheu - sometimes he seems to deliver the lines without thinking about them. The actor who plays Souvarine is very striking.

The cinematography is nice, but does not convey a lot of what Zola emphasizes in the novel: the heat and lack of space in the mine tunnels, etc.

A good movie if you haven't read the novel; a disappointing one if you have.