The Grand Maneuver
| Les Grandes Manœuvres The Grand Maneuver |
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Film poster
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| Directed by | René Clair |
| Produced by | René Clair André Daven |
| Written by | René Clair Jérôme Géronimi (adaptation) Jean Marsan (adaptation) |
| Starring |
Michèle Morgan Gérard Philipe |
| Music by | Georges Van Parys |
| Cinematography | Robert Lefebvre |
| Edited by | Louisette Hautecoeur Denise Natot |
| Distributed by | Cinédis |
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Release date
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Running time
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106 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Box office | $39.8 million |
The Grand Maneuver (French: Les Grandes Manœuvres) is a 1955 French drama film written and directed by René Clair, and starring Michèle Morgan and Gérard Philipe. It was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland as Summer Manoeuvres, and in the United States under the title The Grand Maneuver. It is a romantic comedy-drama set in a French provincial town just before World War I, and it was René Clair's first film to be made in colour.
Armand de la Verne, a lieutenant in the French cavalry and a notorious seducer, undertakes a bet that he will "obtain the favours" of a woman selected secretly by lot, before his company departs for its summer manoeuvres in a month's time. His target turns out to be Marie-Louise Rivière, a Parisian divorcée who runs a milliner's shop, and who is also being courted by the serious and respectable Victor Duverger. Marie Louise's growing attraction towards Armand is tempered by her discoveries about his reputation, while Armand's calculated strategy become undermined by his genuine emotions. A subplot follows the parallel but simpler courtship of Armand's friend and fellow officer Félix and Lucie, the young daughter of a photographer.
In René Clair's own words, "Love is the only concern of Les Grandes Manœuvres", and he added that the film was one of the countless variations to be made on the inexhaustible theme of Don Juan. The film is set in a French garrison town in the period just before the First World War, the end of the Belle Époque. Describing the origins of the film, Clair said, "Having passed a part of my childhood near Versailles, I could not forget the cavalry officers, their galloping in the forest of Viroflay, the rumors of their adventures, a duel which the newspapers talked about and in which two of those officers died...." Elsewhere he commented, "For me it is a very sentimental film, even more sentimental because it is situated in the period of my childhood. I put into it things that I saw."
Clair's aim was to create a portrait of provincial life in the years before 1914, and close attention was paid to the fashions of the period and the rituals of military life.Les Grandes Manœuvres was Clair's first film in colour, a medium he had wanted to use since his time in England in the late 1930s, because, he stated, "it would enable him to keep reality at a distance" The production designer, Léon Barsacq, created sets in which muted colours were dominant, with furniture and accessories in black or white, and costumes mainly in beige or brown; they even sprayed the leaves of trees with yellow so that their shade of green would not be too bright. The only bold colour permitted was red, the red of the military uniforms.
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Wikipedia