Themes: Teachers and Students, Fighting the System
Main Cast: Bernard Blier, Edouard Delmont, Juliette Faber
Release Year: 1948
Country: FR
Run Time: 84 minutes
Plot
L'Ecole Buissoniere could be described as a small-scale Gallic version of Goodbye Mr. Chips. Bernard Blier stars as Pascal, a head-in-the-clouds teacher forced to come down to earth when he is assigned a woebegone rural school. Hoping to stimulate his students, Pascal digresses from the established curriculum, only to run afoul of the hidebound adults in the vicinity. Eventually, however, he is successful with his students--all but one. The climax finds Pascal desperately trying to turn his lone "problem student" around before his license is revoked. The film works best in the one-on-one scenes between Bernard Blier and recalcitrant schoolboy D. Caron. The 115-minute running time was trimmed considerably when L'Ecole Buissoniere made it to American television in the mid-1950s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Jean-Louis Allibert - Innovator; Jean Aquistapace - Antique Dealer; Maupi - Chemist; Gaston Modot; Henri Poupon - The Examiner
Credit
Claude Bouxin - Art Director, Jean-Paul Le Chanois - Director, Emma Le Chanois - Editor, Joseph Kosma - Composer (Music Score), Marc Fossard - Cinematographer, Andre Dumaitre - Cinematographer, Maurice Pecquex - Cinematographer, Jean-Paul Le Chanois - Screenwriter, Elise Freinet - Screenwriter
