They Were Five

Name: La belle équipe
Genre: Drama
Released: 1938-05-31
Duration: 1 h 40 min
Rating: 7.5
Cast: Jean Gabin, Charles Vanel, Raymond Aimos

Original title: La belle équipe

1936
1h 40m

IMDb RATING

7.5/10

1.5K

YOUR RATING

Play trailer1:42

1 Video

68 Photos

Drama

Five unemployed penniless workers win 100,000 Francs with the national lottery. Instead of sharing the money, they buy a ruin and build an open-air cafe. But difficulties come to split their... Read allFive unemployed penniless workers win 100,000 Francs with the national lottery. Instead of sharing the money, they buy a ruin and build an open-air cafe. But difficulties come to split their friendly group apart.Five unemployed penniless workers win 100,000 Francs with the national lottery. Instead of sharing the money, they buy a ruin and build an open-air cafe. But difficulties come to split their friendly group apart.

Director
- Julien Duvivier
Writers
- Julien Duvivier
- Charles Spaak
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.5/10

1.5K

YOUR RATING

Director
- Julien Duvivier
Writers
- Julien Duvivier
- Charles Spaak
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

Trivia
This film is one of over 200 titles in the list of independent feature films made available for television presentation by Advance Television Pictures announced in Motion Picture Herald 4 April 1942. At this time, television broadcasting was in its infancy, almost totally curtailed by the advent of World War II, and would not continue to develop until 1945-1946. Because of poor documentation (feature films were often not identified by title in conventional sources) no record has yet been found of its initial television broadcast.

Goofs
When the guys are on the roof during the storm, the wires that are making the shingles fly are visible.

Alternate versions
The original ending is bleak and violent. After the movie did poorly in theaters, a new, happier ending was shot. This lighter version is the one that has been seen for decades. The Swiss Cinematheque has a print of the darker version, which has now been shown at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The 2015 restoration also uses the darker version.

Connections
Edited into My American Uncle (1980)

Soundtracks
Quand on s'Promène au Bord de l'Eau
Music by Maurice Yvain
Lyrics by Julien Duvivier
Performed by Jean Gabin

User reviews9

Review

Featured review

The thirties zeitgeist.

Made at the time when the Popular Front was about to happen,"la belle équipe" perfectly captured the thirties zeitgeist.This was a very optimistic time,and no one could have forecast what would occur in the years to come:1936 Summer saw the first paid vacations .

Jean Gabin was THE French actor of this era,the one who embodied almost everything the audience was dreaming of.Here he plays an employed man,who,with five mates ,wins on the raffle :they decide to buy a guinguette (a café on the banks of the Seine river where you can drink wine and dance).The guinguettes have now completely disappeared in France but it must have been many a Parisian's dream at least till early sixties:just hear the song Gabin sings (he's not dubbed,he used to cut records all along his acting career)telling about fun "quand on s'promène au bord de l'eau" (when go for a stroll along the riverside).There's an almost identical sung sequence in "sous le ciel de Paris"(1952).The guinguettes are part of the past French cinema:Jean Renoir's "une partie de campagne" described them as if he were a painter;ditto the beginning of Jacques Becker's masterpiece "Casque d'or"(1952)which magnificently captured their atmosphere.In "voici le temps des assassins" (1956),his film noir extraordinaire,Duvivier showed a darker side of the guinguettes .

This dark side is already present in "la belle équipe" .Leftish French critics said that the optimistic ending (the team succeeds)was released in the popular theaters ,and the doomed one(the team fails) was shown in chic ones .Modern historians generally do not agree.Duvivier's choice was certainly the pessimist conclusion:it could not be any other way when you know his work,one of the most somber of the French cinema. It must have been filmed first,then the producers asked him to sweeten the screenplay:they were not completely wrong,on account of the historical background.Nowadays,French TV show the two endings in a row.

"La belle équipe" is brimming with camaraderie,joie de vivre and vie en rose.With its happy end ,it's a true oasis,a truce before the flood.Subsequent works such as "carnet de bal" and "la fin du jour" will blight all hopes.