The amazing thing about this film is that It has succeeded in living up to all the magic of the book and making it real on the screen. All the book is here, but not just the story and the characters, but all the feelings and emotions as well, the moods, the strange feeling of unreality at the wondrous party that seems to go on forever landing nowhere but in timelessness - the film has taken care of everything, and it is all convincing, the marvelous direction has captured all the mischiefs of the schoolboys, many of the best scenes are from that rural school, while the highlight is the same as that of the book - the great feast, where Augustin ends up by mere coincidence and meets his love, starting off the great love affair of the story which brings both success and tragedy; which wedding feast the director Jean-Gabriel Albicocco turns into a brilliant haze of wonders, just like in the book, reminding both of some of Fellini's masterworks and Agnes Varda's "Le bonheur" a few years earlier, while this is a more sincere account of love, sincerity is actually the word that sustains the whole story and film. The thing to observe about this central chapter of the book is, that the feast is supposed to be a most lavish and generous celebration of Frantz de Calais and his engagement, but he loses his bride, and instead Augustin Meaulnes finds Yvonne de Calais, so it actually becomes their feast of acquaintance. The actors and the music are also all superb all the way, and what is especially striking is Albicocco's use of close-ups, to enhance the moods, the human feeilings and emotions, to make them even more convincing and to bring out the souls in all their intensive pain and fervor of love; while melancholy ultimately is the dominating sentiment of the story and film. The author Henri Alain-Fournier was not allowed to write any more books as he fell as one of the first casualties of the first world war in its first month at the age of only twenty-eight. He was not made for war, he was made for eternity in letters, which he actually reached just by his one single novel.
Review of The Wanderer
