![And Hope To Die (Rene Clément) [DVD] [1972]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51thl5dM+xL._SY300_.jpg)
It may be more unwieldy and have difficulty fitting on most movie marquees, but the translation of the French title for Rene Clement’s 1972 Franco-Italian but shot in tax-friendly Canada thriller La Course du Lièvre à Travers les Champs - The Race of the Hare Through the Fields - is much more evocative than its English language moniker And Hope to Die, which seemed to be one of those compromise titles because the one David Goodis used for the novel it’s based on, Black Friday, was already taken. But then the film’s poster and DVD sleeve, featuring stars Robert Ryan, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Aldo Ray and Jean Gaven in tuxedos isn’t exactly an example of truth in advertising either since they spend most of the film in lumberjack shirts.
Trintignant is the hare in question, on the run in Canada after causing a fatal light aircraft crash, pursued by knife-wielding gypsies who don’t care if it was an accident or not and literally stumbling across a dying man in Montreal’s Biosphère and finding himself out of the frying pan and into the fire when his killers take him to their boss (Ryan) in his remote lakeside cabin with the gypsies in tow. While the film does lead up to a heist of sorts (and a rather over elaborate one at that), most of the film is devoted to Trintignant trying to find ways to make himself indispensable to the gang and play along and act like a career criminal to stay alive.
But the real theme here, sometimes laid on with a trowel, is the way that the cruel games children play on each other continue with higher stakes as they grow into arrested adolescence – Trintignant is the archetypal bullied (albeit not without reason) kid who ingratiates himself with an even bigger gang of bullies to try to get out of trouble. Opening with both a nod to Alice in Wonderland and The Wild Bunch, the gang play childish games to while away the boredom waiting for their big job, Tisa Farrow goes from hating Trintignant to devotedly loving him with a childlike irrationality, Ray’s slightly prissy washed-up boxer sulks when caught clumsily playing Peeping Tom on Lea Massari, one impromptu burial in the back garden is accompanied by a children’s prayer while Trintignant has to sleep in a tiny child’s cot, Clement taking the notion even further when part of the plan is revealed not by Ryan but by children playing the group (a young but very recognisable Emmanuelle Beart among them) while the caper itself involves a woman with the mental age of a child. It’s no surprise that the film goes full circle, its violent denouement no more than playing for marbles before going home to mama.
It’s not the only the only aspect of the film that could have benefited from a more subtle touch - there’s one wildly misjudged and laughably clumsily executed moment with a double exposure on a photograph foreshadowing the plan’s downfall that makes today’s crudest photoshopping look convincing, but the film’s biggest drawback is that it doesn’t justify its 140-minute running time (the UK DVD is a restored version, with most theatrical versions running a good 20 minutes less). While it’s certainly not a bad film, it’s not especially gripping and could have benefited from the kind of tighter running time it would have had when Ryan was making this kind of thing at RKO back in the 50s.
The collision between French cinema and the stars of the kind of 50s American noir thrillers that remain such an influence on them to this day certainly gives it a unique feel, and unlike other directors like Chabrol who have tried their luck on the other side of the Atlantic, it doesn’t pretend to be an American film: one of the surprisingly few French films shot in Canada (and they talk about Britain and America being divided by a common language), it’s shot almost entirely in French. Ray used his own voice for the French dialogue while Ryan, surprisingly, is dubbed (apparently unable to learn the French dialogue he was given nonsensical English lines that matched the desired lip movements for dubbing, though it’s more an issue of the wrong timbre of voice being used to replace him than lip-synch). Even though seriously ill at the time, something that only shows in a couple of his more physical moments, Ryan’s still an imposing presence who can be more threatening with a smile than Ray can with his fists.
Ultimately it’s a film that perhaps fascinates more than it completely works: neither director nor cast are at their best here, but most of them are still doing better work here than in other films at that point in their career (only Tritignant could claim to really be in his prime in 1972). It’s the kind of film that’s not that easy to take in one uninterrupted sitting, but it’s one that’s still intriguing enough to draw you back to finish it.
Top reviews from other countries
Trevor Willsmer
‘We are but older children, dear/Who fret to find our bedtime near.’
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 4, 2015
Mr Kevin E J Wheeler Tallim Aerotech Limited
Disappointing - not the English language version
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 14, 2013
