La communale

A school in France circa 1930;who said schoolteachers were poorly paid?this one has got a car and at the time it must have been pretty rare! That car plays a prominent role in the screenplay.

It's a good documentary about the old pedagogy when pupils used to learn everything by heart even if they did not understand a word!let's be fair! The teacher takes his pupils to the country around to study the cocoons and the ....lumberjacks ;"modern" teaching of history takes them to the war memorial ;says the wise sewer worker:" to think that they stuff those brats' head with that!" The teacher gives an essay " why do you enjoy a drive ?" before realizing that none of his boys has ever got into a car! It's funny (in places) but it's not as absorbing as "L'Ecole Buissonnière" ,this great Le Chanois movie of the late forties or "La Maternelle" (early thirties),two very clever works about teaching:which "L'Ecole Communale" is not,being today much more dated than the two aforementioned works.

The teacher's son is played by wunderkind Didier Haudepin ,who found a much more sustained part in Delannoy's "Les Amitiés Particulières".