Running Water

running Water , film French realized by François Villiers, left in 1958.

Synopsis

In the valley of the Durance in refitting because of the construction of the stopping of Greenhouse-Ponçon, the Hortense young person, with died of his father, landowner, inherits the 30 franc million that this one touched like allowance of expropriation. As it is still minor, it will be the subject of the covetousness of various family members who will use of all the stratagems, of the seduction to violence, to try to adapt the nest egg. But Hortense, éprise of freedom like the running water of the Durance, will always slip between their fingers to finally find the lull near his/her uncle cherished, the Simon shepherd…

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Around film

the running water of EDF : By evaluating energy needs of France for the Years 1950, the Commission of Modernization and Equipment of Electricity envisaged to increase the hydroelectric production. running Water , financed by EDF, belonged to 39 films related to this period of intense activity of hydroelectric constructions. Turned between 1956 and 1957 with, in backdrop, the construction of the Stopping of Greenhouse-Ponçon (Hautes-Alpes) started in 1955 and the next drain of the the Durance, this propaganda fictionalized was a great success.
For the sequences of the flood, it is the dam Chaudanne (completed in 1951 and brought into service in 1952) in the Alp-of-High-Provence which was the lining of the future Barrage of Greenhouse-Ponçon (brought only into service in 1960).
the scene of flood of the cellar was turned to the public swimming pool of Gap, whose basin was transformed into decoration for the occasion. Pascale Audret profited, for certain scenes, of the assistance of an young girl of Gap, Edith Isnard, girl of the managers of the swimming pool, committed like lining. Due to engagement of Pascale on other turnings, Edith replaced it in the sequences of the flooded cellar, of the descent in the scooter of Greenhouse-Ponçon like in part of the end of film (flat of the Crau). The participation of an young girl of the country in this film, reporting the construction of a stopping which upset the socio-economic structures of the department of the Hautes-Alpes, beyond the aspect symbolic system, leaves still today a very alive trace in the memory of the inhabitants of the High-Durance.
the scenario generated a work cosigné Jean Giono and Alain Allioux (the adapter), Hortense or running water (Editions France-Empire, 1958).
More than film, it is the song éponyme which will fit in the collective memory. Written and sung by Guy Béart on the original music of film, this song became a traditional national.
In 1995, at the time of the commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Jean Giono, in the supplement of the daily newspaper Of Provence the, Jean Contrucci considers the cinematographic attempts at Giono and note, in connection with running Water : A documentary film on the construction of the stopping of Greenhouse-Ponçon becomes - finally! - a film of fiction signed Giono, put in scene by François Villiers: running Water . In this connection, François Truffaut, then large destroyer of cinematographic mediocrities, wrote in Arts: Giono is the writer who could bring more to the cinema . Conditional which induces that this contribution is not yet carried out…

Distinctions

Nominated for the gold Palm to the Cannes festival 1958.
Golden Globe 1959 category Better foreign film (Best Foreign Language Film).

External bonds

Poster
Small pocket BO 45 turns '' running Water ''
Image: Charles Blavette & Pascale Audret in margin of '' running Water '' (1956)

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