In its final moments, « Le bon dieu sans confession » unexpectedly meets « Rendez-vous de juillet », as the older generation is led off-screen and forced to make room for the newer one, on which all hopes now rely not to repeat their parents’ mistakes.
In « Rendez-vous de juillet », after the unspeakable trauma of France WW2 collapse, the older generation seemed silently to agree they had lost any moral right to advise their progeny about their life.
In « Le bon dieu sans confession », the lies, the compromises, all the wasted feelings of the adult characters make them similarly unsuitable role models.
Both films tell the war generation to give way to the post-war generation.
François Dupont dies at fifty. Claude Autant-Lara was fifty-two when « Le bon dieu sans confession » was released.
The film possibly marked the apex of « qualité française ». Henri Vilbert won the Volpi Cup at the 1953 Venice Film Festival : a competent actor who, in the film, rose above himself, like « Le bon dieu sans confession » rose above « qualité française » or to its top.
Could François Dupont’s silent call from the grave to youth also be Claude Autant-Lara’s ?
It is as though, through Roland, François Dupont’s son, the director anticipated the New Wave and called for it, though he had no illusion about what it would bring.
Roland’s diatribe against his father seems to announce François Truffaut’s similarly vitriolic and self-serving article in « Les cahiers du cinéma » : « Une certaine tendance du cinéma français ». The famed -or infamous ; choose your side- piece of writing would come in 1954, only one year after « Le bon dieu sans confession ».
A very young actor, who makes an appearance in « Le bon dieu sans confession », will also play a substantial role, mostly as a producer, to reshape French cinema : Claude Berri. As if, by hiring and training him, Claude Autant-Lara himself had contributed, wittingly or not, to his own demise.
On screen, François Dupont reacts with moderation to his son’s accusations. Things went less smoothly off screen : Claude Autant-Lara rebelled vehemently against Truffaut’s assertions and a state of war developed between the « qualité française » and « New Wave » supporters.
Despite his earlier diatribe at him, François Dupont’s son attended his father’s funeral.
François Truffaut would have been unlikely to attend Claude Autant-Lara’s and would not have been welcome, if he had.
When Claude Autant-Lara died, the issue had long been academic : the « qualité française » director outlived his « New Wave » foe by sixteen years.
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