« Le bon dieu sans confession » is sharp and entertaining social satire, but its final act lifts the film to an unexpected level, which justifies the book alternative title « M. Dupont est mort » and somehow reconciles it with the more famous one.
There, François Dupont, the slightly vane and naive -when it comes to the trades of love and money- new rich character, enamoured with his faithful car and a woman who misleads him at will, reclaims the driver’s seat and his position as the film main character.
The film, which had steadied its focus on the relationship between Janine and François Dupont, suddenly shifts it to the trader’s children : we had met them before the war as kids, meet them again in their father’s funeral procession as young adults.
We had not paid attention to them, though they were the official reason for the delay in Janine’s and François Dupont’s carnal reunion, and literally do not recognise them : different actors now play them.
In the storytelling equivalent to a reverse shot, they take the stand and give their perspective about their dead father.
They do so in two successive flashbacks : two long face to face discussions, filmed with a solemn lack of effects, in contrast with the brilliance of similar scenes between Janine and François Dupont, or Janine and her husband, e.g. as they romantically discussed their future, standing at night in a window frame watching an air raid and bombings we only heard, as if they were fireworks.
These two extended sequences unveil a new François Dupont : he escapes the limitations of his name, one of the most common ones in France, and his character stereotype to draw a much more complex picture of himself and achieve full individuality.
When his son Roland unleashes a violent diatribe against him for neglecting his mother and loving money and Janine, he betrays genuine emotion and answers with commendable restraint and surprising understanding.
The scene is particularly striking and simultaneously ironic, because François Dupont’s son is played by Claude Laydu, who, for his first screen appearance in 1950, was the priest in Bresson’s « Journal d’un curé de campagne » : the actor here delivers a stern and self-righteous sermon to his own on screen father, while Bresson’s character was far too humble to teach anybody lessons.
The discussion with his son shall lead François Dupont to discover that his fancied future with Janine was nothing but a dream, that, however grown up, his children will always need him and that, however estranged they may be of each other, he shall never leave his wife.
In his conversation with his daughter, François Dupont shall further distance himself from his character’s lack of sentimental insight and combine fatherly tenderness and open-mindedness with the sound and quick decision making of an experienced business man.
As his eighteen-year old daughter tells him she is pregnant and does not presently wish to marry the child’s father, François Dupont does not shout, scream or fear a scandal, though Henri Vilbert is from Marseilles and -nearly : Alexander Korda’s film was his second screen appearance- started his career with a small part in « Marius ».
François Dupont will set up her daughter in the very apartment he had lovingly bought and decorated for Janine and to be, one day, their love nest : there, his daughter will able to raise her kid and meet the child’s father.
The arrangement becomes both the symbol of François Dupont’s self-sacrifice : fatherly love prevailing over selfish male passion, and, for us who know the truth of Janine’s behaviour, a sarcastic twist by which the beloved daughter is to live in the apartment of her father’s treacherous love interest.
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