La Course du lièvre à travers les champs […and Hope to Die] *** (1972, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Robert Ryan, Lea Massari, Aldo Ray, Jean Gaven, Tisa Farrow) – Classic Movie Review 12,600

Director René Clément’s fair, often compelling, but muddled 1972 international thriller And Hope to Die [La course du lièvre à travers les champs] stars Jean-Louis Trintignant as Antoine Cardot aka Froggy, a French crook on the run in Canada who gets on the wrong side of gypsies and Charley Ellis (Robert Ryan)’s group of criminals planning a big robbery and kidnapping.

The cast (also Aldo Ray, Lea Massari, Jean Gaven, Tisa Farrow), location filming in Montréal, Québec (including Expo ’67) and Canada’s countryside (as well as in the studio at Paris Studios Cinéma, Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France), and Francis Lai’s music score all help to compensate for the difficulties of filming the downright peculiar story. It is fascinating as an adaptation of a David Goodis novel.

Anyone for a pretentious, artistic gangster movie? I thought not. René Clément’s 1972 film And Hope to Die is an interesting, borderline fascinating French gangster crime-drama thriller, set and partly filmed in Canada (studio work in France) and stylishly achieved. But, for all its ambitions and incidental virtues, it is way too doomy, arty and talky for its own good.

It stars Jean-Louis Trintignant as French thief Tony Cardot aka Froggy, Robert Ryan as Charley Ellis, Lea Massari as Sugar, Aldo Ray as Mattone, Jean Gaven as Rizzio and Tisa Farrow as Pepper. It runs an epic 141 minutes, which is too long and too slow here.

And Hope to Die looks great when it’s outside in Canada, and the actors do their very best for it, especially Ryan, though Trintignant and Massari are notable too (even Tisa Farrow despite an impossible task as the neurotic moll Pepper). But it gets nowhere very slowly and depressingly. There is just not enough gangster or crime action and way too much high-flown dialogue. Too often, nothing’s happening at all. Long scenes of Trintignant and Ryan betting a symbolic crucial banknote that they can or can’t stack three cigarettes on end. Such tension! Such drama! The film gets all Pinteresque or Becketesque for absolutely ages, as we seem to be in a rep theatre production reworking Waiting for Godot, or Waiting for Heist, maybe.

There are a few action highlights, including the long-awaited heist, but not many, and even then Clément’s (rather chilly) heart doesn’t seem to be in it fully. Somewhere, there is a great movie trying to break out of here, and you keep waiting for it, but it never starts. Well, it does kinda start, but then it stops. The unusual heist, by the way, is to kidnap a crucial female witness in a mafia trial. That’s a very good idea. The downer fatalistic ending, as suggested by the English title, plays like a mini homage to The Wild Bunch, which also starred Ryan (and hence, no doubt, his casting here), is also depressing.

And Hope to Die is loosely based on the novel Black Friday by David Goodis. But the problem there is that, though Sébastien Japrisot was  hired to adapt the novel, he increasingly deviated from it, adding personal themes like the boyhood scenes in Marseille where he grew up. His script also borrows elements, such as the key one of gangsters hiding out in a fishing cabin, from Goodis’s novel Somebody’s Done For. Yet Goodis’ name does not appear in the credits! The screenplay is muddled and confusing, not cutting a clear path through its eccentric, complicated plot, or explaining its oddball characters and strange motivations satisfactorily. The cutting, editing and continuity are terrible, leading to muddle and confusion, and a lack of flow and dynamism. Basically, you need an effective plot summary to understand the plot.

Edmond Richard’s widescreen photography is often extraordinary, resulting in startling images taking full, exciting advantage of Montreal sites and scenery, while Francie Lai’s unusual score is very diverting indeed. Gotta say, both photography and score help a great deal.

However, overall, this is all immensely frustrating. Eventually the film seems suitable only for Clément and Goodis completists (and Trintignant, Ryan and Massari completists), but then there may be quite a few of those. And, at the end of the day, gangster movies aren’t meant to be pretentious or artistic, though this one makes a pretty strong case for the idea. They can of course be ambitious though – The Godfather – though the more genre they remain, the better, However this is a French take on the gangster movie, so something a bit arty is certainly expected.

The film understandably received many negative reviews, especially in the US, and was far less successful than the previous Clément-Japrisot collaboration Rider on the Rain with Charles Bronson.

The 1972 French-Italian-Canadian film And Hope to Die is also known in French as La course du lièvre à travers les champs and in Italian as La corsa della lepre attraverso i campi. The original title translates as The Hare Race through the Fields.

The original French version runs 141 minutes. An English language version released in the US runs 99 minutes. The version released on DVD in 2013 by Studio Canal UK runs 127 minutes. The 2020 Kino Lorber Blu-ray version runs the full 141 minutes. For the full experience you need the 141 minutes, but also a lot of patience.

Can we just quickly recall how good Ryan is at playing bad guys, while being one of life’s good guys, I know it’s called acting, but he was good at it.

It is the film debut of Emmanuelle Béart as Child (uncredited). Also in the cast are Jean Gaven, Nadine Nabokov, André Lawrence, Daniel Breton, Don Arrès, Aubert Pallascio, Jean Coutu, Jean-Marie Lemieux, Michel Maillot, and Mario Verdon.

And Hope to Die [La course du lièvre à travers les champs] is directed by René Clément, runs 141 minutes, 127 minutes, or 99 minutes, is made by Greenwich Film Productions, is released by Compagnie Commerciale Française Cinématographique (CCFC) (1972) (France) and 20th Century Fox (1972) (US), is written by Sébastien Japrisot, based on the David Goodis novel, is shot in Eastmancolor by Edmond Richard, is produced by Serge Silberman and is scored by Francis Lai, with Art Direction by Pierre Guffroy.

The Burglar (1957) is another adaptation of a David Goodis novel, remade in France as The Burglars. François Truffaut adapted Shoot the Pianist to the screen, based on Goodis’s 1956 novel Down There. Jacques Tourneur’s 1956 film noir Nightfall is based on Goodis’s 1948 novel and stars Aldo Ray (and hence, no doubt, his casting here).

René Clément’s masterwork is the 1960 Plein Soleil.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,600

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