If this was indeed the first film of the New Wave then it has a lot to answer for. Unless there are other causal influences I don't know about, the New Wave destroyed French cinema. Old wave films like Carné's "The Children of Paradise" (1943), Clouzot's "The Wages of Fear" (1953), and Tati's "My Uncle" (1958) make Truffaut, Renais and Chabrol look earthbound and dreary. As, by and large, they are. (Even in the years after 1959 France's best films had little to do with, and owed little to, the New Wave.) But "Beautiful Serge" is at least a nice little film, only somewhat earthbound, and not so dreary at that.
An earlier reviewer has complained about the music; and, indeed, at the screening I attended there were some people up the back determined to chortle at what they perceived to be musical heavy-handedness. A cheap response would be that the film needed SOMETHING to lift it above the level of a 7-Up documentary. A fairer response would be that this is a story in which the theological significance of the hero's actions shines through a mundane surface, and the score serves to express that, too. It's the faint but real sense of fantasy that keeps "Beautiful Serge" very much alive.
An earlier reviewer has complained about the music; and, indeed, at the screening I attended there were some people up the back determined to chortle at what they perceived to be musical heavy-handedness. A cheap response would be that the film needed SOMETHING to lift it above the level of a 7-Up documentary. A fairer response would be that this is a story in which the theological significance of the hero's actions shines through a mundane surface, and the score serves to express that, too. It's the faint but real sense of fantasy that keeps "Beautiful Serge" very much alive.