In theaters April 22nd
Epic yet intimate, sweeping yet personal, La maison des bois (The House in the Woods) stands as one of the greatest achievements in the history of television as well as legendary director Maurice Pialat’s magnum opus. Commissioned for French TV in 1971, Pialat and screenwriter René Wheeler crafted a seven-episode, nearly 400-minute miniseries about the impact of World War I on a simple French family living in the countryside. Applying a naturalistic focus to their subject, Pialat and Wheeler capture both the historical scope of the conflict and the subtle ways that a small town’s quotidian routines and rituals—church, school, tavern—are indelibly touched by it. At the center of the richly detailed narrative are the Picards, headed by Albert (Pierre Doris), a game warden for the wooded estate of a local marquis (Fernand Gravey). He and his gentle wife, Jeanne (a heartbreaking Jacqueline Dufranne), raise two teenagers—Marcel (Henri Puff), at risk of being drafted; and Marguerite (Agathe Natanson), contemplating marriage—but also shelter three abandoned boys for the duration. Most rambunctious and soulful among them is Hervé (Hervé Lévy), whose journey from boyhood to adolescence, all while becoming a surrogate child to the Picards and hoping for a reunion with his soldier father (Paul Crauchet), lends a beating heart to La maison des bois—a panoramic tale that explores the longing, loyalty, and resilience that sustain humanity amid times of earth-shattering loss.
