1941-1950 Classics Drama France Jean Dréville

Jean Dréville – La cage aux rossignols AKA A Cage of Nightingales (1945)

adminOctober 3, 2019

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Clement Mathieu has written a book, La cage aux rossignols, which recounts his recent experiences as a teacher in a typical French boys’ school. Having tried, in vain, to get the book published Mathieu succeeds in persuading a friend to print it in the newspaper he works for. The story he tells moves the thousands of people who read it, but it has most impact on the woman who is shortly to be his wife. In the 1930s, Clement Mathieu took up a teaching post at a school run with an iron fist by the authoritarian headmaster Monsieur Rachin. Despite the brutal way in which the pupils are treated, they are undisciplined and waste no time trying to make Mathieu’s life a misery. But Mathieu refuses to counter the boys’ unruliness with violence and abuse. Instead, he gains their respect and affection by treating them with kindness and dignity, as though they were human beings, not animals. He teaches the boys to sing and, within a few weeks, the untidy rabble has become a chorus of angels.’
— Films de France