La famille Hernandez

Pied-Noir ( Black-Foot), plural Pieds-Noirs, is a term referring to people of French and other European ancestry who lived in French North Africa, namely French Algeria, the French protectorate in Morocco, or the French protectorate of Tunisia, often for generations, until the end of French rule in North Africa between 1956 and 1962.(.....) The Europeans arrived in Algeria as immigrants from all over the western Mediterranean (particularly France, Spain, Italy and Malta), starting in 1830. (wikipedia)

One character tells us so "my parents came from Spain;I am French."

Released in 1964,two years after the Evian agreement and the return of the Pieds-Noirs in France (I remember them when they were temporarily "camping" on a square in front of my father's shop). The movie met with mixed critical reception,being trashed by the leftist press for their depicting of the Pieds Noirs Community.However ,that was the only movie which,at the time,described ,in a colorful Pagnol way,the everyday life of those people who lived on the other side of the Mediterranean .the French settlers repatriated after Algerian independence:one of them,a singer ,Enrico Macias,was very popular -and not only among the repatriated- :his first songs often dealt with this "lost paradise" ,this "country I left but that I've never forgotten ,and the silence is often a way to like it".He also sang about the "beautiful girls of my country ,to whom,family's honor prevails over everything".

Through these songs ,the Young boy I was had a vague idea of the Pieds-Noirs's sunny country and "La Famille Hernandez is ,although based on a play which was written long before the film,an equivalent of Macias's songs .

In Bab El Oued -the movie was filmed in Spain,for a good reason!-,lives the Hernandez family:the parents want their daughter to get married .Their life is depicted in a colorful way ,but they seem naive and rather simple-minded :the "culture" Carmen gets is found in her kid brother's chocolate ,or on a poster in a movie theater;she does not know what a tiebreaker is:hence her failure in a sentimental woman magazine 's competition.The "real" culture is represented by the "true" French schoolteacher whose dictation revolves around Charlemagne and by the (rather unsympathetic ) social worker ,who proudly walks down the street ,with her fashionable hairdo and dress and who wants the Hernandez's little daughter to spend her Summer in a French Holiday camp to breathe pure fresh air .It must also be noticed that everyone knows his place : a man of French extraction won't marry a Pied-Noir girl.These details might have infuriated the repatriated,some of whom were educated as well!

The movie - the play was reportedly a huge success in the fifties- was certainly entertaining but only for the mainstream Pieds-Noirs audience in the early sixties:it fueled their nostalgia,their regret of their lost paradise ;but this audience was limited and the movie quickly fell into oblivion,largely overlooked by historians of cinema.It also should be pointed out that the movie,except for the ominous last sequence,does not deal with politics .

NB:Frederic De Pasquale,who portrays the schoolteacher ,would be featured in Robert Enrico's contemporary much-debated movie about the Algerian war "La Belle Vie"