Technical Specifications
Year: 1987
Director: Claude Goretta
Director of Photography: Bernard Zitzermann
Sound: Étienne Métrailler, Philippe Abrezol
Distribution: Idéal Film
Runtime: 118’
Language: French
Production: Les Productions JMH, Marion’s Films, Sara Films, RTS Radio Télévision Suisse
Associate Producers: Sylvette Frydman, Raymond Vouillamoz
Distribution of the Restored Version: Cinémathèque suisse
Restoration Information
Restoration: Cinémathèque suisse
Image Digitisation: Cinegrell
Colour Grading-Digital Restoration: Colograde
Sound Digitisation and Restoration: Masé studio
Synopsis
Claude Goretta brought Charles Ferdinand Ramuz’s novel to the big screen 20 years after his adaptation of Jean-Luc persécuté (1966). Despite being set in the 1930s, he believed that the themes of this allegorical novel resonated in a distinctively familiar way in the context of the 1980s. The director subtly immerses the viewer in the lives of the inhabitants of a small mountain village who are cut off from the world by snow and face the threat of not making it through the night. The idea of a never-ending winter and the possibility that the end is nigh provoke very different reactions among the villagers.
Regarding the Film's Restoration
The film competed at Venice Film Festival in 1987 alongside Alain Tanner’s La Vallée fantôme, before it was released in French-speaking Switzerland and France, selling almost 500,000 tickets. While the French media highlighted the slow-paced narrative, the film’s release in German-speaking Switzerland received a more unanimous response, and the Federal Department of Home Affairs rewarded it for its quality. For these reasons, the Cinémathèque suisse decided to raise the film’s profile with the support of the Federal Office of Culture, which, in 2020 and 2022, funded the digitisation of award-winning Swiss films currently and predominantly available on conventional media. The restoration was carried out on the 35mm image negatives (Fonds Les Productions JMH, deposited in 2003) and the 35mm magnetic sound film (Fonds Schwarz Film AG). A French copy with German subtitles from the JMH Distribution collection served as a reference for the colour grading.