Germinal [VHS]
starring: Miou-Miou, Renaud (II), Jean Carmet, Judith Henry, Jean-Roger Milo
directed by: Claude Berri
directed by: Claude Berri
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Price: $65.82
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Amazon.com:
Emile Zola's novel of arural mine town and a perilous worker's strike becomes a big-budget film of grit and torment in Germinal. The first half of the movie captures a world just this side of prison where whole families work in the Voreux mines with a daily dose of coal dust covering their skins and clogging their minds. Escapes are rare: a drink at the company bar or a carnival. An outsider provokes talk of a strike, something the failing owners want as well. When the workers revolt, it becomes a monster. While true to Zola's passion for the worker and social change, the movie cannot recover from the operatic drama that turns the action into mere motion, failing to draw in the audience (although this is an impressive-looking film, with Voreux passing as the real thing). Viewers will be moved by the workers' plight, the daily grime that they must rinse away, and their efforts to instill a normal life in this industrial hell--and will surely learn to appreciate their ownjobs, whatever the inadequacies. --Doug Thomas
Emile Zola's novel of arural mine town and a perilous worker's strike becomes a big-budget film of grit and torment in Germinal. The first half of the movie captures a world just this side of prison where whole families work in the Voreux mines with a daily dose of coal dust covering their skins and clogging their minds. Escapes are rare: a drink at the company bar or a carnival. An outsider provokes talk of a strike, something the failing owners want as well. When the workers revolt, it becomes a monster. While true to Zola's passion for the worker and social change, the movie cannot recover from the operatic drama that turns the action into mere motion, failing to draw in the audience (although this is an impressive-looking film, with Voreux passing as the real thing). Viewers will be moved by the workers' plight, the daily grime that they must rinse away, and their efforts to instill a normal life in this industrial hell--and will surely learn to appreciate their ownjobs, whatever the inadequacies. --Doug Thomas
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: 
- Breathtaking
This is truly a wonderful film if you wish to get a sense for class conflict in nineteenth-century Europe.I regularly show the film to my European history classes and believe it is high time that a DVD version be released.
Rating: 
- The germination of coal miner unionization in 19th-century France
Germination is the sowing and sprouting of an idea,hence we come to GERMINAL,a sprawling adaptation of an Emile Zola novel concerning the fledgling Coal Miner fight for worker unionization and fair employee treatment under burgeoning socialist thought in 19th century France.For information ,alone,this Claude Berri (LEAN de FLORETTE) epic is worth at least one viewing.The film seems massive in scope and impressive at first with it's theme for equality,liberty and justice;but the film suffers terribly ... Read More
Rating: - SIX STARS
This is one of the great ones.Every bit as riveting as "Shindler's List", it is not about the Jews and The Holocaust, but a less immediate cause - coal miners in France in 1884.Deserves to be one of France's top ten films of all time.Costing $30 million, it's worth every penny.At two hours, 38 minutes, it never lost me for a second.I sat enthralled, immersed in the poverty, meanness, and ugliness of the world Berri's camera shows us.The extras he used are actual descendants of the original ... Read More
Rating: - Sprawling adaptation!
As you know Emile Zola was the authentic father of the realism in literature. His portraits are so lucidly depicted as you were watching a film. His impeccable and descriptive style is so impressive that it is nothing difficult to get into his world.
Claude Berri had gotten an excellent rapport previously with Depardieu in Jean de Florette and Manon of Spring. In this time we will witness of the rural drama of an impoverished family leadedby Depardieu, a coal miner who begins to politicize ... Read More
Rating: - How poverty and hunger will drive people to extremes
This film is based on Emile Zola's classic (and perhaps best) novel. It's a bleak story about underpaid miners and their families living in poverty while their employer makes excuses for not being able to pay them better, all the while living in wealth with his own family. The film does a brilliant job of showing this contrast between the squalor of the miners' class and the lavish lifestyle of the upper-class which employs them. The miners' work is very dangerous down there and sooner or later there are ... Read More
- BreathtakingThis is truly a wonderful film if you wish to get a sense for class conflict in nineteenth-century Europe.I regularly show the film to my European history classes and believe it is high time that a DVD version be released.
- The germination of coal miner unionization in 19th-century FranceGermination is the sowing and sprouting of an idea,hence we come to GERMINAL,a sprawling adaptation of an Emile Zola novel concerning the fledgling Coal Miner fight for worker unionization and fair employee treatment under burgeoning socialist thought in 19th century France.For information ,alone,this Claude Berri (LEAN de FLORETTE) epic is worth at least one viewing.The film seems massive in scope and impressive at first with it's theme for equality,liberty and justice;but the film suffers terribly ... Read More
- SIX STARSThis is one of the great ones.Every bit as riveting as "Shindler's List", it is not about the Jews and The Holocaust, but a less immediate cause - coal miners in France in 1884.Deserves to be one of France's top ten films of all time.Costing $30 million, it's worth every penny.At two hours, 38 minutes, it never lost me for a second.I sat enthralled, immersed in the poverty, meanness, and ugliness of the world Berri's camera shows us.The extras he used are actual descendants of the original ... Read More
- Sprawling adaptation!As you know Emile Zola was the authentic father of the realism in literature. His portraits are so lucidly depicted as you were watching a film. His impeccable and descriptive style is so impressive that it is nothing difficult to get into his world.
Claude Berri had gotten an excellent rapport previously with Depardieu in Jean de Florette and Manon of Spring. In this time we will witness of the rural drama of an impoverished family leadedby Depardieu, a coal miner who begins to politicize ... Read More
- How poverty and hunger will drive people to extremesThis film is based on Emile Zola's classic (and perhaps best) novel. It's a bleak story about underpaid miners and their families living in poverty while their employer makes excuses for not being able to pay them better, all the while living in wealth with his own family. The film does a brilliant job of showing this contrast between the squalor of the miners' class and the lavish lifestyle of the upper-class which employs them. The miners' work is very dangerous down there and sooner or later there are ... Read More
