Directed by Clément, Le Père Tranquille in some ways reflects the influence of actor-writer Noël-Noël more than that of Clément, whose first feature, La Bataille du Rail (1945), is a neorealistic picture of French railway workers involved in the Resistance. Le Père Tranquille approaches the subject of the involvement of the average Frenchman in Resistance activities with a sense of humor; the film stands out as an intimate portrait of small-town French life under the Occupation. “Instead of battlefield heroics, Le Père Tranquille examines the ordinary and the mundane in a manner both tender and ironic. At times, it becomes poetic....”--Dan Yakir, Museum of Modern Art. (Though critic Georges Sadoul, who wrote well of La Bataille du Rail, found Le Père Tranquille “an amusing but too facile...story of ‘free and easy' resistance.”)
René Clément is a director whose work is given depth by his concern with visual detail; thematically, his greatest films range from the 1952 drama, Jeux Interdits, to the 1959 thriller, En Plein Soleil.