La maison des bois: Episodes 1–3

Epic yet intimate, sweeping yet personal, La maison des bois stands as one of the greatest achievements in the history of television, as well as legendary director Maurice Pialat’s magnum opus. Commissioned for Télévision Française in 1971, this seven-episode, nearly four-hundred-minute miniseries considers the impact of World War I on a simple French family living in the countryside. Applying a naturalistic focus to their subject, Pialat and screenwriter René Wheeler capture both the historical scope of the conflict and the subtle ways that a small town’s quotidian routines and rituals—church, school, tavern—are indelibly touched by it.