Les hommes nouveaux: Romantic drama or just colonial busywork?

Is it worth your time?

If you have a thing for old French cinema or want to see Jean Marais before he became a household name, sure. If you’re looking for a tight narrative, you’re going to be disappointed. It’s for the patient, honestly.

The whole vibe is a bit disjointed. It feels like two different movies taped together. One is about a guy trying to keep his marriage from falling apart in Morocco, and the other is just watching an officer do paperwork and ride horses. It’s like watching a soap opera interrupted by a government training video.

There is this one scene where they are just talking about colonial duties, and I swear the background noise of the market is louder than the actors. It’s oddly distracting. You can tell they were trying to capture that bustling, dusty Moroccan heat, but sometimes it just sounds like someone dropped a bag of silverware off-camera.

Jean Marais is there, though. Even early on, you can tell he’s got that screen presence that just eats up the frame. It’s almost a shame he gets overshadowed by the businessman’s constant brooding.

Speaking of the businessman, the guy is basically a human wallet. He’s rich, he’s tired, and he’s clearly not having a great time. You want to feel bad for him, but he’s so stiff it’s hard to get invested. It reminds me a bit of the stuffy tension in Sentimental Romance, where the silence does more work than the script.

The odd bits:

• The officer’s mustache is a character in itself.
• The transition between the romance and the politics is about as subtle as a train crash.
• I’m pretty sure one of the extras in the background is just reading a newspaper during a dramatic confrontation.
• The lighting in the interior shots looks like they were trying to hide the set, which, to be fair, is a choice.

It’s not as polished as some of the other stuff from the era. It feels raw, maybe a bit rushed. It’s definitely not on the level of something like The Mysteries of the Chateau de De in terms of style, but it’s got enough weird charm to keep you watching. At least until the plot starts wandering off to find a snack.

You can see the movie trying to be important. It tries so hard to show the 'new men' of the title, but it mostly just shows men being indecisive in fancy suits. A bit of a letdown, but not entirely a waste.