V.to air tonight at 21.20 on Rai 3 the first episode of the miniseries Germinal, co-produced by Rai. It is the television adaptation of the great novel by Émile Zola published in 1884.
Set in the mining area near Lille, the fiction faithfully transports the pages of the book to the small screen. Returning the grandeur, but also the urgency, of a universal history of struggle for rights and equality.
Germinal: the previews of the first episode
France, late 19th century. Étienne Lantier (Louis Peres), just twenty, flees from Lille after slapping his boss. Unemployed and with few prospects, he takes refuge in the city of Montsou and finds work in a mine. Here he finds out the hardness of the work at a depth of six hundred meters and the daily humiliations endured by the miners.
But he decides to stay, especially for the beautiful Catherine (Rose Marie Perrault), a young worker with whom he falls in love. Over the weeks, Étienne becomes a good miner and makes friends with everyone. But when the owner of the mine decides to reduce wagesthe young man thinks of a riot.
A scene from the miniseries “Germinal”. (Photo by Sarah Alcalay – FTV – Banijay)
Meanwhile Catherine reluctantly binds herself to Chaval, Étienne’s enemy worker. Weeks go by and the anger of the miners continues to grow in the face of injustice. Étienne tries to convince them to create a solidarity fund and to organize a strike but it fails.
But one day later an accident to little Jeanlinthe workers decide that the time has come rebel once and for all.
A modern adaptation of Zola’s novel
Published in 1884, Germinal is one of the most famous novels of the prolific French writer, father of the naturalism. A current that aimed to tell stories with social and political implications through the lens of the “Experimentation” in the field. In fact, to write it, Émile Zola personally visited the Anzin mine, one of the most important of the time.
The title, which has been translated into Italian Germinalrefers to the calendar month of the French Revolutioncorresponding to allearly spring. A moment of rebirth and flowering that Zola wants to compare to “Spring” of workers’ equality and the shoots of the revolution.
Émile Zola. (Getty Images)
Already brought to the big screen in 1993 in a film with Gérard Depardieu, Germinal is transposed with fidelity by this new adaptation, also thanks to the possibilities of long narration (six hours in all) that the seriality offers.
The splendid photography makes you regret the possibility of a viewing on the big screen. From the very first seconds, in fact, we are catapulted intosuffocating and gloomy atmosphere of the mines while the many characters in the book enter the scene with the necessary attention to psychologies.
(Photo by Sarah Alcalay – FTV – Banijay)
Filmed by David Hourrèguedirector of Skam Francethe series shines especially for the modernity of writing. All the dialogues in fact have been rewritten in today’s language, without lose that realistic quality it made Germinal one of the nineteenth-century symbolic novels.
With a palpable tensionepisode after episode, the miniseries also has the merit of focus on the many female characters that populate the pages of the book. Fighting women, strong and determined to fight for their rights.
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