Good evening and welcome to our Saturday Night Movie. Here now is your host John Hind.
Alexander Arkady's 1980 film Le Coup de Sirocco was a new title to me when it turned up on the suggested list,
but in a quiet way I did fall for it and I think you will too.
I'm not quite sure how the title translates, except of course that the Sirocco is an ill wind blowing out of Africa,
but the film gives a gently comic treatment to the saga of this family of French settlers
who are blown out of Algeria and back into France by the winds of the Algerian independence in 1962.
I found myself liking the Nabonis from the moment that we meet them in 1945.
One possible problem is that the screenplay does take the very French view that everyone's going to know about all the problems
that followed the Algerian declaration, but I don't think that it's likely to spoil this one
because the movie itself is so warm and funny.
The five major players are Roger Hanin, Martha Villalonga and young Patrick Boyle as the three Nabonis.
Michel Euclair is Lucien Bonheur and Lucien Lejani is Jacob.
There are subtitles, but for once they are really readable, so I'll see you after the movie.