Feature film
The Surveyors
Les Arpenteurs
Michel Soutter · 1972
Synopsis
In the Geneva countryside, two surveyors, the tall Léon and the short Max, survey the grounds of a park that is to be laid out; two women whose houses stand on the future site oppose the project. Léon, who quarrels with Max, lets himself be distracted from his task: he agrees to carry a basket of vegetables to Alice, whom he does not know, and is charmed there. From encounter to encounter, with Lucien, with Ann, they all cross paths and miss one another.
Context
Soutter wrote and directed the film, produced by the Groupe 5 with the SSR. Simon Edelstein was responsible for the image, colourless, shot in sixteen millimetre and then blown up to 35, and the music was borrowed from Schubert and Brahms. Jean-Luc Bideau plays Léon and Michel Cassagne Max, with Marie Dubois, Jacques Denis and Jacqueline Moore. The film was released in France on 1 November 1972; the Cinémathèque suisse has since restored it, keeping the grain of the original film stock.
Who it is for
Eighty-five minutes. It helps to know that there is no plot to follow, only encounters, and that the title denotes a trade as much as a way of living.
Prizes and reception
Selected for official competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1972; it is counted among the emblematic films of the years 1966 to 1975 in Switzerland.
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