All of the scenes at the chateau and its surroundings are photographed in blurred colored shots, evoking a surreal and mysterious world unlike the everyday world. The children escorted him through the rooms into the Great Room where a banquet was being held for the engagement of the son of the house, Frantz de Galais, to the beautiful Valentine. There were few adults around other than the entertainers, and a few others, and the children and teenagers seemed to rule in this world. Augustin found clothes and dressed as a marquis. Two actors were talking in another room, one a Pierrot, and invited him to the masquerade ball.

Augustin entered the Chateau and hid in an unused room and lay on a bed. He followed them and found a chateau, where children were dressed in period clothes and were playing games. When looking for the horse he had to walk a long time and finally heard children’s voices. He had taken a horse cart and left town, but he became lost and then his horse got away. His adventure was the most marvelous and mysterious adventure. It is only after several days that he retells the story to Francois. He is gone three days, and on his return he says little, only that he didn’t sleep. Soon after arriving, Augustin takes a horse and wagon to go to wandering. He impresses all of the boys, especially 15 year old Francois Seurel, the book’s narrator and a central character of the film. He is 17 year old Le Grand Meaulnes, Meaulnes is his last name, meaning Miller, or simply, the big Miller. In a small school house the adolescent boys are struck by a newcomer, a taller and braver version of themselves. The film’s setting is rural France at the beginning of the 1900s. Author John Fowles considered it, “the greatest novel of adolescence in European literature.” In the U.S, it is usually translated as The Wanderer, a fitting title. It influenced Jack Kerouac, and thus became the only book that Sal Paradise carried with him in On the Road.

Whoever read it in their youth can never forget it. I’ll need to start with the novel since it is so fundamental to the film. Its title is strange, its been out of circulation since it was released in 1967, it’s in French and has no subtitles, yet no film is so enchanting but ultimately tragic as Le Grand Meaulnes, based on the classic novel of the same title written by Alain-Fournier, his only novel published the year after he was killed in the first World War.

The magnificent meaulnes