This is not legend ;this is fact .Till 1930 there was a sinister shantytown on the outskirts of Paris which was called "la zone" (=the slum belt); Georges Lacombe devoted a 28 min documentary to this place in 1928.From 1930 onwards , they began to demolish the slums and accomodated some of the underdogs in cheap brick houses ;anyway shantytowns persisted till the early sixties ,when HLM (public housing estate) created low-rent buildings en masse.
Before the war, this "zone " frightened the wealthy bourgeois who considered it the place where the dregs of society lived.The first picture is revealing : a wedding takes place in a chic part of Paris: bride and groom radiant with joy, guests dressed up to the nines :but those selfish privileged people ignore the beggar who asks them if they can spare a dime : old man Didier ,an anarchist who has lost in faith in God and in his fellow men ,an inhabitant of the zone.
The director switches abruptly from paradise to hell :in the zone , which crawls with vermin,where rats invade the slums ",where people live everyday
off the waste and decay off the discards of their fellow man" : these Tracy Chapman's lines (from "subcity")can perfectly apply to these underdogs' situation : one sees them finding the carapace of a lobster in the rubbish .
"Notre Dame De La Mouise "(=Notre Dame destitution) was intended as a religious movie,to edify its audience ;a priest who used to work in the posh side of the city is not welcomed in the zone (they throw stones at him ) : undaunted,he proudly says ,picking up a missile " on this stone ,I will build my church" .And actually he has to build himself his tiny church (made out of wood) with sparse help from a inhabitant .
The inhabitants ,like old man Didier , do not care about religion and "pie in the sky " is not their food.Fortunately , religion takes a back seat to daily life in the slums ,and from that point of view,the movie is successful : the dandy who wants to attract poor girls to the bright lights of the city (probably a pimp) and is thrown into the mud , the girl (Odette Joyeux ) whose mom has found a place of concierge in a decent street and who leaves her lover crying , the small joys where they meet in a seedy café , the chanson réaliste bawled out by a wretch (Odette Barançay) accompanied on her husband's accordion ......
Except for the very last scenes ,which do not make any sense ,with the coming of the bishop ( one thinks of how a genius such as Luis Bunuel would have treated this mascarade ) , one rarely enters the makeshift church and one never attends a single mass.
"Notre Dame De La Mouise" is not "los olvidados" ,by a long shot ;but in 1939 , it's more than a curios , it's almost an anomaly on the French scene ; the film was released in 1941 ,during the occupation.Robert Peguy ,its director sunk into oblivion.
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