The Oxford History of World Cinema (47 page)

de Guise ('The assassination of the Duc de Guise', 1908), whose deepspace mise-en-scène

(including 'authentic' décors), economical acting style (particularly that of Charles Le

Bargy), and succinct editing had a considerable influence, at least in France. That

influence can be seen, in conjunction with the system of narrative continuity earlier

developed by Pathé, in subsequent historical films, many based on nineteenth-century

plays and operas. Although most clearly evident in those dealing with an indigenous

French history, such as SCAGL's La Mort du Duc d'Enghien ('The death of the Duc

d'Enghien', 1909) and Gaumont's Le Huguenot ('The Huguenot', 1909), it is also apparent

in films as disparate as Film d'Art's La Tosca ( 1909) and Werther ( 1910). Generally,

those running counter to this pattern were 'oriental' films such as Pathé's Cléopâtre and

Sémiramis (both 1910), whose privileged moments of spectacle (accentuated by the

company's trademark stencil colour) and 'exotic' characters served to reinforce the

mandate for France's colonial empire.

Gaumont's 'realist' Scènes de la vie telle qu'elle est ('Scenes from Real Life') series, the

same company's bleak railyard melodrama, Sur les rails ('On the rails', 1912), directed by

Léonce Perret, or Pathé's intricately choreographed bourgeois melodrama La Coupable

('The guilty one', 1912), directed by René Leprince. At least two short films from Pathé

and Gaumont respectively -- Georges Monca's astonishing L'Épouvante ('The terror',

1911), starring Mistinguett, and Henri Fescourt's Jeux d'enfants ('Children's games', 1913)

-- even used extensive cross-cutting with a skill that rivalled Griffith's. Finally, the best of

the comic series increased to a full reel, a length perfectly suited for Perret's sophisticated

Léonce series ( 1912-14). Films such as Les Épingles ('The pins'), Léonce à la campagne

(Léonce in the country'), and Léonce cinématographiste (Léonce the cinematographer')

(all 1913) reveal that this series deftly exploited the social situations in which Perret

himself, as a solidly assured bourgeois type, either outsmarted or was outsmarted by his

wife (usually Suzanne Grandais) in a perpetual battle for domestic dominance.

It was also in 1911 that 'feature' films of three or more reels began appearing on cinema

programmes. Pathé introduced the first of these that spring: Capellani's historical

melodrama Le Courrier de Lyon ('The courier of Lyons'), and Gérard Bourgeois's 'social

drama' Victimes d'alcool ('Victims of alcohol'). Not until the autumn, however, was there

a clear sense that such lengthy films would prove acceptable and profitable. Every major

production company invested in the new format, with films that spanned the spectrum of

available genres. Pathé and Film d'Art drew on the cultural capital of familiar literary

adaptations with, respectively, Notre Dame de Paris ('The hunchback of Notre-Dame'),

starring Henry Krauss and Stacia Napierkowska, and Madame Sans-Gêne, in which

Réjane reprised her celebrated performance in Victorien Sardou's play of twenty years

before. Gaumont contributed a film from Feuillade's Vie telle qu'elle est series, La Tare

('The fault'), starring Renée Carl, which headlined the programme inaugurating the

Gaumont-Palace. Based on its past success, Éclair banked on Jasset's adaptation of Léon

Sazie's popular serial crime novel Zigomar, starring Arquillière as a master criminal who

could also be read as a ruthless capitalist entrepreneur.

Over the next few years, feature-length films became the principal weekly attraction on

French cinema programmes. Film d'Art, for instance, convinced Sarah Bernhardt to

reprise one of her more famous roles in La Dame aux camélias ('The lady of the

camellias', 1912), which led to her performance in Louis Mercanton's independent

production of Queen Elizabeth ( 1912) and to a hugely successful roadshow presentation

in the USA. Whereas these two films relied on an old-fashioned tableau style of

representation, Capellani skilfully integrated a wide range of representational strategies in

perhaps the best, and certainly the most exhibited, French historical film, SCAGL's

twelve-reel Les Misérables ('The wretched', 1912), again with Krauss. Most feature-

length films, however, now took on contemporary subjects. A former playwright and

theatre director, Camille de Morlhon proved adept at imitating the pre-war boulevard

melodrama, as in his Valetta production of La Broyeuse des cceurs ('The breaker of

hearts', 1913). Éclair, by contrast, continued to trade on its crime series, in Jasset's

Zigomar contre Nick Carter ('Zigomar against Nick Carter', 1912) and Zigomar, peau

d'anguille ('Zigomar the eelskin', 1913), until Gaumont seized control of the genre with

Feuillade's famous Fantômas series (starring René Navarre), which ran to five separate

films between 1913 and 1914. For Gaumont, Perret also directed two 'super-productions',

L'Enfant de Paris ('The child of Paris', 1913) and Roman d'un mousse (A midshipman's

tale', 1914), which neatly combined features of the crime series with others from the

domestic melodrama in narratives involving a lost, threatened child. In fact, L'Enfant de

Paris became one of the first French films to occupy an entire Paris cinema programme.

THE GREAT WAR: COLLAPSE AND RECOVERY

The general mobilization orders in early August 1914 brought all activity in the French

cinema industry to an abrupt halt. Until recently, it has been customary to use the war to

explain the decline of the French-vis-à-vis the American cinema industry. Although there

is some truth to that claim, the French position had been weakening before the war began.

By 1911, for instance, under pressure from MPPC restrictions and the 'independent'

companies' expansion, Pathé's portion of the total film footage released in the USA had

dropped to less than 10 per cent. By the end of 1913, in both numbers of film titles and

total footage in distribution, the French were losing ground to the Americans on their own

home territory. The war simply accelerated a process already well under way, and its most

devastating effect, other than cutting off production, was severely to restrict the export

market on which the French companies so heavily depended for distributing their films.

Although Pathé, Gaumont, Éclair, and Film d'Art all resumed production in early 1915,

wartime restrictions on capital and material forced them to operate at a much reduced

level and to rerelease popular pre-war films. Furthermore, they faced an 'invasion' of

imported American and Italian films which quickly filled French cinemas, one of the few

entertainment venues to reopen and operate on a regular basis. And many of those films

were distributed by new companies, some with American backing. First came a wave of

Keystone comedies, most of them distributed by Western Imports/ Jacques Haik, which

had become a crucial foreign distributor just before the war. By the summer and autumn,

through Western Imports and Adam, the films of Charlie Chaplin (nicknamed Charlot)

were the rage everywhere. Next came Les Mystères de New York ('The mysteries of New

York'), a compilation of Pearl White's ' first two serials, produced by Pathé's American

affiliate and distributed by Pathé in France, and its only rival in popularity was the Italian

spectacular Cabiria ( 1914). By 1916, through Charles Mary and Monat-Film, it was the

turn of Triangle films, especially the Westerns of William S. Hart (nicknamed Rio Jim),

and Famous Players adaptations such as Cecil B. DeMille's The Cheat ( 1915)), which ran

for six months at the Select cinema in Paris.

The 'tableau': Sarah Bernhardt in Louis Mercanton's Queen Elizaveth ( 1912)

Despite contributing to the onslaught of American films, as well as losing critical

personnel like Capellani and Linder to the USA, Pathé remained a major distributor of

French product. Not only did the company support feature-length productions from

SCAGL (Leprince, Monca) and Valetta (Morlhon), but it sought out new film-makers,

notably the famous theatre director André Antoine. Pathé also provided financial backing

to Film d'Art, where Henri Pouctal was joined by young Abel Gance. Gaumont, by

contrast, had to cut back its production schedule, especially after Perret left to work in the

USA. Yet it maintained a strong presence in the industry, largely through Feuillade's

popular, long-running serials as well as its circuit of cinemas (the second largest after

Pathé's). Although continuing to produce films, Éclair never fully recovered from the

double blow of the war and a fire that destroyed its American studio and laboratories in

April 1914. Eventually, the company reorganized into smaller components, the most

important devoted to processing film stock and manufacturing camera equipment: Éclair's

camera, for instance, competed with Debrie's 'Parvo' and Bell & Howell's for dominance

in the world market. Eclipse survived largely on the strength of its new film-making team,

Mercanton and René Hervil. In spite of the odds, independent production companies

actually increased in number, and some (those of André Hugon, Jacques de Baroncelli,

and Germaine Dulac) even flourished. That they could succeed under such conditions was

due, in large part, to the relatively widespread distribution their films had in France,

through AGC or especially Aubert, whose circuit of cinemas continued to expand.

The French films available to spectators between 1915 and 1918 were somewhat different

from before. Perhaps because it was now difficult for the French to laugh at themselves,

at least as they had been accustomed to, the once prolific comic series almost

disappeared. Pathé kept up the Rigadin series, but with fewer titles; Gaumont went on

making Bout-de-Zan films and then concocted a series with Marcel Levesque. Production

of large-scale historical films was also curtailed, unless they were conceived within a

serial format, as was Film d'Art's Le Comte de MonteCristo ('The Count of Monte-Cristo',

1917-18), directed by Pouctal and starring Léon Mathot. Given French budget restrictions

and the success of Pearl White's films, the serial became a staple of production, especially

for Gaumont. There, Feuillade turned out one twelve-episode film per year, returning to

the crime serial in Les Vampires ('The Vampires', 1915-16), then shifting to focus on a

detective hero (played by René Cresté) in Judex ( 1917) and La Nouvelle Mission de

Judex ('Judex's new mission', 1918). Otherwise, patriotic melodramas were de rigueur, at

least for the first two years of the war: perhaps the most publicized were Pouctal's Alsace

( 1915), starring Réjane, and Mercanton and Hervil's Mères françaises ('French mothers',

1916), which posed Bernhardt at Joan of Arc's statue before the ruined Rheims cathedral.

Soon these gave way, however, to more conventional melodramas and adaptations drawn

from the pre-war boulevard theatre of Bataille, Bernstein, and Kistemaeckers. Many of

these films were now devoted to women's stories, in acknowledgement of their dominant

presence in cinema audiences and of their ideological significance on the 'home front'

during the war. Moreover, they gave unusual prominence to female stars: to Mistinguett,

for instance, in such Hugon films as Fleur de Paris ('Flower of Paris', 1916), Grandais in

Mercanton and Hervil's Suzanne series, and Maryse Dauvray in Morlhon films such as

Marise ( 1917). But most prominent of all,. between 1916 and 1918, in more than a dozen

films directed by Monca and Leprince for SCAGL, was the boulevard actress Gabrielle

Robinne.

Out of such melodramas developed the most advanced strategies of representation and

narration in France, particularly in what Gance polemically called 'psychological' films.

Some, like Gaumont's one-reel Têtes de femme, femmes de tête ('Women's heads, wise

women', 1916), directed by Jacques Feyder exclusively in close shots, nearly passed

unnoticed. But others were celebrated by Émile Vuillermoz in Le Temps and by Colette

and Louis Delluc in a new weekly trade journal, Le Film. The most important were

Gance's own Le Droit à la vie ('The right to life', 1916) and especially Mater Dolorosa

( 1917), both much indebted to The Cheat and starring Emmy Lynn. Through unusual

lighting, framing, and editing strategies, Mater Dolorosa seemed to revolutionize the