Skip to main content

Cœur fidèle (Faithful Heart)

Director: Jean Epstein
Year: 1923
Runtime: 1 hr 27 min
Source: Archive.org (English subs found elsewhere online)

Part of the reason I'm using this list is the high possibility of great unknown foreign classics, and this definitely fits that bill.  Faithful Heart is an extremely early example of what would Quentin Tarantino once characterized as the classic stereotype of European film-making: the plot is painfully simple and there are few surprises, but it hits home because of effective editing and pacing.

In this case, we have an orphaned girl Marie who falls in love with a kind dockworker Jean, but is forced by her cruel adoptive parents to marry a local drunkard with the unfortunate name Petit Paul.  Jean and Petit Paul end up brawling, Jean ends up in jail while Petit Paul escapes, and by the time Jean gets out Petit Paul and Marie have an infant child.  I won't spoil the end, except to say that no one comes out of this story looking very responsible, save for an innocent disabled woman played by Jean's sister and collaborator Marie.  (It did occur to me that the two lovers in this movie share names with the director and his sister, but don't really know if anything needs to be made of this.)

The rather plaintive melodrama is entirely rescued by some phenomenal cinematography and editing, as well as strong performances by the leads, masters of silent film expressions.  There are powerful close-ups that are reminiscent of Dreyer, double exposures and fade outs.  My favorite image is how a slightly turbulent sea is imposed onto a shot of the two lovers, and becomes symbolic of their relationship.  Somehow the image is both calming and foreshadows the pain in their future.

Given such a strong piece, I don't know why Jean Epstein seems to be almost completely forgotten today.  In a way, he seems like the natural first link in a chain that leads to Bresson and Godard - the start of a grand French tradition.  (Feuillade is wonderful, but not sure how he fits into that tradition.)
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Killers

  The Killers  uses up every noir cliche that had developed by this time - the detective story with flashbacks from Laura , the insurance investigator from Double Indemnity, the seductive femme fatale from Gilda - but somehow manages to feel wholly original. I thought that I'd grow weary of noirs by this point, but they are getting better, and there's no doubt that it's a fun genre, if there's not always much going under the pristine surface. There's some tremendous acting, and I unabashedly love the opening scene with the titular killers - the only part that seems to have been actually adapted from the Hemingway short story (Ernest himself was nevertheless a fan) - but the ending doesn't really work. It's a bit easier to follow than The Big Sleep, but it has a few too many twists for what is ultimately a pretty straightforward story without any real morals. Still, I have to recommend it, and it would definitely be up there in my list of best noirs.
Post a Comment
Read more

Fétiche Mascotte (The Mascot)

Director: Ladislas Starevich Year: 1933 Run-time: 26 min Source: Youtube Notable For : The second animated short on the list from 1933 is this stop-motion piece from the Polish-Russian film-maker Ladislas Starevich.  Stop-motion is almost as old as cinema itself (Starevich had been innovating since 1912).  The craft here is as good as any modern film, and Starevich's twisted imagination is on full display, with dolls and household objects coming to life in a dark version of Toy Story.  For animation fans, it almost goes without saying that Starevich was an influence on Jan Svankmajer's work much later. Verdict :  Every frame is a bizarre delight. There didn't seem to be an overarching plan to this work (indeed, it's possible that The Mascot  is an amalgamation of several shorter films featuring the same dog character), and so the film veers from one strange scene to the next, with much of the second half taking place in some kind of tchotchke hell governe...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Trip to the Moon

Director: Georges Méliès Year: 1902 Seeing the painstakingly restored hand-colored print of A Trip to the Moon, in a literally mind-numbing 14 frames per second, makes it utterly clear that cinema is and has always been witchcraft. Every frame of this short feels bursting with magic, and even watching it on a modern TV in a space age that would have blown the mind of any of the actors of this film, you're left thinking "How did they do that?".
Post a Comment
Read more