Crainquebille (1922) - film review

For over forty years, a modest street peddler, Crainquebille, has sold vegetables from his cart in the environs of the Halles market in Paris.  One day, whilst waiting for a customer to give him his change, he is accosted by a policeman who insists that he moves on.   When he protests, Crainquebille is arrested, supposedly for swearing at the policeman.  After a farcical trial, the old man is sent to prison, where he enjoys the benefits of free shelter, free food, and even free healthcare.  But when he leaves prison, Crainquebille’s fortunes take a turn for the worse.  All of his erstwhile customers shun him, and, with no income, he drowns his sorrows in drink.  Reduced to a loathsome tramp, the sad old man is about to end his life when a young street urchin takes him by the hand and persuades him to make a fresh start.

Jacques Feyder’s credentials as a serious filmmaker were established early in the 1920s with such films as this masterful adaptation of a novel by Anatole France.  In contrast to his 1921 adventure epic L’Atlantide, Crainquebille is a comparatively modest melange of social drama and satire, but one that is extraordinarily direct and engaging.  The film’s subject fits perfectly with Feyder’s effective realist style, heightened by the director’s very evident humanist principles.  With a skill that becomes increasingly evident in his subsequent films, Feyder succeeds in drawing every last ounce of pathos from a situation without ever crossing the line into sentimentality.   See how masterfully he manages to employ comedy to offset the tragic elements of his drama, something which adds great depth to his characters and a very human dimension to their plight. 

There are also some memorable artistic touches, which show that Feyder was not averse to experimenting with the cinematic medium.  These include a demonic nightmare version of the trial scene, which appears to have been spliced from an early German expressionist film.  There are also shades of Chaplin, not just in the character of Crainquebille himself (a lovable outsider who appears to be constantly at odds with the world he lives in), but most evidently in the film’s rather touching final sequences.  (The angelic child actor Jean Forest would feature in Feyder’s subsequent films, Visages d’enfants and Gribiche .) 

Whilst the film may not have received the recognition it deserved when it was first released, it is now gaining acceptance as one of the most important French films of the silent era.  It amply demonstrates that Jacques Feyder was years ahead of his time, and on so many fronts – a truly inspirational director and a great auteur of the Seventh Art.

© James Travers 2006

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