L’Homme du large (1920) - film review

Off the coast of Brittany, Nolff earns his living as a fisherman, and hopes that his son Michel will follow in his footsteps.   However, Michel has no such aspirations, preferring to spend his days and nights with his dissolute friends in the nearby town.  When his mother dies, Michel steals some money left by her to his sister Dejenna.  When he learns of this, Nolff seizes his son and casts him out to sea in an open boat, letting the sea cast its judgement...

L’Homme du large, Marcel L’Herbier’s first great film, offers an extraordinarily compelling portrayal of the forces of good and evil that motivate human behaviour.  Whilst it does not have the huge epic scale of some of L’Herbier’s subsequent films, it is nonetheless a masterwork of cinematic storytelling and uses a dazzling range of photographic techniques to hold the audience’s attention.

The harsh Brittany coast provides an appropriate setting for this austere tale of filial betrayal and redemption.  The alluringly beautiful but fearsome open sea emphasises the temperament of the fisherman Nolff, a simple solitary soul whose only wish is that his son becomes like him.  Meanwhile, the scenes of wild debauchery in a town tavern (at one time censored for being too explicit) reveal the true nature of Nolff’s wayward son, Michel.  The narrative approach is simple but it is astonishingly effective, with moments of harrowing dramatic intensity gradually building to a genuinely poignant climax.  In addition, the documentary-style filming of an Easter festival provides an illuminating record of Breton life in the early part of the Twentieth Century.

The historic importance of L’Homme du large is summed up Henri Langlois, founder of the cinématèque française, who described the film as the first example of "écriture cinématographique".   It also marked the screen debut for famed French actor Charles Boyer.  The film was recently restored (by Gaumont in 1998), complete with the original colour tints and decorated caption cards.

© James Travers 2002

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