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La Bergère d'Ivry
1913 Drama / Short
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Review
La Bergère d’Ivry is an
early silent short film by Maurice Tourneur, one of French cinema’s
underrated auteur film directors. Whilst it may lack the
sophistication and attention to detail of Tourneur’s later films, La Bergère d’Ivry is a
charming little piece which tells a simple story with understated
lyricism. The film includes one of Tourneur’s earliest
uses of shadow play to suggest menace – the disturbing shot where
François is considering how to avenge his betrayal.
Shadows feature a great deal in Tourneur’s work, providing an effective
visual metaphor for the darker side of human nature and a
representation of those unseen external forces which determine our
destinies, as in the work of the German expressionists
and their film noir successors.
© James Travers 2008 Write a review for this film...User Comments
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Director:
Maurice Tourneur
Starring: Renée Sylvaire, Paulette Noizeux, Henry Roussel, Albert Decoeur Synopsis
Hortense Fauvel, the wife of a village postmaster, takes Aimée,
a young shepherdess, under her wing. Aimée soon becomes
engaged to François, the Fauvel’s loyal servant. At a
fête hosted by the Count of Granval, Aimée gives her
fiancé a knife, telling him that he should kill her if ever she
ceases to be faithful to him. That same day, the Count is
planning to have an amorous liaison with Hortense, but Aimée
intervenes. To save her mistress from a scandal, Aimée
tells the postmaster that it is she, not Hortense, who has been seeing
the Count. Disgraced, Aimée is dismissed by the
postmaster. François contemplates his revenge and recalls
what Aimée said to him earlier...
Credits
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