Le Capitaine Fracasse (1943) - film review

Penniless and alone, the young Baron of Cigognac is ready to join his ancestors in the family vault beneath his run-down chateau.  Then, unexpectedly, a group of travelling actors arrive at his home and ask for shelter for one night.  The baron welcomes the travellers into his home and immediately falls in love with one of them, a beautiful ingénue named Isabelle.  The next day, the actors persuade the Baron to travel with them as far as Paris.  On the way, one of the actors dies and the Baron agrees to take his place, assuming the name Capitain Fracasse.  During one of their performances, Isabelle attracts the attention of the Duke of Vallombreuse.  The ensuing rivalry between the Baron and the Duke is settled in a duel, which the Baron wins.  Intent on revenge, the Duke sends his henchmen to kill the Baron in an ambush.  The attack fails, but Isabelle is captured and taken to the Duke’s chateau.  There, the Duke and the Baron confront each other in a duel to the death.  To save the Baron, Isabelle agrees to marry the Duke, not knowing that she is in fact the Duke’s long-lost sister…

Whatever artistic genius Abel Gance was able to call upon in the early years of his film making career had all but dissipated by the time he came to make this run-of-the-mill pseudo-historical.  Made at the time of the Nazi Occupation of France (albeit in studios in the Free Zone which were not directly under Nazi control), Gance’s creativity was restricted both financially and politically.

The film was intended to be escapist fun for the masses, not an avant-garde masterpiece, and in this respect the film hit its mark.  Although condemned by the critics, the film was popular with the French people, offering a welcome release from the privations of their wartime experiences.  However, Gance’s reputation and confidence took a pounding and it would be more than a decade before he could complete his next film.

Whilst Gance’s direction is, as ever, technically competent, it is largely uninspired, as though the author had little interest in the subject of his film.  Indeed, from the frequent references to another historical tale (Cyrano de Bergerac), Gance gives the impression that he would rather be making a different film.   Despite this, and despite the overly theatrical performances (justified by the fact that the story is about theatrical people), the film has an indefinable charm.  The crowded baroque sets and Nicholas Hayer’s near-expressionist photography give the film the feel of a dark poetic fantasy, similar to Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la bête (1946).  This is most apparent in the film’s last fifteen or so minutes in which Gance finally manages to impose his artistic style with a beautifully crafted denouement, saving what might otherwise have been dismissed as a lacklustre piece of cinematic theatre.  Even in the dismal protracted sunset of his career, Abel Gance was still able to surprise his detractors with a few fleeting moments of naked artistic brilliance.

© James Travers 2004

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