Film Review
For the decade following the
Lumière
brothers' invention of the cinématograph in 1895, cinema remained
little more than a fairground amusement. 'Moving pictures' were still
a tawdry commercial novelty rather than a new art form. They rarely
exceeded the length of a single reel (up to fifteen minutes) and were mostly
infantile fantasies or burlesque entertainments consisting of no more than
a few scenes, using camera trickery and sensational subjects to attract the
paying punter. All this changed in 1908, the year in which cinema passed
suddenly from infancy to adolescence with the advent of two films that would
transform the nature of filmmaking overnight - Albert Capellani's rural melodrama
L'Arlésienne and André Calmettes's historical intrigue
L'Assassinat du Duc de
Guise. Both films were conceived with the noble intention of
elevating the status of cinema, to make it as respectable as the theatre,
but the public reaction was so immense and so immediate that there was no
doubt that a seismic event had occurred. Cinema would never be the
same again as it embraced the extended narrative and morphed into the distinctive
art form that we recognise today - one that would impact on human consciousness
more spectacularly than any other single invention since the arrival of the
printing press in the 15th century.
The prime instigator of this revolution was Paul Laffitte, a prominent publisher
who made good use of the fortune he inherited from the banker Jacques Laffitte
through his generous sponsorship of the theatre and early cinema. The
highly cultivated Lafitte saw the enlightening potential of cinema more clearly
than perhaps anyone, and this led him to create Le Film d'Art, the first
company that was specifically set up to make high quality films for a more
discerning audience.
L'Assassinat du Duc de Guise was the company's
first prestige production and its initial screening in mid-November 1908
was indeed a great event in the history of cinema. However, much of
the thunder of this cultural coup de main was stolen by the almost simultaneous
screening of a work of comparable significance from a rival company, SCAGL.
Seeing Le Film d'Art as a threat to his ambition of retaining global dominance
of the nascent film industry, Charles Pathé set up his own subsidiary
company in 1908 - Société cinématographique des auteurs
et gens de lettres (SCAGL) - with pretty much the same objectives, primarily
to produce quality adaptations of classic works of literature. There
was only one man Pathé could trust to make a success of this venture,
a man who not only showed an unrivalled potential as a filmmaker, but one
who was also a dependable administrator - Albert Capellani. Since joining
Pathé-Frères in 1905, Capellani had impressed his employers
with his innovative flair and boundless enthusiasm, so who better than him
for the role of SCAGL's artistic director?
L'Arlésienne
was Capellani's first film for the fledgling company, an 18 minute short
that would make history as the first moving picture to have a continuous
extended narrative running beyond a single reel - the immediate forerunner
of the fully fledged feature film.
The film is based on the 1872 play of the same title by the celebrated French
writer Alphonse Daudet, which was itself taken from a short story by Daudet
(one contained in his 1869 anthology
Les Lettres de mon moulin).
The story was so widely read that its title entered common parlance in France
not long after its publication - the term
l'Arlésienne now
means someone who is talked about a great deal but never actually seen.
Daudet's three-act play had not been a success but the incidental music which
Georges Bizet composed for it later achieved great renown in the form of
two orchestral suites. This was the music that was chosen to accompany
Capellani's film on its first screening on 1st October 1908 at the Omnia-Pathé
Theatre in Paris. The critical and public reaction to the film was
overwhelmingly positive, and this encouraged the director to embark on a
series of increasingly ambitious adaptations of classic works, culminating
in his epic masterpieces
Les Misérables
and
Germinal in 1913 - the
two films that established the feature as the dominant format in cinema from
then on.
For the best part of a century, Capellani's part in cinema history has been
massively downplayed, partly because his filmmaking career came to an abrupt
end way before the arrival of sound cinema in the late 1920s, but also
because much of his work was lost and forgotten,
L'Arlésienne being one of the most undeserving victims of this
cultural amnesia. The miraculous recovery of a print of
L'Arlésienne
in the early 2000s and subsequent restoration by Lobster Films has given
back to us an absolutely crucial link in the development of early cinema.
At long last, Albert Capellani's immense contribution to cinema is beginning
to be recognised - ninety years after he finished laying the rock solid foundation
on which today's entire filmmaking industry rests.
There are many aspects of
L'Arlésienne that mark it out as
a significant development from just about everything that had gone before.
Even for Capellani, a master innovator, it was a considerable advancement.
Prior to this, the director's forte had been whimsical fairytales and fantasies,
which gave him scope for experimenting not only with cinematographic technique
but also effective storytelling.
Aladin ou la Lampe merveilleuse
(1906),
Cendrillon (1907) and
Peau d'Âne (1908) - to
name just three - are lovingly crafted interpretations of classic tales that
build on the pioneering work of Capellani's illustrious predecessor Georges
Méliès and still impress with their visual ingenuity and exuberant
zaniness. Capellani also had a penchant for more realist subjects,
melodramas depicting the conflicts and tragedies of everyday life.
His 1906 films
Drame passionel,
L'Âge du coeur,
La
Fille du sonneur and
La Femme du lutteur show a noticeable evolution
from the blunt histrionics of Grand Guignol to a more intimate and naturalistic
approach that Capellani would strive to perfect for the remainder of his
career.
L'Arlésienne is an important milestone in this
progression towards what we now think of as modern cinema - as significant
an achievement as the publication of the first novel.
Filmed almost entirely on location in the historic French city of Arles and
its picturesque environs,
L'Arlésienne has none of the cramped
staginess and theatrical artifice of most dramatic shorts made around this
time. It is hard to believe it was made as early as 1908. How
oddly it resembles the 1930s films of Marcel Pagnol (
Angèle,
Jofroi),with its idyllic Provençal
setting and convincing depiction of ordinary folk from the region.
The remains of a spectacular Roman landmark - the Arles amphitheatre - provides
a suitably dramatic and ominous opening for cinema's first authentic depiction
of an amour fou, the fleeting glimpse of a bullfight anticipating the
Carmen-like
tale of love, rejection and death that slowly unfolds before our eyes.
The distinctive Provençal sunlight and bucolic ambiance lend an aching
lyricism to the scenes of intimacy in the winding cobbled streets of the
old city and the lush olive groves in the countryside beyond.
L'Arlésienne
has a near-documentary reality to it and it is this quality, the sense that
we are watching real life, not a staged fiction, which makes it so intensely
involving. The visuals are captivating, with more than a foretaste
of the seductive impressionistic poetry of Jean Renoir's early films, but
it is Capellani's delicate handling of a genuine human crisis that makes
it such an utterly remarkable film for its time - outshining even André
Antoine's 1922 feature-length remake, an adept but far less groundbreaking
retelling of Daudet's immortal story.
It was with
L'Arlésienne that Albert Capellani progressed from
being merely a monstrously talented experimentalist to the world's first
great cineaste. Once his concept of realist drama had taken root (in
the period 1908-1913) cinema would develop at a spectacular rate into the
form that we know today. Crucial in this phase of cinematic evolution
was the host of innovations that Capellani perfected in his attempts to move
away from the clunky theatricality of early cinema towards a more organic,
naturally flowing form of visual expression - to take the 2D-image and make
it appear to us as a genuinely four-dimensional entity, rather than merely
a succession of loosely connected snapshots.
L'Arlésienne
abounds with the innovative flourishes that would become Capellani's hallmark
for the duration of his time at SCAGL and allow him to reach his artistic
apotheosis with his stunning magnum opus
Germinal (1913).
The film's most spectacular shot is found near the start, with the camera
slowly panning across the famous Arles amphitheatre in a way that captures
both the enormity and primal strangeness of the location and the excitement
of a bullfight in progress. From a high vantage point, the camera starts
with a distant glimpse of the toreadors showing their bravado at the heart
of the arena and then slowly glides rightwards into the crowds of minuscule
spectators gathered in the tiers of the gigantic Roman edifice like ants
on the skeletal remains of a dinosaur. Impressive as this is, it is a mere taster
for the even more daring shot that comes a short while afterwards, after
the hero Frédéric has succumbed to the fateful allure of the
girl from Arles.
As Frédéric and the object of his desire exchange their first
sweet nothings up in the highest walkway of the amphitheatre, the camera
starts with a leisurely pan across the city skyline until the lovers suddenly
appear in the frame's foreground. As if aware they have been found
doing something illicit, the lovers quickly slip away to the right, out of
camera shot. The camera maintains its unbroken movement rightwards,
continuing its sweep across the horizon until, a few seconds later, the lovers
again come into shot, this time in a closer embrace. The complete 180-degree
shot lasts a full 40 seconds and conveys more about the nature of Frédéric's
headlong fall into amorous infatuation than any quantity of close-ups and
dialogue. The fact that the intoxicated hero is seen at such an elevated
position - literally walking in the clouds - has an ironic undertone, grimly
anticipating his ultimate fate at the end of the film. Frédéric's
tragic collision with reality once the illusion of love has passed is anticipated
long before we actually see it on the screen. Here we have the first
glimmerings of poetic realism, the doom-laden aesthetic that would define
French cinema in the 1930s and prefigure the arrival of classic film noir.
It is with its depiction of Frédéric's dramatic descent into
insanity that
L'Arlésienne is at its most inventive and poignant.
As he pores over the letter that leaves no doubt as to his beloved's cruel
infidelity, Frédéric's fevered imagination conjures up the
apparition of the Arlesian minx so that he can banish her and regain his
peace of mind. Instead of just appearing from nowhere in an instant
(through the standard stop-motion effect pioneered by Méliès)
the girl gradually materialises out of thin air and becomes as solid as Frédéric
until he sends her away, at which point she melts away into nothing once
more. This effect was presumably achieved by shooting the scene twice
- one without the girl, one with - and then combining the two through a meticulous
process of over-layering and editing. Capellani employed the same effect
more prosaically on earlier shorts, notably
Pauvre mère (1906),
which shows another descent into madness, a young mother driven to distraction
by the accidental death of her infant daughter. The effect recurs at
the end of the film in an even more spectacular manner, providing Frédéric
with the hallucination that lures him to his doom.
And it is with Frédéric's death - a hangover from the Grand
Guignol sensationalism of the director's earlier 'dramatic scenes' (
Drame
passionel,
Mortelle idyll,
L'Âge du coeur) - that
the
L'Arlésienne assails its audience with a truly shocking
climax. The impact of the film's horrific ending is accentuated by
a rare example (at the time) of cross-cutting. As attention switches
back and forth between the now totally unhinged Frédéric and
his pitifully distraught mother the pace of the narrative is dramatically
accelerated, the tension building up and up to a terrifying crescendo, in
perfect alignment with the characters' frantic climb up to the top of a tall
building. This was some years before D.W. Griffith introduced cross-cutting
into his films and claimed the technique as his own. In this, and in
so many other ways, Albert Capellani was way ahead of the game. The
first screening of
L'Arlésienne in the autumn of 1908 was a
crucial moment in film history - the day on which the Seventh Art genuinely
came of age. It was as if humanity had suddenly discovered the
portal to a whole new dimension.
© James Travers 2023
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