Film Review
The first impressionist masterpiece
It was with
L'Homme du large - his first truly remarkable film - that
Marcel L'Herbier established himself as one of the principal drivers in what
soon became known as the Parisian Avant-Garde. This was a group of
radical young writers and filmmakers that set themselves the challenge of
moving French cinema out of the tightly constraining cul-de-sac it had become
wedged into by the late 1910s - that of the prosaic literary adaptation.
Strongly influenced by French symbolist literature of the mid-to-late 19th
century, the pioneering L'Herbier was especially motivated to depart from
the rigidly established convention of plot-driven film narratives, portrayed
with everyday realism, and move across the perceptual boundary into the inner
realms of dreams, feelings, beliefs and imagination.
L'Homme du
large was only the fourth film that L'Herbier directed but it is already
the work of a committed film poet and seasoned cineaste. In his immense
oeuvre it stands apart as a particularly beguiling example of film impressionism,
one that powerfully evokes the ancient mystique of the ocean whilst delivering
a cogent fable on parental responsibility that still resonates to this day.
Crucial to Marcel L'Herbier's development as a trailblazing film auteur was
his decision to accept a two-year contract from Léon Gaumont to contribute
to a series of prestigious films under the title Gaumont Série Pax.
The offer arose after the director had completed
Le Bercail (1919)
for Gaumont and was too good to turn down, as it allowed him not only the
promise of almost complete artistic freedom, but also access to the immense
resources of one of the world's leading film production companies.
L'Herbier's second film for Série Pax was
Le Carnaval des vérités
(1920), which benefited from extensive location filming on the Basque coast
near Biarritz. The experience of working outside the studio was so
liberating for the 32-year-old filmmaker that he would repeat it on his subsequent
films for Gaumont, beginning with the film where the location was of paramount
importance -
L'Homme du large. L'Herbier appended the subtitle
'Marine' to the film and was right to do so. This is more a living
seascape than a conventional film drama, a pure
hymne à la mer
that captivates both the eye and the heart with its painterly composition
and the way in which its austerely beautiful setting impinges on the lives
of the protagonists.
Brimming with stylish innovation and experimental flair,
L'Homme du large
boldly proclaims Marcel L'Herbier's radical new vision for cinema and reads
like a manifesto for the Avant-Garde movement. For its time, this was
a piece of film art of breathtaking originality, replete with the impressionistic
tropes that would define the silent cinema of L'Herbier and his contemporaries
(
Abel Gance,
Jean Epstein, Louis Delluc, Germaine
Dulac and René Clair). It is also the director's most intensely
lyrical work, the simplicity of its story and the sublime starkness of the
visuals achieving a perfect union of image and feeling that had rarely, if
ever, been achieved prior to this. Henri Langlois (the illustrious
film archivist who co-founded the cinémathèque française)
expressed this idea better than anyone by describing the film as the first
example of
écriture cinématographique - cinematrographic
writing. L'Herbier had created a new kind of cinema, one that flows
as elegantly and purposefully as the great literary novel, uniting the world
of deceptive outward appearances with the truer inner worlds of psychological
awareness and reflection.
The plot is taken from a short story by Honoré de Balzac entitled
Un drame au bord de la mer, first published in 1834 as part of his
monumental oeuvre
La Comédie humaine. Reworked by L'Herbier
(with a significantly altered ending that is far more upbeat than the original)
this simple tale of a father's grief after his failure to raise his son properly
provides the basis for a deeply moving study in human frailty, the power
of which is magnified vastly by the raw coastal location in which the drama
is situated. The exteriors for
L'Homme du large were filmed
on the rock-strewn shoreline around Morbihan and Finistère in the
southwesterly tip of Brittany, and it is the bleak savagery of the timeless
setting that gives the film its visual grandeur and haunting poetic resonance.
The power of metaphor
From the outset, L'Herbier was keen to make the sea the dominant protagonist
in the drama, an idea he had already toyed with on an earlier film that he
had scripted - René Hervil and Louis Mercanton's
Le Torrent
(1917). At the time, the notion that the location should play such
a significant part in the film was fairly new - it was perhaps best represented
in Swedish cinema, notably in the work of Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjöström.
Both visually and thematically, L'Homme du large has some striking similarities
with Sjöström's 1917 masterpiece
A Man There Was (
Terje Vigen),
based on an epic poem by Henrik Ibsen, although L'Herbier's dazzling impressionistic
flourishes have the effect of setting his work well apart from the brutal
naturalism of his Swedish contemporary. The film is unusual for its
time in employing a flashback narrative structure - an exceedingly rare departure
from the linear narrative form. Even more surprising is the presence
of a short flashback within the main flashback, for the sequence in which
Nolff recalls holding his new-born baby boy above the waves immediately after
having sent his full-grown son out to face the mercy of the sea in a boat.
L'Homme du large abounds with the liberal use of metaphor that instantly
marked L'Herbier out as the leading French film poet of his era. The
sea isn't just the supreme natural element in the film, one that shapes and
decides the destinies of all of the protagonists, it is also a potent symbol
of man's inherent purity - an infinite pool of unsullied goodness.
The land, by contrast, is where human corruption lies, its monstrous depravities
focused in a coastal town that has the character of a modern Sodom and Gomorrah.
The scenes of wild revelry in a bawdy tavern, where just about every conceivable
vice is indulged in by lowlife of every hue, appear sickeningly satanic when
set against the puritanical simplicity of the life of the roughly hewn fisherman
eking out his threadbare existence on the rocky seashore, scourged incessantly
by wind, rain and wave.
The sea versus land dichotomy is reflected in the opposing characters of
the siblings Djenna and Michel, the separation being made at once explicit
in a split-screen sequence showing how differently they are reared by their
parents. Raised by her strict mother, Djenna becomes a dutiful and
virtuous child, obedient and hard-working. Meanwhile, indulged by his
doting father, Michel grows up to become a dissolute idler who - naturally
- loathes the sea, preferring instead the sordid delights offered by the
town. With his rough features and bear-like physique, the father Nolff
fits so readily into the fiercely rocky Breton landscape that it seems inevitable
that ultimately he should become part of it - a human menhir facing the sea
to atone for the sin of judging another for his own failure. The words
'Judge not, that ye be not judged' are all he hears as the breakers crash
around him. It is here that the sea acquires another persona - that
of a cosmic arbiter, left to decide the fate of the recalcitrant offspring
and the father who failed abysmally in his parental duties.
Sometimes the imagery is subtle, sometimes it is more blatant, but mostly
it has distinctly Christian overtones - evidenced by the recurring image
of the crucifix, an instantly recognisable symbol of judgement and forgiveness.
After Nolff's desperate act of surrendering his son to the sea there is the
striking shot of an enormous stone cross superimposed on the turbulent waves.
The image of the cross not only marks the watery grave of a condemned villain,
it also connects the sea with the fisherman's faith, the cross symbolising
a father's willingness to sacrifice his only son in an attempt to redress
the balance of good and evil in the universe. There is one notable
example of metaphorical montage that pre-dates Eisenstein by several years:
a fleeting shot of a bird flying out through the opened door of a cage.
This is immediately followed by a shot of Nolff tearing the nun's veil from
his daughter's face on learning of his son's miraculous survival and redemption.
The unexpected news brings both physical freedom for Djenna (presumably she
can now give up her convent life to care for her brother and father) and
spiritual release for Nolff, who is no longer forced to maintain his rock-like
pose on the seashore like a morbidly self-flagellating Simeon Stylites.
A new style of cinema
The steady ebb and flow of the waves on the seashore is palpably reflected
in
L'Homme du large's smooth, hypnotic undulations - and this is perhaps
the most striking aspect of the film. It may not have the benefit of
the abundance of camera motion that L'Herbier would employ to startling effect
on his later silent films - culminating in his magnum opus
L'Argent
(1928) - but the director achieves a comparable fluidity with techniques
that were more readily available to him in 1920. Iris effects (often
involving two overlapping shots) and variously shaped masks (which screen
off part of a shot temporarily) allow for some incredibly graceful transitions
between shots without the need for fades and dissolves (which L'Herbier would
employ increasingly on later films as he refined his technique).
Colour tinting is used with great skill and artistry to provide tone and
contrast between scenes and, occasionally, within a scene, whilst strengthening
the film's coherence. In silent cinema, nothing disturbs the flow of
the narrative more than the presence of inter-titles, which impose jarring
breaks between shots and disrupt the spectator's attention. L'Herbier
smartly sidesteps this throughout
L'Homme du large, either by superimposing
text directly over a shot or by placing it to the side of a shot in a masked-off
area. This is particularly effective for those shots where the text
is dialogue spoken by one of the characters on the screen, like a speech
bubble in a comic book.
The film's remarkable fluidity is further enhanced by the skilful application
of cross-cutting in a few scenes, in a way that helps to build the tension
at key dramatic moments. The best example of this is the sequence where
Djenna is attending to her dying mother at home whilst her unworthy brother
is caught up in a drunken brawl at his preferred hostelry. The scenes
of wild debauchery in the crowded cabaret bar are noteworthy for their use
of deep-space mise-en-scène, something L'Herbier would employ to ever
greater effect on his subsequent silent films, most notably
L'Inhumaine (1924) and
L'Argent (1928). (The cabaret
scenes betray one of L'Herbier's key literary influences at the time, the
Irish author Oscar Wilde. In
L'Homme du large, the corruption
of Michel by the untamed vice of the town's lower depths echoes the fate
of the hero in
The Picture of Dorian Gray, whilst his next film -
Villa Destin - borrows unashamedly from
Lord Savile's Crime.)
Throughout
L'Homme du large, the photography has an exceptionally
lush and expressive quality, the exteriors charged to excess with the raw
beauty of the Breton landscape, the interiors (designed by future director
Claude Autant-Lara) carefully lit in a way that subtly underscores the characters'
psychological stress. In this, L'Herbier was well-served by his cinematographer
Georges Lucas, who worked on all six of the films he made for Gaumont films
as well as several other notable films of this period, including Jean Epstein's
La Chute de la maison
Usher (1929). It is through the stunning sea-views that L'Herbier
achieved his central goal, making the sea a fully fledged character by showing
us its constantly fluctuating moods - shifting from serene calm to brooding
menace tinged with scornful mockery as Nolff's tragic destiny unfolds, culminating
in a condemnatory surge of raging fury.
A wise and capricious soul in constant flux, this is how L'Herbier compels
us to see the sea - a co-mingling of the Gods of the Old and New Testament
dispensing wrathful retribution to the sinner and absolution to he who bows
to divine judgement. The sea's immense power can be felt through the
impact it has on the lives of those who are dependent on it - the superstitious
Breton folk who, with their traditional costumes and harshly simple way of
life, look as if they belong to a far distant epoch. The film's portrait
of Breton life has an authentic documentary feel to it, heightening the realism
of the drama and no doubt providing a valuable ethnological record for future
cultural historians. In this affectionate homage to the landscape and
culture of Brittany the film prefigures Jean Epstein's Breton studies of
the 1930s -
Finis terrae (1930),
Mor vran (1931),
L'Or des mers (1932).
One of the most important cinematographic aspects of
L'Homme du large
is the way it manages to deeply connect with its audience through the generous
use of the big close-up - a particular speciality of Marcel L'Herbier.
It is through this mechanism that we come to appreciate the wildly contrasting
natures of the angelically dutiful daughter Djenna and her impishly wayward
brother Michel. Whilst Djenna is often framed as a Madonna-like symbol
of virtue, Michel's rotten soul is repeatedly revealed to us, through a half-suppressed
smirk, a murderous glare or a genuinely sickening look of lascivious intent.
The extent of Nolff's inner torment is exposed in some of the film's most
powerfully moving close-ups, which show a tender heart as harshly weather-beaten
as the surrounding landscape. Meanwhile, Michel's mother is never anything
other than the Mater Dolorosa, the constantly suffering mother driven to
a painful martyrdom by a fore-knowledge of her son's cruel fate. Only
by pushing the camera as close to his actors' faces as he could was L'Herbier
able to achieve what he most wanted - to take us into his characters' inner
worlds and place us in communion with their most intimate thoughts and feelings.
But what this also required was a radically new style of acting.
A new school of acting
One of the abiding concerns of Marcel L'Herbier on his early films was to
avoid the overtly theatrical-style of performance that had become the established
norm in cinema of this era - the inevitable result of experienced, traditionally
trained stage actors being hired to lend legitimacy to the new medium of
mass entertainment. L'Herbier was one of the first film directors to
appreciate the enormity of the difference between stage and screen acting.
His preference was to make use of inexperienced and non-professional actors
whom he could nurture and mould to develop the kind of understated, naturalistic
performance that best suited his style of cinema. His best find
was Jacques-Catelain, a student at the Paris Conservatoire with whom he struck
up an immediate rapport in 1914 and who became a lifelong friend. It
was L'Herbier who contrived to get Jacques-Catelain his first screen role
(in
Le Torrent) and he subsequently employed him (most often as the
male lead) on the vast majority of his silent films.
L'Homme du large was Jacques-Catelain's fourth collaboration with
L'Herbier and as the badly brought up son Michel he had the kind of mercurial
character role that was particularly well suited to his refreshingly subdued
style of acting. Disgraceful as his behaviour is, Michel never quite
loses our sympathies. The film makes it clear that the aggressive outbursts
and licentious misconduct of this
enfant sauvage are down to bad parenting,
not necessarily bad character, and it is with genuine horror that we watch
Nolff administering his monstrously ill-judged chastisement at the film's
dramatic climax. The casting of an actor as popular and sympathetic
as Jacques-Catelain in the part may have been a factor in L'Herbier's decision
to depart from the tragic ending of Balzac's original story - particularly
as Michel is so evidently the victim of the piece.
Claire Prélia and Marcelle de Pradot were two other important members
of the little repertory company that L'Herbier formed for his early films
at Gaumont. Mother and daughter in real life, neither had any acting
experience before L'Herbier discovered them and cast them in his second feature
Le Bercail (1919). They appeared in many of his subsequent silent
films, although neither survived the transition to sound cinema. Marcelle
de Pradot became L'Herbier's wife in 1923, abandoning her screen career after
appearing in his first sound film,
L'Enfant de l'amour (1930).
As the model daughter Djenna, de Pradot brings a saintly nobility to her
portrayal of innocence that makes Michel's bad behaviour appear all the more
disgraceful. As defining character traits, Djenna's virtue and her
brother's venality are polar opposites but they stem from the same cause
- a parent's godlike ability to guide his or her child's moral development
through its formative years. This is the crux of the film, and through
the stark opposition of Jacques-Catelain and Marcelle de Pradot L'Herbier
gave his audience not only an intensely involving piece of cinema but also
an exemplary guide to good parenting.
Roger Karl was already a prominent, greatly respected stage actor when Marcel
L'Herbier encountered him for the first time in 1918 and gave him a leading
role in one of his earliest cinematic endeavours,
Phantasmes.
Although this film was abandoned, L'Herbier felt he owed a debt to Karl which
he amply repaid by giving him one of his most memorable screen roles, as
the stoical fisherman Nolff in
L'Homme du large (followed by three
other film collaborations). Karl's impressive bulk and craggy features
made him ideal casting for the part of Nolff, a solid physical presence that
appears unmistakably at home amidst the towering ogre-shaped rocks which
adorn the Brittany coastline. In common with all of the great silent
actors of this period, Roger Karl manages to express his inner world with
immense power and eloquence - not through words, but through the subtlest
of expressions and gestures. The final shot of him calling out to the
sea is utterly heartbreaking in its crude, unvarnished pathos.
The most famous name in the cast list is Charles Boyer, although at the time
he would have been a complete unknown. Another of L'Herbier's golden
finds at the Paris Conservatoire, Boyer had just turned twenty when he landed
his first ever screen role as Guenn-la-Taupe (the debauched rogue who leads
Michel astray) in
L'Homme du large. It is unusual to see Boyer
play such an out-and-out villain here (and do so with such obvious relish)
as he would soon become known as one of the smoothest and most charming of
the world's greatest matinee idols. After finding international renown
as the lead in Anatole Litvak's
Mayerling
(1936), Boyer rapidly became one of the leading lights of Hollywood, starring
opposite such acting legends as Marlene Dietrich (
The Garden of Allah),
Greta Garbo (
Conquest), Bette Davis (
All This, and Heaven Too)
and Ingrid Bergman (
Gaslight).
Boyer's contribution to French cinema may not have been quite so glamorous
but it gave him a wider variety of roles, from swashbuckling hero in Alberto
Cavalcanti's
Le Capitaine Fracasse
(1929) to carousel barker in Fritz Lang's
Liliom
(1934). Boyer featured in two subsequent sound films by L'Herbier -
L'Épervier (1933) and
Le
Bonheur (1934).
Reception and resurrection
Originally screened in the late autumn of 1920,
L'Homme du large achieved
an immense success with both the press and the cinema-going public, despite
running into censorship difficulties. Even though the film had been
issued with a visa by the Bureau de la Censure, it had to be withdrawn a
week after its original release once the Minister of the Interior had ruled
against further screening on the grounds that it contained offensive content.
L'Herbier was obliged to remove one inter-title and make three cuts to remove
supposedly indecent images for scenes set in the seedy tavern frequented
by Michel. These consist of: a shot of two lesbians kissing each other
on the lips; a shot of one woman caressing the knee of another woman; and
a shot of Charles Boyer kissing a young woman stretched out on a table in
a suggestive pose. L'Herbier reinstated the cuts several months afterwards,
once the puritanical brouhaha had died down.
In common with all of Marcel L'Herbier's other silent work,
L'Homme du
large soon faded into obscurity with the arrival of sound cinema, but
it enjoyed a hugely enthusiastic reappraisal upon its rediscovery in the
1950s, helped in part by Henri Langlois's Herculean efforts to unearth and
promote France's rich cinematic legacy. By the time the film was restored
in 1998, it had deteriorated substantially. The colour-tinting and
superimposed text (both essential to the film's cohesion and artistry)
had to be put back in from scratch using the best available inter-positives
and L'Herbier's detailed hand-written notes describing where the tinting
and overlaid text are applied. Now restored to its former magnificence,
L'Homme du large both dazzles and enchants as one of the most sublime
creations of the French Avant-Garde. A work of exquisite charm that
bristles with compassion and stylistic ingenuity, it provides us with something
truly special - cinema's most haunting evocation of the twinned mysteries
of the sea and the human soul, the depths of which are way beyond the bounds
of our meagre understanding.
© James Travers 2023
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Next Marcel L'Herbier film:
Eldorado (1921)