La Tare (1911)
Directed by Louis Feuillade

Film Review

La Tare (a.k.a. The Defect) looks as if its director, Louis Feuillade, conceived it primarily to showcase the talents of his favourite actress, Renée Carl.  For eight years, Carl was Feuillade's most loyal collaborator and featured in some of his most important works, including, notably, the Fantômas series, in which she played the strangely alluring Lady Beltham.  Carl was also famous for playing the mother of infant star René Dary in Feuillade's popular Bébé films and gave what is probably her finest performance in the director's Mater dolorosa (1910).  In La Tare, the actress excels in one of her most substantial screen roles, sympathetically playing a 'fallen woman' (dancehall habitué being an obvious euphemism for prostitute) who redeems herself only to be rejected by a heartless society that cannot forgive her past.

A dark commentary on bourgeois morality, La Tare is among Louis Feuillade's bleakest film, one that mocks society's tendency to judge individuals without understanding their personal circumstances, or even allow for the possibility of redemption.  It is a very different kind of film to those for which Feuillade is now remembered, his ebullient comedies and stylised thrillers.  It is an early example of social realist drama, offering a realistic portrait of an ordinary woman coping with a precarious existence in an unforgiving and hypocritical society.  La Tare ends with the heroine poised to throw herself through the window of her pokey garret flat.  It is probably the most devastating and poignant scene in Feuillade's entire oeuvre, and it serves as a powerful indictment of a society that is governed by deeply flawed notions of morality.

Today, Feuillade is too easily criticised for relying almost exclusively on long takes with immobile camera set-ups, something that makes his films often appear static and theatrical.  La Tare is typical of Feuillade in this respect, with most of the film consisting of long takes in which the camera is rigidly fixed, usually just to the left of centre.  Watching the film is like watching a stage play, but, when there is a such a compelling central performance from Renée Carl, this is no bad thing.  Only in one scene does the camera move, with an unusual (for Feuillade) tracking shot which follows the heroine as she moves from one room to another (in an employment agency) and back again.  One likely reason why Feuillade shoots this sequence in an unbroken taken is to retain the continuity of his lead actress's performance, allowing the spectator to take in the full extent of the heroine's despair as her last chance of salvation is brutally snatched from her.  It's an intensely moving scene and you only have to watch it once to recognise Renée Carl as one of the subtlest screen actresses of her generation.  No wonder Feuillade adored her.

Film Synopsis

Anna Moulin works as a waitress in a bustling brasserie in Paris' Latin Quarter, a place frequented by students and loose women.  One of her customers is a hard-up young medical student named Alphonse Marnier, to whom she makes a habit of giving money out of her meagre earnings.  One day, Dr Paul Perrin drops in on the brasserie and, moved by Anne's plight, offers her work helping to manage a charitable hospital he runs.  Eager to turn over a new leaf, Anne gratefully accepts the offer and is soon an indispensable addition to Dr Perrin's hospital.  When the good doctor falls ill, Anne takes over the running of the institution and within no time she has gained the respect and admiration of all who know her.   Then comes the fateful day when the recently graduated Marnier shows up looking for work.  Taken by surprise, Anne sends him away, and Marnier takes his revenge by revealing her sordid past in a local newspaper...