Film Review
Alexandre Dumas's novels have provided a rich source of material for cinema
right from its earliest days. The mix of historical setting and fast-moving
adventure-intrigue has always been a perennial favourite with cinema audiences,
and the screen adaptations of Dumas's work are so numerous that it would
an unimaginable chore to enumerate them all.
The Three Musketeers
had its first screen version in a (now lost) short French film of 1903, with
numerous increasingly ambitious adaptations of the same novel galloping out
in profusion from studios on both sides of the Atlantic
in the decades that followed. Dumas's next most
famous work
The Count of Monte Cristo
had countless screen versions dating back to 1908, and a filmmaker as well
regarded as Ernst Lubitch cut his directorial teeth with his distinctive
take on
Madame Du Barry.
Of the earliest cinematic exploitations of Dumas's novels, one of the most
ambitious and most successful was Albert Capellani's
Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge,
based on one of the author's less well-known but still greatly admired works.
To the English speaking world, the novel is best known under the title
The
Knight of Maison-Rouge, and it has had two other screen adaptations -
the Italian film
Il Cavaliere di Maison Rouge (1954) directed by Vittorio
Cottafavi and a French television serial aired in 1963 starring Jean Desailly
in the title role. As with his subsequent, even grander historical
fresco
Quatre-vingt-treize
(1914), Capellani's film is set in Paris at the time of the Terror in 1793,
the bloody climax of the French Revolution, and is a suitably tense and sombre
piece - far darker in tone than the director's previous historical epic
Les Misérables (1913).
Whilst it may lack the grandeur, scale and stark humanity of this earlier
film,
Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge still manages to be a compelling
and assured piece of filmmaking, in which Capellani - now a technically proficient
cineaste of the first order after seven years' experience - uses his skill
and artistry to dazzling effect.
The plot, comprising six parts divided up into sixty perfectly composed tableaux,
revolves around a succession of daring attempts to rescue Queen Marie-Antoinette
from the Temple Prison on the eve of her execution. Of course we know
that all of these attempts are doomed to fail, but in spite of this the film
keeps us on tenterhooks throughout, even seducing us into thinking a happy
ending may be possible. (It's worth noting that the film's ending differs
somewhat from the original novel, so things do not turn out quite as badly for
the lead protagonists as we might have feared.) The fast-moving, incident-packed
narrative lends itself naturally to an episodic treatment, and so it's hardly
a surprise that there is a striking similarity between this film and the
adventure serials being churned out by Pathé's nearest rival around
this time, in particular Louis Feuillade's incredibly popular
Fantômas
series.
Albert Capellani's penchant for realism - which is apparent both in the style
of acting and in the historically accurate sets - heightens the film's dramatic
impact and authenticity, allowing the tension to build steadily as events
move towards a truly gripping climax. There are some welcome moments
of comic relief, afforded mainly by the chronic ineptitude shown some of
the prisoner guards, who look as if they'd be more at home in
Carry On Don't Lose Your Head
or an episode of
Blackadder. Even by Capellani's standards, some of
the visuals are stunning - in particular the busy crowd sequences (a speciality
of this director) which give a real sense of the nerve-racking reality of
the time in which the story takes place. It is hard not to be awe-struck
by the unending lines of armed revolutionaries snaking their way down the
narrow streets of the capital, driven by an obsessive will to flush out every
last royalist and their supporters. Set in the same period, D.W. Griffith's
Orphans of the Storm (1921)
conveys far less of a sense of the insane terror that had overtaken Paris
at this appalling stage of the Revolution, where hope and idealism had totally
given way to extreme paranoia and an epidemic of bloodlust.
As was the established convention of the time, the film is composed almost
entirely of static mid-shots, with just a few fleeting close-ups (mostly
of hands) to capture a detail of significance - for example, the concealment
of a secret message to the Queen within the petals of a carnation.
By this time, Capellani was beginning to find it hard to keep up with trends
in movie making (especially with regard to editing and camera motion), and
so he stuck longer than he should have done to the idiosyncratic style of
filmmaking which he had, from 1906 to 1913, developed into a fine art.
With editing kept to a minimum, shots are far longer and blocked in a far
more overtly theatrical manner than would be countenanced by Capellani's
more experimentally minded contemporaries - in particular D.W. Griffith (and
it is probably for this reason that Griffith's reputation still vastly surpasses
Capellani's).
The camera hardly ever moves, but when it does (as in one very noticeable
slow zoom near the end of the film) the effect is either distractingly clunky
or intensely ominous. Likewise, superimposition, another of Capellani's
cherished devices, is used very sparingly (here on just two occasions), with
inlaid shots to show what is in the mind of a protagonist. It wasn't
until Capellani moved to America, not long after the outbreak of
WWI, that he was able to further develop as a filmmaker, under the influence
of the first wave of great American cineastes.
Le Chevalier
de Maison-Rouge is a slick and pacy production for its time but it does
have a slight whiff of stagnancy about it. Falling below the extraordinarily
high standard set by Capellani on his previous historical dramas
Les Misérables
and
Germinal (1913) it is something
of a letdown for those admirers of the director hoping to see a further progression
in his art. Judged on its own merits, however, it is an engaging, eminently
watchable entertainment - a more than satisfying forerunner of subsequent,
feistier Alexandre Dumas adaptations.
© James Travers 2023
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Paris, 1793. After four years of turmoil, the French
Revolution has reached its bloodiest phase with the execution of King Louis
XVI, the old monarchy replaced by a reign of terror. Queen Marie-Antoinette
is awaiting her turn at the guillotine, a prisoner in the Temple Prison,
unaware that plots are being hatched to secure her release by those still
loyal to the former regime. One staunch royalist, the intrepid Knight
of Maison-Rouge, has resolved to rescue the Queen, and in this he enlists
the help of his brother-in-law, an impoverished tanner named Dixmer.
The latter's beautiful younger wife Geneviève is soon drawn into the
conspiracy, and she narrowly escapes being arrested through the intervention
of Maurice Lindey, a handsome lieutenant committed to the revolutionary cause.
From the moment he sees the unhappily married woman Lindey realises he is
in love with her, and she, the most miserable of wives, reciprocates his
feelings for her. Dixmer soon discovers the identity of his wife's
secret lover and sees at once an opportunity to exploit the situation to
his advantage. Who would ever suspect Citizen Lindey of being involved
in a plot to rescue the Queen? Plans are soon under way to knock through
a wall and break into the Temple Prison from the cellar of a house in Dixmer's
possession. The attempt fails and the Queen is immediately transferred
to the more secure Conciergerie, where there is no hope of escape.
What will be the fate of her would-be rescuers when they are brought to trial
for their treasonous acts against the Revolution?
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.