Film Review
Jean Grémillon had turned out around twenty documentary shorts
before, in his late twenties, he made
Maldone,
his first full-length fictional film. Given that Grémillon
has made several notable contributions to French cinema -
Gueule
d'amour (1937),
Remorques (1941),
Lumière
d'été (1943) and
Le Ciel est à vous
(1944) - it is hard to explain why he continues to be overlooked
and why much of his oeuvre remains relatively unknown.
Even those familiar with
Grémillon's work will be surprised by the innovative flair that
he exhibits in
Maldone, a
film in which its director made a conscious attempt to transcend the
anaemic realism of the documentary by embracing a more subjective approach to
filmmaking. His intention is not just to show what things look
like on the surface, but also to reveal what lies beneath, to
capture the feelings of his protagonists as vividly as possible.
The film's striking visual impact probably owes as much to
cinematographer Georges Périnal as it does to Grémillon,
and it is hard to tell who deserves most credit for what we see on the
screen. This was Périnal's first major assignment;
he would go on to have a very distinguished career, leaving his mark on
such classics as René Clair's
Le Million (1931), William
Cameron Menzies'
Things to Come (1933), Zoltan
Korda's
The Four Feathers (1939) and
Powell and Pressburger's
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
(1943).
What sets
Maldone apart from
most films of its era is its attempt to construct an entire
narrative from a single point of view. With its real locations,
vertiginous point-of-view shots and unusual camera angles, the film has an
almost brutal sense of reality, a style which presages
both the neo-realist and French poetic realist developments of the
following decade and yet, at the same time, manages to be startlingly
different. The juxtaposition of its documentary-style location
photography with an abundance of bold stylistic touches suggests a
timeless surface calm that is periodically punctured by
moments of immense emotional intensity, reminiscent of what most of us
experience in real life. The film begins with a portrait of
idyllic bucolic calm, the camera gently gliding through a rural
landscape of exquisite peace and beauty. This is the carefree
paradise to which the main character Maldone belongs and against which
his subsequent miserable existence as a wealthy landowner will later be
compared. Maldone's expulsion from his own personal Garden of
Eden begins, in a suitably Biblical fashion, when he succumbs to the
temptress, in the guise of a gypsy girl. It is at this point that
the rural idyll breaks down and Maldone experiences new and violent
passions, which are revealed to us by some dizzying camera movements
and a kaleidoscopic superposition of images. Maldone's
conflicting needs and emotions are what propel the narrative in a way
that mirrors the fatalist trajectory of a poetic realist drama, and yet
the film ends not with unambiguous tragedy but with a question
mark. As the violent forces of nature coalesce with Maldone's
inner turmoil, it is left to the spectator to decide whether the film's
hero will find his way back to his lost paradise or whether he is
merely chasing an illusion that will end in disaster.
The film's main protagonist, Olivier Maldone, is sympathetically played
by Charles Dullin, a distinguished character actor and theatre director
who enjoyed much greater success on the stage that in film.
Dullin's few notable film credits include a marvellously venal
Thenardier in Raymond Bernard's
Les Misérables (1933)
and an equally repugnant impresario in H.G. Clouzot's
Quai
des Orfèvres (1947). It was Dullin who financed
Maldone (the sole film that he
produced), although it proved to be a poor investment as the film was
not a great success (perhaps because Dullin was not an established
screen actor). Despite his somewhat intimidating
appearance, Dullin gives an arresting performance that shows a simple
soul being put through the wringer by the severest case of mid-life crisis -
not a conventional hero but nevertheless someone
whom we can readily engage with. The supporting cast includes
such luminaries as Annabella, in one of her earliest film appearances,
and Roger Karl, a notable actor of the silent era. Cast as the
stunningly beautiful gypsy girl is the Rumanian-born actress Genica
Athanasiou, a leading player in Charles Dullin's theatre company who
had distinguished herself a few years previously in Dullin's original
Paris stage production of Jean Cocteau's play
Antigone.
Having languished in virtual obscurity for around seventy years,
Maldone was painstakingly restored
in 2001 by Centrimage for ZZ Productions, one of several treasures of
the silent era to have been rescued in recent years. Now
available in an almost pristine print, the film can be more widely
appreciated, both as a superlative example of experimental silent
cinema and as an auspicious debut feature from one of France's great
film auteurs.
Maldone may lack the coherence and
polish of Jean Grémillon's later films but it shows the director
at his most uninhibited and inspired. It is here that
Grémillon establishes his fierce rejection of what he referred
to as
mechanical naturalism,
by attempting to show the world not merely as it is seen by the human
eye, but how it is felt by the human soul. Grémillon's
approach to cinema was uniquely impressionistic and
Maldone is, arguably, his most
successful attempt to extend the principles of impressionism to the
moving image.
© James Travers 2001
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Next Jean Grémillon film:
Gardiens de phare (1929)
Film Synopsis
For twenty years, Olivier Maldone has lived the life of an itinerant
labourer, content to earn his meagre wage by toiling on the land and
the canals. One day, he sees a young gypsy girl, Zita, and is
mesmerised by her beauty. They meet up again at a country ball
and Maldone becomes jealous when he sees Zita dancing with another
man. After Maldone's younger brother Marcellin has been killed in a
horse-riding accident, his uncle sends a servant out to look for
Maldone and persuade him to come back home. Reluctantly,
Maldone returns to his family seat, and marries Flora, the daughter of
a wealthy landowner. Three years later, Maldone has come to hate
his new life. During a holiday break in the city he has a chance
encounter with Zita. For a brief time he relives his former
passion but soon realises that the romance has no future. Maldone
cannot turn the clock back - or can he?
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.