In the dark of the night
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | In the dark of the night |
| Original title | Dans la nuit |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1930 |
| length | 75 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Charles Vanel |
| script | Charles Vanel |
| music |
Louis Sclavis (restored version) |
| camera | Georges Asselin |
| occupation | |
| |
In the Dark of the Night is the German title of the French silent film drama Dans la nuit , which the actor Charles Vanel presented as his first directorial work in 1929. He also played the main role in it. His partner was the Saint Petersburg- born dancer and actress Sandra Milovanoff.
In the dark of night was one of the last silent films produced in France.
action
A worker in a quarry, disfigured by a dynamite explosion, hides his face behind a mask. His wife, whom he had just married, is estranged from him through the injury and betrays him with someone else. One night the worker surprised his wife and her lover, who had also put on a mask for fun. A fight ensues in the course of which one of the two masked men is killed. The woman helps the survivor dispose of the body until she realizes that she was mistaken about the man's identity ...
background
The shooting took place in the summer of 1929 in a house in Boyeux-Saint-Jérôme . Producer was Fernand Weill , the production headed George O'Messerly , the stage set created Armand Bonamy . Georges Asselin took care of the photography . The film premiered on May 31, 1930 in Paris. Dans la nuit also ran in Germany as “Im Dunkel der Nacht”, in Hungary as Az éjszakában , and in Yugoslavia, where it received the Serbian title U noći .
The film was saved for posterity in 2002 in a joint effort between the Cinémathèque française and the Institut Lumière , which was responsible for the restoration. The culture channel Arte broadcast the film in a restored version with German subtitles on Friday, May 26, 2006 at 00:25 on German television.
The jazz musician Louis Sclavis , who was born in Lyon in 1953, composed a new music to accompany DANS LA NUIT in 2002 at the suggestion of Bertrand Tavernier , who saw the film as an unjustifiably overlooked masterpiece and advocated its re-performance, which is also available on CD.
reception
DANS LA NUIT is “a human drama, convincing and sometimes cruel” and was “years ahead of its time”.
Marcel Carné wrote about the film: "Images dures, simples et belles, mises au service d'une histoire terrible, douloureuse, parfois brutale, mais dont la puissance fut rarement surpassée dans tout le cinéma français."
The outstanding film was the first directorial work by the actor Charles Vanel (1892–1989), who also played the leading role. He had previously appeared in 183 films before directing for the first time. Vanel performed well into old age; He played his last role in Jean-Pierre Mocky's film drama "The Seasons of Pleasure" in 1988 at the age of 96 .
DANS LA NUIT was shot in 1929, on the threshold of the sound film era, and premiered in Paris in May 1930. It was not a success. Both viewers and critics, distracted by the novelty of talking films, simply no longer noticed it. Under pressure from the censors, a shameful happy ending was added to the film, which portrays the terrible event as a mere dream. Vanel, disappointed by the failure, gave up directing. He made only one short film: L'affaire classée (1932), which was shown again in 1935 under the title “Le Coup de minuit”.
DANS LA NUIT has a virtuoso camera work. His imagery with moments of hallucinatory disorientation, with ephemeral light effects and the depiction of overheated feelings, which contrast sharply with realistic scenes and naturalistic images from the world of work, was influenced by the impressionists.
DANS LA NUIT only needs a few subtitles. Vanel preferred to blind her to the plot instead of interrupting it with title cards .
literature
- David Cairns: The Forgotten: Charles Vanel's "Dans la Nuit" (1929) , on line at MUBI , Nov. 26, 2015
- F. Flament: Le miroir de la peur , dans free.fr , 19 Avril 2002
- Gary Giddins: Weather Bird - Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century. Published by Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN 9780195348163 . Length 656 pages
- Romain Le Vern: # 324. DANS LA NUIT. Charles Vanel, 1928 dans "le chaos règne" , 10 Octobre 2015
- Michael Witt, Michael Temple (Eds.): The French Cinema Book. Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. ISBN 9781844575732 . Length 294 pages
Web links
- In the dark of night in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Fernand Weill Films 1929 movie poster
Individual evidence
- ^ "Sandra Milovanoff was born in St Petersburg and had a successful career as a dancer in Anna Pavlova's troupe, and as an actress in the theater, before emigrating to France in 1919, where she was soon much in demand for cinematic roles. She played opposite Charles Vanel in several films including "La Flambée des Rêves" and "Pêcheur d'Islande" (both directed by Jacques de Baronceli), "La proie du vent" (directed by René Clair), and "Maquillage" (directed by Félix Basch), before making “Dans la nuit” with him. Very much a star of the silent era she was, unlike Vanel, ill-equipped to make the transition to the "talkies". She made no films at all in the 1930s and only four between 1940 and her death 17 years later: of these her role in Sascha Guitry's "Le comédien" received the warmest press notices " it says from her at jpc.de
- ↑ Bertrand Tavernier , fan absolu of Dans la nuit , coined the sentence: "L'histoire du cinéma français muet commence avec Lumière et se termine avec Vanel" (quoted from chaosreigns.fr , 10 Oct. 2015)
- ↑ cf. DM in france3-regions . Published on October 17, 2013
- ↑ cf. IMDb / release info
- ↑ cf. beepworld.de ( Memento of the original from March 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : "FRI, May 26, 2006 (00h25): Arte repeats DANS LA NUIT (In the Dark of the Night, F 1930), which the broadcaster already had in its program a few years ago."
- ↑ cf. Louis Sclavis: Dans La Nuit. Music For The Silent Movie By Charles Vanel. CD label: ECM, 2000. Order number: 4728894, date of publication: December 19, 2008, cf. jpc.de ; on this: Giddins (2004) pp. 547f. Review in Jazz Journal International 2003, p. 42f.
- ↑ "In its scenes of explicit infidelity, physical violence and gritty realism," Dans la nuit "was years ahead of its time." Writes jpc.de
- ↑ cit. based on: F. Flament (2002)
- ↑ cf. unifrance.org
- ↑ On October 4, 1929, Alan Crosland's sound film “The Jazz Singer” with Al Jolson as Le chanteur de Jazz premiered in France
- ↑ "... in a terribly disappointing pay-off, it turns out all to have been a dream. Not even a dream that has any particular point. A great shame, since Vanel's handling of the story up to the denouement is deft and inventive, with striking industrial imagery ... " (David Cairns)
- ↑ "To put the censors mild, producer Fernand Weill added a happy ending that wants us to believe that the whole dark story is just a dream." (Beepworld.de); see. on the other hand Witt-Temple (2008) p. 72
- ↑ after the short story 'Au Coin Joli' by Frédéric Boutet, cf. IMDb , ressorti en 1935 sous le titre “Le Coup de minuit”. (Giddins (2004), IMDb / title )
- ↑ cf. David Cairns: "He seems influenced by the impressionist school: Like Epstein, Vanel exults in hallucinatory moments of disorientation, transient effects of light, and contrasting overheated emotion with gritty locations and a naturalistic depiction of working life."
