L'Homme du large - A man of the sea

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Movie
German title L'Homme du large - A man of the sea
Original title L'Homme you large
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 1920
length 2256 meters, at 23 fps approx. 86 minutes
Rod
Director Marcel L'Herbier
script Marcel L'Herbier after Honoré de Balzac
production Léon Gaumont , Gaumont Série Pax
music Antoine Duhamel (2001)
camera Georges Lucas
cut Marcel L'Herbier
occupation

also Jeanne Bérangère , André Daven , Jane Dolys , Marcel Rival

L'Homme du large - A man of the sea is the title of a French silent film drama that Marcel L'Herbier directed in 1920 for the Gaumont film company . He wrote the screenplay based on the literary model of the same title by Honoré de Balzac , which was published in 1835.

The film shows how the happy life of a passionate fisherman and his wife comes to an abrupt end when it turns out that the late-born son fears, even hates, the sea. This divides father and son, the mother perishes in the conflict.

action

Nolff, a Breton fisherman, has taken a vow of silence and lives as a hermit on the coast. No one comes close to him but a white-clad novice who provides him with food.

Years ago, full of contempt for people and life on land, Nolff built his house on the tip of a remote cliff to devote himself entirely to fishing and his family. His daughter Djenna works hard and dutifully. His son Michel, whom he adored, is said to become a "free man, a man of the sea" like him. But Michel is selfish and takes advantage of his father's blind affection; as he grows up he begins to hate the sea. The temptations of city life mean more to him. He is seduced by his friend Guenn-la-Toupe and lured into bad company.

At Easter, the only occasion when Nolff and his family join the townspeople, Nolff's wife falls ill. While she is being transported home, Michel escapes to a bad repute in town, where he teams up with the dancer Lia. His sister Djenna visits him to take him home to his mother's bedside, but Michel slips back into the pub, where he gets into an argument with Lia's pimp and stabs him to death.

Nolff pays for Michel's release from prison. But when they get home, the mother died. Since he needs money to endure Lia, Michel steals the savings that his mother had put aside for his sister Djanna's trousseau, but is caught and punished by Nolff. Nolff swears to "give it back to God". He ties Michel to the bottom of an open boat with heavy chains and pushes it out to sea. Then he begins the life of a hermit on the coast.

Djenna goes to a monastery. Months later, she receives a letter from Michel, who survived. He has now become a different person who now earns his living as a seaman. When Nolff learns that Michel would like to come home, he shouts his remorse over the judgment he had passed on his son.

background

The exterior shots were shot on the Brittany coast in Penmarc'h, Finistère , the interior scenes were shot in the La Villette studios, Paris 19 , in Paris. The set was created by Robert-Jules Garnier and Claude Autant-Lara , who was assistant director alongside Philippe Hériat (here still as 'Raymond Payelle') and Dimitri Dragomir , who also had small roles in the film. The photography was in the hands of Georges Lucas . Director L'Herbier and Jaque Catelain did the editing. The Société des Etablissements L. Gaumont took over the distribution for France .

L'Homme du large premiered in France on December 3, 1920 at the Gaumont Palace in Paris. There was a re-performance on July 19, 1929. It was also shown in Italy, there as La giustizia del mare , in Portugal and Poland.

reception

The film was received with enthusiasm by both the audience and the press. His critical fame continued over the years that followed. The film historian Henri Langlois remarked about him that the film not only tells a story of individual events that are held together by subtitles, but represents a sequence of images whose message is an expression of an idea, whose subtitles blinded by the images make sense like an idéogram. The film is the first example of “cinematic writing”.

L'Herbier's innovations in the language of the film initially confused some of the critics, who they could not bring together with the impressions of the natural shots of coast and sea. The rhythmic structure of the cuts and sequences, which, in L'Herbier's opinion, was conceived as a musical composition, met with broader approval.

Only the French censor took offense at some of the pictures of lesbian women caressing each other, which were perceived as too revealing. L'Herbier negotiated with the authorities and made a few cuts to reassure them so that the film could continue to be shown, but later reinserted the rejected images in the original negative.

"Melancholic drama about the eternal contrast between sea and land, in which the storm-lashed Atlantic, which puts people in their place, plays the central role." (Filmlexikon 2001)

"The masterful silent film works with complex editing sequences, sees itself as a 'visual symphony' and is considered an early example of a 'cinematographic script'," explains the 2001 film dictionary.

In 1998, CNC Archives françaises du film and Gaumont undertook an extensive restoration, which also included the restoration of the original intertitles and the systematic coloring true to the original L'Herbier notes . The composer Antoine Duhamel , son of the writer Georges Duhamel , wrote a new piece of music to accompany it in 2001. On December 20, 2002, the cultural channel Arte France broadcast the restored film on television. Paramount Home Entertainment France released L'homme du large on DVD in 2009 together with El Dorado .

literature

  • Richard Abel: French Cinema - the First Wave 1915-1929. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 1984.
  • Honoré de Balzac: L'Homme du large. Editions Will, Paris 1835.
  • Jaque Catelain: Jaque Catelain présente Marcel L'Herbier . Vautrain, Paris 1950.
  • Raymond Chirat, Roger Icart: L'homme du large. In: Catalog des films français de long métrage, Films de fiction 1919–1929. Cinémathèque de Toulouse, 1984, ISBN 2-905295-00-7 , p. 454.
  • Catherine Fowler, Gillian Helfield (Eds.): Representing the Rural: Space, Place, and Identity in Films about the Land. Contemporary Approaches to Film and Television. Wayne State University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-8143-3562-4 , p. 78.
  • Alan Goble: The Complete Index to Literary Sources in Film . Verlag Walter de Gruyter 1999, ISBN 3-11-095194-0 .
  • Marcel L'Herbier: La Tête qui tourne. Belfond, Paris 1979.
  • Roman Mauer (Ed.): The Sea in Film: Border, Mirror, Transition (= projections. Studies on nature, culture and film. Volume 3). Verlag Edition Text + Critique, 2010, ISBN 978-3-86916-029-0 , pp. 66, 121, 284.
  • Josef Nagel: L'homme du large - A man of the sea. In: film service. (Germany) 55, number 26, December 17, 2002, pp. 32–33.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Honoré de Balzac: L'Homme du large. Editions Werdet, Paris 1835; Goble p. 800.
  2. ↑ according to Filmlexikon 2001
  3. ↑ the plus grand cinéma du monde , opened on September 30, 1911, cinema orchestra of 50 musicians, later a large cinema organ by Christie, in 1931 the cinema held 6,000 spectators, cf. paris-louxor.fr
  4. ↑ cf. IMDb release info
  5. ↑ cf. Henri Langlois, in: L'Âge du cinéma. no.6, 1952, quoted in the booklet accompanying the DVD edition of L'Homme du large 2009 on p. 5: “le premier exemple d'écriture cinématographique ... L'Homme du large n'est pas la narration de faits expliqués et reliés par des sous-titres, mais un succession d'images dont le message a la valeur d'une idée; d'idéogrammes ... Les sous-titres ne viennent pas prendre la place d'une image pour dire en quelques phrases ce qui semblait inexprimable. Ils se superposent à l'image pour en souligner le sens ... " .
  6. ↑ cf. Abel p. 306.
  7. ↑ cf. Marcel L'Herbier: La Tête qui tourne. P. 52: “Bref montrer moins en suggérant plus”.
  8. ↑ cf. Film Lexicon 2001
  9. ↑ cf. Film Lexicon 2001
  10. ↑ “The intertitles were not present in any of the few copies. Only when a scientist found the photograms of the subtitles with their original colors in the estate of the director, who died in 1979, and discovered notes in which L'Herbier had stipulated the exact placement of the titles as a separate visual expressive element, was it possible to think of a faithful restoration. "(Arte France, press release 2002)