Do not miss… The Divine Voyage (1929), BFI 14th August with live accompaniment

If I were an architect and had to build a monument to cinema, I would place a statue of Duvivier above the entrance. This great technician, this rigorist, was a poet. Jean Renoir, Mémoires

 

Given the widely quoted proportion of missing silent film it’s amazing how much is still extant which can surprise, uplift and thoroughly engage. This mood-altering beauty, La divine croisière en français, was all but lost at sea and was splendidly restored in 2020 by Lobster Films from a variety of sources; an abbreviated nitrate print used for Pathé Baby 9.5 mm home cinema, four different 35mm fragments and two 17.5mm diacetate Pathé Rural prints including shots that were censored. The results are on the absolutely essential Cinema of Discovery: Julien Duvivier in the 1920s set from Lobster/Flicker Alley – nine films including Au Bonheur des Dames (1930) – which was released earlier this year: the uncovering of a veritable “cinematic Atlantis” as described by Serge Bromberg, Lobster’s leader.

 

Due to wedding commitments, not mine but the next generation are in a post-pandemic rush, I can’t make the screening but I would urge everyone who can to do so, book now, stop reading and go straight to the BFI website, you will not be disappointed with film or accompaniment; this is going to be a revelatory show.

 

Suzanne Christy and Jean Murat

There is so much pleasing late-silent technique on show from Duvivier in this film – Renoir’s “rigorist poet” in action – with a roving camera that moves in and out of buildings, follows crows as they race to the harbour side or to confront wrong-doing. Close ups of locals cast for face and rapid cutting that shows the influence of both Russian and German directors, not to mention intense close-ups that rival Dreyer for impact. The locations, Paimpol in Brittany, Louvigny sur Mer in Normandy and Ermenonville, now in a national park northwest of Paris, are superbly photographed and edited to create an impression of a people on the edge, battling unforgiving nature.

 

Against this backdrop Duvivier, who wrote and directed, presents a story of faith, bravery and class conflict. The film’s critique of blind capitalism is one of the reasons it was heavily censored at the time, and it begins with an act of desperate revolt when a mariner Kerjean (Henri Valbel) who has defaulted on his rent, attempts to assassinate unforgiving businessman Claude Ferjac (Henry Krauss), Ferjac in his chateau. Ferjac runs the town with a callous calculation and he will push the citizens to the brink before the story is through.

 

Almost the opening shot...

On the run Kerjean encounters Ferjac’s daughter, Simone (Suzanne Christy) who, for a few moments he considers killing her but she is a completely different proposition to her father who connects with the locals and shows compassion. We cut to the Kerjean’s house being emptied and see that his wife has killed herself… but none of this cuts any ice with Ferjac, who threatens a child who throws a stone at his limousine… property is more important than people’s lives.

 

Times is also money and Ferjac makes it clear to the local mariners that manning the insufficiently repaired La Cordillère is of far more importance than the risk to their lives. Captain Jacques de Saint-Ermont (Jean Murat) makes their case but he knows there’s no way of changing Ferjac’s mind. The meeting between the boss and the sailors shows the hatred and fear they feel for this man and the desperate calculations they have to make for their families.

 

There’s further intrigue with Simone romantically attached to Jacques and the two meet in the bay, separated by a fishing net, both trapped in their relationships with her father who will listen to no one be it the curate (Louis Kerly) or Jacques mother (Charlotte Barbier-Krauss, who also featured in Carrot Top (1926) also on the Lobster set and Duvivier’s favourite film.)

Simone and Jacques, caught in the net

The ship sets sail and includes the last-minute arrival of a mariner from outside the area, Mareuil played by Thomy Bourdelle who gives a stand-out muscular performance as the faithless opportunist upon whose actions so many lives will rest. Simone visits the Curate in his church and dedicates herself to repainting the frescoes and especially the painting of Maris Stella, she who is the “Star of the Sea”.

 

Things swiftly go awry on the voyage as Mareuil decides that stealing the cargo is the way forward – another heartless capitalist? – and persuades most of the men to revolt, throwing one unfortunate who refuses into the sea to drown. His group overpowers the Captain and his men, taking control just before the sea, as it was always going to do, erupts in a storm that would challenge even the finest of ships.

 

Back on land, the body of the murdered man is found and there’s a harrowing passage as his wife, Jeanne (Line Noro in her first feature film of what would become a long career) is told of the news and leads a march to confront the man responsible. Ferjac is busy hosting a lavish dinner party to announce the marrying off of Simone to one of his business contacts, she cannot even hold her glass to toast the depressing nuptials and then Jeanne arrives followed by dozens of the locals who are now convinced that the ship has sunk and there’s only one man to be blamed.

 

Roughhouse Thomy Bourdelle

NO SPOILERS!

 

This is only the narrative entrée though and the Divine Voyage is yet to really begin… there’s a magical realism at play and faith, fate and hate will all have their role to play as the full story enfolds.

 

Duvivier maintains not only the pace but also a startling consistency of cinematic expression throughout as well as bringing out some extraordinary performances. Watchable on so many levels, The Divine Voyage is indeed as Serge Bromberg suggests, as glorious a discovery as you would expect from an unearthed cinematic Atlantis.

 

Do not miss it on screen if you can make it. You can book here.

 

The Duvivier box set is available from Flicker Alley and Lobster Films.

Wise before the event... J'Accuse (1938) out now on BFI BluRay/DVD

"I dedicate this film to the Dead of tomorrow's War, who will doubtless watch it with scepticism and fail to recognise within it the image of themselves." Abel Gance 1938

When I first heard that Abel Gance had "remade" his eerie First World War epic I callously thought about the "improvements" George Lucas had made to Star Wars and THX 1138 through a remix using recent technology to "enhance" his "dated" originals. This comparison is facetious I'll admit but I'm not a great believer in remakes.

I don't think Gance chose to make this picture as an "improvement" on the already powerful silent original, he made it because he was as frightened as his hero in the latter film, that Europe was about to descend into a second war to end all wars. Actually, forget frightened: he was angry and watching the incredibly moving closing sequences of this film is every bit as poignant as the sight of off-duty soldiers in the first film who play the dead risen from their battlefield graves come to accuse the living. The first film was shot in 1918 and many of these troops returned to the front and their doom and yet, in 1938, many of the men in the film would suffer the same fate yet only the twenty first century watcher really knows that for sure, despite Gance's prediction above.

"What I said before, I say again - I'll scream it into the face of mankind, because it must be done!"

War was possible in 1938 but by no means a certainty - most people lived in hope that Herr Hitler surely couldn't be as bad as he was made out... Even as late as September, British PM, Neville Chamberlain was still talking about "peace in our time" even though he, like Stalin the following year, was playing for time as the Brits had failed to re-arm at the same rate as Nazi Germany and were just not ready...

Victor Francen speaks for his director

In his informative notes and commentary for this superb BFI release, Paul Cuff clarifies Gance's position regarding "strong leaders" by showing that the far right had been highly critical of Napoleon - a film who, literally, several people even now accuse of "fascism"... whereas noted fascist sympathiser, Lucien Rebatet viewed it as "idiotic sentimentalism".  But Gance was indeed a man on a mission and his own experience in the Great War had convinced him it had to be the "final" conflict.

In his first talkie, La Fin du Monde (1930... (just about 90 years too early, cheers Donald and Kim...) the director had mankind renouncing war and establishing a World Council, leading the charming Rebatet to label Gance a "delusional primitive". Well, speaking as one about another, I must say that I found J'Accuse - Prenez Deux very moving and, even though the story is uneven in parts, the central message never grows old. As for Rebatet, he spent the war broadcasting for Vichy radio and blaming the Jews and the third French republic for the war.

He never touched the World in the way that Gance did, he never became loved... Gance's open-hearted approach to film-making lifts this film throughout as does his casting of the exceptionally commanding and mightily-expressive Victor Francen as Jean Diaz.

Victor Francen and Francois Laurin - a difficult conversation

Francen is one of the senior troopers at a beleaguered French outpost near the front in the dying days of 1918. In a remarkable opening sequence as what's left of the little town comes under sustained fire, a dead dove falls slowly into gas-poisoned water in a fountain topped off by a statue of Christ inverted by the bombardment. When a squaddie finds the bird, the talk is of how to eat it but Jean decides to bury it instead.

As he does so, he is joined by Marcel Delaitre (Francois Laurin) whose wife Edith (Line Noro) has fallen in love with Jean... It's a key plot component from the first film but here it's covered off in minutes as the two men shake hands; although that will not be the end of it. The men join their comrades in the village bar where sad-eyed Flo (Sylvie Gance... yes, the very same) sings songs to keep the spirits alive especially for one of the men, the youngest and the handsomest, who can't gather the courage to tell Flo how he really feels. But, she knows...she knows.

The troop are ordered on a deathly patrol from which only one man has returned: Jean. With the clock ticking down on armistice it seems a sad risk to take and knowing the dangers Jean agrees to swap places with one of the men, a father of four.

Sylvie Gance sings for the boys

We don't see their final battle just the corpses being dragged back and counted as young Jean fades away in no man's land. But, they're not all dead and Jean's luck has held out and he coughs back to life perhaps foreshadowing later events or an indication that he has been chosen to represent the Dead?

Meanwhile Marcel is dying and Jean promises that there will never be anything between him and Edith. He's a man of his word but things are still very complicated as he returns to the civilian world...

Fittingly for a man who came so close to death, Jean cannot fit back amongst the mortal world and, whilst he continues to innovate for the glass company he once managed, he bases himself near to his fallen comrades and the huge cemetery at Verdun. He's searching for something, a way to stop war ever happening again.

Francois Laurin and Line Noro

The world thinks him mad and Edith and her blossoming daughter, Helene (Renee Devillers) - who loves Jean as much as her mother - try to understand the moods of this brilliant but broken man. Things are complicated by the reappearance of the man who ordered the final assault, Henri Chimay (Jean Max) who eventually becomes engaged to Helene... As war becomes more likely, the stage is set for a chilling replay of the most famous moment from the 1919 film. It's done very differently but is no less powerful aided by Francen's superb commitment.

Gance had seen action in the Great War and perhaps this gave him the motivation as well as the understanding that drove it. He did whatever he could to stop those trenches from being dug again and the tragedy of watching this film is knowing how quickly the battle lines would once again be drawn.

No wonder Gance was a "passionate pacifist". With J'Accuse he aimed to prove that "the future of humanity resides in a generation who will be the first Europeans..."  The last 72 years have seen peace in Western Europe at least, maintained by those new Europeans with or without Little Britain.

J'Accuse is out now and is available from the BFI shop on and online in DVD and Blu-ray - presented in both High Definition and Standard Definition with that new full-length audio commentary by leading Gance expert Paul Cuff. There is also a stills and special collections gallery and a handsome illustrated booklet written and compiled by Mr Cuff, including a specially commissioned essay and newly translated contemporary reviews.

One of the key releases of the year I would venture.