Really free… Feu Mathias Pascal (1925)

Can freedom truly exist without responsibility? My politics teacher would have explained the difference between freedom and licence: you need to have some checks and balances otherwise there is nothing to stop half of us being oppressed by the other’s desire to do as they wilt.

The main character in Feu Mathias Pascal (The Late Matthias Pascal) is obsessed with the idea of liberty but ultimately finds it limits his freedom to act not so much as anyone else’s. Mathias Pascal spends long hours in his room reading about liberty and theorising… he still lives with his mother and all the while he is stuck in his studies he is failing to protect her estate and her liberty.

Adapted from Luigi Pirandello's 1902 novel Il fu Mattia Pascal by its director, Marcel L'Herbier, Feu Mathias Pascal is a fable filmed against stunning backdrops in San Gimignano, Monte Carlo and Rome. Not many silent directors used location as well as L’Herbier: just check out L’Alhambra in Eldorado…

Michel Simon and Ivan Mosjoukine

The Pascal’s live in the picturesque and many-towered town of Miragno (imagine a smaller version of Bolgna in its heyday…) and have fallen on hard times. The widowed Madame Pascal (Marthe Mellot) is tricked into selling her property for a fraction of its real worth by her wicked attorney and they downsize...

Life takes an unexpected turn as Mathias (the magnetic Ivan Mosjoukine) is persuaded by a love-sick friend Jérôme Pomino (Michel Simon), to tell the object of the latter’s desire, Romilde (Marcelle Pradot), of his affection… But, as readers of Cyrano will know, this can be a potentially hazardous route and thus it proves as Mathias and Romilde (not Roxanne) find that they are the ones in love…

Ivan Mosjoukine and Marcelle Pradot

They marry and soon have a baby in their modest quarters which are shared by Romilde’s harridan of a mother who is gradually recreating herself in her daughter in spite of their seemingly tenuous genetic connections.

Mathias is thus dragged from thoughts of soaring liberty down to the earthy requirements of board and lodging. He takes up a job as an assistant librarian in a former church packed with piles of dust-coated literature, stacked to the rafters and constantly nibbled at by rats… The head librarian sits high above absorbed in his studies. He leaves his new assistant to it and Mathias devises an elaborate mechanism for herding the rats through use of cats tied to carefully measured strings… The set is enormous and expressive: were you watching Tim Burton?

Insert mother-in-law joke here...

It’s one of many light touches in a film that deals in both sides of the music of chance… Mathias’s unhappy home life is soon an irrelevance as his mother becomes seriously ill and, as she calls out to see her grand-daughter one last time, the child too succumbs to life threatening disease.

Romilde and her mother neglect to tell Mathias of his mother’s request and by the time he finds out it is almost too late for both gran and granddaughter: even so in his hysteria of grief he brings the two together one last time…

Marthe Mellot

The story turns now as Mathias travels away to Monte Carlo in order to recuperate… he finds his way to the Casino and, as luck would have it, wins a fortune in the casino. Then, in a moment resembling a Paul Auster narrative, he reads that he is believed dead after a man’s body was identified as him back home: everyone believing him the victim of his grief.

He is elated: now he can be truly free no money or identity worries and he can be whoever he wants to be. He heads off to Rome where he wanders the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain and through a Forum yet to be encroached by Il Duce’s arrogant architecture. He spies an exceptionally pretty girl, Adrienne Paléari (Lois Moran, who beguiled F Scott Fitgerald and many others…) and follows her across Rome to her father’s apartment block.

Lois Moran

So far, so free and yet… Mathias discovers that without a passport and without proof of his identify, he cannot rent a room in a hotel, even though he could afford it many times over.

He finds it easier to rent a room from Adrienne’s father and joins the odd community in what look like the most spacious rooms in Rome. The “dead” man is surprised to find that so many of the lodgers are interested in re-incarnation and the practice of séances used to try re-connect with those on the other side.

There’s an obvious poignancy in the “late” Mathias needing to reconnect with himself but this necromancy is also the plot device driving the remainder of the tale. There’s a fraudulent “archaeologist” Terence Papiano (Jean Hervé) who controls his neighbours lives through the promptings of the dead, with the aid of his brother Scipion (Pierre Batcheff - he of Napoleon, The Chess Player, Un Chien Andalou etc…) under cover of the dark.

Pierre Batcheff

Terence has persuaded Adrienne’s father that his dead relatives believe that she should marry him and it seems that nothing will stand in his way. But he pushes his luck too far when brother Scipion robs Mathias during one performance… Mathias realises that he cannot go to the police as he has no identity… returning to the house though he chances his arm by denying that a robbery has taken place, knowing that Terence will realise that his game is up. Thus compromised the trickster has no option but to follow Mathias’ suggestion that he take his brother on an extended vacation…well away from Rome.

Mathias knows that he must regain his identity in order to pursue his love for Adrienne… but he must also return home to settle his account with his wife, friends and the man who robbed his mother: things he can only achieve as himself, emboldened by the realisation that there is no place like your own face…

Les deux Pascal

Feu Mathias Pascal clocks in at just under three hours and feels like an adaptation of a book with its multiple locations and characters, but it is full of invention from L’Herbier and his cast. As well as the exceptional location sequences, the director inserts a number of clever dream sequences showing Mathias encountering himself and wrestling with his conflicted imagination.

Of course, Mosjoukine revels in the drama and is so charismatically intense it’s sometimes difficult to watch the other performers. He had unusual features and a strangely feline countenance set off against huge expressive blue/grey eyes that allowed him to turn his emotional focus at will. It was rumoured that he was bought to Hollywood as a replacement for Valentino but, whilst he has the charisma and acting skill, he conveys a lot more…under-current than the former.

Ivan Mosjoukine

He displays great range and star power in this film given his character’s story arc and the amount of time he has on screen. One of many Russian émigrés to France after the revolution, Mosjoukine directed as well as acted and I shall certainly be seeking out his other films for Albatross specifically Flicker Alley’s recent box set – temptingly available direct.

I watched their Blu-Ray of Feu Mathias Pascal which has no extras save for a brief booklet…but it doesn’t really need anything to add to what is a magnificent restoration of one of the most adventurous French films of the twenties although I should give special mention to Timothy Brock’s excellent new score which trips alongside this dreamy tale with emotional precision.

The film was perhaps more formally disciplined and less experimental than his earlier works such as Eldorado and L’Inhumaine and was unsurprisingly L’Herbier’s most successful release at the time, also going on to play well abroad, where it continues to impress to this day.

Strange corridors...

Earthy… La Terre (1921)

Germaine Rouer

 “Only the earth is immortal, the mother from whom we all spring and to whom we all return.” Emile Zola

Watching the peasants harvesting the wheat in this film put me in mind of City Girl but, whereas the latter film was set in “modern” America with large-scale, semi-automated farming techniques, here is recreated the near subsistence-level practices of the 1860’s.

Men scythed the crop which was then gathered in lose bundles by the women and piled manually-high on wooden carts. There is a small horse-drawn harvester to separate the wheat from the chaff but this is dwarfed by the 20 horse-power machine in Murnau’s film. This was life on the edge with the slightest shifts in fortune potentially life-altering.

La Terre has a documentary feel and for a film of this vintage it is remarkably naturalistic as well as uncompromising… there’s no point looking for the easy resolutions of most Hollywood fare. I notice from the IMBD reviews that some have found it hard-going but for me it is engrossing: like a good book.

La Terre was filmed in 1919-20 and adapted by director André Antoine from Émile Zola’s novel, the fifteenth in the sprawling Rougon-Macquart series – which also included L’Argent trivia fans! As with many of Zola’s stories it is full of the hap-hazard cruelties of life, whilst its detailed depiction of rural existence in the Second Republic is mixed with violence and sexual frankness that caused a scandal on its publication in 1887 and – watered down in the film – still shock along with man’s routine in-humanity to man (and woman).

Germaine Rouer and René Alexandre

Antoine had an extensive background in theatre and came late to film as “a sixty-year-old beginner”. He was concerned with realism and wanted to pay due credit to Zola’s intentions.

His adaptation takes the main strands of a novel that features dozens of characters… and tries to show the link between life and the land as well as the ruinous impact of the post-revolutionary Civil Code (1804) which provided for the ostensibly equitable division of rural estates amongst farming families which led to imbalance and in-fighting.

Armand Bour

Le père Fouan (Armand Bour) is dividing his land between his family as he and his wife get too old to work the land. It is split three ways between his daughter Fanny and two sons, the wastrel Hyacinthe – also known as Jesus Christ (after his beard, not his good grace) – played by Émile Mylo and the ambitious, aggressive, Louis Buteau (Jean Hervé).

At the same time a young man arrives in the town, Jean Macquart (René Alexandre) –  a member of one of the key families from Zola’s series and featured in two later novels. He saves a young girl who has been dragged off by a skittish cow, Françoise Mouche (the extraordinary Germaine Rouer) who is Fouan’s niece. The two form an instant attraction and Françoise takes him to find work at one of the larger local farms.

La Cognette et La Trouille!

Here he meets La Cognette (Jeanne Grumbach) who effectively manages the farm. Older and more experienced than Françoise – who is under age – she also romances the handsome new arrival…

In exchange for his land Fouan’s children are to pay him a regular pension but, all too quickly, greed diverts their intentions…it’s not difficult to see the links to King Lear here although poor Fouan is badly in need of a Cordelia…

Émile Mylo

Hyacinthe is certainly the Fool but a poisonous one… He lives his life as a poacher, drinking his days into oblivion and using his daughter La Trouille – The Pest – (Berthe Bovy) to help steal anything they can.

Fanny is married to a well-to-do farmer but cannot abide her father’s diminished position whilst Buteau just wants it all and is completely un-restrained by any consideration of his fellows. He marries Françoise’s elder sister Lise (Jeanne Briey) and turns the younger girl into little more than a slave, all the while harassing her sexually.

A wicked brother-in-law

Then there is Fouan’s sister who, left out of his “living will” holds him in disgust and hopes that he will “die in a ditch”.

So far so grim – so Zola – and so it proceeds with the old man being cheated of his agreed payments as his children proceed to abuse him, refuse to pay him and force him to move around between them.

But there are still Antoine’s wonderful shots of the family working their fields, all put together with meticulous attention to detail and on glorious sunny days. There are superb close-ups of Buteau and Françoise as they rest in the hay. He tries to grab hold of her and she escapes, meeting Jean further down the field. When the camera returns Françoise has her hair down and something has clearly “gone on” with Jean, a fact he admits to a friend shortly afterwards…

Hats on

The relationship between Françoise and Jean develops in spite of the Buteau’s disapproval – he knows full well the challenge it poses to his lifestyle.  As she reaches 21 Françoise marries Jean and demands her inheritance leading to the eviction of Buteau and Elise – blood doesn’t get any badder and you know this will not be the end of the matter.

Meanwhile Fouan’s health is deteriorating and he is running out of options as one by one his family disown him.

Bad blood...

I won’t give any more of the plot away as this is a storyline well worth seeing out in your own time. I watched the Milestone DVD which features an excellently sympathetic score from the experienced composer, Adrian Johnston, who treats the story with all the respect due to a new film.

La Terre was long considered lost and this restoration, from Kevin Brownlow and David Gill, was made in collaboration with the Royal Belgian Film Archive and the Cinémathèque Française, using the sole surviving copy made available by Gosfilmofond, Moscow.

Germaine Rouer: seventy years between these shots

It also features the text from an excellent interview with Germaine Rouer conducted by Kevin Brownlow in 1991. Her memories are precious: “… he let us be natural. Sometimes he just told me: “Try to look like a peasant girl, go on, look like a peasant girl.” So I did all I could to look like a peasant girl.”

La Terre is a vibrant film from an age of experimentation: magically far closer to the era it recreates than our modern world... so far removed from the land. It is readily available direct from the Milestone site.