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| Festival Year |
Festival Section |
| 2005 |
André Antoine and French Realism |
| Film Title |
QUATRE-VINGT-TREIZE |
| Alternative Title 1 |
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| Alternative Title 2 |
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| Alternative Title 3 |
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| Country |
France |
| Release Date |
1914-1921 |
| Production Co. |
S.C.A.G.L. |
| Director |
Albert Capellani (1914), completato da/completed by André Antoine (1919) |
| Format |
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Speed (fps) |
| 35mm |
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18 |
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| Footage |
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Time |
| 3394 m. |
|
165' |
| Archive Source |
Cinémathèque Française |
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| Print Notes |
Didascalie in francese / French intertitles |
| Cast |
| Henry Krauss (Cimourdain), Paul Capellani (Gauvin), Philippe Garnier (marchese di/Marquis de Lantenac), Dorival (Le Sergent/sergente/Sergeant Radoub), Max Charlier (Imanus), Maurice Schutz (Grandcoeur), Charlotte Barbier-Krauss (Flécharde) |
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| Other Credits |
| scen., adatt./adapt: Albert Capellani, dal romanzo di/from the novel by Victor Hugo; f./ph: Pierre Trimbach, Paul Castanet?, Karénine Mérioban |
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| Other Information |
| dist: Pathé-Consortium-Cinéma; ppp/rel: 2 parti/2 parts, 24.6.1921, 1.7.1921 |
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| Program Notes |
The contribution of Antoine to this film, co-signed with Albert Capellani, was quite scanty and limited. According to the testimony of his son André-Paul, “In 1914, at the moment of signing the contract with S.C.A.G.L., Antoine was present at the shooting of some scenes of '93.” Work on the film was, however, interrupted by the outbreak of war, and Capellani left France for the United States, leaving the film incomplete: “To recoup the capital invested S.C.A.G.L. asked Antoine to complete it, which he did in a few days, with the agreement of Capellani.” According to some sources, Antoine directed the final episode of La Torgue and some exteriors, and supervised the montage. It would have been possible to finish it sooner if the wartime censorship had not intervened to forbid the treatment of a subject which evoked civil war. Adapted from Victor Hugo's novel of the same name, the film in fact deals with events and characters of a crucial year in French history, 1793, when the Convention collapsed in the internal struggle between the different revolutionary factions while the supporters of the Ancien Régime gambled their reactionary chances in La Vendée.
In October 1921, some months after the long-delayed eventual release of the film, in an article attacking the damage done by censorship, Antoine denounced the fact that, under the pretext of social peace, things had been done to postpone so long the distribution of a film which he considered a masterwork: “Here is a film distributed seven years after it was made: fortunately, thanks to its historical character and the talent of the director Capellani, it escapes the peril of becoming dated, but, miraculously, in an art in which developments are ceaseless.”
Directed then in large part by Capellani, the film bears all the traces of this. It is enough to compare it with the preceding Les Misérables, another great novel by Hugo brought to the screen by Capellani, to recognize forcefully how much the one seems the continuation of the other, whether in the mise-en-scène or the methods of shooting: accurate reconstruction of the settings and costumes, long shots in the mid-field in which the action is played without the change of viewpoint, so dear on the contrary to Antoine, who employed the resources of montage from his first film. In this respect, the theatrical influence is again evident in the way that the interpretations of many actors trained in the school of Antoine stand out, from Henry Krauss (a titanic Cimourdain) to Paul Capellani (a passionate Gauvin), from Philippe Garnier (an icy and pitiless Marquis de Lantenac) to Charlotte Barbier-Krauss (a courageous and distressed Flécharde). But if the film stands the test of time, it is due, beyond the acting performances, to sequences of great intensity. Without citing the decorum of the tragic finale, two earlier sequences are examples: that of the sailor condemned to death because he has not properly fixed the cannon dislodged by the rolling of the ship, and the subsequent episode on the sloop, when the sailor's brother, Halmolo, considers avenging his death, getting ready to kill the Marquis de Lantenac, who has decreed it, but letting himself be seduced by the oratory of the nobleman, and desisting from his intention. - LUCIANO DE GIUSTI
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