Introduzione/Introduction
04.10.2008 [20.30]
Serata finale / Closing Event
In collaborazione con / In cooperation with
La Cinémathèque française
LES NOUVEAUX MESSIEURS (Albatros, FR 1929)
r./dir.: Jacques Feyder; scen.: Jacques Feyder, Charles Spaak
dalla pièce di/based on the play by Robert de Flers & Francis de Croisset
f./ph.: Georges Périnal; scg/art dir.: Lazare Meerson
cast: Gaby Morlay, Albert Préjean, Henry Roussell
Nuova partitura di / New score by Antonio Coppola
eseguita da / performed by l'Octuor de France
Programma a cura di / A programme prepared by Lenny Borger
Cortometraggi di Jacques Feyder / Jacques Feyder shorts (1915-1919):
DES PIEDS ET DES MAINS (+ Gaston Ravel, 1915) 16 min.
TÊTES DE FEMMES, FEMMES DE TÊTE (1916) 37 min.
UN CONSEIL D’AMI (1916) 15 min.
LA FAUTE D’ORTHOGRAPHE (1919) 27 min.
TRIPLEPATTE (Raymond Bernard 1922) 74 min.
KNOCK (René Hervil, 1925) 129 min.
PARIS EN CINQ JOURS (Nicolas Rimsky/Pière Colombier, 1925) 77 min.
FIGARO (Gaston Ravel, 1928) 108 min.
TIRE AU FLANC (Jean Renoir, 1928) 102 min.
TOTTE ET SA CHANCE (Augusto Genina, 1928) 97 min.
LA MERVEILLEUSE JOURNÉE (René Barberis, 1929) 84 min.
LES NOUVEAUX MESSIEURS (Feyder, 1929) 120 min.
Introduction
When, in the wake of the warm reception to last year’s mini-René Clair retrospective, the Giornate’s organizing team invited me to curate another program of French silent comedies for 2008, my response was an unhesitating, “Mais, oui!” After all, my original idea had been to put Clair’s films in historical context by screening them alongside select comedies by his contemporaries. Done properly, however, that program would have proven too unwieldy.
Now, with Clair’s reputation secure (at Pordenone in any case), the Giornate turns to Clair’s contemporaries, to ask some key questions: Was post-war French comedy truly a cinematic desert until the Clair oasis sprang up? Did Clair have any rivals, any potential heirs? From my experience of watching “lost” French silent films in French and foreign archives, I knew that Clair had not materialized out of a total void, and might well have engendered films of greater wit and style had the talkies not arrived.
My first choices for this program came spontaneously. Who has seen (or even heard of) Triplepatte (1922), a delightfully quirky farce which might have led director Raymond Bernard along another career path, instead of specializing in historical spectaculars? And if Totte et sa chance (1928) came just as immediately to mind, it was because I and many other veterans of the Giornate fondly remembered this cosmopolitan romantic comedy as one of the highlights of the Augusto Genina retrospective, back in 1989.
As for Feyder’s Les Nouveaux Messieurs (1928), it seemed a foregone conclusion that this was to be the pièce de résistance of the 2008 festival, one of those luminous, neglected late silent masterpieces, by a great director often pigeonholed for his sober realism. For this reason, I have thrown in an opening bouquet of sophisticated comedy sketches made by Feyder in his journeyman days at Gaumont during the war. (Feyder will also be showcased this year with the special Cinémathèque Française presentation of the newly restored 1925 Gribiche.)
Hopefully this program will provide some mirthful grist to the mill of historical inquiries. Is it time to re-evaluate Renoir’s Tire au flanc in the light of his later reputation? What was Nicolas Rimsky’s true contribution to screen comedy as the popular Russian émigré writer-director-star of his own series? Can the aphoristic theatrical satire of Jules Romains’ Knock be recaptured on the silent screen? Will the lush screen illustration of Beaumarchais’ Figaro plays finally inspire us to look at the career of the prolific but still obscure Gaston Ravel?
Putting this show together was an amusing challenge. I trust that this shortlist of comic films, directors, and actors will prove worthy of (re)discovery, and widen our knowledge of French mainstream cinema in the last decade of the silent era. And, at the very least, make us laugh. – Lenny Borger
