Bois d’Arcy 40
Film in programma/Films to be shown:
LE BONHEUR CONJUGAL (Films Saidreau, FR 1923)
GRAZIELLA (Film d’Art/Vandal & Delac, FR 1925)
L’ÎLE ENCHANTÉE (Lutèce Film, FR 1926)
LA VIE MERVEILLEUSE DE BERNADETTE (Isis Film, FR 1929)
ÉTUDES SUR PARIS (André Sauvage et Cie., FR 1928)
Once again this year, the Archives françaises du film of the CNC is honoured to contribute to the programming of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. This annual event is the ideal occasion to present to an informed audience just a few of the 15,000 film titles restored at our facilities at Bois d’Arcy. Many are rare and often forgotten, but in one way or another they have all enriched the history of motion pictures.
To celebrate our 40th anniversary, we are especially proud to present a hand-picked selection of French films of the 1920s whose very diversity reflects one of the abiding principles of our mission: the defence and illustration of cinema in its entirety, of all forms of cinema unbound by allegiances to aesthetic or critical currents. Made at a time when directors such as L’Herbier, Gance, Delluc, and Epstein had greater pride of place than those showcased here, these five films nonetheless afford a varied glimpse of French filmmaking at the apogee of silent cinema. Though they may turn their back on the narrative and formal advances of the so-called “avant-garde” or the “First New Wave”, these films still display major aesthetic qualities and narrative skills, both in the fictional or documentary modes.
Representing a range of genres – comedy of manners; contemporary, literary, and religious drama; documentary essay – each of these films displays the care its makers have lavished on the treatment of lighting both in the studio and on location, and on framing and narrative rhythm. And if I had to voice preferences, I would opt for René Moreau’s delicate cinematography in Graziella or the inventive poetry of André Sauvage, to which Jean Vigo’s barge pays a vibrant homage in L’Atalante. – Béatrice de Pastre
