Despite foreign competition, industry disunity, lack of capital, government indifference, and limited technical resources, the French industry produced a variety of films. In most countries, serials declined in prestige during the late teens, but in France, they remained among the most lucrative films well into the 1920s. Big firms like Pathe and Gaumont found that a high-budget costume drama or literary adaptation could make a profit only when shown in several parts. Because moviegoers regularly attended their local theater, they were willing to return for all the episodes.
4.1 Some scenes in L’Agonie des aigles (“The Agony of the Eagles," 1921), a Pathe film about Napoleon, were shot on location outside
Fontainebleau.
Some French serials of the postwar era followed the established pattern, with cliffhanger endings, master criminals, and exotic locales, as in Louis Feuillade’s Tih-Minh (1919). But social pressures against the glorification of crime and perhaps also a sense that the formula was becoming stale led to changes. Feuillade, whose films were now virtually Gaumont’s sole output, turned to serials based on popular sentimental novels with Les Deux gamines (“The Two Kids,” 1921) and continued in this vein until his death in 1925. Diamant-Berger’s epic adaptation of The Three Musketeers was among the decade’s most successful films. Henri Fescourt directed Mandrin (1924), whose twelve episodes continued the traditions of kidnaps, disguises, and rescues—but presented them as swashbuckling feats in an eighteenth-century setting.
Whether made in serial format or not, many prestigious and expensive productions were historical epics. In many cases film companies economized by using French monuments as settings (4.1). Such films were often intended for export. The Miracle of the Wolves (1924, Raymond Bernard) was the most lavish French historical film yet made; while its interiors used sets, many scenes were shot in the medieval town of Carcas-sone. The film’s producer, the Societe des Films His-toriques, gave it a gala New York run, but, as often happened with such attempts, no American distributor purchased The Miracle of the Wolves.
A modest genre was the fantasy film, and its most prominent practitioner was Rene Clair. His first film, Paris qui dort (“Sleeping Paris,” aka The Crazy Ray, 1924), was a comic story of a mysterious ray that paralyzes Paris. Clair used freeze-frame techniques and unmoving actors to create the sense of an immobile city. Several characters flying above the city escape the ray and proceed to live luxuriously by looting whatever they want; soon they track down the source of the problem and set things moving again. In Clair’s Le Voyage imagi-naire (“The Imaginary Journey,” 1926), the hero dreams that he is transported by a witch to a fairyland, created with fancifully painted sets (4.2). Such fantasies revived
4.2, left Among the supernatural events in Le Voyage imaginaire is a scene in which a waxworks museum comes to life—including figures of Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan as they appeared in Chaplin’s 1921 film The Kid.
4.3, right Max Linder’s comic feature Le Petit cafe combines intertitles with live action.
A popular tradition of the early cinema in France, drawing upon camera tricks and stylized sets somewhat as Georges Melies and Gaston Velie had done.
Comedies continued to be popular after the war. Max Linder, who had been lured briefly to Hollywood, returned to make comedies in France, including one of the earliest comic features, Le Petit cafe (1919, Raymond Bernard). Linder played a waiter who inherits a large sum of money but must go on working to fulfill his contract; comic scenes follow as he tries to get himself fired. The film’s witty touches (4.3) made it a surprise hit and helped give the comic genre more respectability in France. Other important comedies were made by Clair, whose The Italian Straw Hat (1928) brought him an international fame that would grow in the sound era.
World History
