Louis Delluc, Fièvre (1921) La femme de nulle part (1922)

[Smeraldina Rima]

This is a long post about Louis Delluc, a film critic who started making films in 1920 and died in 1924 when he was 33 after catching pneumonia while making L'inondation. In 1918, he married a Belgian actress named Ève Francis, who stars in these two films: as the bartender, Sarah Topinelli, and as the woman from nowhere. Both films are about the return of past love. Spoiler warning.

Fièvre (1921)



With the harbour bar setting, Delluc transformed the western saloon bar into a bar atmosphere that became familiar in later French films. I read that he took the high angle view of the bar from his love of Thomas Ince's westerns, but I couldn't easily find any stills of saloon bars in films from the 1910s that gave a similar looking clear view of the whole room. I skimmed through one film called Hell's Hinges with William S. Hart, who looks like Frankie Howerd, but there weren't very similar shots of the bar. Would be interested if western fans can point me in the right direction. I could see more similar looking shots in later westerns from the 1950s.

The plot is based on Delluc's own short story called "Tulip's Bar" and the film was initially called "La Boue". This is the set up of the room where most of the action takes place. 'The drunk' is on his own and the card-players include 'the man in the hat', 'topinelli' and 'the minor official'.



Topinelli (Gaston Modot) is the landlord, while his wife Sarah (Ève Francis) works behind the bar. She had been in love with the sailor, Militis, (Edmond van Daële) but gave up on him returning and married Topinelli instead. Militis learned about this in East Asia and married the woman described as 'the Oriental' (Elena Sagrary) who had looked after him through illness. On the day the film is set, the sailors return to the harbour bar and Sarah and Militis realise that they've been reunited along with their current partners, the sailors, the women of the town and the regulars at the bar. Van Daële is a bit of a prototype for Jean Gabin who stars in some of the later French films with similar bar settings.
 
The main thing to adapt to is the background being as important as the foreground in shots with the extras dancing and drinking and for picking up the details of the plot.


Militis and Sarah are in the foreground here. The minor official is wandering around between people having had his advances spurned by Sarah in an early scene where he left the card table.


Militis is looking possesively or protectively to his wife who is getting harassed by the man in the hat out of shot, while Sarah is lost in love and the minor official is looking over jealousy. The shot sums up the zigzagging desire in the film.

The minor official persuades the landlord, Topinelli, to fight the returning lover, Militis, and then joins in with a cheap shot. Watching this scene, I had thought the official had stabbed Militis with a knife - he makes a lunging attack after lurking for a while laughing at Militis - but I then read that he smashes Militis over the head with a bottle, which makes more sense. Topinelli then stands on his neck to kill him.




I was surprised by his grimacing laughter and the lunge with his trousers riding up. While this is going on, Militis's wife is surrounded at the other end of the bar. This photograph from the set captures the moment from another angle and gives a good impression of the impressive coordination of all the actors:



Sarah is aggressive towards Militis's wife too which I found a bit confusing, not having the sense of defending honour of the men. Would the audience have seen this as unsympathetic behaviour from a main character (since Militis's wife hasn't wronged Sarah and as far as I can see there's no reason for Sarah to think she has)? With minor characters attacking Militis's wife in a group, I assumed that the viewer at the time was supposed to have a critical view of a sort of racist bullying albeit in a film using racist stereotypes - or at least a sympathetic view of the isolated woman in a foreign bar - but with Sarah's attack on her I was wondering if it could have been viewed differently (and if so, whether that depended on Militis's wife being 'the Oriental' rather than just the other woman). There's another confusing part where I thought we were supposed to be looking at things in the bar from Militis's wife's perspective on the floor, while 'the drunk' (not to be confused with 'the man in the hat' who harasses her) stares into the camera, but the shot of the whole room before that shows her looking in the opposite direction, so I wasn't sure what to make of the sequence.




One Mubi review said this:

Through a series of shot-reverse-shots, Delluc teases with the inclination that eyelines and formalist completion between close-ups will convey connection beyond surface, only to sever and divorce such emotional weight.

Is that what's going on there? I think I only half understand that, finding it difficult to pick out the right scenes where it's relevant.

There are two other moments where Sarah and Militis look into the camera - maybe I'm making too much of this but it seems like there's something sort of implication that they are trapped in their suffering and trapped in the film looking at the viewer:




In the scene pictured above the blue tint colours the flashback to Militis's fever. I liked one use of tinting with the same colour, less for symbolic colouring and more for a hypernatural cool effect at the end of the day at the harbour.



At the beginning, the harbour is tinted green and the establishing shots have a documentary look in contrast with the melodramatic action in the bar:



The flashback to the wedding is red, which I assumed was a cultural/racial colour association but wasn't sure where that assumption comes from exactly and couldn't think of any non-diverting ways to look it up:



The flashback to the pasionate relationship between Militis and Sarah is purple, which didn't seem right to me, but is red too strong for this?



The online reviews that I read afterwards were much less appreciative than reviews from when the film came out. There are a few obvious explanations for this. Some reviews highlighted the racist stereotypes as an obstacle for a contemporary viewer and some criticised melodramatic acting. Most people now wouldn't be impressed by hundred year old innovations in deep focus or simultaneous action or have the same interest in the character of the bar from 100 years ago.

A new print was made from the 1963 copy in 2008, with the original intertitles reintroduced from the nitrate which was used as a reference point for the tinting. A lot of people - including some after 2008 - seem to have watched it without the intertitles (which would make it difficult to follow) and tinting (which would make it less enjoyable). Some people seemed not to know who attacked Militis and who attacked 'the Oriental'. One blog accuses the drunk who stays in the corner for most of the film. Someone on Mubi who had watched the restored version complained about a 'restored print that includes an omnipresent and unbearable score with a tireless accordion' which must be the one from this free version (without English subtitles): https://www.cinematheque.fr/henri/film/48026-fievre-louis-delluc-1921/

The version I watched on Mubi had no music. I think it would originally have been screened without music. I didn't want to watch it without music, so I chose some Ravel solo piano, trying to find some sympathy in French impressionism, and that worked out well. It was surprising how easily the music and action seemed matched in moments not just vibe. Made me want to experiment with different music for other silent films.


La femme de nulle part (1922)

A fifty year old woman returns to the place where she lived twenty years before, to rekindle happier memories. She meets a young woman, the daughter of the current owners of the property, who is on the point of abandoning her home – just as she did, all those years ago...

When the husband goes away, the woman from nowhere advises the younger woman against leaving her family, explaining how it had been bad news for her years ago, but during the course of her stay the memories of her love come flooding back and change her mind. This place is called the lane of memories:




I'll have to paraphrase her epiphany from my memory: 'What is sorrow compared with one moment of infinite love?'; 'Embracing joy is the only human law'. Things like that. While the husband 'who couldn't make himself loved' is still on his trip away from home, the woman from nowhere tells the younger woman to take the opportunity to run away with her lover who had told her at their last meeting that if she doesn't meet him at the agreed time to run away together he would kill himself.

The younger woman packs her bags and leaves but on her way out her child runs out after her and falls over. She turns around, goes back to comfort the child and decides she can't leave. The husband then returns and realises what was happening and it's a bit like Brief Encounter but less about keeping an intense love in her heart through a loveless marriage and more about the love for her child. The young lover gets tired of waiting and drives off. For some reason I enjoyed him jumping into the car and what seemed like a cut before the car could drive off to make it quicker action. Seeing the young woman change her mind and choose her family, the woman from nowhere is a bit disappointed and is brought back to thinking about her own decision and the world that she once gave up. Before leaving she looks at the child and rolls her eyes, a bit in sickness, and also a bit cigs. This is similar to the bathetic ending of Fièvre, where Militis's wife realises that she's been attracted to an artificial flower in the bar. It also made me think of the indifferent or impassive endings of the first films of the French new wave (Breathless and Shoot the Pianist I mean). I suppose there are further parallels with Delluc having been a critic and drawn from American films.






An average of 6.1 and 6.3 on Mubi and imdb, respectively, for Fièvre; 7 and 6.5 for La femme de nulle part. I thought the first one was still brilliant in a few ways and Ève Francis is captivating in La femme de nulle part where she was only in her mid-thirties playing fifty. From here, I'm keen to watch the subsequent French films developing the atmosphere of the bar, or the deep focus used by Renoir. And to watch more films from this period including the German Kammerspielfilm Hintertreppe and more of the French films that use tinting: French impressionist films 1918-1929

[Johnny Foreigner]

Interesting. Never heard of Ève Francis, but then, I am not a French speaker. The fact that she has no Wikipedia entry in Dutch is telling enough.

[Crenners]

The thread is unarguably too good for this subforum. I don't know anything about Delluc but I'll investigate on the back of this.

[Lost Oliver]

Wonderful post. Will watch.

[sevendaughters]

Incredible post. I take it you're some kind of film academic, Smeldo?

[Smeraldina Rima]

Thanks for the kind words. sd: No, but since discovering zlibrary I find film writing more easily. There was a long essay on Delluc that discussed the harbour bar between westerns and the later French films. Here are some pictures of the actors from Fièvre that I didn't bother putting in the first post.

Gaston Modot was painted by Modigliani and sketched as Topinelli in a magazine review:


A sketch of Léonid Walter de Malte as 'the Drunk':


George Footit who plays 'the man in the hat' was a clown: