Some notes on Visages d’enfants (J Feyder, 1925)
I couldn't think of a better title than this for this. Where do I start? If you’ve not seen it then I’d urge you to watch this. A silent film, so it might not be to everyone’s liking, but it’s probably not at all what you’d expect a silent film from this period to be like. Again, I owe a debt of thanks to my good friends Dr Lisa Purse and Doug Pye for encouraging me to write about this film. I’d raved about it for a long time, but Lisa and Doug gave me the kick up the arse I needed to write something about it. I'm afraid none of this is very succinct or eloquent.
Made in 1925, I suppose generically, you’d call it a melodrama. Given the date of production you’d be forgiven for thinking it could be cloy and sentimental and straight out of the mould that Griffith inhabited so easily, but it’s not. Feyder’s visual flare and the remarkable performances he teases from the child actors elevate this way above the usual melodramatic fare.
I won’t offer up a plot summary, you can find that easily enough for yourself and I don’t really have a coherent, well worked out argument about the film, this is more of a shopping list of why I love it. Think of this as a series of notes rather than a beautifully constructed argument. It's an artificial and rather inelegant way to appreciate a film, but it's the best that I can do.
Performance and visual strategies
As the title of the film implies this is a story about faces, it's a film about performances and conforming, but it's not just faces of the present that captivate us, this is a film about trauma, grief and memory. This is heartbreakingly apparent in the central thrust of the narrative a young boy loses his mother early in the film and is barely able to comprehend the confusion and frustration he feels when his father makes the decision to marry again. He finds comfort in items such as one of his late mothers old dresses and, most hauntingly the photograph of his mother which he turns to in times of distress. This photograph is also effectively used to subjectively highlight Jan's own mental state, this is powerfully illustrated when, in a fit of guilt, he turns to his mother's portrait for consolation, but the image is misty and unclear and the face of his beloved mother can no longer be seen through the fog that has now replaced her.
This is shaky critical ground, but what’s immediately striking about this film is the incredibly restrained, unfettered and unaffected nature of the performances. This is in no way a lazy value judgment on the modes of performance in silent film. One of the things I love about films of the 20s is that often-strange sort of middle ground the performances inhabit which is somewhere between what I suppose could carelessly be defined as Naturalism and a more stylized and emphatic range of gestures such as those found in Diderot’s excellent book ‘The Paradox of Acting’.
In 1773 French writer and philosopher Denis Diderot (pictured) published ‘The Paradox of Acting’,
in it he argued that rather than an actor immersing themselves within the emotions and feelings of the character they were playing (as would be expected in a process such as method acting) the actor should instead become skilled in communicating that emotion to the audience through gesture. It’s a mode of performance which relies on what Helen Klumph describes as ”the mechanics of emotion”, it’s a mode of performance that requires precise control of the body and a mastery of body language. Rather than immersion into emotion, Diderot’s approach demands that the actor be dispassionate. What’s important is not that actor’s ability to experience the emotions they are displaying, it’s their ability to control their body and gestures with a precision that will guide and inform the response of the audience. It’s a style of performance that relies on a series of heavily codified gestures.
As Maltby and Craven discuss in ‘Hollywood Cinema’, Diderot’s approach to acting proved highly influential and in the nineteenth century it led to a proliferation of instructional manuals and books for actors which would. The books would feature appropriate rhetorical poses, designed to communicate a particular emotion which the actor could mimic and learn, the emphasis was on the external elements of performance, not complex character psychology. This was acting as a semiotic activity. It's unsurprising that silent cinema (which of course was heavily influenced by theatre) drew significantly on this mode of performance. Even though one could make a case for the increasingly subdued nature of performance going into the 1920s, we can still detect an impulse towards tableaux and Diderot’s well ordered, stylized gestures and poses, particularly in moments of high emotion and drama.
What's exceptional about the film and Feyder's skill as a director, are the remarkably unaffected performances he elicits from his actors, particularly those of his child actors (Jean Forest, as Jean, delivers a stunning performance). They're remarkably restrained, nuanced and sensitive and this is nowhere more apparent in the film's highly emotionally charged opening. Inevitably, this discussion will bled over into other areas. (dividing elements into rigid categories is always a tricky business when so many elements are in play simultaneously)
The film begins with a series of establishing shots and title cards which establish the village of Saint-Luc
in its spectacular, fecund surroundings and the vital, turbulent force of nature.(the waterfall emerges as a potent motif of this in the film and, without revealing too much, it has a key role to play in the story) We're also given the dramatic context; the funeral of Jean's mother. There's a distinct shift in tone from the bright sunny vistas and rapid, hurrying villagers,
to the still and sombre events that await in the house of Gone are the wide open spaces and vistas, gone is that dynamic flow of movement in the waterfall and the people, instead we're confronted with something more fixed, permanent and oppressive. The space is skilfully closed down by the composition and the high contrast lighting. The little congregation are loosely arranged in a circle and the only significant area of empty space is reserved for the imminent arrival of the coffin.
The interior is defined by stillness, but the inertia and the body language should not be equated with the heavily codified gestures prevalent in some silent cinema of the period. This is a portrait of agonized restraint in the face of overwhelming grief. Following the painterly composition of the opening shot, the subsequent medium shots systematically dissect the space and the slow and orderly nature of the process, all the physical exuberance of the exterior shots has evaporated. Following the medium shots of the old gentleman and the choir, we cut to a medium/ long shot of Jean and Pierre (his father), the agonizing trauma of the moment is etched on their faces.
Although they're standing next to one another, father and son are lost in their own grief, Pierre makes no effort to console his distressed son, already suggesting that a distance of some kind may exists between them. Father and son are united in trauma, their barely repressed grief is channelled into agitated, restless movements both make with hands, Pierre energetically claws at a handkerchief in his fist, while Jan steadily massages his flat cap which is clenched in his hands. Their expressions are set in a mask-like grimace, their eyes fixed on the spot soon to be occupied by the coffin. It's a fleeting moment, but it effectively sketches in the economy of the performances beautifully and highlights Feyder's skillful direction and careful control of composition.
The subsequent shot, which isolates Jean, places the camera almost at his level, a subtle making of the iris focuses our attention of the intensity of his grief, it also expressively suggests his sense of isolation. Jean raises his eyes, looking off screen left.
The next cut is a significant one as the position and height of the camera suggests that the shot of the floor and the frame allocated for the coffin is shown to us from Jean's point of view. Cutting back to Jean reinforces this conclusion as do the subsequent patterns in the editing and the position of the camera. This sequence of shots represent a significant moment in the film, anchoring us spatially to Jean and his subjective experience of this awful moment. His subjective experience of this event will, as we'll see, become a fundamental strategy in the film.
Composition, landscape and editing
Feyder employs a variety of strategies suggesting a number of possible influences on the film. As one would expect the film employs the conventions of the continuity system, which were well established by 1925. The opening, which I've already briefly discussed is a good example of this, a wide shot establishes a location, and subsequent shots move closer to particular elements (such as the waterfall), before we're shown the house in a medium wide shot. The cut to the inside of the house reintroduces another wide shot of the space, before it too is dissected with an axis cut to Jan and his father. As one would expect from a film of 1925, the flow of the editing is smooth, creating the illusion of continuous time and action.
However, there are clearly other impulses at work in Feyder's choices. Of particular note is the aftermath of the funeral, where Jean, accompanied by his father, stands by the grave of his mother. As Jean stares down at his mother's grave Feyder rapidly cuts a series of associative images that are clearly designed to express the trauma and confusion Jean is feeling, but unable to express. His psychological turmoil is expressed to us in this rapid montage of apparently unconnected images. Editing is deployed to express a state of mind, rather than simply delineate and dissect space.
It's difficult to be certain, but it seems highly probable that Feyder was influenced by the experiments in editing conducted by Soviet filmmakers, such Kuleshov, Eisenstein and Vertov, there was also a very strong community of Russian filmmakers in France in the post revolutionary years, many having fled from their homeland as political undesirables.
In order to examine potential meanings, careful attention needs to be paid to the choice and order of images Feyder uses in this rapidly edited, associative sequence . It's important to stress here that these images are less than a second in length and the majority are not actually straight cuts but rapid cross-fades, and, or multiple exposures. The sequence is composed of 13 shots and last for just over two seconds of screen time - that's how rapid the editing is!
The frames below are a shot by shot breakdown of the brief, but arresting sequence. They set out not just the cause of Jean's breakdown, but offer compelling insights and possibilities regarding memory, sensory experience, religion and the presence of the divine within nature.
The wide shot (1) establishes Jean and his father looking into the open grave, their evident distress is met with a relentless indifference by the gravedigger who, apparently oblivious of their presence and obvious distress, sets about his task of filling in the plot before they have left. It's a cruel touch. Lost in his own grief, Jean's father turns and begins to walk away from his son, back down the path. As if suddenly struck by the memory of his son's presence he hesitantly returns, no words are exchanged between them, Pierre can't find any, this isn't a moment for words. He tentatively and awkwardly reaches out towards Jan, it's not clear if this is a clumsy effort to try to console his son, or a nudge to persuade him to leave the graveside.
This effort at contact seems to motivate the first cut to the medium close-up of Jean (frame 2), it also seems to provoke the eruption of Jean's explosive traumatic episode as he begins to sway and clutches his head, perhaps signalling that what we're about to witness is subjective experience. The key image that holds the sequence together is that of the coffin being lowered into the open grave. It's repeated three times in the sequence and each time we see it lowered into its resting place. The repetition suggest it's a moment of profound significance and trauma. The elongated shadow of the cross, falling towards us across the earth is shown in shot 4 of the sequence. Unlike the shots of the coffin, which we can locate as being in the recent past, it's difficult to temporally pin down the shots of the cross, but the juxtaposition of the coffin and the cross highlight some careful choices surrounding composition. The shadow of the cross falls across the same middle portion of the frame as the cross and the camera appears to be at a similar height, angle and distance to the ground in both shots creating a visual link between the two. The lack of information in shot 4 makes it difficult to assert with certainty that the spot we're looking at is newly filled in plot from shot 3, and there's no evidence of cross at the head of the grave in shot 1. However the juxtaposition still invites to associate the two. The dark, inverted, elongated cross stretching out words us with an oppressive and crushing finality, it imprints itself upon the earth, for all its Christian associations and connotations, there's no possibility of resurrection here.
However it would be too simplistic to argue that the sequence only invites us to see the symbol of the cross as something oppressive. As the sequence develops, and with the benefit of close analysis, we're invited to revise some of our initial conclusions. The graphic similarities between shots 9 and 11 encourages us to make a connection between religion and nature and this is developed and repeated throughout the film. Feyder's film suggests that the Divine is to be found not in empty man made rituals and gestures, but in the overwhelming beauty and terrifying power of nature and landscape in particular. This desire to suggest the presence of the mystical within the natural world was a particularly common theme in Scandinavian cinema of the period, notably in the work of Victor Sjöström. (see The Outlaw and his Wife 1918),
The sequence ends with a return to the original set-up of the first shot, overcome with emotion Jean faints into the arms of his father, the indifferent gravedigger doesn't even glance up, or break the rhythm of his strokes - a cruel detail indeed.
The association between nature and the Divine has a longstanding tradition in painting and is perhaps nowhere more stridently evident than in the work of the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich. A number of Friedrich's works employ precisely the same sort of graphic matches between man made objects or worship and places of adoration and naturally occurring shapes or forms. Perhaps the most striking (and famous) example of this characteristic of Frierich's is his contemplative, Winter Landscape with Church (1811).
In this painting Friedrich brings together faith and nature in the images of the church in the distance, and the tree, set amongst a snowy, misty landscape. The forms of the trees and the church echo one another, suggesting a deep connection between them. But it’s not just a landscape, there is also a story here; once we spot the two crutches in the foreground, on the right of the painting, our eyes are led to a solitary figure praying below the cross. The figure prays not in the church, but amongst the trees, amongst nature. Feyder, like Freidrich, is interested in conveying the inherent spirituality of nature, through the experience of a human being.
I've not really done the film, or why I love it justice here, but it is an extraordinary piece of work and my clumsy enthusiasm has only scratched the surface of it's remarkable qualities. I can't claim to have done any sort of exhaustive analysis of stylistic trends in French cinema of 1925, and this post is highly informal, but for me Feyder's film glitters like a little gem of beautifully executed brilliance.
