La Terre
(1921 Silent)
Picture:
C Sound: B- Extras: D Film: B
Andre
Antoine, also simply known as the famous stage producer Antoine, had made
several films for the Pathé Studios, but many were considered lost for
good. His 1921 film of Emile Zola’s La Terre was rediscovered back in 1991
and reissued with a new soundtrack, though the film is still not the completed
version known to have existed form its original release.
The idea
from both Zola and Antoine were to go into a new direction of “Naturalism” that
was somewhat tainted by what became a sort of formula of that and may even be a
criticism of Capitalism (or Feudalism). Like
Erich von Stroheim’s Greed (1925,
which also happens to have its full-length version lost likely forever), pettiness,
wealth, and loss of humanity destroy a family.
It is likely that this film influenced Stroheim, though he definitely
took off into a grand direction even beyond the epics that D.W. Griffith and
the Italian-produced super-productions of the 1920s offered.
Fouan
(Armand Bour) owns and runs the land of his entire family, but his sons are
ready to take the land and kill the father.
This is threatened when Francoise (Germaine Rouer) discovers the plot, but
her involvement is twisted by the fact that she is a neighbor with her own
land. The temptation to stop them is
challenged by a perverse self-preservation that just makes things more
complicated.
It is
amazing how watchable this film is 83 years later. Fritz Lang was not a big fan of tinting the frame,
and I tend to think it is a distraction and an excuse to cover up for problems,
but it makes sense here in connection to the events. This rarely works for me, but this is an
exception.
The full
frame image offers some moments of depth, but the black and white can sometimes
look like a paper print, which is typical for a film from this time
period. Rene Guichard and Rene Gaveau
shared the camerawork chores on the film, which does a groundbreaking job of
capturing the land and people around them.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo offers good Pro Logic surrounds, offering
Adrian Johnston’s score and no sound effects enhancements. The only extras include a stills gallery and
DVD-ROM only text interview with co-star Germaine Rouer in an Adobe Acrobat
document set up like a press release.
Silent
films still have the stereotype of being boring or “old”, but La Terre is lively and like the best
silent films, always offers something interesting to watch. The music score is good, but I wish it even
had a more acoustic sound and feel to it.
Sometimes, certain scenes do not work or are unintentionally funny,
while the father beating his daughter with a stick seems to play into a
negative attitude towards women on film even then. Either way, this is an early important
landmark in French Cinema that tried to do more than reproduce the Impressionism
the country had become world famous for.
This was also 12 years ahead of Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante (reviewed elsewhere on this site) and can go a few
rounds with that classic. Some will try
to write it off as a Socialist/Communist parable, but La Terre is never that condescending. Now that this version has been unearthed,
even if it is not the full-length cut, it can now take its place among the
silent classics of world cinema and give us a new perspective of the
development of French filmmaking.
- Nicholas Sheffo
