Pêcheur d'Islande / The Iceland Fisherman

Jacques de Baroncelli: Pêcheur d'Islande / The Iceland Fisherman (FR 1924).

FR 1924. regia/dir: Jacques de Baroncelli. asst. dir: Abel Sovet, Jean Wells. scen/adapt: Jacques de Baroncelli, dal romanzo di/from the novel by Pierre Loti (1886). photog: Louis Chaix, asst. Henri Chomette. scg/des: Dumesnil Frères [Gaston Dumesnil, Robert Dumesnil].
    cast: Charles Vanel (Yann), Sandra Milowanoff (Gaud), Roger San Juana (Sylvestre), Mme. Boyer (la nonna/Grandmother), Claire Darcas (La Gommeuse), Jean Wells (Yvonneck), Thomy Bourdelle, Felix Mounet, Raoul Lagneau.
    prod: Les Films Baroncelli. dist: Films Radia. copia/copy: DCP, 93' (da/from 35 mm, 2086 m, 20 fps); did./titles: FRA. fonte/source: Lobster Films, Paris.

    Unreleased in Finland.

    Pierre Loti's novel was translated into Finnish as Islannin kalastajat, transl. O. Relander, Otava 1890.

    Musical interpretation: Gabriel Thibaudeau, Frank Bockius.

    Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Pierre Loti, 10 Oct 2023.

Kevin Brownlow (GCM 2023): " In 1924, when the film was released, this paragraph was printed on a poster (now preserved at the Cinémathèque française): “The cinema owed it to itself to adapt to the screen this masterpiece of the great French author, a work both beautiful and grandiose and yet full of simplicity. It is with faithfulness and sincerity that the well-known French director Jacques de Baroncelli has filmed Pêcheur d’Islande, a novel full of suggestions from which come this poignant, melancholy melodrama, this affirmation of crushing fatalism which brings to the scale of the elements our humble and proud humanity. Pêcheur d’Islande is a cinematic work of quality worthy of the novel that inspired it. It is one of those excellent productions that ennoble the cinema.” "

" I vividly remember the moment I found a Pathé-Baby home-movie copy of this film. I used to spend Saturday mornings patrolling the streets of London looking for 9.5 mm films. This was in 1953: Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear was showing at my local cinema, television was coming in, and people were disposing of their pre-war home movies. At a photographic shop near Paddington Station, the assistant offered me a film I’d never heard of – Fishers of the Isle. I took a risk and paid 12/6 (65 pence) for it. The film turned out to be a sensitively handled drama of a doomed love affair, set among fisher-folk in Brittany. It was superbly photographed, absolutely authentic, and the sort of film no one made any more. "

" Novelist Pierre Loti’s portrayals of life in his native Brittany had always fascinated Baroncelli. Sadly, the great writer died the year before this film was completed. Published in 1886, Pêcheur d’Islande was Loti’s seventh book, and the story that established his fame as a novelist. He had been a sailor in the French navy when he wrote it. "

" Baroncelli’s reverence for Loti’s story does not result in a stodgy, literary film. It is at its best in the village streets, and in the little harbour. Memorable images include Gaud waiting on the clifftop by the memorial; the cemetery with the names of the boats and the men who never returned from fishing near Iceland; and the grandmother sewing outside the cottage. The handful of studio scenes are all the more intrusive among scenes of such naturalism. The camerawork by Louis Chaix is of such a high order and Baroncelli has chosen his cast with such fidelity that each close-up carries emotional impact. Mixing actors with what film-makers call “real people” can often be a dangerous practice, but Baroncelli’s casting is flawless. The mother has a face from a Dürer engraving. "

" Historians Maurice Bardèche and Robert Brasillach caught the film’s atmosphere: “It was in Pêcheur d’Islande that Baroncelli came into his own. Graceful Sandra Milowanoff as Gaud, the cloudy skies, the young woman walking in the cemetery of the drowned sailors with its crosses that mark no graves, the sense of the sea and of death which it evoked, all combined to lend this film a quite remarkable sureness and power.” (The History of Motion Pictures, 1938, ed./trans. Iris Barry, p. l55) The film was shot at Paimpol and Ploubazlanec in northern Brittany, and the sailing ship Marie became a floating studio – and a temporary hospital for those film people suffering from seasickness. The local people volunteered as extras to immortalize the story of what they considered to be their book. The scenes of combat and the shooting of Sylvestre take place in Indo-China (later Vietnam), identified as Tonkin. An obvious model of the Marie appears twice and is a black mark against the film. There is a wonderful moment when the fishing vessel encounters a ghost ship and the crew receive news from home. We learn of its mysterious origins when a title tells us “The Reine-Berthe, lost at sea last month.” "

" Charles Vanel as Yann is asked when he will marry. “One of these days I’ll get married but not with any village girls. It’s the sea that I shall wed and I’ll invite you all…” Vanel (1892-1989) was a stalwart of the French cinema – he played the truck driver in The Wages of Fear (1953) and was still acting as late as 1980. Sandra Milowanoff, a former ballerina with the Pavlova troupe, was one of thousands of Russian émigrés in France; her resemblance to Lillian Gish ensured her roles in Henri Fescourt’s Les Misérables (1925), in which she played Fantine, and Baroncelli’s La Légende de soeur Béatrix (1923), inspired by Max Reinhardt’s stage spectacle The Miracle, based on the play by Karl Vollmöller. I don’t see how this delicate story could be better depicted – except for one scene, which was usually done so well on the screen – the storm. This is a scene I wish someone would retake, along with the egregious model shot which bears not the slightest resemblance to the real fishing vessel. "

" Baroncelli’s full name was Marquis Jacques de Baroncelli-Javon, and he began his career as a journalist – like René Clair, a pupil of his. (Clair’s brother Henri Chomette was an assistant cameraman on this picture.) When Baroncelli went to the cinema for the first time, he was overpowered by the new medium: “I was conquered, upset, hypnotized,” he wrote. “I had discovered a new world to which I must dedicate my whole life.” His first film was a 2-reeler about the war called La Maison de l’espoir, made in 1915. Pêcheur d’Islande was his 44th film. Altogether, he made 81. “I loved the cinema very much,” said Baroncelli. “I could never pass a studio or prevent myself from devouring celluloid. I have filmed too much, I have had to refuse too often… No film of mine will ever be remembered.” " – Kevin Brownlow

AA: Pierre Loti had just died (in 1923) when this contender for the best film adaptation of his work was made.

Pêcheur d'Islande is both unique and representative of a classic type of a tragic sea narrative, familiar also in Finland's "storm cliff bride" cycles from the Åland archipelago, including Katrina (filmed in Sweden) and Stormskärs Maja, the most recent film adaptation forthcoming in January 2024.

At the 2023 Giornate we are seeing three of them, all from France. Besides Pêcheur d'Islande, also La divine croisière and Vent debout.

In his program note copied above, Kevin Brownlow catches the distinction of Pêcheur d'Islande so perfectly that it is hard to add anything but that the experience of the actual experience of the film fully confirms everything he says.

Pêcheur d'Islande emerges from the great tradition of French realism and finds a place of honour particularly among accounts of Brittany, including Jean Grémillon's Gardiens de phare and the maritime work of Jean Epstein.

Wedding scenes can be special in the cinema. Pêcheur d'Islande stands out with the tact and the tenderness of its account of the wedding night and the relationship between Yann (Charles Vanel) and Gaud (Sandra Milowanoff ).

Much is left unsaid. Yann had declared that he is not going to wed any of the village girls. He was going to get married with the sea.

One of the implications is that he is bound to die in the embrace of the sea. I remember having read recently that professional fishing in the ocean is still the most dangerous peacetime profession.

Another implication is that of a love that dare not speak its name, one that Yann cannot even admit to himself. The quandary might be so agonizing that the only solution might be a heroic death.

Aesthetically Pêcheur d'Islande is both refined and powerful. Jean de Baroncelli's approach to composition is dynamic and engrossing. The sense of the landscape is expressive, the portrait shots of all characters, down to bit parts, are vivid. There is no clash between professional actors and "real people". The storms and the swells of the ocean exist as a mighty, all-encompassing power field. Superimpositions take us to dimensions of time and memory. Passages of cod processing contribute to a documentary impact. Wild dances and the grand wedding banquet express the life force of the community.

The visual quality of the restoration is beautiful. In this screening, I failed to connect with the musical interpretation.