Vendémiaire (2023 Gaumont edition)

Louis Feuillade: Vendémiaire (FR 1918). Photo: SensCritique.

Louis Feuillade: Vendémiaire (FR 1918). Photo: IMDb.

(Vendemmiale) (FR 1919) regia/dir, scen: Louis Feuillade. photog: Léon Klausse, Maurice Champreux. mont/ed: Maurice Champreux. 

    cast: René Cresté (Pierre Bertin), Édouard Mathé (Capitano/Captain de Castelviel), Louis Leubas (Wilfrid, il tedesco evaso/the German escapee, posing as Leopold), Mary Harald (Sara, “La Caraque” [zingara/gypsy vagrant]), Mlle. Lugane (Marthe), Mlle. Fabiola (Marie), Mme. de la Croix (Madame de Castelviel), Gaston Michel (padre Larcher/old father Larcher), Manoël Camére (Fritz, il tedesco che si finge il muto /the German, posing as Urbain, a mute), [Georges] Biscot (Le Comique/the comedian), Jane Rollette [cantante/the singer], Émile André (Bernadou), André Séchan (François, husband of Louise), ? (Louise, l’altra figlia di Larcher / Larcher’s other daughter, wife of François), Olinda Mano (Zaza, figlia di Sara/Sara’s daughter), ? (Étienne, nipote di Larcher/Larcher’s grandson). 

    prod: S.E.G. – Société des Établissements L. Gaumont. dist: Comptoir Ciné Location. riprese/filmed: 9-10.1918. trade show: 11.1918. uscita/rel: 17.1.1919 (Pt. 1), 24.1.1919 (Pt. 2). copia/copy: DCP, 143'; did./titles: FRA. fonte/source: Gaumont-Pathé Archives, Saint-Ouen, Paris.

    Not released in Finland.

    Grand piano (taking turns): Gabriel Thibaudeau, John Sweeney.

    Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Il canone rivisitato/The Canon Revisited, 12 Oct 2023

François Amy de la Bretèque (GCM 2023): " The name Feuillade promptly brings to mind Fantômas and Les Vampires, key works in his prolific oeuvre (500 films) and memorably marking the birth of French serials and the creation of a modern urban myth. An almost forgotten title with a tormented history, Vendémiaire is now finding the place it deserves and provides a good opportunity to “revisit the canon”. In my opinion it is Feuillade’s finest work and one of the most beautiful French silents. "

" When he began shooting in September 1918, Louis Feuillade (born in 1873) had been Gaumont’s artistic director for a decade. He settled permanently in Nice, where Gaumont had set up studios and personnel, and where he was given free rein as his career reached its zenith. Until his death in 1925 he remained loyal to the serial — the source of his success – with all its complicated plots and multiple twists. So it is all the more remarkable that he allowed himself an interlude, leaving Nice to shoot among the vineyards of his birthplace, Lunel, near Montpellier, a final return to his roots. Vendémiaire thus has a special quality. It is also much shorter than the adjacent titles in Feuillade’s oeuvre, Tih Minh and Barrabas: here he abandoned the serial structure, producing a more uniform work that stands as a singular escape in his career. "

" However, Vendémiaire had an ill-fated start with the public. People’s minds were on entirely different things at the time of the trade show in November 1918, and when the film was released in two parts on January 17 and 24, 1919, it was still barely two months since the armistice had been signed; viewers were starting to turn away from films reminding them of the painful all-too-recent conflict. The film was a fiasco, and its failure became a curse that has lasted until the present day. The story is set during the war, behind the lines, with the action unfolding mainly in the wine region of Languedoc in the South, with other scenes in the North of France (reconstructed in the studio) narrated through inserted flashbacks. Invalided in September 1918, Sergeant Pierre Bertin is sent to the South, where workers are needed for the grape harvest. He is recruited with others by Bernadou, the manager of an estate owned by Captain de Castelviel, who was blinded in the war and lives there with his elderly mother. Among the men are two Germans on the run who have managed to get themselves hired by pretending to be two Belgian soldiers they murdered on the way there; one speaks French and the other feigns being a mute. Aiming to raise some money for passage to Spain, they steal the grape-pickers’ pay, accusing Sara, “La Caraque”, a gypsy vagrant who is raising her daughter alone after losing her husband at the Front. The truth is finally revealed during the harvest feast, with the tasting of the new wine. "

" Vendémiaire looks like a patriotic, jingoistic piece, which it certainly is (footage of the Victory Parade was added for the release of the film), but one should bear in mind that in September 1918 Germany could still have won the war; the last offensives had taken place in July. The film follows current events closely. After four years of fighting, the South, like other French rural areas, was bled dry, and Feuillade was well aware of the price the region paid for this faraway massacre. The wine spilled on the ground is the blood of his youth, and the grape harvest is a Biblical image of war. The tank where the grapes ferment represents the cauldron that brews the populace, and Gaumont explicitly advertised that “the new wine is the wine of freedom, to be drunk by new generations”. "

" There’s significant intuition in the film’s description of the postwar social upheavals in France: the sacrifice of a generation of young men, the irrevocable end of a rural world, the decline of the old aristocracy (perfectly symbolized by the name Castelviel), the role of women in replacing absent men, the rise of the middle classes, and even the intermingling of populations. "

" Vendémiaire has an obvious allegorical dimension, embodied in the very names of its characters and nourished by the culture of the Bible and Classical Antiquity. A blind man has visions, the “mute” finds his voice through drunkenness, the truth is revealed by wine (“in vino veritas”), and the existence of a “miracle infant” is revealed at the end. The two daughters of the old man, Larcher, are called Marthe and Marie, Gospel names which – combined with that of Sara, the outsider “La Caraque” (a derogatory regional term for “gypsy vagrant”) – form the trinity of the “Holy Marys” venerated in the Camargue. It should be noted that an additional lengthy subplot takes us on a detour to a neighboring town occupied by inept Germans, where Larcher’s other daughter, Louise, has a secret reunion with her soldier husband, resulting in the “miracle infant”. The children, as always so expertly filmed by Feuillade, cavort among the vine branches and stumps like little pagan gods: the film is more Dionysian than Christian. The dazzling light of the Mediterranean sky plays a revelatory role, yet deep shadows remain. It’s not as Manichean as one might think. Above all, Vendémiaire is a great poem. "

" Last but not least, one should note Feuillade’s sensitivity to light, landscape, and the physical language of workers: Vendémiaire must be the most beautiful film ever made about wine-growing, with almost ethnographic accuracy. Feuillade was a great landscapist and an attentive photographer of faces, and these combined talents make Vendémiaire a bucolic poem unlike few others in French cinema. " – François Amy de la Bretèque

AA: 

Un ciné-feuilleton in four episodes:

I Prologue

II La Vigne

III La Cuve

IV Le Vin nouveau

I see for the first time Vendémiaire, a turning-point on the magnificent career of Louis Feuillade, and the debut of Maurice Champreux, his new right-hand man and future son-in-law. The grandson Jacques Champreux pursued the Feuillade legacy to the end of his life in 2020.

Like Feuillade's most famous films, such as Fantômas, Vendémiaire is a serial, today on display in one uninterrupted screening. Instead of cinéfantastique, Feuillade, the jack of all genres, here turns to realism - the grand current of French realism being currently revitalized by André Antoine and Jacques de Baroncelli, with predecessors in the work of Léonce Perret, Georges Denola - and Feuillade himself (La Vie telle qu'elle est). The new realistic films were longform dramas on a deeper level of gravity.

A hallmark of Feuillade's thriller serials was always setting mystery plots into real locations. The combination of realism and fantasy was the secret potion of their surrealist fascination.

In Vendémiaire, Feuillade casts in main roles both René Cresté (who had played Judex) and Éduard Mathé (remembered as the investigative journalist hero Philippe Guérande who defeated Irma Vep in Les Vampires).

Vendémiaire is a celebration of the life force of the fighting France, symbolized in wine-growing themes in all episodes - the Prologue, the Vineyard, the Vat, and the New Wine. Wine is a grandiose symbol, of course also evocative of the unheard-of bloodbath of "the Great War".

The sense of landscape is personal. Feuillade is now shooting in the landscape of his childhood. He was born in Lunel, near the côtes du Rhône where the film is set. A special affection and warmth for the homeland is a distinction of Vendémiaire. Visually, the movie is rewarding, both in views of the mighty Rhône and Languedoc and in eloquent close-ups. Léon Klausse, the cinematographer of Judex and Thi Minh, shares camera credit with Maurice Champreux.

Vendémiaire is a multi-character study. In war-ravaged France, people from the North find refuge in the South. Feuillade registers the devastating fate of the refugees with epic grandeur and dignity.

His sympathy is on the side of the outcasts such as "Sara la Bohémienne", the Romani (in pejorative parlance "La Caraque"), framed as a criminal, and harassed, together with her innocent daughter, until the crime has been solved. As always, Feuillade is great with children, giving us the child's point of view.

Feuillade's heart is also on the side of Louise, the daughter of the old father Larcher, who has found refuge in the South, while Louise has remained in the occupied North,  protecting her home, waiting since three years for her husband's return from the front. Meanwhile, she has given birth to a baby, which has led to scandal and ostracism. But the best kept secret is that the baby is legitimate.

I agree with Leo Tolstoy that art is incompatible with nationalism and militarism. My conviction is that even the art of defense is incompatible with nationalism and militarism. If you must fight, keep your head cool, your powder dry and your heart warm. Hate makes you stupid and crazy. It diminishes your intelligence by 90%.

Despite its elements of grandeur, Vendémiaire is also grievously marred by militaristic hate stereotyping, starting from the nationalistic slur "boche". The anti-German hate angle is offensive even today.

Gabriel Thibaudeau and John Sweeney took turns at the grand piano. Franz Schubert's "Ständchen" ("Leise flehen meine Lieder") from Schwanengesang, D 957, becomes an ambiguous and conciliatory theme for the two Germans disguised as Belgian farmworkers.

The film has been reconstructed with loving care from partially challenging sources. It is not visually even, but the overwhelming impact is impressive.

It all ends in the celebration of new wine, the spectacle of fermentation in la cuve immense, leading to le vin de l'humanité nouvelle. John Sweeney elevated this with a glorious crescendo.