by Allan Fish
(France 1913 150m) not on DVD
Workers leaving the factory
d/w Albert Capellani novel Emile Zola ph Pierre Trimbach, Louis Forestier art Pasquier, Valle
Henry Krauss (Étienne Lantier), Mévisto (Maheu), Jean Jacquinet (Chaval), Sylvie (Catherine), Paul Escoffier (Négrel), Jeanne Cheirel (la Maheude), Cécile Guyon (Cécile Hennebeau), Marc Gérard (Bonnemort), Albert Bras (Hennebeau), Dharsay (Souvarine),
Like many early European silents, I first glimpsed Germinal courtesy of the clips shown in Kevin Brownlow’s Cinema Europe, the series commissioned to be one of the memorials to the 100th anniversary of film and the first showing of the Lumières’ Sortie de Usines Lumière. It’s been a long wait to finally get to see the full thing, so long that it’s now another centennial; that of the film’s release.
In 2013 Germinal may seem to belong to another era, not just cinematically but in terms of its setting. But Germinal caught a time and a place before it would vanish for ever and was shot on location, where little had changed in the mere 30 years since the publishing of the book and even in the 50 since it was set. One of Zola’s greatest and most challenging works, it follows Étienne Lantier (a figure who appeared in his earlier novel ‘L’Assammoir’ but not in its film adaptation Gervaise), a factory worker whose temper and good heart get him in trouble when he stands up for a fired worker and gets himself the sack. Moving on to another village, he is got a position at a coal mine, but there he sees even more injustices piled on the workers by the bosses. He urges them to take a stand and they go on strike, but when the bosses bring in the army and a group of men and their wives are shot, a stooge for the employers, Chaval, turns them against him. He becomes an outcast, until a tragedy brings the opposing factions together.
There have been other versions of Zola’s tale, a serviceable 1963 piece by Yves Allégret which was everything the nouvelle vague detested and then an admirable 1993 film which nonetheless turned the focus to the unfortunate Maheu family headed by Gérard Depardieu and the superb Miou-Miou. Capellani spent a comparative fortune on the piece, buoyed by the success of his Les Misérables in 1911. Hugo’s epic would have even greater adaptations to come in 1925 and 1934, but Zola seemed so much more relevant than Hugo in 1913. While perhaps playing to the gallery a little bit, Henry Krauss – who had been Capellani’s Valjean and would later play the Bishop of Digne in Bernard’s version just before his death – is excellent as Lantier. Look out, too, for a remarkably young (29 at the time) Sylvie, that eternally old bird, as Catherine and applaud old Marc Gérard as Bonnemort, a tired old man in the Armand Bour and Severin-Mars mould.
As always with Zola, there’s a ‘J’Accuse’ barely under the surface, but it’s not merely the obvious one attacking the intransigent greed of the bosses and plight of the workers, it’s the very essence of France losing its very soul. Capellani is at pains to show the orders to bring in the police and then the army bear the stamp of the Republic, and a sense of forgetting what the Revolution stood for, the loss of not just liberté but égalité and fraternité as well. There’s an attempt at optimism at the end, as there would be in the similar later takes on the subject on film Kameradschaft and The Stars Look Down, but it’s in hope not expectation. Germinal takes place in a world devoid of soul, where its populace are a mere means to an end; in this case, to line the pockets of the rich. Then look at the extras used in the crowd scenes in the community, all looking at the camera as if it was as alien to them as to natives untouched by civilisation. This was a corner of France where Nickelodeons weren’t to be found, where there was no time for such frivolities and the only escape was death or alcohol. You can say their looking at the camera takes away a sense of authenticity, but think again. Watch the troops march in, think how many of them would soon be in uniform for real and how the French populace would be called upon to bleed in the earth again, at the Marne and Verdun. Capellani would never come close to matching its power, but there would be others; l’Herbier, Bernard…and Gance.
