Carmen (1926)
Directed by Jacques Feyder

Film Review

Such was the impact made by his early films L'Atlantide (1921),  Crainquebille (1922) and Visages d'enfants (1925) that Jacques Feyder was considered one of the foremost film directors in France by the mid-1920s.  His success made him an easy recruit to Albatros Films, a prestigious film production company that had a reputation for quality that was virtually unrivalled in France.  Based in Paris, Albatros was managed and staffed by Russians living in exile after the 1917 revolution, and was a magnet for talented film directors of the period - Jean Epstein, Marcel L'Herbier and René Clair all lent theur talents to the company for a time.  Carmen was the second and most ambitious of the three films that Feyder made for Albatros, the other two being Gribiche (1926) and Les Nouveaux messieurs (1929).

For his grand adaptation of Prosper Mérimée's famous novel, Feyder envisaged something on the epic scale of his earlier L'Atlantide, with extensive use of location filming and a run time comfortably in excess of two and a half hours.  To help him in this ambitious venture, he was allotted three assistant directors, two of whom - Luis Buñuel and Charles Spaak - went on to achieve considerable fame in the decades that followed.  Buñuel would make his directing debut three years later with his surreal short Un chien andalou; in the 1930s, Spaak would become of the leading screenwriters of his day, best known for his collaborations with Jean Renoir (Les Bas-fonds, La Grande illusion).  Buñuel also appears as an extra in the film, in the guise of a smuggler.

Playing the title role is the stunning Spanish singer-dancer Raquel Meller, who came a world famous film star in the 1920s.  Previously, she had taken starring roles in Violettes impériales (1924) and La Terre promise (1925), both directed by Henry Roussel.  Meller's sultry looks and extraordinary charisma make her the ideal casting choice for the part of one of the most passionate heroines in French literature.  Cast in the role of Don José was the Austrian actor Fred Louis Lerch, a minor star of German cinema, whilst Don José's rival Le Borgne was played by Gaston Modot, who appeared in around four hundred films in the course of his prolific screen career.

In comparison with many of his contemporaries (notably L'Herbier and Epstein), Feyder tacitly avoided expressionistic and impressionistic influences, and instead forged his own style of naturalism, which is reflected as much in the acting as in his use of real locations and objective camerawork.  To a degree, his silent cinema can be considered a forerunner of neo-realism, and this is particularly apparent in Carmen, which has a near-documentary authenticity throughout, a far cry from the over-directed, over-acted melodramas that were prevalent at the time.

Feyder's artistry is most evident in the film's masterfully staged set-pieces, which include some well-choreographed fight scenes and the gripping bull-fighting scene which comes at the end of the film.  Perhaps because of its self-conscious grandeur, Carmen fails to be as emotionally involving as the director's other great silent films, but its breathtaking ambition and unfaltering visual flair places it in a category of its own.

Film Synopsis

After killing a man in a duel, Don José Lizzarabengoa is forced to flee his home in Navarre.  On his arrival in Castille, he enlists in the army and soon becomes a sergeant in the regiment at Almanza.  It is here that his life takes an even more dramatic turn, when he encounters a beautiful Spanish gypsy girl named Carmen.  When he allows the girl to escape after she has been arrested for causing a brawl in the cigarette factory where she works, Don José is demoted.  Later, after killing an officer in a fight, he takes refuge in the mountains, joining up with a band of smugglers who are known to Carmen.  Don José now realises that he is infatuated with the gypsy girl, but then he discovers she is already married and is planning to help her husband, Garcia le Borgne, the former leader of the band of smugglers, to escape from prison...