L'Aventurier (1934)
Directed by Marcel L'Herbier

Film Review

L'Aventurier was one of a number of stage plays adapted for cinema by director Marcel L'Herbier in the 1930s which, whilst moderately successful, gave him little scope for employing the visual flair that he had shown in his previous silent films. With its unflattering portrayal of capitalism and the bourgeoisie, the film has echoes of L'Herbier's previous masterpiece L'Argent (1929), although it lacks the force of that film.   An effective mix of melodrama and social satire, the film has an obvious anti-capitalist stance which would have appealed to a contemporary cinema audience.  At the time, left-wing sentiment was very much in the ascendant in France, and two years later the country would be governed by a coalition of leftist parties (the Popular Front).

L'Aventurier has a distinguished cast, although few of the illustrious actors in the castlist are remembered today.   The lead actor Victor Francen was a major star in French cinema at this time, but would go on to find greater fame in Hollywood, in such films as Madame Curie (1943), Passage to Marseille (1944), The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) and The Beast with Five Fingers (1946). Francen's brooding persona and unconventional good looks made him the ideal casting choice for the kind of character he plays in this film, the society outsider who has no truck with bourgeois morality.  This is a film that plays to Francen's strengths and the actor gives what is easily one of his most memorable performances, one that is enhanced by the presence of his eye-catching co-stars Blanche Montel and Gisèle Casadesus.  L'Aventurier is by no means L'Herbier's finest film, but it is competently directed, well-scripted and vividly reflects the mood of its time.  The sequence where striking factory workers riot around the Guéroy mansion instantly calls to mind the one in Jean Renoir's La Marseillaise (1938) in which revolutionaries attack the palace of Versailles.   The film anticipates a new revolution, in which the loathed bourgeoisie would be for the chop.

Film Synopsis

After selling his salt mine in Tunisia, Étienne Ranson finds himself caught up in a bloody uprising which culminates with the slaughter of many indigenous rebels.  On his return to France some years later, he is an incredibly wealthy man.   His uncle, Achille Guéroy, the owner of a glove factory, gives him a cold reception until he realises how rich he has become.  Étienne is glad to renew his acquaintance with his uncle's adopted daughter, Geneviève, with whom he was once deeply in love.  Ranson's involvement in the Tunisian riots results in his being arrested, and when it becomes known that he is related to Guéroy the latter fears that his business will be severely harmed by the bad publicity.

To assuage the mood of his fractious employees, Guéroy is forced in to giving them a pay rise, but in doing so he is ignorant of the fact that his son Jacques has drained his bank account through his foolhardy speculations.  To save his family from ruin, Ranson agrees to cover Guéroy's debts, on condition that he consents to allow him to marry his adopted daughter, even though Geneviève is at present engaged to another man, the deputy Varèze.  The glove manufacturer has no choice but to accept the arrangement, but Ranson soon realises that he will never be at ease with his family, who still regard him as something of a black sheep.  He renounces his claim to Geneviève and heads back to Africa...