La Femme de nulle part (1922)
Directed by Louis Delluc

Film Review

Although he only made seven films over a five year period, Louis Delluc made a significant impression on French cinema in the early 1920s and was one of the driving forces behind the impressionist movement that comprised some of the leading figures of the French Avant-Garde - Abel Gance, Marcel L'Herbier, Germaine Dulac, René Clair and Jean Epstein.  Before turning to filmmaking, Delluc made his name as an influential critic and film theorist, and it was his determination to move beyond the staid theatricality of early cinema and instill a greater sense of emotional realism in his films that made him such an inspiration to many filmmakers of his generation, in particular Jean Renoir and Jean Epstein.  La Femme de nulle part (1922), his last but one film, was to be the apotheosis of his art, a deceptively simple melodrama that engages the emotions more intensely and stirs the heart more forcefully than perhaps any other film up until this point.  How tragic it is that Delluc should fall seriously ill during the making of his next film, L'Inondation (1924), and die not long afterwards, aged 33.

As with his previous notable work, Fièvre (1921), Delluc takes the simplest of stories and gives it an extraordinary emotional resonance by masterful, and incredibly subtle, application of the techniques that became essential to the art of the impressionist filmmakers - close-ups, superimposition, flashbacks and lighting effects.  In contrast to the more extravagant impressionistic style of his Avant-Garde contemporaries, Delluc stays clear of showy overstatement and achieves a harmonious balance of lyricism and naturalism.  What sets La Femme de nulle part apart from other impressionist films is that you hardly notice its impressionistic tropes - you are just carried along by the story, or rather the gentle interlacing of the subjective experiences of the three main characters that make up the story.

As in all of Delluc's films, his wife Ève Francis takes the lead role and is perfectly suited for the part of the mysterious, almost wraith-like woman of the title who, in revisiting her tortured past, finds a woman in her own predicament twenty years previously.  Francis was hardly the subtlest of actors and today her style of acting would be judged somewhat excessive but she has, to make up for this, a remarkable screen presence and ability to project genuine feeling that was virtually unsurpassed in her day.  The long, lingering portraits of her that Delluc frames with a devotion bordering on idolatry are the most sublime expression of a woman who has been martyrised by love and yet still sees love as the most marvellous of life's experiences.  Only an actress of Francis's ability could sell us this apparent contradiction without appearing ridiculous.  You are reminded of Renée Falconetti's Joan of Arc in Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928) - Ève Francis's portrayal of a woman in thrall to the ecstasy of love whilst it visibly eats away at her, until she is ultimately reduced to a crushed broken shell, has a similar devastating impact.  La Femme de nulle part is a film that moves you while you watch it and goes on haunting you for long afterwards.

Film Synopsis

At a house in the country not far Genoa, a husband tells his younger wife that he must spend the next twenty-four hours away from home to take his leave of a friend at the seaport.  At this moment, a stranger - a woman in her fifties - presents herself to the couple as a previous resident of the house and asks if she may be permitted to spend a while in the grounds to rekindle old memories.  The husband kindly agrees and invites the woman to spend the night in the house during his absence.  That evening, the stranger catches sight of the wife reading a letter and realises she has a secret lover with whom she is planning to elope.

Having lived exactly the same scenario herself and suffered the consequences, the stranger sympathises with the wife and urges her to reconsider, if only for her young child.  The wife's lover then appears and tells the young woman that he will be waiting for her outside the gates of her villa in his car.  He swears that if she does not come to him he will kill himself.  As she reminisces on her own amorous infatuation, the love affair that whisked her away from her family and robbed her of everything, the stranger has a change of heart and appeals to the wife to submit to the call of love.  The young woman is hurrying away from the villa to join her lover when her child comes running after her...