La Route impériale (1935)
Directed by Marcel L'Herbier

Film Review

It says something about the strength of Anglo-French relations in the mid-1930s that one of the most flattering films appertaining to British colonialism was made in France.  That film, La Route impériale, was the first in a series of military-themed adventure movies directed by Marcel L'Herbier around this time and belonged to a popular but fairly short-lived genre that may be termed 'colonialist melodrama'.  With its exotic locations and tales of old-fashioned heroism, the genre was as appealing to British and American audiences as it was in France, and it is interesting to compare Henry Hathaway's The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) and Zolta Korda's The Four Feathers (1939) with their more pessimistic French counterparts, which included Jacques Feyder's Le Grand jeu (1934) and Julien Duvivier's La Bandera (1935).

La Route impériale was based on the 1919 stage play La Maison cernée by Pierre Frondaie, which had previously been adapted for cinema in 1922 as Det omringade huset (a.k.a. The House Surrounded) by the important Swedish filmmaker Victor Sjöström.  By this time in his career, Marcel L'Herbier had long surrendered his auteur independence and, like several of his avant-garde contemporaries (including Abel Gance), had little choice but to make commercial films for a mainstream audience.  Whilst it is true that L'Herbier's best work was behind him, that there would never be a film as mind-blowing and monumental as L'Inhumaine (1924) or L'Argent (1928), he remained a competent and resourceful filmmaker, one who had a knack of making quality films that appealed to the average man in the street.  The reason why many of his sound films are overlooked today lies not in the fact that they are poorly made, but rather that they are too intimately wedded to the era in which they made, and nowhere is this truer than in his pro-colonialist melodramas and films whose main raison d'être was to give France pride in her military, ahead of another likely European war in the late 1930s.

La Route impériale is dated on two counts.  Most off-putting is its wearisome romantic intrigue, which has the words 'stale' and 'contrived' stamped all over it and does nothing other than to weaken an already fragmentary and cliché-sodden narrative.  With some better casting choices, this may have been less of a problem, but with Pierre Richard-Willm and Kate de Nagy offering up the poorest possible imitation of a couple who were once singed by Cupid's fiery darts you can only cringe.  Richard-Willm's tendency to overact and his co-stars inability to show any emotion whatsoever are a killer combination, lending more than a touch of absurdity to their scenes together.  Thankfully, the standard of acting elsewhere is far better.  Aimé Clariond especially stands out as the humane and conflicted Colonel Stark, effectively contrasted by Pierre Renoir's somewhat nastier Major Hudson.  Richard-Willm is generally a capable actor but here he merely looks like a poor substitute for Charles Boyer.

L'Herbier's adept mise-en-scène and some moody lighting bring a palpable, almost stifling tension to the film, grimly anticipating the horrors that the narrative has in store for us.  Most impressive is the camerawork, which shows a rare fluidity for a film of this era, with long, often complicated, tracking shots helping to sustain the aura of expectant menace that pervades the film.  Location filming in Algeria adds to the realism of the piece, with the main exterior set designed for Julien Duvivier's Golgotha (1935) being reused as the rebel stronghold of Ksour, spectacularly blown up at the end of the film.  La Route impériale is modest compared with L'Herbier's silent masterpieces, but for all its shortcomings, it leaves little doubt that it was crafted by one of the masters of the seventh art.  And after this full-blooded paean to British colonialism L'Herbier would be well placed to give Anglo-French relations a further boost with his propaganda piece Entente cordiale (1939).

Film Synopsis

Lieutenant Brent, a young British officer, finds himself in front of a military tribunal after he is suspected of trading secrets with Iraqi rebels.  Once he has been acquitted, he returns to Iraq to join a regiment that is tasked with protecting a crucial convoy route to India.   Brent is taken by surprise when he meets up with his former lover, Joyce, who is now the wife of his garrison's commander, Colonel Stark.  He allows Joyce to decide his fate by drawing a card that will determine whether he or one of his fellow officers will lead a hazardous assault on the nearby rebel stronghold of Ksour.  Although Brent is chosen for the mission, it is Joyce's brother Dan Grant who takes his place to safeguard his sister's honour.  This deception leads Major Hudson to suspect that Brent is a spy working for the rebels.  The lieutenant manages to redeem himself by infiltrating the enemy base and allowing it to be captured.