Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge (1914)
Directed by Albert Capellani

Film Review

Alexandre Dumas's novels have provided a rich source of material for cinema right from its earliest days.  The mix of historical setting and fast-moving adventure-intrigue has always been a perennial favourite with cinema audiences, and the screen adaptations of Dumas's work are so numerous that it would an unimaginable chore to enumerate them all.  The Three Musketeers had its first screen version in a (now lost) short French film of 1903, with numerous increasingly ambitious adaptations of the same novel galloping out in profusion from studios on both sides of the Atlantic in the decades that followed. Dumas's next most famous work The Count of Monte Cristo had countless screen versions dating back to 1908, and a filmmaker as well regarded as Ernst Lubitch cut his directorial teeth with his distinctive take on Madame Du Barry.

Of the earliest cinematic exploitations of Dumas's novels, one of the most ambitious and most successful was Albert Capellani's Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, based on one of the author's less well-known but still greatly admired works.  To the English speaking world, the novel is best known under the title The Knight of Maison-Rouge, and it has had two other screen adaptations - the Italian film Il Cavaliere di Maison Rouge (1954) directed by Vittorio Cottafavi and a French television serial aired in 1963 starring Jean Desailly in the title role.  As with his subsequent, even grander historical fresco Quatre-vingt-treize (1914), Capellani's film is set in Paris at the time of the Terror in 1793, the bloody climax of the French Revolution, and is a suitably tense and sombre piece - far darker in tone than the director's previous historical epic Les Misérables (1913).  Whilst it may lack the grandeur, scale and stark humanity of this earlier film, Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge still manages to be a compelling and assured piece of filmmaking, in which Capellani - now a technically proficient cineaste of the first order after seven years' experience - uses his skill and artistry to dazzling effect.

The plot, comprising six parts divided up into sixty perfectly composed tableaux,  revolves around a succession of daring attempts to rescue Queen Marie-Antoinette from the Temple Prison on the eve of her execution.  Of course we know that all of these attempts are doomed to fail, but in spite of this the film keeps us on tenterhooks throughout, even seducing us into thinking a happy ending may be possible.  (It's worth noting that the film's ending differs somewhat from the original novel, so things do not turn out quite as badly for the lead protagonists as we might have feared.)  The fast-moving, incident-packed narrative lends itself naturally to an episodic treatment, and so it's hardly a surprise that there is a striking similarity between this film and the adventure serials being churned out by Pathé's nearest rival around this time, in particular Louis Feuillade's incredibly popular Fantômas series.

Albert Capellani's penchant for realism - which is apparent both in the style of acting and in the historically accurate sets - heightens the film's dramatic impact and authenticity, allowing the tension to build steadily as events move towards a truly gripping climax.  There are some welcome moments of comic relief, afforded mainly by the chronic ineptitude shown some of the prisoner guards, who look as if they'd be more at home in Carry On Don't Lose Your Head or an episode of Blackadder. Even by Capellani's standards, some of the visuals are stunning - in particular the busy crowd sequences (a speciality of this director) which give a real sense of the nerve-racking reality of the time in which the story takes place.  It is hard not to be awe-struck by the unending lines of armed revolutionaries snaking their way down the narrow streets of the capital, driven by an obsessive will to flush out every last royalist and their supporters.  Set in the same period, D.W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm (1921) conveys far less of a sense of the insane terror that had overtaken Paris at this appalling stage of the Revolution, where hope and idealism had totally given way to extreme paranoia and an epidemic of bloodlust.

As was the established convention of the time, the film is composed almost entirely of static mid-shots, with just a few fleeting close-ups (mostly of hands) to capture a detail of significance - for example, the concealment of a secret message to the Queen within the petals of a carnation.  By this time, Capellani was beginning to find it hard to keep up with trends in movie making (especially with regard to editing and camera motion), and so he stuck longer than he should have done to the idiosyncratic style of filmmaking which he had, from 1906 to 1913, developed into a fine art.  With editing kept to a minimum, shots are far longer and blocked in a far more overtly theatrical manner than would be countenanced by Capellani's more experimentally minded contemporaries - in particular D.W. Griffith (and it is probably for this reason that Griffith's reputation still vastly surpasses Capellani's).

The camera hardly ever moves, but when it does (as in one very noticeable slow zoom near the end of the film) the effect is either distractingly clunky or intensely ominous.  Likewise, superimposition, another of Capellani's cherished devices, is used very sparingly (here on just two occasions), with inlaid shots to show what is in the mind of a protagonist.  It wasn't until Capellani moved to America, not long after the outbreak of WWI, that he was able to further develop as a filmmaker, under the influence of the first wave of great American cineastes.   Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge is a slick and pacy production for its time but it does have a slight whiff of stagnancy about it.  Falling below the extraordinarily high standard set by Capellani on his previous historical dramas Les Misérables and Germinal (1913) it is something of a letdown for those admirers of the director hoping to see a further progression in his art.  Judged on its own merits, however, it is an engaging, eminently watchable entertainment - a more than satisfying forerunner of subsequent, feistier Alexandre Dumas adaptations.

Film Synopsis

Paris, 1793.  After four years of turmoil, the French Revolution has reached its bloodiest phase with the execution of King Louis XVI, the old monarchy replaced by a reign of terror.  Queen Marie-Antoinette is awaiting her turn at the guillotine,  a prisoner in the Temple Prison, unaware that plots are being hatched to secure her release by those still loyal to the former regime.  One staunch royalist, the intrepid Knight of Maison-Rouge, has resolved to rescue the Queen, and in this he enlists the help of his brother-in-law, an impoverished tanner named Dixmer.  The latter's beautiful younger wife Geneviève is soon drawn into the conspiracy, and she narrowly escapes being arrested through the intervention of Maurice Lindey, a handsome lieutenant committed to the revolutionary cause.

From the moment he sees the unhappily married woman Lindey realises he is in love with her, and she, the most miserable of wives, reciprocates his feelings for her.  Dixmer soon discovers the identity of his wife's secret lover and sees at once an opportunity to exploit the situation to his advantage.  Who would ever suspect Citizen Lindey of being involved in a plot to rescue the Queen?  Plans are soon under way to knock through a wall and break into the Temple Prison from the cellar of a house in Dixmer's possession.  The attempt fails and the Queen is immediately transferred to the more secure Conciergerie, where there is no hope of escape.  What will be the fate of her would-be rescuers when they are brought to trial for their treasonous acts against the Revolution?