Les Aventures de Robert Macaire (1925)
Directed by Jean Epstein

Film Review

Jean Epstein is often held up as a shining example of the film auteur, a leading figure of the Parisian avant-garde in the 1920s fêted for such cinematic marvels as Coeur fidèle (1923), La Chute de la maison Usher (1928) and Le Tempestaire (1947).  But, midway through his career, he had a profitable dalliance with commercial cinema which not only raised his public profile but also allowed him to refine and develop his technique.  In the mid-1920s, Epstein made four films for the prestigious company Albatros, comprising three melodramas - Le Lion des Mogols (1924), L'Affiche (1924) and Le Double amour (1924) - and a lavish historical romp, Les Aventures de Robert Macaire (1925).  It is the fourth of these films which seems most out of place in Epstein's oeuvre.  Running to almost three and half hours, it is by far the director's longest film and, with its episodic, five act structure, it can hardly fail to resemble an affectionate homage to the Feuillade serials of the previous decade.

Robert Macaire was a well-known figure in French popular culture of the 1800s, having first appeared in Benjamin Antier's 1823 stage play L'Auberge des Adrets.  It was the famous stage actor Frédérick Lemaître, a habitué of the so-called 'Boulevard du crime' in Paris, who brought Macaire to life in this play and its 1835 sequel, Robert Macaire.  In Marcel Carné's film Les Enfants du paradis (1945), Lemaître is a central character, memorably portrayed by Pierre Brasseur as he plays Macaire on stage.  It was Georges Méliès, a cinema pioneer best known for his inventive fantasy shorts, who gave Macaire his first screen outing in Robert Macaire and Bertrand (1907).  Epstein's film came a hundred years after the fictional criminal's birth and is for the most part a reworking of Antier's play.

Les Aventures de Robert Macaire shows little of the wild flair for invention and stylistic bravado that impinge on so much of Epstein's other work but it is an accomplished piece of filmmaking that impresses as much with its meticulous shot composition as with the quality of the acting.  Some flashback sequences allow Epstein to depart from the linear narrative and are interesting because they are obvious distortions of the truth, ridiculously so in one case.  The location exteriors are particularly eye-catching and effortlessly evoke the paintings of the Romantic era, lending an old-fashioned chivalrous quality to the central protagonist.  Here the cunning villain of Antier's original play comes to resembles a mix of Maurice Leblanc's gentleman thief Arsène Lupin and Cervantes' knight errant Don Quixote, complete with a Sancho Pansa-like comedy sidekick whose exploits always seem to end with a boot up the posterior or a gratuitous spot of cross-dressing.

The double act formed by Jean Angelo and Alex Allin - as Macaire and Bertrand respectively - is the film's main asset, and Epstein exploits it to the full by allowing his actors plenty of scope to indulge their obvious penchant for knockabout comedy.  One of the stars of French silent cinema, Angelo was not particularly renowned for comedy and his intense, brooding persona meant that he was better suited for dramatic roles, in such films as Henri Fescourt's Monte Cristo (1929) and G.W. Pabst's L'Atlantide (1932).  As the morally ambiguous swindler Macaire, Angelo not only gets his teeth into another complex character portrayal but also provides the perfect foil to Allin's unrestrained comedy antics.  And it is Allin who ultimately steals the film as the put-upon Bertrand, a Harpo Marx-like clown whose primary raison d'être is to be something Macaire can kick when their plans go awry.  Not content with forcing his devoted dogsbody into women's corsets, Macaire has him impersonate a pig in the film's most memorable and most hilarious scene.  After this brilliant screen debut, Allin appeared in only nine subsequent films, most famously as the clergyman in Germaine Dulac's La Coquille et le Clergyman (1928).

By all accounts, the making of Les Aventures de Robert Macaire was a happy experience for Jean Epstein, and this is apparent not only in the film's comic exuberance and the delightful rapport between the two male leads, but also in the cheery lightness of Epstein's mise-en-scène.  Watching the film, you can easily convince yourself that it is one which Epstein made for his own amusement, motivated not by a desire to make great art but simply to entertain a mainstream cinema audience.  It is revealing that when Jean Epstein parted company with Albatros immediately after making this film to set up his own film production company the next film he made was a similar historical adventure with crowd-pulling potential, Mauprat (1926).

Film Synopsis

In 1825, the itinerant thief and swindler Robert Macaire wends his way across France in the company of his faithful companion Bertrand, never passing up the opportunity to fleece any unsuspecting party they may come across in their travels.  After one successful robbery, Macaire disguises himself as a nobleman, the Viscount de la Tour, to gain admission to a farm and terrorise a farmwoman who had earlier refused to offer him alms.  Not only does he manage to con the old harridan into handing over her fortune, Macaire also saves the life of an attractive young woman, Louise de Sermèze - an uncharacteristic act of heroism that earns him an invitation to the grand country residence of the girl's grateful father.  During a ball, Macaire's real identity is discovered and the bandits narrowly escape capture by the police.  Now hopelessly in love with Louise, Macaire cannot prevent himself from paying her a return visit, but in doing so he ensures his arrest.  Seventeen years later, Macaire and Bertrand return to the region, apparently reformed characters after their sixteen years in prison.  Louise has long since died but by her grave Macaire is astonished to see a young woman who has her exact likeness...