Maman Colibri (1929)
Directed by Julien Duvivier

Film Review

Julien Duvivier began his prolific filmmaking career in 1918, but whilst he made over twenty films in the silent era most of these are all but forgotten, overshadowed by the sober crowdpleasers that earned him his reputation as a great cineaste in the 1930s - La Bandera (1935), La Belle équipe (1936), Pépé le Moko (1937), Un carnet de bal (1937) and La Charrette fantôme (1939).  Duvivier's silent films may lack the maturity of his later work but they are packed with innovation, flair and human interest.  One standout film of this era is his 1925 film Poil de Carotte, which so impressed producers Marcel Vandal and Charles Delac that they invited him to work for their company Film d'Art.

Duvivier made several important films for Vandal and Delac in the latter half of the 1920s, including L'Homme à l'Hispano (1927), Le Mystère de la tour Eiffel (1927), Maman Colibri (1929) and Au bonheur des dames (1930).  Maman Colibri has the distinction of being the last of the director's films to be released exclusively as a silent film; Au bonheur des dames had the indignity of having a hastily cobbled together soundtrack tacked onto it to benefit from the sudden switchover to sound cinema.

Adapted from Henry Bataille's 1904 stage play of the same title, Maman Colibri is an unapologetically sentimental melodrama, of the kind that was immensely popular with cinema audiences at the time.  It is unusual for Duvivier in that the central female protagonist is portrayed throughout in a sympathetic light - not the usual femme fatale but a flawed woman who chooses wrongly, abandoning her family for a younger lover, and ultimately pays the price.  There is none of the brooding fatalism and dark cynicism that characterises the director's subsequent films and which reflected the darkening mood in France as the countries around it succumbed to militant Fascism.  Indeed the film would seem to fit more comfortably into the more humane oeuvre of Jacques Feyder; with its delicate handling of human feelings it has some striking similarities with Visages d'enfants (1925) and Gribiche (1926).

In common with his avant-garde contemporaries (Abel Gance, Marcel L'Herbier, Jean Epstein, René Clair), Julien Duvivier was an inveterate experimenter and would constantly strive for innovation, even in his most commercially oriented films.  Maman Colibri amply bears this out, with a whole range of cinematic devices being employed to heighten the film's dramatic power and emotional impact.  The camera is rarely at rest - more often it is in motion, tracking from side to side across the field of view, or zooming in and out to force us to shift our perspective.  Ceiling shots and low camera angles are used with imaginative flair to create a sense of exaltation and awe.

And then there are the massive close-ups which, along with some deft use of superimposition, effectively let us into the protagonists' thoughts and feelings.  The banality of the subject matter is totally at odds with the unrelenting artistry with which Duvivier deals with it.  There's even a sequence which would be more at home in a Hollywood blockbuster epic - a vivid reconstruction of a desert battle, with horses and camels charging at a frantic pace across a vast open expanse of North African landscape.  It is a sequence that puts to shame the action scenes in the director's later offering in a colonial setting, La Bandera.   

Another reason why the film still holds up well today is that it boasts arresting performances from two of the most photogenic performers of the age - Maria Jacobini and Francis Lederer, perfect casting choices for the woman who refuses to grow old and her younger lover.  Jacobini had been a leading light of Italian cinema for many years, after finding stardom via her role in Gerolamo Lo Savio's Cesare Borgia (1912).  The collapse of Italy's film industry after WWI forced her to move to Germany, where she enjoyed comparable success.  Maman Colibrì was her last silent film, one of only a few films she made in France.  The advent of sound did not end her career - unlike many actresses of her generation she continued making films for many years afterwards.

Francis Lederer was an astonishingly good-looking Czech actor, who first came to prominence in Germany, playing alongside Louise Brooks in G.W. Pabst's Die Büchse der Pandora (1929) and Brigitte Helm in Hanns Schwarz's Die wunderbare Lüge der Nina Petrowna (1929).  In the mid-1930s, he took up residence in the United States and enjoyed a moderately successful career in Hollywood and on television, with notable appearances in Anatole Litvak's Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) and Jean Renoir's The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946).

Jacobini and Lederer make such an effective screen couple in Maman Colibri that you wonder why they didn't go on to become the European equivalent of Garbo and Gilbert (maybe, like the character she plays in this film, the former's age was against her).  It is not difficult to account for Maria Jacobini's popularity.  An immensely subtle and confident performer, she had no need to resort to the over-expressive gestures that were employed by most actresses of the silent era.  Like her contemporary Louise Brooks, she hardly seems to be acting at all, and yet somehow we are able to see into her character's soul and are compelled to sympathise with her, even when she has so clearly taken the wrong path.  Unusually for a Duvivier film, the handsome male protagonist (Lederer) is the one we come to regard as the malignant influence - not so much wicked but despicably careless in his handling of a woman's affections.

With the heroine treading a perilous path towards ruin we anticipate a grim denouement of the kind that Duvivier made his speciality in the 1930s and subsequent decades.  But no, at the very last moment the pessimism abates and we are rewarded with a wistful happy ending which, whilst a tad contrived, cannot fail to stir the spectator's heart.  The reason why Duvivier gets away with this brazen acquiescence to mainstream sensibility is the torrent of emotion that Jacobini unleashes on us in the film's closing seconds.  How deeply do we sense her anguish on having to accept that her youth has left her, that she will never again experience the thrill of romantic love.  But in her defeat there is also a kind of victory.  Through her painful experiences, Irène has come to realise there are more satisfying forms of love, reflected in her younger son's tender regard and the first sight of her newborn grandchild.  In the end, good sense and compassion triumph over pride and vanity.  What a note to end on for Duvivier's silent era swansong.

Film Synopsis

Married to a wealthy baron, Irène de Rysbergue leads a privileged life but she still sees herself as a carefree ingénue, attending parties and generally have a good time.  This is in spite of the fact that she is now in her early forties and has a grown-up son, Richard, who is engaged to be married.  Ignoring her husband's remonstrances, but encouraged by her younger son that she is still a beauty (he dubs her Maman Colibri), Irène attends an extravagant ball, where she immediately attracts the attention of a handsome young man.  They dance together and enjoy each other's company, but it soon dawns on Irène that her admirer is none other than Georges de Chambry, a close friend of her eldest son.  The married woman's conscience gets the better of her and she makes a hasty return to her homestead, leaving behind a man who has fallen hopelessly in love with her.

Whilst visiting his friend, Georges has a chance encounter with Irène whilst she is staying at the baron's country residence.  Overwhelmed by her admirer's declarations of love, Irène gives in to him.  The affair is soon discovered by the her husband and eldest son and Irène is forced to choose between her lover and her family.  She chooses the former, and accompanies him to North Africa, where Georges is stationed as a cavalry officer in a French desert regiment.  For a time, Irène leads a blissful and idyllic life in the company of the man she has lost her heart to, but all too soon she comes to realise that her age is against her.  Georges becomes attracted to another, younger woman and soon forgets his former lover.  Broken heartened, Irène returns to Paris to bid a final farewell to her family...