Mater dolorosa (1917)
Directed by Abel Gance

Film Review

Avant-garde filmmaker Abel Gance got off to a bad start when he began working for the fledgling film company Film d'Art in the mid-1910s, turning out weirdly experimental shorts such as La Folie du docteur Tube, but he amply redeemed himself with the later films he made for the company, many of which were significant commercial successes.  Mater dolorosa was among the most profitable films that Gance made for Film d'Art, one of the first in a series of psychological melodramas which established him as one of France's leading cineastes, a decade before he unleashed on the world his most highly regarded film, Napoléon (1927).  Beset with a narrative that is ludicrously contrived and painfully predictable, Mater dolorosa has little of the sophistication of Gance's subsequent melodramas, notably his monumental La Roue (1923), but the mise-en-scène has some inspired touches and perhaps a foretaste of the masterworks that were to come.  Having been a hit in France, the film proved to be even more successful in America, where it was released as a slightly truncated version, under the title The Torture of Silence.

More than anything, it is Léonce-Henri Burel's moodily chiaroscuro cinematography that elevates the film above the norm.  Scenes of conflict and tension have a greater impact because of the way in which these are shot, with high contrast lighting creating a tangible mood of oppression and alienation.  The scene in which the heroine makes her final appeal to her lover is strikingly filmed as a shadow-play, with the protagonists appearing as silhouettes in front of a backlit window.  In a later scene, when the good doctor Berliac attempts to treat his bedridden son, he pulls back the bed curtains and sees his wife in the arms of her lover, an eerie superimposition effect of the kind that Gance would later use on some of his best known films, including J'Accuse (1919).  Near the end of the film, there is what feels like an interminably long tracking shot past a cemetery, inter-cut with two-shots of the distressed heroine and her husband which convey more than any amount of dialogue.

Just as she would practically ruin Gance's later film, La dixième symphonie (1918), Emmy Lynn pretty well wrecks Mater dolorosa with a performance that would look wildly over-the-top even in the theatre.  Lynn's style of acting (which involves eye-rolling and hand-wringing to laughable excess) was not uncommon in films of this era, but it feels out of place in a quality melodrama of this kind, particularly when the rest of the cast appear to have signed up to a more naturalistic approach.  In his scenes with Lynn, Firmin Gémier's performance appears positively subtle by comparison, and far more effective in expressing his character's inner feelings and gaining the audience's sympathies.  Mater dolorosa is marred by the conventions of its time (contrived melodramatic plot, forced happy ending, exaggerated acting) but Gance's visual artistry still shines through, and whilst it pales in comparison with the director's later films, it has its moments of brilliance.  In any event, it's far more palatable than Gance's sound remake of the film, released in 1933.

Film Synopsis

Émile Berliac is a specialist doctor in children's diseases.  Dedicated to his work, he neglects his young wife Manon, who, unbeknown to him, has been pursuing an extramarital affair with his brother, the writer François Rolland.  When he receives a letter from Manon insisting that they should elope together and start a new life, François decides that he must end their relationship.  In a violent confrontation, Manon shoots her lover with his own gun.  Before he dies from his injuries, François writes a letter claiming that he committed suicide.  A few years later, Manon learns that a bookseller has acquired one of François's books, in which her final letter to him has been concealed.  Fearful of the scandal that will arise if the letter is published in the newspapers, Manon submits to the bookseller's blackmail demands.  However, this does not prevent Dr Berliac from discovering his wife's secret, and, appalled by her infidelity, he insists that she leaves his household and never again sees her infant son...