Mor vran (1931)
Directed by Jean Epstein

Film Review

It was whilst filming Finis Terrae (1929) on the remote Breton islands in the Ushant archipelago that Jean Epstein came to acquire a profound love for Brittany and its people that would endure for the rest of his life and become the main inspiration for the final, and arguably, finest phase of his filmmaking career.  For his next Breton poem, Mor-vran (a.k.a. La Mer des corbeaux), Epstein would base himself on the frighteningly inhospitable island of Sein, a half square kilometre of barren rock that is home to a handful of fishermen and their families.  Once again, Epstein's striking images of Nature at her most untamed, as horrific as they are beautiful, instil in the spectator a sense of wonder and admiration for this strange breed of men and women that can endure such a brutal existence, prospering in spite of all that the gods in their most spiteful of moods care to throw down on them.  Mor-vran is as much a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit as it is a portrait of Nature at her most unforgiving and capricious.

Epstein underscores the stark otherworldliness of Sein, which really does seem to exist in another time, one far removed from our own, with a fleeting stopover in Brest, one of the most populated towns on the mainland of Brittany.  Here, a party of fishermen from Sein are happy enjoying the distractions afforded by a fair, and one member of the group is apparently delighted when he wins a cheap item of jewellery for his girlfriend.  The fact that none of these men will reach their homes when they set to sea brings home the precarious nature of their lives.  The next we see of the lucky sailor who won the necklace is a soggy broken cadaver washed up on the seashore.  When Man plays roulette with Nature he plays for the highest stakes - and Nature can be an unforgiving adversary when she chooses.

As in Finis Terrae and Epstein's subsequent Breton films, it is the sea that embodies Nature at her most violent and mercurial, the central protagonist in the grimmest of human dramas - calm and beatific one moment, raging with the fury of an incensed maniac the next.  Recurring images of the waves beating on the coast - waves that threaten not only to engulf but to smash to pieces everything in their wake - bear witness to the unbounded might of the ocean.  You can but wonder how any living thing can go on clinging to existence when challenged by such a monstrous onslaught.  A distorted human face peering through the windows of a lighthouse puts into our heads the idea that the sea has eyes of its own, and sure enough in the next shot the boiling waters are even more menacing, surging towards the microscopic island like some demented demonic flotilla. Not only is the sea alive, revelling in its power; it also seems to be an entity of pure deadly malevolence - an evil giant that enjoys playing with the puny biological freak that is homo sapiens.

'The sea can talk', a caption then tells us, although this we already know.  The soundtrack (especially composed for the film by Alexis Archangelsky, thereby making this Epstein's first sound film) is as laden with menace as the images that pummel our retinas, and it is just as expressive of the raw power of Nature, the musical accompaniment building to a harrowing crescendo as the tempest reaches its dizzying climax of destructive power.  Once the storm has passed, the music collapses into a solemn lament, and from what we see and hear it seems that Nature is now in the throes of a bitter remorse, regretting the violent outburst that has caused so much misery and destruction.  In this, the final passage of the film, as widows grieve and young lovers plan their future, Nature smiles kindly on Man, and you can almost believe that no storms will come again.  The final lingering shots of a lighthouse standing implacably on the shore and the seas gently lapping the rocks, purring like a contented kitten, imply as much.  But it is only a lull...

Film Synopsis

For those who eke out an existence on Sein, one of the smaller islands in the Breton archipelago, life is unremittingly hard.  Who knows how the inhabitants of this tiny, storm beaten stretch of rock can endure when the elements are so violently opposed to them, straining their capacity for survival to the limit with a constant onslaught of wave and wind.  Yet survive they do, with families subsisting on a poor fisherman's wage and coping as best they can with the dramas that come their way.  During a brief stay in the town of Brest on the mainland, a young fisherman wins a necklace for his sweetheart back home.  Resolved to rejoin their families for the weekend, he and his fellows set out in their boat, the Fleur-de-Lisieux, just before a storm breaks.  The storm lasts three weeks and wreaks havoc on the island.  The smashed remains of the Fleur-de-Lisieux are strewn on the beach, along with its lifeless human cargo.  As women mourn their loss, others plan their future.  This is how it has always been and will always be, on this little scrap of land forever tyrannised by the sea...