So little French material from the early twenties is accessible that an hour's worth of the celebrated Louis Delluc gets more attention than this minor melodrama really deserves.
A Marseilles bar piece, of the kind that directors Epstein, Cavalcanti and Pagnol would later try, details of the story remain impenetrable in the American copy without intertitles. The thin plot re-unites Eve Francis, who we must consider the Juliette Binoche of her era for want of another contender, with Van Daële (later impressive in "Coeur Fidele") as her lost sailor lover, upsetting her bar owner husband, the admirable Gaston Modot. It would have been nice to see more of Modot here, in one of his youngest sustained appearances.
Best scene has the the dreary bar fill with sailors who, in turn, draw a hoard of floozies, displaying for them the souvenirs of their travels - a live monkey, shawls, an Asian doll, the beak of a sword fish.
Running near an hour at fourteen images a second (anything else destroys the performances), this one holds attention well enough. It's technique and particularly playing are still adequate to make us to take things seriously.
A Marseilles bar piece, of the kind that directors Epstein, Cavalcanti and Pagnol would later try, details of the story remain impenetrable in the American copy without intertitles. The thin plot re-unites Eve Francis, who we must consider the Juliette Binoche of her era for want of another contender, with Van Daële (later impressive in "Coeur Fidele") as her lost sailor lover, upsetting her bar owner husband, the admirable Gaston Modot. It would have been nice to see more of Modot here, in one of his youngest sustained appearances.
Best scene has the the dreary bar fill with sailors who, in turn, draw a hoard of floozies, displaying for them the souvenirs of their travels - a live monkey, shawls, an Asian doll, the beak of a sword fish.
Running near an hour at fourteen images a second (anything else destroys the performances), this one holds attention well enough. It's technique and particularly playing are still adequate to make us to take things seriously.