This is
a silent film from 1923 directed by Frenchman Jean Epstein and is a melodrama about
a bargeman named Louveau who, one day whilst on shore on business, finds an
abandoned young boy named Victor.
Finding no-one to claim the boy, he goes about adopting him and brings
him back onto his boat much to the alarm of his disapproving wife. She lets the boy stay overnight but explains
that he must go back in the morning.
Immediately Victor gets along with the couple’s young daughter Clara and
the two happily play as kids do. From
here the film cuts ahead to ten years into the future, and we see that the
couple ended up bringing up Victor as their own son in that time, and he ends
up being quite the helpful boatman to his adoptive father. Louveau announces this will all be Victor’s
and Clara’s in the future, talking about his business, which irks Louveau’s
shipmate who has been with him since the beginning. It soon becomes obvious too that Victor and
Clara love each other in more than just a sibling way. They spend the days on the barge together in
each other’s arms or gazing into their eyes.
Eventually this perfect life is interrupted as Victor’s real father
comes back to claim him, and the young lovers are torn apart. Even though Victor is now brought up in a
richer and more educated way, he dreams about his time back on the barge which
is named “The Beauty From Nivernais” and of his lost love Clara.
This was
the second film in a row that had to do with young people in love, admittedly
the couple in this film are a little older than the ones in “Moonrise Kingdom”,
and again I thought the love affair was handled really well. The 1920’s were a different time, so the
thought of a boy and a girl who have been brought up as siblings falling in
love may seem a little strange today, but I love the way the affair was
portrayed, so naively, so respectably and so innocently. It was really beautiful.
Compared
with the flourishes of cinematic brilliance seen in Jean Epstein’s “The
Faithful Heart”, you could look at “The Beauty From Nivernais” as nothing more
than a conventional melodrama, but I much preferred the drama of this film than
the more recognized “The Faithful Heart”.
It is true, the wild montage editing and superimpositions of that film,
are almost absent from this one, but I felt much more moved by the performances
of all the actors in “The Beauty From Nivernais” that I did not miss the
brilliant technique from the other film.
That doesn’t mean that all technique is missing, as Epstein does use
superimposition to good effect here, and he also lets a lot of the drama play
out over the actors face in close-up too.
The only
negatives I had with the film where the over-the-top and obvious acting of the “evil”
shipmate, and I felt that the big dramatic scene of the impending barge
disaster went too long that it lacked realism, but other than that I thought “The
Beauty From Nivernais” was an outstanding achievement in silent cinema from the
early 20’s by director Jean Epstein.
4 Stars.
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