"Le Capitaine Fracasse" (1929) By Alberto Cavalcan

[Ferdinand Von Galitzien]

Herr Sigognac ( Herr Pierre Blanchar ) is a young French nobleman
without means ( well, this it is not a tragic fact for this German
count who has known such want during his youthful days, his mature days
and even his twilight days… ); he lives a poor and miserable existence
in his Schloss until one night unexpectedly a troupe of strolling
players asks for shelter. Herr Sigognac will offer his aristocratic
roof to the troupe and will be especially attracted to Isabelle ( Frau
Lien Deyers ), a beautiful actress, so the next morning, after a short
hesitation, he decides to join the actors and travel to Paris with
them, becoming, after a violent incident involving two gypsies, the
Captain Fracasse.

"Le Capitaine Fracasse" (1929) is a classic adventure epic directed by
Herr Alberto Cavalcanti, a director who will do his most important work
in France, the land in which he was educated, although he will direct
in a number of other countries during the years. The film was based on
a famous novel by the French writer Herr Théophile Gautier that
obviously this Herr Von hasn't read it because it was written in
French. The story is full of funny, sarcastic and cynical characters
inspired by the European comedy theatre of the XVII century.

A very interesting part of the film is its novel subject, the
recreation of the lives and work of those strolling players who, for a
few coins, performed their comedies in any available place: small
towns, populous barns, crowded taverns with audiences of commoners and
noblemen alike. The film includes action and adventure involving a
wicked enmity between the captain Fracasse and the Duke of Vallombreuse
( Herr Charles Boyer ) who will fight during the whole movie for the
love of Frau Isabelle.

The direction is perfect, including elegant camera movements and
elaborate adventure sequences with beautiful outdoor scenery. It is a
well-done swashbuckler film, archetypical in many moments and indeed
very professional but it is a bit too much like other adventure films
of those silent days and in some ways does not stand out from them.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because
this German Count must direct a troupe of Teutonic rich heiresses.

Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien
http://ferdinandvongalitzien.blogspot.com

[Richard M Roberts]

"Le Capitaine Fracasse" (1929) is a classic adventure epic directed by
Herr Alberto Cavalcanti, a director who will do his most important work
in France, the land in which he was educated, although he will direct
in a number of other countries during the years.

Sprech for Herr Zelf Count. As good as LE CAPITAINE FRACASSE indeed is, Cavalcanti's best and most lasting and important work has and will most likely be his English films: WENT THE DAY WELL, DEAD OF NIGHT, THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE, NICHOLAS NICKELBY, and one of my favorite films of all time, CHAMPAGNE CHARLIE. A good enough filmography for any Director, though the stuff done in other countries was no slouch either. A still comparitively underrated filmmaker in film history circles who deserves far more attention.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

[DShepFilm]

In 1973 I collaborated with Cavalcanti on his professional autobiography (which has been published but only in Portuguese). At that time LE CAPITAINE FRACASSE was considered a lost film but he insisted it was his best work. The imdb has a co-director listed but that is an error.

Cav was also especially proud of EN RADE and RIEN QUE LES HEURES from his silent period, and of the sets he designed for THE LATE MATHIAS PASCAL.

He enjoyed his time at Ealing and making the films Mr. Roberts admires, especially WENT THE DAY WELL?, CHAMPAGNE CHARLIE, and NICHOLAS NICKELBY which has been obscured by David Lean's two superb Dickens adaptations for Rank. However, in England he was proudest of his experimental sound work for the GPO Film Unit, especially on PETT AND POTT, NIGHT MAIL, COAL FACE and NORTH SEA.

Although Cav was a fine director of fiction films, I think his heart was always closest to the documentary.

David Shepard

[Ferdinand Von Galitzien]

It is not necessary to say that the silent nitrate that this Herr Graf watched recently of Herr Cavalcanti's "Le Capitaine Fracasse" was the one produced years ago by Herr David Shepard, a beautiful and great silent film restoration, ja wohl!.

So, having in mind that Herr Shepard doesn't have any Teutonic rich heiress around, what are you waiting for to buy such wonderful modernen disk edition of "Le Capitaine Fracasse" in order to make Herr Shepard rich?!...

Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien
http://ferdinandvongalitzien.blogspot.com

[R Michael Pyle]

Already bought it, and I've watched it twice now, besides!

[DShepFilm]

Herr Graf, thank you for the commercial. Although I do not have a rich Teutonic heiress in my life, I do have a beautiful female Dobermann Pinscher who provides all the Germanic affection I can absorb. Herr Dobermann accomplished something amazing when he created that hybrid (to protect him while he went about the unpopular work of collecting taxes from the reluctant German populace).

David Shepard

[Arndt]

I believe he also coined the phrase "Speak softly and carry a doberman."

[Jim Roots]

Hey David, aren't you going to knock down the Count for calling Fracasse a swashbuckler?

Just kidding...


Jim

[Mike Gebert]

Speaking of Cavalcanti, I received Vol. 3 in the Kino Avant-Garde series, and watched Rien Que Les Heures, which was Cavalcanti's entry in the "symphony of a city" minigenre, shortly followed by Berlin: Symphony of a City, which Cavalcanti is said by some sources to have been involved with as well.

In fact it's very different from Berlin, as Paris is different from Berlin. Berlin is editing-driven, as symphonic as a locomotive; this is much more an impressionistic vision of the city, with a particular focus on the down and out. This is what makes it interesting when the cinematography and editing are not especially exceptional; it has a real feel for unglamorous lower class people, albeit mostly the sort of people whom you can shoot without permission (eg., bums sleeping in doorways). At times this turns into staged scenes with rather cliched types (a streetwalker, a sailor, etc.), and there's one character— an aged, possibly mentally disturbed woman staggering down narrow alleys— whose distress is so extreme that the frequent cutaways to her latest travails have the nightmarish quality of a David Lynch film. (These must have been staged, because otherwise following her through all that with a camera would be as inhuman as flipping a turtle on its back and watching it die in the sun.) Oh, and in the middle of that, there's a bit that couldn't be more contemporary in its reflection of food politics— a man is eating a steak at a cafe, and a closeup of the steak is superimposed with shots of the slaughter of the animal who provided it. Evidently even before the days of supermarkets and meat in yellow styrofoam trays, people needed reminding where their food came from...

I'm not sure what it all adds up to‚ this odd mixture in tone of Paris vu Par... and Las Hurdes, but so far it's at least one of the more interesting films I've watched in this set. Still, I suspect that if, as David Shepard says, Cavalcanti preferred his documentaries to his fiction films, it's because all the prejudices of the day preferred them, too. For me, what I've seen of Cavalcanti's documentaries (a number of the BFO films as well) doesn't really compare to his outstanding, underrated fiction work in Britain in the 1940s.