Le tournoi

This isn't really a Jean Renoir-originated film. It was commissioned by a historical society to commemorate 500 years of history in whichever French city it was that this was made. Portions of the film are apparently lost, and what I saw was a three-reel reconstruction made much later, probably by the BBC. It runs about 30 minutes. It kind of tells a complete story.

It's a fairly large-budget, swashbuckling costume drama set in the 16th century in the court of Catherine de Medici. She, at the time, was trying to reconcile Catholic and Protestant factions in France. She promises to marry one of her ladies-in-waiting to a prominent Protestant nobleman (who's portrayed as the bad guy in the piece), in exchange for his promoting peace. But the lady has already promised herself to a Catholic nobleman, whom she loves, and who is a good buddy of her brother's. The Protestant taunts the brother about how he's going to have his sister; they fight a secret, illegal duel, and the brother gets killed. Finally, there's a big tournament between the rival lovers, the Catholic and the Protestant, with jousting and swordplay and whatnot. The Protestant is winning. But while this is going on, the he is betrayed by a former lover, and revealed as the murderer of the brother. Catherine de Medici orders a group of her men-at-arms to arrest him, but he refuses to be taken alive. He fights to the death. As he lays dying, he asks his mother--the so-called 'Queen of the Protestants'--to forgive. But she has a vengeful look on her face... The Catholic nobleman and the lady are back together, smiling. Some dust blows in the wind. The end.

I'd be curious to know how long this film originally ran, and whether there were additional sub-plots that are now missing. What remains feels kind of skeletal in the way of those very early silent dramas of the 1900s and early 1910s--it just hits the main points of the plot and leaves the rest up to your imagination. It's not terribly engaging drama, as in scenes aren't really developed or built up to; they just sort of happen. But I guess that's to be expected if really significant portions of the film are missing. The costumes and the sets seem nice, as is some of Renoir's camera work, but the print I saw was incredibly shoddy and non-restored, barely watchable.

It's hard to judge something like this fairly, but I give it a 6/10. It's probably only of interest to Renoir completists, and maybe some history buffs.

For many years this rare, silent Renoir was considered lost, except for an abbreviated 40-minute print that could only have provided a tantalizing hint of the splendor of the original feature. The setting is the medieval French city of Carcassonne, where lords and ladies have gathered for a friendly tournament sponsored by Catherine de' Medici to unite feuding Protestants and Catholics under the common banner of France. But never mind the 16th century history lesson; enjoy it as an epic romance of chivalry and courtly manners, with rival knights De Rogier (in white armour, of course) and the despicable De Baynes competing for the hand of a beautiful young maiden. Agile camera-work and painterly lighting effects lend momentum to a drama which otherwise has a tendency to become bogged down in narrative exposition and meticulous period detail, up until the stirring climactic joust.

I watched LE TOURNOI yesterday. What a revelation! I am a bit of a Renoir fanboy and have seen all of his silents, but so far LE TOURNOI had only been available to me in the hugely truncated 9.5mm version with a running time of around 35 minutes. I had never thought much of it and believed the critics that rated it as a fairly shoddy potboiler. But now that I have seen LE TOURNOI on the Gaumont DVD in all of its glorious two hours I have discovered that there is so much more to this film. Technically it is an audacious tour de force, with an incredibly mobile camera, many close-ups and actual handheld shots. Colorize some sequences and convert them to 16:9 and LE TOURNOI could have been made yesterday. This makes for a very exciting viewing experience. Add to that the ultra-lavish interiors and costumes, hundreds of horses and the backdrop of actual Carcassonne for the location shots and LE TOURNOI is a feast for the eyes on that level, too.

Unfortunately other aspects let the film down a bit. The plot is fairly unsophisticated, with a pure maiden and a villain straight out of Victorian melodrama. Maybe it is because of this that Renoir does not seem to be overly invested in the climax, the tournament of the title. I couldn't help but feel that other directors would have made a lot more of the fighting sequences. Renoir seems to have concentrated on the psychological drama, which might have been a bit of a wasted effort here due to the lack of it in the plot. The only mention LE TOURNOI gets in Renoir's memoirs is for the contraption Renoir claims he invented to shoot a scene at a banquet. Seeing this scene properly for the first time I understood why he singled it out. Here villain Francois de Baynes has brought together his harem of high society ladies around a table ready to greet (and mortally embarrass) his new fiance. Before she arrives he enters the room and - with the help of Renoir's contraption - the camera follows him slowly making his way along the assembled ladies, putting his hands on them in various ways and thereby obviously claiming them as his possessions. It makes your flesh crawl, especially as the actresses do a very good job of conveying their squirming anguish and he of displaying his obscene enjoyment of the pain he inflicts. This scene more than compensates for the lack of outstanding acting in the rest of LE TOURNOI and it alone makes the film worth watching. Altogether quite a discovery. LE TOURNOI ought to be a shoo-in for film festivals, if only for the fact that it is strongly reminiscent of GAME OF THRONES. I was reminded of Ramsay Bolton a lot.

This is unique in Jean Renoir's filmography, a big production centuries ago about relationship between catholics and protestants. And it's a longer version than the 40 minutes last print available, with few scratches. Not really exciting, but some great scenes : the first sword duel very tough, the orgy, and the final fight.

A mystery remains on imdb : the cinematographer Willy Faktorovitch is credited to be born in 1915 and died in 1987. He worked on his first movie in 1918, what a so young genius. I searched and found 1888 - 1960, but in that case, there are around 40 movies that shouldn't be in his imdb filmography. In fact, imdb confused the father (Volko "Willy", born in 1888 in Kiev) with the son (Charlie Willy Gricha, born in 1915 in Neuilly sur Seine), they joined their filmography with the son's date of birth and death. This is to be repaired, well that happens.

The father Volko "Willy" was seven times cinematographer for Marcel Pagnol from 1933 to 1954.

...De Medicis who forbade the duels! It was the Cardinal De Richelieu,during Louis the Thirteenth's reign,because that way of settling of scores was decimating the French aristocracy whose duty was to fight for their country first.

Renoir did not take this film seriously.It's the(modest) granddaddy of "La Reine Margot" and other costume dramas in the catholic vs protestants background.Two young nobles want to marry Isabelle ,hence the title (the tournament in the city) .It seems that the director had a comfortable budget at his disposal,but it's far from being more than a footnote in his oeuvre.