Crainquebille

Jacques Feyder possessed a unique eye towards filmmaking. Growing up in Belgium, Feyder took to acting on the French stage when he was older. His interests eventually morphed towards cinema, hired in 1914 by Gaumont Films as an assistant director. After serving in World War One, he secured a head director's position at Gaumont. When he helmed November 1922's "Crainquebille," critics realized they were witnessing a new style in film. There were no terms yet to describe Feyder's first critically-acclaimed movie, but his aesthetics transformed the look and feel of French movies, so much so that he influenced successor directors to a new cinematic form in what is now called 'poetic realism.' French directors such as Jean Vigo, Julien Duvivier, Jean Renoir and Marcel Carne, have followed Feyder's pioneering aesthetics in recreating a naturalist look in movies, despite some sequences filmed inside a studio. Poetic realism follows a pattern of an outsider, frustrated with life, experiences an incident serving as a tipping point. Its characters possess both nostalgia and bitterness in the waning years of their lives.

"Crainquebille" is a quintessential poetic realistic film. Adapted from a Anatole France novel, the movie follows a poor aging vegetable street seller who is confronted by a police officer in the middle of a crowded city avenue who's demanding he move his cart. Waiting for money a customer promised to pay when she purchased a bunch of vegetables, the vendor said something the officer mistakenly thought was a threat on his life. He's arrested and hauled into court, where the proceedings become a surrealistic display of indifference and predetermined judgement on the poor man's guilt. The sequence, studied today for its framing and positioning of the court's participants, had an impact on the audience illustrating how stacked the deck is for those caught up in the web of so-called justice.

Once released from prison, the vendor sees his business ruined since he's shunned as an ex-convict. Facing starvation, he tries to get arrested again since prison gave him food and shelter. But frustrated at how arbitrary justice is, he's unable to return to the comforts of jail. Ready to jump off a bridge, he's talked out of it by a boy, played by Jean Forest. Feyder claimed he discovered Jean when he and his wife were dining in Montmartre and spotted him playing in the street with other boys. This was Forest's first of 12 films he was featured.

"Crainquebille" was hailed by critics as a major work in French cinema. Even D. W. Griffith, not the easiest man to please reviewing other directors' work, was effusive in his praise. "I have seen a film that, for me, symbolizes Paris," wrote the director. "That man with his barrow load of vegetables - what a striking image - and how forceful! A fine work, beautiful, compelling, bold!" The New York Times called "Crainquebille" one of the best movies of the year.

As I like old french movies in old settings, I had to see "Crainquebille" by Jacques Feyder. And I was deeply surprised, the Feyder direction is great, settings are really from another age, but the most fabulous is Maurice de Féraudy as Crainquebille, he is so natural and touching. The scenes during the trial are outstanding, so much poetry, and many other scenes are wonderfully shot. That "Crainquebille" is a must-see for french cinema lovers.

'Crainquebille', based on a short story by Anatole France, is a tale that comes straight out of the 'Belly of Paris'. Its main theme is friendship (here between two street vendors: an old peddler and a newsboy) and its opposite, exclusion and hate. The movie exposes the brutal power of the law (the police and the judges), the coldness and cynicism of the bourgeoisie and social ostracism of 'stained' people (even when a trial is rigged and an accused wrongly condemned). The movie excels by its realism (the street and market scenes), by the acting of its main characters and by its emotional impact on the spectator. Akira Kurosawa explained it later so wonderfully: art is not the expression of (the artist's) personal emotions, but the engendering of emotions in the heart of the spectator. In other words, the spectator should really share the joys and pains of the characters on the screen. Therefore, the directing must be focused on 'natural' acting, on doing things 'naturally'. Jacques Feyder knew this all important message instinctively. He was a real master of Art. This movie is a must see for all movie buffs.

There's one thing to note here, the old man's subjective experience of the courtroom where he's on trial, and later on the nightmare where it is more vividly relived; figures are unnaturally large or small, blacks and whites are inverted, and the judges storm from their pedestals across the room in thunderous slow-motion. It's an arresting sequence of internal anxieties.

So even though the film has been jotted down in film history as realist - the Parisian marketplace bustling with activity, the sellers pushing their carts down cobble-streets - it is this, impressionist we call it now, inversed look of objective reality from inside the mirror that strikes some spark now.

But compared to what more renowned French filmmakers - Gance, Epstein, L'Herbier - were attempting at the time or were gearing to, it leaves something to be desired. Example: the state prosecutor, whose court rhetorics intimidate the simple old man, is envisioned as gigantic; but Feyder frames him in a full shot that makes the court appear miniscule and the prosecutor normal, which is clearly not what was intended from what the intertitle lets us gather.

So it is all a bit improvised for effect, in an effort, that was taken up in France at the time, to distend cinema from the theatrical point-of-view foisted upon it by the earlier generation of filmmakers.

The moral of the story is actually more interesting; it is not the rigid, surreal system of law and justice that tears the individual, this anomy is endured with quiet, baffled dignity and some measure of ritual fatalism, but the society that bestows a final respect on the word of this system; a collective whole which Feyder reveals to be thoroughly hypocritical, petty, small-minded, and ultimately heartless.

So it is not surprsing that the guardian angel turns out to be a kid; not yet swallowed in this collective cruelty, a person who can see from the heart.

Other than that, there are some lovely evening atmospheres that you may want to see; empty streets lined up with lights, a bridge across an expanse of water. It's all painterly, quite evocative of a sense of place.

Due to the well-known extravagances so characteristic of the aristocracy, this German Count has sometimes declared his liking for frenchified silent films and among those his affection for Jacques Feyder's oeuvre. Some time ago this German Count had the chance to watch an abridged version of one of the French director's earlier films, "Crainquebille", a film that was very acceptable to strict German tastes; so when some rumors reached the Schloss that the German-French ( an impossible alliance, certainly ) TV channel "ARTE" would show a beautifully restored and tinted version of that film, it was a great opportunity to check if the film in its entirety promised as much as the abridged version.

And that's true, certainly; "Crainquebille" is a beautiful and poetic film that tells the story of a street seller who sells vegetables from his oxcart in the Paris market; due to an incident with a policemen he spends some days in prison, and when he finally comes out of jail everything has changed for him. "Crainquebille" is an astonishing and remarkable film for many reasons: for the technical aspects, because the mastery of Jacques Feyder is in every shot and conception of the film; special and visual effects ( Dr. Mathieu's nightmare, the sequence of Crainquebille in the court ); also excellent cinematography ( the marketplace sequences and specially the night shots ) by Herr Léonce-Henri Burel & Herr Maurice Foster that enriches the film and the story in an excellent way. Besides the technical aspects, "Crainquebille" is remarkable for Feyder's poetry, full of sensibility and not fussiness, which is difficult to do because many directors might have made a very different and worse film from such a story ( there is even an orphaned paper boy with a dog… ). When it depicts the different ordinary people that can be seen, sellers, shop assistants, policemen, prostitutes, judges or doctors, a kind of human symphony emerges, as real as life itself; the film also inserts criticisms about social injustices, social degradation and even injustice in the application of justice.

"Crainquebille" is a piece of real life, a kind of documentary of the people who lived in Paris ( or in any great city of the world ) during the 20's, their harsh lives depicted with some sense of humor and hope, a beautiful film that bets always for the honesty and the honest people, a marvelous masterpiece, indeed.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must take a walk on the wild side for an aristocrat, that is to say, in the street market.