Le nain

Louis Feuillade strikes again in one of his earlier works (pre-"Fantomas"), this time telling the story of a dwarf who is a "grand poet". Take that for what it is worth.

Now, I am not sure what to make of this film. Heck, I am not even sure if the dwarf is really a dwarf (he sort of looks like a child). But yet, for a mere 17 minutes, you will find yourself enthralled, or at the very least more than just a tad interesting.

Feuillade was a genius. I feel like he is not as well known as Murnau, or even other early French innovators. This is a shame, and I hope to see more of Feuillade's work in the years to come.

I've been on a Louis Feuillade kick recently, and finally began watching some of his short films from the early years. One which has popped up several times in the last twenty years in sets with certain Feuillade serials is a 16 or 17 minute short called "Le nain"(1912), that is, "The Dwarf". Part of a series of short films Feuillade called "la vie telle qu'elle est", or "Life as it is", "The Dwarf" sets itself up for its finality by avoiding irony and simply leading the lead to ultimate upshot, a psychological catastrophe. We as the audience are hoping, as is the dwarf's mother (though she knows differently), that some fairytale fate will intervene and produce another result, but it is not to be. The film opens with an actress finishing a play which is getting roaring applause, the audience calling for the author to appear on stage. But...the play had been left at the theater anonymously, and now no one knows who the author is. We meet the author in a future scene, and with him is his mother, a matronly looking smothering guardian of a mother. The author finally writes to the actress whose photographic portrait the author has on a table, and by which the author has fallen for her vicariously. She agrees to let the author call her and speak with her on the phone. They carry on a phone relationship for some time, the actions of which stir up quite an audience among the telephone operators who listen in on the goings-on. Finally the actress discovers on her own where the author lives through these nosy operators, and she goes to his home. The ensuing occurrences end in a very unpleasant, but, unfortunately, realistic finale.

For a short made in 1912, this piece of work is brilliant psychologically. The camera work is not necessarily ordinary, but it doesn't have the snap of the future serials. The acting is first rate. The only thing that will startle most people today is the coddling that the mother does to her son, a small person who gets up in his mother's lap a number of times and behaves like a baby. It's rather off-putting. Whether or not it was meant to be I don't know. But it certainly adds to the complexity of the subject matter.

Dwarf, The (1917)

*** (out of 4)

The term melodrama was certainly made for a movie like this but it's still an interesting little gem. A manuscript is mysteriously delivered to a playhouse where it is eventually turned into a major hit with critics calling it a masterpiece. The only problem is that no one knows who wrote it. The actress of the play receives a call from the author and the two quickly becomes friends but the man won't give any details about himself because he doesn't want her to know that he's actually a dwarf. This leads up to the woman getting his address and stopping by to pay a visit. This is one of the most bizarre shorts I've seen and I must admit that I'm still not certain what director Feuillade was going for. I won't ruin the ending but I can't help but think it was a little over-the-top but it's hard to go into detail without spoiling it. I'm not sure if the directors was trying to say anything or if he thought this was just the right way to end the film but either way it's certainly strange. I thought the story was rather unique and Feuillade tells it in such a way that you can't help but get caught up in it. I thought the two leads did a pretty good job with the characters. Another plus was the pacing which had the film going by pretty quickly and without any slow moments. There's not much visual style as once again Feuillade tells everything with mostly medium shots and not too much editing.

A sad, unique tale of the unrequited love of a dwarf playwright for the leading lady of his latest work, who is unaware of his identity but highly intrigued by the daily amorous phone calls she receives from him. The poignancy for which director Louis Feuillade is clearly striving is tempered somewhat by the slightly unnerving relationship the dwarf (played very well by Delphin) has with his mother (grown men really shouldn't climb upon their mother's lap for comfort, no matter how small they might be).