Le mystère des roches de Kador

I recently had a chance to view "The Mystery of the Rocks of Kador", directed by Leonce Perret. It's one of the selections on the Gaumont Treasures DVD from Kino, and I believe that it was virtually unseen in the United States before now. Having some familiarity with movies from the early 1900's, I was still surprised by the level of sophistication that Perret brings to this film. It's an engaging four-reel crime story with a very satisfying resolution.

Perret plays the villain - a gentleman willing to do away with his cousin Suzanne and her lover in order to get his hands on her inheritance. It's interesting to see how the villain commits his crime, but the real charm of this movie is the "film within a film" that is used for psychological effect. I would never have expected this in a movie made in 1912. You have to see it to believe it.

Perret does a fine job as both actor and director. Some of the other acting is a bit over-wrought, but the story's pacing kept me entertained throughout. If you are familiar with other dramas of this period (works by D.W. Griffith or Urban Gad, for instance), you may want to see "The Mystery of the Rocks of Kador". You may be as surprised as I was.

When I watched Jean-Luc Godard's documentary series Histoire(s) Du Cinema, there was a quick image from a silent film of a woman open mouthed, collapsing in front of a movie screen. The brief clip impressed me, but I had no way of knowing what the film's title was. A few months later, I am watching the Gaumont Treasures DVDs and I stumble onto the film with that clip. A personal mystery is solved!

The above mentioned scene is the centerpiece of this forty minute thriller. The plot is the classic of a scoundrel trying to do away with an heir to inherit a fortune. The mystery of the title isn't much of one, but the film is fun and also unexpected. A psychiatrist uses a motion picture camera to treat a patient, re-creating a traumatic event in that patient's life. This is an unconventional moment of self-reflexion for a film from 1912. I was fascinated. In addition to the set up, the actors are wonderful. Some have found director Leonce Perret wrong for the role of the scoundrel, but I found him appropriately light-hearted AND evil. His reactions during the masked ball finale are perfect. I actually prefer The Mystery of the Rocks of Kador to Perret's more revered The Child of Paris. It was a good time!

The Marquis de Kéranic has died; the last will and testament of the deceased bequeaths all his possessions to his young niece Frau Suzanne de Lormel ( Frau Suzanne Grandais ), a young orphan. Upon her eighteenth birthday she will receive everything but until she reaches adulthood the entirety of his estate shall belong to her cousin, Herr Fernand de Kéranic ( Herr Léonce Perret ); in case that ( God forbid! ) Frau Suzanne suffers a terrible indisposition like being struck by serious illness such as blindness or insanity, or dies, or even worse, enters a convent!!... then her tutor shall be sole heir.

Apparently adhering to the gospel saying "Let the dead bury the dead" both Frau Suzanne und Herr Fernand, immediately head off to Brittany ( thank God one of the less frenchified French regions ) in order to spend the summer. There Frau Suzanne lives with her tutor and pretty soon she will be captivated by a handsome captain on horseback whose name is Herr Jean d'Erquy ( Herr Max Dhartigny ). Obviously the sight of a dashing man on horseback causes the rich heiress to fall at his feet (the captain's, not the horse's).

Meanwhile, Frau Suzanne's tutor has more earthly problems; he has a debt of 200.000 francs and if he doesn't pay, the lender will perform a public service by unmasking Herr Fernand as a criminal who hides behind the guise of a gentleman. The scoundrel's only way out is to marry his cousin but -not too surprisingly- Frau Suzanne prefers the handsome captain.

During a visit to the rocks of Kador, Herr Fernand discovers his cousin's secret love and realises what this means to him so he hatches an evil scheme against the two lovers.

"Le Mystère Des Roches De Kador" ( The Mystery Of The Rocks Of Kador ) (1912 ) is a solid short mystery and includes all the elements so characteristic of that film genre: a beautiful and young heiress, an evil relative, a pure love and a lot of drama with a happy ending. But besides these classic narrative elements, the film brings a modern touch to the traditional detective tale: Herr Perret introduces a Herr Professor Williams ( Herr Émile Keppens ) who has theories about the application of cinematography to psychotherapy! This voyeurism with its cinema inside cinema gives the story a certain farcical aspect which plays well with the gripping central story.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must solve the mystery of why some decadent aristocrats drink whisky on the rocks.

After watching the two Leonce Perret films in the Gaumont set released by Kino, the word that seemed to sum him up for me is "cerebral." I don't mean that there's psychological depth such as you might find in Scandinavian films of the teens here; the characters in both are more or less the standard two-dimensional types of Victorian melodrama, vigorously portrayed by French actors with obvious stage training, but types nonetheless.

But the films take a cool, methodical approach to melodramatic tales that others (not least of them Perret's coworker Louis Feuillade) would have made more lurid. That's both their weakness and their strength, for movies of 1912-3; they are carefully worked out, logical, and thus unusually credible for melodramas of their time. If the delight of Feuillade's serials is the sense that any social order could be overturned at any moment, part of the satisfaction of Perret's is this sense that his world is so solid.

Both films on the set are crime films, that genre which simultaneously presents a vision of the world's proper order and of its subversion. In The Mystery of the Rocks of Kador, which runs about 45 minutes, a guardian (played by Perret himself) conspires to steal his ward's fortune in a manner that turns violent; she winds up in a sort of catatonia, and to jog her memory, a film is made of the events and shown to her (and us). More could have been made of this theme of a film within a film, how true what we see is, etc., but it's pretty remarkable that it's being done at all in 1912.

The one major flaw in this film is Perret's own casting-- plump and genial-looking, he's a natural comedian (which he was, in fact), and he doesn't exude the cold Victorian heartlessness the part wants. Still, the open air photography and the clinically precise staging of events in medium shot make this an unusually fluid and lucid film for 1912, that could easily have come from five years later.

One more time,no comment comes from Perret's native country ;French people are not that much interested in their silent era.

Restored in 1993,the pictures are close to perfect ;The film was filmed on location (no,it's not Godard and co 's invention!) ,and the director takes advantage of it ,notably in the remarkable scene in which Ferdinand shoots Jean.

The screenplay ,closer to French melodrama from the nineteenth century and to contemporary Maurice Leblanc 's Arsene Lupin -the settings could be used for ,say,"l'Aiguille Creuse" -than to Souvestre and Allain's "Fantomas " ,Judex ,or "Les Vampires " which Feuillade transferred to the screen ;Perret 's murder mystery has stood the time better than his colleague 's extravaganzas .

The first part has only one major flaw;a line reads " Suzanne struggles against the raging sea": the viewer only sees little wavelets ,the boat stands in little danger of capsizing!

The second part is well ahead of its time and predates the Freudian American movies of the forties ,those of Lang,Tourneur,Hitchcock ,Siodmak ...Suzanne has lost her mind and her memory ,and doctor Williams gives her his special treatment : he films the reconstruction of the drama and shows his work to his patient :the film in the film,which holds her spellbound ,psychoanalysis ,all this takes us far from Fandor,Juve and Musidora.And in the masked ball,Perret shows his sense of mystery and a certain symbolism .

Suzanne Grandais ,Perret 's Lilian Gish ,was unfortunately killed in a car crash in 1920:she was only 27.

I do hope all these comments from abroad will help this movie to be restored to favor in France.