Nocturne (1927)
Channel: The Cinema Cellar
Date: 11/06/2023

'Marcel Silver
France / 1927 / 32:37 / French intertitles
With Raquel Meller, Louis Lerch.
Musical accompaniment by Ignacio Plaza Ponce (piano).
In a grand hotel in southern Spain, a woman is waiting for her lover, an officer who has left for the Rif war. One night, finally, he returns. On time ?

Restoration carried out in 1987 by Renée Lichtig from an original nitrate negative and intertitles kept in the collections of the Cinémathèque française. The digitization and setting to music by Ignacio Plaza Ponce were carried out in 2012 with the support of the CNC.

To understand the genesis of Nocturne (Chanson triste) , a medium-length film directed by Marcel Silver in Ronda, Spain, during the winter of 1925-1926, we must go behind the scenes of one of the most ambitious shoots of artistic director Alexandre Kamenka for Albatros Films: the film adaptation of Carmenby Prosper Mérimée, directed in 1925 by Belgian filmmaker Jacques Feyder and performed by Raquel Meller and Louis Lerch in the roles of Carmen and Don José. To shoot the exteriors of the film, the artistic team left, at the beginning of November 1925, for the south of Spain (Seville, Ronda, Cordoba and Algeciras) in search of the light and the Andalusian landscapes necessary for the realism desired by Feyder. However, because of unfavorable weather for the recording of outdoor sequences, this filming on Spanish soil, initially planned to last until the end of December, was extended until the end of January 1926.

Probably because of the forced stoppages of this filming, but above all in order to make the stay there and the teams sent there profitable, Kamenka decides to launch a second film, in parallel with that of Feyder. A shorter film, without major technical deployments or additional investments, shot in the hotel where Carmen 's team is staying in Ronda, and which also allows her to benefit from the commitment of Raquel Meller. The production is ensured by Marcel Silver, already on site as an assistant to the production of Jacques Feyder, and having previously directed L'Horloge (1924) and La Ronde de nuit., released shortly before, in October 1925, also shot with Meller. Regulars of the Albatros troupe, such as Lazare Meerson for the sets or Nikolas Roudakoff and Jéhan Fouquet for the shooting, will take care of the technical aspects, otherwise reduced to a minimum.

Coming from behind the scenes of Carmen , and calling on the same main actors, Marcel Silver's film nevertheless proves to be an antithesis of Feyder's project. Faced with the opulence and sumptuousness of the sequences and sets set up for the literary adaptation, Nocturne takes advantage of natural settings and avoids any artifice of staging. Faced with the dazzling Andalusian sun, the night welcomes storms and hurricanes. Faced with the colorful myth rooted in the fantasized past of romantic Spain, a more sober, arid Spain, with the Rif War as a backdrop, is rooted in the contemporary Spanish reality of the 1920s.

Sad song, but love song, Nocturneis the story of two lovers who miss each other while waiting for each other. A lyrical and poignant drama without dialogue, whose absence of action is filled with an aesthetic power that condenses the drama into itself. Raquel Meller strolls, almost ghostly, through the solitary spaces of this hotel located on the edge of the great cliff carved by the Guadalevín River. The void opened on the Andalusian landscape visually reinforces the emotional abyss experienced by this woman in her waiting full of suffering, and the despair of the loss of love. Silver uses the power of the landscape and the hostility of the local climate to compose the visual atmosphere that accompanies the torment of the protagonist. His sadness only comes up against the reverse shot of an arid and desert landscape and a threatening climate that augurs tragedy. A sad song in images composed for Raquel Meller and allowing the actress, then at the height of her film career in France, to confirm her dramatic power.

The film was presented exclusively at the Aubert-Palace in Paris on May 13, 1927, in a session shared with La Preie du vent by René Clair (1926), also produced by Albatros. A release that we presume to be a success because, after four weeks in theaters, the film was released in several Parisian theaters on November 11, 1927, for another three weeks.

Marien Gomez Rodriguez

Marién Gómez Rodríguez is the author of a thesis entitled Spain and the Spanish imaginary in French films of the 1920s: a source of cinematographic modernity (Sorbonne Nouvelle University – Paris 3 and Jaume I University, Spain).'

Auto-Translated Text and File Source: https://www.cinematheque.fr/henri/film/103083-nocturne-marcel-silver-1927/