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Le silence de la Mer (1949) More at IMDbPro »
24 out of 28 people found the following comment useful :-
adieu my love, 8 June 2004
Author: (luckysilien@t-online.de) from offenbach/rodenbach
France 1942. Jean Pierre Grumbach alias Melville is away in London with General de Gaulle. France is occupied by the German nazi swastika. Jean Bruller, actually an illustrator, writes a novel 'LE SILENCE DE LA MERE', which is published by the underground 'Edition de Minuit'. Bruller calls himself Vercors. On Feb. 22, 1942 the book is ready to be issued and distributed in Paris by messengers on bicycles.
Melville first read the novel in English. He reports, that he was absolutely determined, that it would be his first film. He returned to France and negotiates with Vercors to buy the rights for his resistance novel. Vercors refused to let Melville have it. The book had virtually served as a Bible during the war and had become part of the French national heritage. Finally Vercors and Melville make a deal: The future famous director guarantees to submit the film as soon as it was finished to a jury of resistant selected by Vercors. Should one single member of this Jury be opposed to the film being shown, Melville promised to burn the negative.
The trouble was, that Melville was unqualified professionally, had no union card and in fact not obtained the rights to the book. Still, the director of the GTC laboratories Colling encouraged Melville and did the chemical work for nothing and the later famous lighting cameraman Henri Decae was the operator of the hired and not so well working equipment. The film was made in Vercors own house and Howard Vernon, a German (Swiss?) starred, as well as a friend of Melvilles Jean-Marie Robain, a wartime comrade, and a family friend Nicole Stéphane, whose profile and limpid eyes Melville loved and who was according to him a Rothschild, what the CGT didn't like so much.
What is it all about ? Uncle (Robain) and his niece ( Stéphane) live together in a house outside some village that is occupied by the Germans (and drink expensive coffee all the time). They have to tolerate a German lieutenant (Vernon), who comes to live upstairs and has a bad leg and who works in the Commandantur. He is a well educated composer of music and has never been to France, though he has traveled the world – except France. When he after work comes back to the uncle-niece couple (he sucking a pipe, she knitting) he knocks at the door and speaks (mostly in his German uniform) in French to the owners of the house, who never answer to him or comment on his statements, explanations, ideas, longings, who never say good night. They are just listening to him.
What is the lieutenant speaking and dreaming of ? He imagines the genius of German music and the greatness of French literature being united in a peaceful Europe. One day our lieutenant Werner decides to go to Paris, that he avoided a long time. The opera like action inside the (Vercors) house is now taken to open air Paris, Vernon with his officers cap is a tourist in front of several well known Paris Buildings and we watch him attending a party of officers, who wise Ebrennac up, that they never intended to respect the French culture or let it at least exist as it is. They make clear that the occupation has just one aim, finish the French for once and for all times. Ebrennac looses all hope, returns to the cottage of uncle and niece, packs his luggage and reports to them what he had heard in the officers Club in Paris. He decides to go back to the front. He leaves the house and this is the time, when the niece says just one word: Adieu.
Certainly the film has an anti-cinematographic aspect and there is little action. But you watch every minute with growing interest how the relationship between the three is developing. There are simple means, two or three walls, a ceiling, a door, a uniform, a ball of wool, a flickering fireside and the over and over repeated greeting of the officer, that he wishes a good night. Are we even witnessing a quiet love affair ? It is probably not in the book, but I like to accept that idea, sympathy for the devil. (Andre Gide: I think the girl was a fool. She deserved to be spanked.)
The film is full of fine details. All of them put splendidly by Decae into a black and white photography as if that sort of film was just freshly invented. The church at the horizon (where would that be ?) behind a field of corn and the forgoing panning shot followed by a slow pan toward a gun barrel. The scene when the lieutenant and his corporal cross a bridge and three French occupy the sidewalk and don't move a single inch. The group of officers caps on the table at the soiree, the perfect focus in the kitchen (Gregg Toland's way) and the nice scarf of the niece towards the end, which looks like decorated by Jean Cocteau, but was drawn by Melville himself, who greatly admired Cocteaus work. Its all much more than just a first film of a future independent film maker.
Melville tells us, making the film was the happiest year in his life. Decae and Melville did the editing from 35 mm rushes in a hotel room. They projected on to the wall. They filmed in total penury. After putting an original music to the film (cost as much as the whole film, 120 musicians) in October 1948 the film was first screened at the studio des Champs-Elysees, in the presence of a top-drawer audience. Now at last Pierre Braunberger came in and managed to persuade Melville to give him the film. It did well at the box office.
And thanks to young Howard Vernon, who passed away only recently at the age of 82. And Cocteau thought the mentioned scarf was a work of his.
Michael Zabel, Offenbach/Rodenbach
17 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
Simple and powerful, 19 January 1999
Author: spechax from Riga, Latvia
I am surprised that this movie is so little known (I must confess I did not know much about it either when I first went to see it). I think it is one of the best movies made in Europe in the first years after the WW2. It is quiet and simple, but very powerful at the same time. Without any killing or death in it, this film shows the absurdness and tragedy of war better than any other I have seen. At the same time, for me this was a very good insight in the spirit of French resistance. But above all, it is about a collapse of dreams, a conflict between one's conscience and ideology, and a realisation of how senseless human feelings, aspirations and the whole existence is made by the war. Very deep and impressive. I felt like crying at the end.
9 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Wonderful debut, 13 November 2007
Author: Prof-Hieronymos-Grost from Ireland
In a small town in occupied France, the tranquil life of the occupants of a country house (an uncle and his niece) is disturbed when a new German officer, Lieutenant Werner Von Ebrennac is billeted and takes up residence in their home. Not wanting to be seen to be collaborating with the enemy they both agree not to let the foreign presence interfere with their everyday life and to this end they even refuse to acknowledge their new guest when he speaks to them. Von Ebrennac a musician and budding composer understands their stubbornness and each night he joins them in their living room and regales them with his stories, on topics such as his love of France, the influence of his father, the war and his passion for music, all of his thoughts and questions go unanswered by the uncle and his niece, he puffs on his pipe while she continues to knit, all the time never making eye contact with their unwanted guest. Privately they both seem to have a growing respect for Von Ebrennac,a learned, romantic and cultured man who imparts his knowledge of French literature with a vitality that can't help but enthuse the listener, he even resorts to wearing civilian clothes in order that his hosts feel more comfortable in his presence.
After the fall of France to the occupying Nazi's, Jean Pierre Melville who fought in the famous battle of Dunkirk found himself demobbed from the French military and subsequently ended up in London where he tried to do his part for the French Resistance, it was there that his love of Cinema gave him his first inkling of what his first project would be, he wanted to adapt the infamous and iconic Resistance book, La Silence de la Mer by Vercors, After the war Melville approached Vercors looking for his permission to adapt his work, which was denied. Despite this setback Melville set out to make the film anyway, another problem that beset him was that he had no Cinematic training and in the highly regulated and unionised France this was going to be a sticking point if the film was going to be made, but his determination fuelled the project and soon Vercors was on board, after Melville made him an offer that the film would never be released unless it was accepted by an esteemed Resistance audience at a private screening and if it didn't compromise his book, of course the film was widely accepted with only one vote against. Melville strived for authenticity and even used Vercors' own home for the filming and also employed actors that had been in the Resistance.
Jean-Marie Robain plays the Uncle and his voice is for the most part only heard in voice-over, both he and Nicole Stéphane's (the Niece) performances by their nature have to be very subdued and all emotion is shown with but the slightest of glances and hardly any movement. Vernon has nearly all the on screen speaking parts and the film is broken up into his ever more emotive musings on life that border on soliloquy and its his performance that holds together the film, when after a brief trip to Paris to meet some old friends, he returns devastated in the knowledge of the atrocities that are to happen and that have been happening, he must now admit to his hosts that his interpretations of his countries ideals have been erroneous. A sublime debut from Melville that influenced many of his fellow countrymen, like Bresson, Truffaut and Godard, with but the slightest hint of what direction his career would take, his gathering together of first timers succeeded in creating a film that bucked many of the filmic trends of the day and as such helps retain its freshness and power even today.
11 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
"I bid you good night.", 8 July 2007
Author: TrevorAclea from London, England
Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Silence de la Mer now seems an atypical work in light of his later, more widely-known gangster films, but this 1949 adaptation of Vercors' hugely popular WW2 novella can lay claim to having influenced both Robert Bresson and the Nouvelle Vague filmmakers both in terms of its style and its production. The book was written under an assumed name by Jean Bruller and published by a (literal) French underground press during the Occupation, and it's a surprising work to have been written during the war, not demonising its central German character but rather making a kind of plea for understanding – but not understanding the enemy, rather making him understand why even his best and idealistic assumptions are so wrong.
The story is simplicity itself: Howard Vernon's German officer is billeted at a French farmhouse where the owner (Jean-Marie Robain) and his niece (Nicole Stéphane) resist in the only way they can – by refusing to say a single word to him. Introduced as a figure out of a horror film yet transformed in the same shot into a less threatening figure the moment he crosses their hearth, he's not a stereotypical Nazi thug, but rather a more sensitive and naively idealistic figure. Soft spoken and polite, he never imposes his will on his reluctant hosts but rather tries to win them over through conversation, never losing his temper at their refusal to respond like a patient suitor. He dreams of a marriage between Germany and France that will take both nations to a higher level, achieving through the reluctant use of force what pre-war politicians failed to do with diplomacy. He doesn't want an empty conquest but, rather, wants France to come willingly to its embrace. He sees the Occupation in terms of Beauty and the Beast, with the proud Beauty destined through time to see that the ill-mannered Beast is not nearly so brutal as it appears. He even admires their silence, taking it as a sign that France is not some easily won over craven coward but rather worthy of Germany's attentions and the effort to woo her to its side. Yet after an ill-fated trip to Paris it is their silence that ultimately wins him over to the realisation that the Beast is far worse than he imagined, a rapacious, soulless figure without redemption, eating away at his idealism with the same ingrained contempt with which it destroys the culture and character of those it conquers.
The film itself had a bizarre history: refusing to sell the screen rights, Vercors eventually agreed to allow Melville to shoot the film after the director promised to submit it to a jury of prominent resistance figures and destroy the negative if any were opposed to the finished film being shown. Made completely outside the studio system over a period of months as and when he could raise the money and film stock for a few days shooting, shot with a non-union crew and going through two cinematographers (Luc Mirot and André Vilar) who objected to Melville's unconventional lighting request before striking lucky with Henri Decae (making his first fictional feature after working in documentaries), and filmed in Vercors' house in the very same room the author had shared with the real German officer who inspired the story, in many ways it's an exemplary no-budget film, a virtual three-hander that makes a virtue of its economy, although it's not a perfect one. There is far too much narration at times, particularly in the early scenes where what we can see is constantly described (Ginette Vincendeau makes a particularly unconvincing argument that this isn't the case simply because there could have been even more narration in the booklet accompanying the DVD) and the relationship with the niece isn't particularly well-handled: there's little sense in Nicole Stéphane's performance that she's trying to hold emotions back, and even small moments like her missing a stitch at a crucial moment in one of Vernon's monologues seems muffed in the execution.
Yet the strengths outweigh the limitations. The situation is a compelling one, the act of passive resistance more intriguing than the more conventional heroics of resistance cinema, and the minimalist treatment is often fascinating. In many ways the film is a bridge between the classic tradition of quality style of pre-War French cinema while heralding a more adventurous and stylised approach, with Henri Decae's often strikingly modern cinematography giving notice of why he would become one of the great cinematographers of French cinema with films like The 400 Blows, Lift to the Scaffold, Plein Soleil and several more collaborations with Melville such as Le Samourai and Le Cercle Rouge. Indeed, Decae's importance to the film cannot be underestimated: as well as being willing to experiment and at once be 'anti-cinematographic' yet 'classical' as Melville demanded (or to risk the film "looking like crap" as Mirot allegedly put it) he would even work on the post-production and editing of the film alongside Melville. To those unfamiliar with Melville's early work it's a world away from his later crime films (although a brief prologue with resistants exchanging a suitcase with copies of the book on a street corner offers a hint of what was to come), and it's not as powerful or accomplished as his masterpiece L'Armee des Ombres, but it's still a remarkably assured and accomplished debut.
Although it has to be said that the film works better on the big screen than the small one, the Eureka Masters of Cinema PAL DVD is absolutely stunning quality: not only is it better than any of the theatrical prints available for years or Waterbearer's NTSC video release but, considering the technical problems that plagued its production, probably looks better now than it did in 1949.
1 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Speaking Volumes, 24 November 2008
Author: writers_reign from London, England
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
This fine film has a lot to answer for: when, in 1949, Jean-Pierre Melville shot it he did so with virtually no formal training in film making and, as a non-union member he employed other non-union members, specifically cinematographer Henri Decae, who went on to enjoy a distinguished career. Finally Melville did not shoot in studio conditions, filming the bulk of the action in author Vercors own home - the home in which, he had in fact written the novella which Melville adapted. The quality of the finished product is beyond dispute but the downside is that he gave the Cahiers crowd the idea that anyone could do it, thus indirectly Melville has to take the rap for foisting the untalented semi-amateur Godard on the world of film. That apart this is a stunning debut - Melville had previously shot only a short about a clown - with three (Howard Vernan, Nicole Stephane and Jean-Marie Robain) exceptional performances, all the more so because the latter two speak less than a dozen words between them. Later Melville returned to the Resistance with L'Armee des ombres, arguably the finest film about the Resistance ever made and taken together they make formidable viewing.
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