Cœur Fidèle
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''Cœur fidèle'' is a 1923 French drama film directed by Jean Epstein. It has the alternative English title ''Faithful Heart''. The film tells a melodramatic story of thwarted romance, set against a background of the Marseille docks, and experiments with many techniques of camerawork and editing.


Plot

Marie (
Gina Manès Gina Manès (born Blanche Moulin; 7 April 1893 – 6 September 1989) was a French film actress and a major star of French silent cinema. After an early appearance in a Louis Feuillade film, she had significant roles in films of Germaine Dulac and ...
) was an orphan adopted by a bar-owner and his wife in the port of Marseille, and now she is harshly exploited by them as a servant in the bar. She is desired by Petit Paul ( Edmond van Daële), a thuggish layabout, but is secretly in love with Jean (
Léon Mathot Léon Mathot (5 March 1886, Roubaix, Nord-Pas-de-Calais - 6 March 1968, in Paris) was a French film actor and film director best known perhaps for playing Edmond Dantes in '' The Count of Monte Cristo'' film serial in 1918. He appeared in the ...
), a dockworker. Marie is forced to leave with Petit Paul, but Jean follows them to a fairground where the two men fight. In the brawl a policeman is stabbed and, while Petit Paul escapes, Jean is arrested and gaoled. A year later, Jean rediscovers Marie, now with a sick baby and living with Petit Paul, who spends all their money on drink. Jean tries to support Marie, aided by a crippled woman (
Marie Epstein Marie Epstein (born Marie-Antonine Epstein; 14 August 1899, Warsaw - 24 April 1995, Paris) was an actress, scenarist, film director, and film preservationist. Her career is distinguished by three important collaborations. Throughout the 1920s, sh ...
, credited as "Mlle Marice"), who lives next door; but Petit Paul, warned by gossiping neighbours that Jean is seeing Marie, returns for a violent confrontation, this time armed with a gun. In the ensuing struggle, the crippled woman obtains the gun and kills Petit Paul. In an epilogue, we see Jean and Marie finally free to love each other, though their faces suggest that experience has taken its toll on their lives.


Production and style

Jean Epstein had already established himself as a film theorist with the publication of several books, and he had begun to explore his ideas in practice with his first two films, ''Pasteur'' (1922) and '' L'Auberge rouge'' (1923). Epstein now chose to film a simple story of love and violence "to win the confidence of those, still so numerous, who believe that only the lowest melodrama can interest the public", and also in the hope of creating "a melodrama so stripped of all the conventions ordinarily attached to the genre, so sober, so simple, that it might approach the nobility and excellence of tragedy". He wrote the scenario in a single night. Epstein had been much impressed by Abel Gance's recently completed ''
La Roue ''La Roue'' (, 'The Wheel') is a French silent film, directed by Abel Gance, who also directed '' Napoléon'' and '' J'accuse''. It was released in 1923. The film used then-revolutionary lighting techniques, and rapid scene changes and cuts. ...
'', and in ''Cœur fidèle'' he similarly applied rhythmic editing, overlays, close-ups, and point-of-view shots. The opening sequence establishes Marie's situation in the harbour bar through montage: we see close-up images of her face, hands, and the table and glasses she is cleaning. Later, images of the sea and the port are intercut and overlaid to convey her relationship with Jean. The film's most celebrated sequence, set at a fairground, employs rhythmic editing to chart the escalating tension of the love triangle. In the film's second half, Epstein employs dramatic lighting effects and lens distortion effects to convey the melodrama of the situation, as well as subjective states, such as Petit Paul's drinking. The film's technical experiments are balanced throughout by the realism of the setting. The characters are unglamorous and belong to a working-class milieu, living in cheap lodgings, frequenting rough bar-rooms. ''Cœur fidèle'' is one of several early films to use the location of the Marseille dockside (in the wake of
Louis Delluc Louis Delluc (; 14 October 1890 – 22 March 1924) was an Impressionist French film director, screenwriter and film critic. Biography Delluc was born in Cadouin in 1890. His family moved to Paris in 1903. After graduating from the university, ...
's ''Fièvre'', and looking forward to
Alberto Cavalcanti Alberto de Almeida Cavalcanti (February 6, 1897 – August 23, 1982) was a Brazilian-born film director and producer. He was often credited under the single name "Cavalcanti". Early life Cavalcanti was born in Rio de Janeiro, the son of a ...
's ''En rade''), and the evocative images of looming ships and deserted wharfs contribute to a style which would be characterized over the next decade and a half as "
poetic realism Poetic realism was a film movement in France of the 1930s. More a tendency than a movement, poetic realism is not strongly unified like Soviet montage or French Impressionism but were individuals who created this lyrical style. Its leading filmm ...
" (cf. ''
L'Atalante ''L'Atalante'', also released as ''Le Chaland qui passe'' ("The Passing Barge"), is a 1934 French film written and directed by Jean Vigo, and starring Jean Dasté, Dita Parlo and Michel Simon. After the difficult release of his controversial ...
'', '' Quai des brumes'' (''Port of Shadows'')).


Reception

The film was not a success with the public. Its initial run in Paris in 1923 was terminated after three days (because of disputes among the audience). A re-release in the following year saw a steady decline in the size of its audience. Among critics and other film-makers however ''Cœur fidèle'' attracted considerable attention and has continued to do so.
Georges Sadoul Georges Sadoul (4 February 1904 – 13 October 1967) was a French film critic, journalist and cinema writer. He is known for writing encyclopedias of film and filmmakers, many of which have been translated into English. Biography Sadoul was ...
said that the film "was a sensation, and was to remain pstein'sbest film"; "it touches us still by its fidelity to everyday life".
René Clair René Clair (11 November 1898 – 15 March 1981), born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker and writer. He first established his reputation in the 1920s as a director of silent films in which comedy was often mingled with fantasy. He wen ...
wrote enthusiastically about it: " ''CÅ“ur fidèle'' must be seen if you want to understand the resources of the cinema today. ...For a film to be worthy of the cinema, that's already a very welcome miracle! ''CÅ“ur fidèle'' is worthy of it on more than one account."René Clair, ''Cinéma d'hier, cinéma d'aujourd'hui''. (Gallimard, 1970), quoted in booklet accompanying Pathé Classique DVD (2007): "Il faut voir ''CÅ“ur fidèle'' si l'on veut connaître les ressources du cinéma d'aujourd'hui. €¦Qu'un film soit digne du cinéma, voilà déjà un bien plaisant miracle! ''CÅ“ur fidèle'' en est digne à plus d'un titre."


References


External links

*
''Cœur fidèle''
at DVDtoile.com * {{DEFAULTSORT:Coeur fidele 1923 drama films 1923 films French black-and-white films Films directed by Jean Epstein French drama films French silent feature films Silent drama films 1920s French films 1920s French-language films