Le Grand jeu (1934)
Directed by Jacques Feyder

Film Review

On its first release in 1934, Le Grand jeu was both critically acclaimed and a box office hit. Its success was partly down to a craze at the time for romantic melodramas set in exotic locations, usually North Africa, and featuring the Foreign Legion.  Julien Duvivier's La Bandera (1935) and Jean Grémillon's Gueule d'amour (1937) are two other notable examples of this ilk.  The immense popularity of Le Grand jeu cemented Jacques Feyder's reputation as one of France's leading filmmakers and helped to establish Pierre Richard-Willm and Marie Bell as two of the most sought-after stars in French cinema.  Cast in the supporting role of Blanche is Feyder's wife Françoise Rosay, playing opposite Charles Vanel, a highly regarded character actor with a film career that stretched back as far as 1910.

One of the most notable things about this film is that the lead actress Marie Bell plays two characters, one of whom was dubbed by another actress.  Whilst the dual-role can be considered a valid narrative device (Pierre sees Irma not as she really is but how he wants her to be, a copy of Florence), the dubbing is probably a mistake, although at the time it was widely praised as an ingenious use of the new sound technology.  Feyder had originally intended to use this same ploy in one of the films he was to have made in Hollywood with Greta Garbo, before he terminated his contract with MGM. Hitchcock would employ it to better effect (without the dubbing) in his thriller Vertigo (1958).

Le Grand jeu demonstrates Feyder's ability to convey layers of meaning and psychological depth through the image alone, a skill that he acquired as a filmmaker in the silent era. (Feyder had loathed the use of inter-titles and used them as sparingly as possible in his silent films, believing that the image should tell the entire story.)   Today, the camerawork and editing that we see in this film still possess a striking modernity.  Feyder's use of long tracking shots, natural locations and overlapping dissolves bring a quasi-documentary realism to the film, making it quite different to the conventional studio-bound melodrama of the time.  This arose partly by chance, from the Foreign Legion's refusal to allow Feyder to include serving legionnaires in the story.  He was however permitted to photograph legionnaires on location in Morocco, as though he were making a documentary, hence the newsreel-feel to certain parts of the film.

Le Grand jeu is an early example of what later came to be termed poetic realism, a kind of melodrama in which the fortunes of the protagonists are guided by Fate, almost inevitably to an unavoidable tragic outcome.  Marcel Carné, one of Feyder's assistant directors on this film, would make several films in the poetic realist mould, including Le Quai des brumes (1938), Hôtel du Nord (1938) and Le Jour se lève (1939).  With their fatally flawed characters and aura of ineluctable doom, these poetic realist films would be a precursor for classic film noir.

Although overshadowed by Feyder's greater achievements - notably his earlier silent masterpieces and the historical allegory La Kermesse héroïque (1935) - Le Grand jeu is a masterfully crafted piece of cinema which stands up far better today than many French melodramas of its era.  The authenticity of the performances (particularly Rosay's), the fluidity of the camerawork and the dashes of overt eroticism that Feyder sneaks into the film all work to give it an immediacy and realism that you would not expect to find in a mid-1930s melodrama.   The final sequence, in which Pierre's tragic fate is alluded to (but not shown), has a brutal pessimism and poignancy that is almost unique in Feyder's oeuvre, closing the film with a darkly ironic admission that man is not, and can never be, the master of his own destiny.

Film Synopsis

Pierre Martel is a young Parisian financier whose taste for the high life leads him to embezzle his clients' money.  When his fraud is exposed, his wealthy uncle steps in to bail him out, on condition that he leaves France immediately.  Pierre hopes to start a new life abroad with his girlfriend Florence, with whom he is madly in love, but she callously rejects him.  Indifferent to what his future now holds for him, Pierre joins the Foreign Legion and finds a posting in North Africa.  Whilst on leave in Morocco, he stays at a shabby hotel run by the disreputable Clément and his world-weary wife Blanche.  One evening, Pierre allows Blanche to tell his fortune with her playing cards.  She foresees that the legionnaire will fall in love, but he will also kill a man.  Entering a bar a short while later, Pierre notices a cabaret performer, Irma, and is stunned by how much she resembles Florence.  The hair and voice are different, but Irma's face is so like Florence's that Pierre cannot resist taking her as his lover.  With Blanche's help, Irma finds work at the hotel where Pierre is staying, but soon attracts the unwelcome attentions of her employer.  When Pierre realises that Clément has been forcing himself on Irma, he is furious and accidentally kills him in a brawl.   Not long after this, Pierre learns that his uncle has died, leaving him a fortune in his will.  The news could not come at a better time.  In just over a month, he will have completed his five years in the Legion and will be able to resume his civilian life.  But when he goes to book the tickets for his return to France, Pierre runs into someone he thought he would never see again: Florence...