Pwt 37 2016 Making of: Autour de l'Argent

WEEKLY TRANSMISSION N°37

AUTOUR DE L’ARGENT OR THE MAKING-OF «MONEY»

n°1, detail

CSI :

THURSDAY 15TH SEPTEMBER 2016

PWT 37-2016 contents : The novel L'Argent ("money") by Émile Zola Marcel L'Herbier’s French Silent film L'Argent, 1928 Dréville and the Simultaneous Documentary About the Making of L'Argent.

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N°37 : «AUTOUR DE L’ARGENT»

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Émile Zola, selfie, circa 1890, will be at auction, Binoche & Giquello, 10 November 2016.

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The novel L'Argent ("money") by Émile Zola L'Argent ("Money"), the eighteenth novel in the Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola, was serialized in the periodical Gil Blas beginning in November 1890 before being published in novel form by Charpentier et Fasquelle in March 1891.

The novel focuses on the financial world of the Second French Empire as embodied in the Paris Bourse. Zola's intent was to show the terrible effects of speculation and fraudulent company promotion, the culpable negligence of company directors, and the impotency of contemporary financial laws.

The novel takes place in 1864-1869, follows the fortunes of about 20 characters, cutting across all social strata, showing the effects of stock market speculation on rich and poor.

Because the financial world is closely linked with politics, L’Argent encompasses many historical events, including: The 1860 Druze massacre of Maronite Christians in Syria France's invasion of Mexico (1861–1867) The construction of the Suez Canal, opened in 1869 The Austro-Prussian War, including the Battle of Königgrätz at Sadowa in 1866 The Third Italian War of Independence (1866) The Universal Exposition of 1867 The publication of Das Kapital in 1867 and the advent of Marxism The 1882 collapse of the Union Générale bank By the end of the novel, the stage is set for the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) and the fall of the Second Empire.

In 1928, a silent film adaptation of L'Argent was directed by Marcel L'Herbier. It used only the skeleton of the plot and it updated the setting to Paris in the 1920s.

Marcel L'Herbier’s French Silent film L'Argent, 1928 Marcel L'Herbier (1888-1979), was a French filmmaker who achieved prominence as an avant-garde theorist and imaginative practitioner with a series of silent films in the 1920s. His career as a director continued until the 1950s and he made more than 40 feature films.

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The outbreak of war in 1914 changed L'Herbier's world. He withdrew from social life, and being unable to join the army immediately because of an injured hand, he went to work in a factory making military uniforms. He went on to serve with various auxiliary units of the armed forces and towards the end of the war in 1917-1918 he was by chance transferred to the Section Cinématographique de l'Armée, where he received his first technical training in film-making.

L'Herbier's first production with his own company was an adaptation of Resurrection (1923) from the Tolstoy novel, but filming met a series of setbacks and the project was abandoned when L'Herbier contracted typhoid and was critically ill for several weeks. Later in 1923, L'Herbier was persuaded by Georgette Leblanc-Maeterlinck to consider a project in which she would star, and which would also attract some American finance; this developed into L'Inhumaine (1924), one of the most ambitious films of L'Herbier's career, in which he collaborated with leading figures from other art forms, including Fernand Léger, Robert MalletStevens and Darius Milhaud. A striking visual spectacle was built around a fanciful plot, and the result proved highly controversial among audiences and critics alike.

L'Herbier had discovered the work of the playwright and novelist Luigi Pirandello during 1923 and was eager to introduce his ideas to the cinema. The film Feu Mathias Pascal (1925) featured the expatriate Russian actor Ivan Mosjoukine in the leading role.

The next and final Cinégraphic production (in collaboration with Société des Cinéromans) was another large-scale project, L'Argent (also 1928), an adaptation of Zola's novel of the same name, transposed from the 1860s to the then present day. With an international cast, art deco design, and some spectacular location filming in the Paris Bourse, L'Argent was a substantial work which effectively marked the end of silent film-making for L'Herbier.

He chose as the basis of his story Zola's novel L'Argent about the corrupting power of money throughout society, but he insisted that it should be updated from the 1860s to present-day Paris. He envisaged a film on a large scale (having been impressed by Abel Gance's Napoléon) and set about arranging a budget of 3 million francs (the eventual cost was nearly 5 million).

To achieve this he had to put his own company in partnership with the Société des Cinéromans of Jean Sapène, and also agreed a distribution deal with the German company UFA which resulted in the engagement of two German stars among the cast.

Filming began in spring 1928 and continued until the autumn. At the Joinville studios the art directors André Barsacq and Lazare Meerson constructed several monumental sets for key scenes: the grand interiors of the respective banks of Saccard and Gunderman...

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Other scenes required location shooting with large numbers of extras. The departure of Hamelin's transatlantic flight was filmed at Le Bourget airport. For three days over the weekend of Pentecost L'Herbier was allowed to take over the Paris Bourse and employed 2000 extras in the stock-exchange scenes. Still more challenging was a night-time scene in the Place de l'Opéra which had to be specially lit and filled with people to convey the feverish excitement of waiting for news of Hamelin's flight.

For his principal cameraman L'Herbier chose Jules Kruger who had devised the elaborate camerawork of Gance's Napoléon. Within the huge spaces of the sets they employed unusually active movements for the camera whose virtuosity makes them highly visible to the spectator. At Saccard's party the camera glides back and forth above the guests; in the bank scenes it moves alongside and among the crowds. Most strikingly of all, in the scenes at the Bourse, a vertical shot from the high ceiling down to the "corbeille" (dealers' enclosure) makes the scene resemble the teeming activity of ants; and an automatic camera then creates a dizzying effect as it spirals down towards the floor. The result is a sense of dynamic exploration of the spaces contrasting with the monumental appearance of the sets.[4] Another innovation that L'Herbier employed for the first screening of the film was the use of recorded sound effects. For the scenes of Hamelin's take-off at the airfield, which is intercut with scenes of frantic activity at the Bourse, authentic recordings were made in both settings and then a composite blend of them was played back from records in the cinema.[5] It was perhaps symbolic that only seventeen days after the première of L'Argent this genuinely experimental use of integrated sound was superseded by the first showing in Paris of the first American sound film, The Jazz Singer.

"Autour de L'Argent" L'Herbier arranged with Jean Dréville, then a 22-year-old journalist and amateur photographer, that he should make a simultaneous documentary about the filming of L'Argent.

The resulting film, entitled Autour de L'Argent (1928), was itself a vigorous exercise in poetic montage, capturing the atmosphere and sheer scale of the sets from the points of view of the lighting riggers, the cameramen and the extras. It shows L'Herbier meticulously directing his actors and marshalling the crowds of extras. It also reveals how the intricate camera movements were achieved with ground-level trolleys, floating platforms and a free-swinging camera suspended from the roof. The film, which runs for about 40 minutes, was originally silent, but in 1971 a soundtrack was added with commentary spoken by Dréville himself.

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JEAN DRÉVILLE (1906-1997). The Cage Ladder, Autour de l’Argent, Studios de Joinville-lePont, 1928. Vintage silver print on mate paper, 132x190 mm, with white margins, numbers, pencil, verso.

2.000 euros

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JEAN DRÉVILLE (1906-1997). Autour de l’Argent Jules Kruger directeur de la photographie dans la fameuse salle ronde dans laquelle pénètre l’acteur Alexandre Mihalesco 1928.

Vintage silver print, 150x210 mm, captioned, verso.

900 euros Jules Kruger dans la fameuse salle ronde [...] travelling d’un genre nouveau, de dos Marcel L’Herbier

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JEAN DRÉVILLE (1906-1997). Cameras, Autour de l’Argent, Studios de Joinville-le-Pont, 1928. Vintage silver print, 85x115 mm, captioned and dated, ink, verso.

1.200 euros

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JEAN DRÉVILLE (1906-1997). The Juge, Autour de l’Argent, Studios de Joinville-le-Pont, 1928. Vintage silver print, 85x115 mm, captioned and dated, ink, verso.

400 euros

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JEAN DRÉVILLE (1906-1997). Autour de l’Argent, Inside the Paris Bourse, 1928. Vintage silver print, 177x239 mm with white margins, number, pencil, verso.

800 euros

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JEAN DRÉVILLE (1906-1997). Ceiling light, Autour de l’Argent, Studios de Joinville-le-Pont, 1928. Vintage silver print, 180x240 mm with white margins, numbers, pencil, verso.

800 euros

Jean Dréville, Pellicules de Pomme d’Amour, 210x290 mm

«The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.» (Émile Zola) Number Thirty-Seven of the Weekly Transmission has been uploaded on Thursday 15th September 2016 at 15:15 (Paris time).

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