Jean-Pierre Melville's first film, Le Silence de la Mer, is remarkable on all levels. Shot in 1947 (but first released in 1949), the film, probably, should not exist in the first place. Melville produced the movie using his own funds and shot the picture on "short ends" -- that is, thirty to forty second strips of film left over when reels were exhausted and thought to be impractical for conventional movie-making purposes. Melville had not been able to secure the rights to the novella from its author Jean Bruller, a resistance fighter against the Nazis who had published the book under the nom de guerre Vercors in October of 1941, Bruller said that the book was part of the French patrimony, was sacred to the resistance, and, therefore, should not be adapted into a film. (More prosaically, Bruller probably thought that the movie couldn't be successfully adapted since all of its action is interior -- it is film in which almost nothing tangible or susceptible to being filmed occurs.) Melville, a cineaste and resistance fighter himself (as well as a survivor of Patton's campaign in Sicily), made a bizarre bet with Vercors. He would shoot the movie using his own money and, then, screen it for 24 bona fide resistance heroes -- if one of them voted against release of the movie, Melville vowed that he would destroy the negative before their eyes. The story is too good to be true and, probaby, has been much amended in the telling -- and Melville admits that he broke his own oath (one of the resistance fighters was "thumbs-down" on the film) -- but the tale suggests the peculiar, self-effacing rigor with which the movie is made and, also, I think accounts for some of its arcane appeal.
After a strange, but powerfully affecting, opening shot, Melville shows us a small town somewhere in France, a place occupied by the Germans. At a country house, an old man lives with his beautiful young niece. The two seem to never speak and appear to be in mourning over the occupation of their country. A paper arrives that seems to imply that a German officer will be billeted with the uncle and niece. Some adjutants appear in a handsome Mercedes Benz convertible and lug some big crates of books up to the room on the second floor of the rural house. It's winter and cold outside. One night, the German officer appears like a ghastly specter out of the icy night -- the German is named Werner von Ebbrenach and he is a peculiar cadaverous-looking man with enormous bulging eyes and long sensitive figures who stalks about like Frankenstein's monster (and is filmed from angles that accentuate his haggard height and his corpse-like features.) The uncle and niece, without forming an agreement on the point, simply decide that they will never speak to the German, nor even acknowledge his presence in their home. The uncle wonders whether this form of resistance isn't "inhuman" but his niece's indomitable will (she makes silence seem violently aggressive and even frightening) shames him. The German speaks eloquent, impeccable French and he immediately recognizes that his hosts (as he calls them) are patriots and will never speak to him or, even, turn their eyes in his direction. He announces that he "admires those who love their country" and looking up to imploring angel, a wooden figure posted on the wall, bids the couple "a good night." For the next hundred days, the German officer comes to the sitting room where the uncle and niece are keeping vigil and, dressed in civilian clothes (suit and tie) embarks on a immense, unrequited monologue. He speaks to the uncle and niece each night, after 9:00 pm when he has come from his duties in the occupied village. The burden of his monologue is that he loves French culture and admires the French in all respects. He claims that the Germans have come as apostles of a broader European culture and that they intend to somehow "marry" the two countries -- that is, effectuate an erotic alliance between France and Germany. As these monologues continue, it becomes apparent that the motif of a wedding between France and Germany is allegorical -- the officer has fallen in love with the unspeaking niece who refuses to even glance in his direction. It is also suggested that the niece has come to love the German. The soldier, who has been wounded in combat, takes leave in Paris and inspects all of the cultural sites in that place. At a meeting with German officers, he learns about the concentration camp at Treblinka and, then, discovers that the Nazi administrators of the occupation plan to annihilate French culture, that is, erase from history the very aspects of the nation that Werner loves. Werner goes back to his farmhouse. The winter is over and it is now summer and the gardens are in bloom. For a week, he doesn't come down to the sitting room to harangue his "hosts." Then, when he finally appears, the niece transfixes him with her eyes -- this is a startling scene containing a huge and terrifying close-up. Werner covers his own face and says that he has sought a transfer to the Eastern Front where we understand he will certainly be killed. The next morning, he leaves. The Uncle has left a book for him open to a page that says "that it is the duty of good soldier to disobey criminal orders." Werner reads these words and, then, looks up to see the old man staring at him fixedly, also a grey admonitory apparition in the dark country house. Werner departs and the film ends.
Melville's picture is a marvel of tact and it is exquisitely shot. The niece appears often in profile against an entirely black background and she seems some sort of classical medallion shot in profile to emphasize that she is both overwhelmingly forceful and, yet, also oddly ethereal and without substance. The room in which almost all the scenes occur is a character in its own right, a hollow sepulchralspace where a clock ticks loudly and the wooden angel peers down at the characters, a divine messenger hovering over the ranks of books on the shelves and the hearth where a fire is always burning. There are many amazing sequences in the picture. An image of a German tank seeming to fire at Chartres Cathedral is intercut into the film with astonishing skill -- although close inspection shows that the scene is shot with almost laughably primitive technique, a tracking shot up into the sky disguises the fact that the tank is peaceably parked in Paris as a public monument and nowhere near Chartres. The camera is simply jiggled to suggest the detonation of the tank's cannon that we hear on the soundtrack. Some of the scenes are surprisingly stylized, including images of the Nazis lounging around under huge swastikas. The sequence in which Werner tours Paris is built from snippets of documentary footage seamlessly intercut with short shots made for the film. The picture uses all natural light to enormous advantage. The country farmhouse where the action takes place was, in fact, Vercors' home. Bruller (Vercors) said that he devised the book, published in October 1941, from his own experience billeting a German office, although the figure of Werner is based upon the redoubtable German intellectual, Ernst Juenger. Despite its lack of action, the film is remarkably suspenseful. Indeed, the film is shot like a combination of a horror film (the curious camera angles used for Werner) and thriller (Of course, Melville is best known for his later pictures, a series of zen-like gangster movies.). In the opening scene, we seem to witness a homosexual tryst or some other clandestine encounter. One man drops off a valise at the foot of another figure -- both of them seem to be on a rooftop or somewhere with deep, plunging space. The second man opens the valise and, under some clothing, finds a stack of resistance newspapers and also a slim white volume -- the camera approaches for a close-up that shows us that the volume is Le Silence de la Mer. What is the "silence of the sea"? This is a name for the force of the resistance, because, of course, the sea is never silent. This is a picture that anyone interested in film should see and, even, study.
Memoirs of a room
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