French Impressionist Cinema: “Coeur Fidele” and “Nana”

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It was 1923, and the French cinema was breaking new grounds passionately by using the stylistic choices that made people literally fight their way to accepting new means of artistic expression. However, for the modern movie industry, the plots of the movies that spawned so much turmoil and so many conflicts wee more than conventional. It should be noted, though, that the advent of new stylistic tools presupposed the emergence of an opportunity to view traditional plots and scenarios through a different lens (Thompson & Bordwell 2003, p. 85), which preserved the originality of the storyline and allowed for the evolution of the latter. Therefore, the ideas, which seem trite and completely worn out nowadays, may have been revolutionary at the time and, therefore, chime in with the originality of the movie aesthetics, which Nana and Coeur Fidele are prime examples of.

Naturally, it could be argued that the plots of the Impressionist movies never evolved on the time slot under discussion. True, movie directors did not seem to be eager to depart from the original story that was adapted into the film. As a rule, the plot lines differed from the source material very slightly – moviemakers were obviously not ready for a major change in this domain yet. However, every rule has an exception, and Nana, unlike Coeur Fidele, was the manifestation of the need to make changes to the principles of film making (Abel 1984, p. 351).

In retrospect, adding the racing scene to Nana’s plot makes ridiculously little sense – it does not add much to the development of the story, the characters, or even the atmosphere. However, the very fact that the director took such liberties with the source material shows that the Impressionist cinema of the beginning of the XX century was more diverse than movie critics give it credit for nowadays.

Coeur Fidele, in its turn, is much more conventional in terms of its plot and characters; in fact, most of its elements can be defined as the staple of the genre, with a French Cinderella named Marie, the infamous love triangle, a murder, and a sympathetic young woman, who is not beautiful enough to compete with the lead female character, and yet not ugly enough to cause the audience’s aversion. Packed with convenient side characters and standard plot lines, including the noble crippled woman and an old and disrespectful husband, the movie is clearly far from being original in terms of its plot.

The style of the movie, however, affects the way in which the audience perceives the traditional characters. For example, the scene that captures Jean’s despair does not add anything new to the plot; however, emotionally, it challenges the audience with the help of the revolutionary visual effects. The image of Marie floating over the sea waves (Epstein 1923, 00:37:21) leaves a number of questions; the audience tries to figure out whether this image is a romantic reference to Jean’s despair, or whether the visuals represent the lead character’s gradual descent into madness (Keller 2012, p. 92). Thus, a seemingly simple narrative of love and unhappy marriage turns into a complex psychological drama with the elements of a thriller (these elements, however, admittedly are in their embryo state).

The director of Nana, however, also did his best to give the stylistic choices that he made a purpose. It was obvious that the extended elements of the plot, which were clearly the brainchild of Pierre Lestrange, the co-writer of the script, were supposed to create a specific atmosphere, which would engulf the audience and create a unique universe. For example, the fact that the movie was color-tinted added a specific element of despair and captured the decay of the early XX century elite society. Though some elements of the style chosen for the given purpose may seem somewhat pretentious to the XXI century audience, most of the shots actually work for the benefit of the movie.

For instance, it was a rather bold move not to shoot the actors’ faces during the final scene – both in the theater release and the director’s cut, the camera captures only the movements of the protagonists’ hands; as a result, the final scene with them holding each other’s hands in complete silence is one of the most powerful elements of the movie, capturing the grief and the air of hopelessness that the source material supposedly conveys. A similar step was taken when shooting the dramatic conversation between Nana and Count Muffat; seeing how Nana is the one who talks, she must be in the limelight; however, her silent husband is captured in the focus of the camera, which creates a dramatic tension (Renoir 1926, 01:17:03).

It would be wrong to claim, however, that both movies use stylistic devices to the same extent and succeed completely in using stylistic devices as a tool for expressing a specific idea or developing characters. True, when taken out of the character context, both plots seem rather simple. However, with the character development that the use of stylistic devices mentioned above presupposes, the seemingly unsophisticated stories suddenly become more complex and filled with more details. It is not that these stylistic elements add anything tangible to the plot; however, the hidden innuendoes that these devices allow dropping here and there in both movies add another layer of complexity to both movies.

For example, the final scene in Nana mentioned above discloses the specifics of the relationships between the lead characters, therefore, allowing for making different interpretations of the scenes seen earlier. In other words, the stylistic decisions made by the moviemakers provide enough room for the viewers’ imagination to work; with these stylistic choices, the audience focuses not on following the plotline blindly, but on interpreting certain scenes in their own way. Thus, arguably, the movies’ style adds to the plot rather than makes it insignificant, as some critics state (Cook 2003, p. 305).

Although what was honored as innovative and new at the beginning of the XX century can hardly be viewed as such in the 2010s, the French Impressionist cinema cannot be labeled as lazy for recycling old plots and putting the emphasis on the stylistic choices. True, the problems that the characters face, as well as the plot lines, remained traditional. However, new stylistic choices allowed for exploring new angles for looking at old problems; therefore, the Impressionist moviemakers were, in fact, doing something entirely new. As much emphasis as Impressionism put on the movie aesthetics, it never allowed for a movie director to choose style over substance; the style was merely a tool, which was used as the means to breathe new life into the old tropes, as such masterpieces as Coeur Fidele and Nana show.

Reference List

Abel, R 1984, French Cinema: the first wave 1915-1929, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Web.

Cook, D 2003, A history of narrative film, W. W. Norton & Company, New York City, NY. Web.

Epstein , J 1923, Coeur Fidele, video recording, Pathe, Paris, France. Web.

Keller, S 2012, ‘Jean Epstein’s documentary cinema,’ Studies in French Cinema, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 91–105. Web.

Renoir, J 1926, Nana, video recording, Pathe, Paris, France. Web.

Thompson, K & Bordwell, D 2003, ‘France in the 1920s,’ in Thompson, K & Bordwell, D (ed.), Film history: an introduction, 2nd ed., McGraw Hill, Boston, MA, pp. 85-100. Web.

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French Impressionist Cinema: “Coeur Fidele” and “Nana”

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