Rediscover Jacques Feyder, French Film Master

Although Belgium-born Jacques Feyder (1885-1948) was an important director in France during the 1920s and ‘30s (and briefly worked in Hollywood as well), he's essentially forgotten today, with even his best-known film, Carnival in Flanders (1935), having drifted into obscurity. All of which makes the aptly-titled Rediscover Jacques Feyder, French Film Master—a collection of his three earliest features—especially valuable. The first, L'Atlantide (1921), is a terribly silly adventure story reminiscent of H. Rider Haggard's She, in which officers of the Foreign Legion are entranced by the queen of a remnant people from the lost continent of Atlantis who wound up deep in the Sahara. At 163 minutes it's overlong, and Stacia Napierkowska vamps it up mercilessly in the title role, but the Algerian locations are quite spectacular. Much better, though, are Crainquerille (1922) and Visages d'Enfants (1923), the former an amusingly quirky comedy about a street vendor (Maurice de Féraudy) wrongly charged with a crime, and the latter a sentimental but touching story of a young boy (Jean Forest) who must come to terms with his father's decision to remarry after the death of his beloved mother. In both, Feyder's eye for composition, imaginative camerawork, and astute use of locations are much in evidence; the mountainous backdrops in Visages d'Enfants, which was filmed in Switzerland, are especially impressive, and the Parisian atmosphere in Crainquerille is masterfully captured, as well. Presented with beautifully restored prints and evocative music scores, the only real disappointment here is the absence of extras, not even a text biography or filmography. Still, this is highly recommended. (F. Swietek)