by Charles Vanel

PostED ON 31 AUGUST 2022

A quarry worker (Charles Vanel) is disfigured after an explosion. To hide his frightening face, he is forced to wear a mask, which he eventually cannot remove. His wife (Sandra Milowanoff), who is caring for him, takes comfort in the arms of another man. One day, the worker surprises the two lovers…

In the summer of 1929, a film is shot in Jujurieux, a town on the left bank of the Ain. This region was the home of Charles Vanel's father, who was a sawmill worker there. The actor, who had already appeared in nearly fifty films since 1910, with the most important French filmmakers (Jacques de Baroncelli, René Clair, Maurice Tourneur), decides to become a director. For him, “the sole author of the film is the director; transposing a story or a novel is almost the equivalent of giving birth to it. [...] The most interesting film profession is not that of the actor but that of the director.”
The actor-cinematographer delivers a deeply moving film. "A drama with a working-class atmosphere", as he liked to describe this story that paid tribute to his father. Upon the film’s release, critics are laudatory: "Vanel suddenly creates a great drama. A frenzied sincerity takes hold of the images. A convincing and painful cruelness. And at last, there is power. [...] The director Vanel expresses his commitment to life". (Michel Gorel, La Revue du cinéma n° 11, June 1, 1930).
However, the silent era is over. When the film arrives in theatres in May 1930, talkies reign supreme. Charles Vanel's only feature film is withdrawn from screens and disappears from memory (he made just one short film afterwards, in 1932, Affaire classée/Le Coup de minuit). Well, nearly.... Bequeathed to the Lumière Institute by Charles and Arlette Vanel in 1983, Dans la nuit has finally been restored, allowing audiences to witness its absolute passion and realism.
"Charles Vanel's Dans la nuit is exceptional in many ways. Directed by an actor at a time when going back and forth in front of the camera was less common than it is today, it was shot in 1929, at the height of the talkies, which makes it one of the last French silent films. Since the film is set in Jujurieux, in the Bugey region near Lyon, thirty-five years after the launch of the Cinematograph, the history of French silent cinema can be said to begin with Lumière and end with Vanel. The coincidence is not merely geographical, and the comparison is not undeserved; Dans la nuit is an absolutely formidable film, unjustly forgotten and extraordinarily contemporary. [...] The film shows a freedom of tone in dealing with both fright and happiness, a richness of purpose, a patience in the image itself, an exactingness, a rhythm: in short, cinematographic poetry. Vanel is a truly modern director and Dans la nuit is a film d'auteur.”  (Bertrand Tavernier)

A film-concert accompanied on the organ by Adam Bernadac

Dans la nuit by Charles Vanel

Thursday, 20 October 2022 at 8pm at the Auditorium of Lyon

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