Raymond Bernard 1932 France
Starring: Pierre Blanchar, Gabriel Gabrio, Charles Vanel, Raymond Aimos, Antonin Artaud, Paul Azaïs, Jean Gallard
A few months ago, while I was on a hiatus from reviewing, I saw Raymond Bernard's recently remastered 1934 take on Les Misérables and was astounded by it. Vaunted by many for its depth of character, Harry Baur's simultaneously brawny, vulnerable and commanding performance and its faithfulness to the original novel, it has repeatedly been called the finest adaptation of any discipline. As such there are no songs, changes to the narrative are kept to a minimum and the finished product honours its source's notorious length, rolling in at just over four and three quarter hours. It's also entirely captivating, the kind of film that should have raised Bernard to the level of a Jean Renoir. Despite this I'd never heard of him before and, when searching for more, I struggled to find a single available example of his other work. Part of the blame, as so many times before, has to be placed at the feet of the Nazis as Bernard had to go into hiding during World War II (he was Jewish and considered an intellectual) and, after returning to directing in 1946, found that tastes had changed and never regained his former position but some claim that he simply struggled to find projects worthy of his attention. Thankfully Eureka's Masters Of Cinema are trying to bring him back into the public eye and followed their release of Les Misérables with his frighteningly realistic war film Wooden Crosses, another illustration not only of his talent for literary adaptations but also of his exacting insistence on accuracy. The film is based on Roland Dorgelès' 1919 semi-autobiographical novel and Dorgelès himself co-wrote the script and remained on-set throughout the shoot. Likewise almost the entire cast had served during WW1, in some cases on the very battlefields that appear on screen - they didn't need to embellish or try to put themselves in the mindset of those they were playing, they had merely to remember and recreate, confront their anguish rather than imagine it. The stunning battle scenes too shun the glamour of the uniform in favour of grim authenticity, characters are as likely to be machine-gunned down at any moment with little in the way of fanfare or traditional sentimentality as they are to be shot only once but severely enough that they either can't or can't risk rushing to safety, the scene cutting from midnight to morning and revealing them to still be alive in the long grass dying the slowest of deaths with no hope of being saved. During the central battle the crosses of the title become literal when freshly dug but as yet unused graves double as trenches when the battlefield crosses lines with a cemetery while in an opening scene back home the local grocer starts stocking wreathes because they bring in more than canned food. Cinema impinges on the realism just once when mid-combat the words 'Et cela dura dix jours' (And it went on for ten days) appear on screen with the final two repeated larger and larger as if even Bernard can't believe what his characters are going through. There are no heroes or star-turns designed for (usually upper class) leading men of the day, every man is as important as the one alongside him and the focus changes from person to person more than once. Some are drunkards, pastry cooks or lawyers, their revelry only stopped in favour of a salute at the first sight of a passing stretcher, another is handed a gun but exclaims "What am I to do with this, I'm a bookseller", some just want to be heroes but don't get any further than sad silent dreams on letter day as Germans tunnel beneath them preparing to blow the shit of them. They're still there because they've been ordered not to move until the higher-ups are informed and pass on the orders that no-one will dare make. There's camaraderie and even bravery but no one makes a gung-ho speech thanking the survivors at the end, instead a colonel demands a parade because someone further up the chain of command is visiting a nearby village. Perhaps only Elem Klimov's harrowing Come And See (the sight of which compelled an elderly man in the audience at one screening to stand up and admit that he had been an officer of the Wehrmacht in the area shown, that every human atrocity on screen had actually happened and that he feared his family seeing it) goes further in portraying the truth of war. It isn't enchanting or romantic or something to be celebrated, it's lice, profiteers, bloodshed, slaughter, trauma and cruelty. It's one of the worst horrors the human mind can envisage. The film world needs more Bernard.
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