Jacques Feyder

Jacques Feyder (; 21 July 1885 – 24 May 1948) was a Belgian actor, screenwriter and film director who worked principally in France, but also in the US, Britain and Germany. He was a director of silent films during the 1920s, and in the 1930s he became associated with the style of poetic realism in French cinema. He adopted French nationality in 1928.

Career

Born Jacques Léon Louis Frédérix in Ixelles, Belgium, he was educated at the École régimentaire in Nivelles, and was destined for a military career. At age twenty-five however he moved to Paris where he pursued an interest in acting, first on stage and then in film, adopting the name Jacques Feyder. He joined the Gaumont Film Company and in 1914 he became an assistant director with Gaston Ravel. He started directing films for Gaumont in 1916, but his career was interrupted by service with the Belgian army during 1917-1919.

After the end of the war, he returned to filmmaking and quickly built a reputation as one of the most innovative directors in French cinema. '' L'Atlantide'' (1921) (based on the novel by Pierre Benoit), and '' Crainquebille'' (1922) (from the novel by Anatole France) were his first major films to achieve public and critical attention. He followed these with '' Visages d'enfants'' (filmed in 1923 but not released until 1925) which proved to be one of his most personal and enduring films. Shortly after this, Feyder was offered a post as artistic director of a new film company, Vita Films, in Vienna, along with a contract to make three films. He made '' Das Bildnis'' (''L'Image'') (1923), but the company failed and he returned to Paris. He re-established himself with '' Gribiche'' (1926) and the literary adaptations of ''Carmen'' (1926) and ''Thérèse Raquin'' (1928). He also contributed screenplays of films for other directors, notably ''Poil de carotte'' (1925) for Julien Duvivier, and '' Gardiens de phare'' (1929) for Jean Grémillon. His last silent film in France was '' Les Nouveaux Messieurs'', a topical political satire which provoked calls for it to be banned in France for "insulting the dignity of parliament and its ministers".

By this time Feyder had accepted an offer from MGM to work in Hollywood, where in 1929 his first project was directing Greta Garbo in '' The Kiss'', her last silent film. It was in Hollywood that he made the transition to sound films; even before he had worked with sound films, Feyder declared himself to be a firm believer in their future, in contrast with some of his French contemporaries. In 1930, he directed Jetta Goudal in her only French language film made in Hollywood, ''Le Spectre vert''. His subsequent work in the USA consisted mainly of directing foreign-language versions of American films, including a German version of ''Anna Christie'', again with Garbo.

Disillusioned with the Hollywood system, Feyder returned to France in 1933. During the next three years he made three of his most successful films, all of them in collaboration with screenwriter Charles Spaak and featuring Françoise Rosay in a leading role. '' Le Grand Jeu'' (1934) and ''Pension Mimosas'' (1935) were both significant creations in the style of poetic realism; '' La Kermesse héroïque'' (1935) (also known as ''Carnival in Flanders'') was a meticulously staged period film which aroused some contemporary political resonances; it earned Feyder several international awards.

Feyder went on to direct films in England and Germany prior to the outbreak of World War II, but with diminishing success. Following the Nazi occupation in 1940, which led to the banning of ''La Kermesse héroïque'', he left France for the safety of Switzerland, and directed a last film there, ''Une femme disparaît'' (1942).

In 1917, Feyder had married Parisian-born actress Françoise Rosay (1891–1974) with whom he had three sons; she acted in many of his films and collaborated with him as writer and assistant director on ''Visages d'enfants''. Jacques Feyder died in 1948 at Prangins, Switzerland, and he was buried in the Cimetière de Sorel Moussel, Eure et Loir in the north of Paris was named in his honour in 1977; Épinay was the location of the Tobis film studios where Feyder made ''Le Grand Jeu'' and ''Pension Mimosas''.

Reputation

In 1944 Feyder and Françoise Rosay published ''Le Cinéma, notre métier'', an autobiographical memoir of their work together in the cinema, in which Feyder stated that he regarded himself as an artisan, a craftsman of filmmaking. Some critics have been content to take him at his word and to look no further for any underlying vision of the world. He was however insistent upon his creative independence, demonstrated by his willingness to make his films in so many different countries if the conditions of production appeared favourable. Recurrent themes in his work include the reckless love of a mysterious or unknown woman (''L'Atlantide'', ''L'Image'', ''Carmen'', ''Le Grand Jeu''), the gap between reality and the vision that someone has of it (''Crainquebille'', ''Gribiche'', ''Les Nouveaux Messieurs'', ''La Kermesse héroïque''), and maternal love (''Gribiche'', ''Visages d'enfants'', ''Pension Mimosas'').

His style was characterised by a classical balance and moderation, composition of images that was beautiful without becoming gratuitous, and a sympathetic rapport with actors. Above all his films achieved an atmosphere of realism, whether through the accumulation of judiciously chosen detail, the use of location shooting, or the use of elaborately designed sets; (he worked closely with Lazare Meerson on several of his films). In this respect, his adherence to a realistic tradition in French cinema was contrasted with the 'impressionist' style of some contemporaries in the 1920s such as Abel Gance, Marcel L'Herbier, and Jean Epstein, and it pointed the way to the vogue for poetic realism which found its fullest expression in the films of Marcel Carné: Carné worked as assistant director to Feyder in the mid-1930s.

Feyder's relatively early death may have contributed to a fading of interest in his films, reinforced by the hostility of some influential critics associated with ''Cahiers du cinéma'' in the 1950s. His younger contemporary René Clair judged in 1970, "Jacques Feyder does not occupy today the place his work and his example should have earned him". Any subsequent reassessment has tended to be hampered by the limited availability of his films in English-speaking countries, with the exception of ''La Kermesse héroïque'' which some reckon to have aged less well than other examples of his work. These factors have contributed to a sometimes ambivalent attitude to his work as a whole.E.g. David Thomson, ''New Biographical Dictionary of Film''; 4th ed. (London: Little, Brown, 2002) p.286. "There was a time when Feyder was claimed as a great realist director, when ''Kermesse héroïque'' was thought of as an important French film. ...Feyder may be unfairly neglected today just as once he was injudiciously acclaimed."

Filmography

Bibliography

* Feyder, Jacques and Rosay, Françoise, ''Le cinéma, notre métier'', (Genève: A. Skira, 1944). n French* Gili, Jean A. & Marie, Michel ds. ''Jacques Feyder'', (Paris: Association française de recherche sur l'histoire du cinéma, 1998. ''1895'', numéro hors série.) n French

References

Further reading

* Bachy, Victor, ''Jacques Feyder: artisan du cinéma, 1885-1948'', (Louvain: Librairie universitaire, 1968). n French* Ford, Charles, ''Jacques Feyder'', (Paris: Seghers, 1973). n French

External links

"Jacques Feyder"
in ''1895'', n°33, "Dictionnaire du cinéma français des années vingt", 2001, nline; retrieved on 12 May 2009 n French*
Jacques Feyder
at Allocine n French*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Feyder
1885 births
1948 deaths
Belgian film directors
Belgian male film actors
Belgian male silent film actors
20th-century Belgian male actors
Belgian screenwriters
French film directors
French male film actors
French male silent film actors
German-language film directors
20th-century French male actors
20th-century screenwriters
Belgian Army personnel of World War I