''Le Tempestaire'' is a 1947 French short

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...

written and directed by

Jean Epstein Jean Epstein (; 25 March 1897 – 2 April 1953) was a French filmmaker, film theorist, literary critic, and novelist. Although he is remembered today primarily for his adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's '' The Fall of the House of Usher'', he direc ...

. The title translates as "The storm tamer". The story revolves around a woman who is worried for her fiancé, who is out at sea during a storm. The film makes use of temporal techniques such as

time-lapse Time-lapse photography is a technique in which the frequency at which film frames are captured (the frame rate) is much lower than the frequency used to view the sequence. When played at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and th ...

and slow motion both in images and sound.

Plot

In a fishing village on the coast of

Brittany Brittany ( ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the north-west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica in Roman Gaul. It became an Kingdom of Brittany, independent kingdom and then a Duch ...

, a young woman and her grandmother sit by a spinning wheel. The wind suddenly makes the front door open by itself and the woman says it is a bad omen. The woman is visited by her fiancé, who against her advice goes out to fish for sardines. The wind starts to harden and soon there is a full storm. The grandmother tells the woman that in old times, people believed in "storm masters", old men who could control the wind, but that such things are only superstition. As the woman grows increasingly worried, she goes to the lighthouse and asks the keepers about an old man who might be a storm master. She visits the man who at first is reluctant but eventually brings out a

crystal ball A crystal ball is a crystal or glass ball commonly used in fortune-telling. It is generally associated with the performance of clairvoyance and scrying through crystal gazing. Used since Antiquity, crystal balls have had a broad reputation with ...

. Inside the ball, the stormy sea appears. When the man gently blows at the ball, the waves change speed, move in slow motion, and at one point play backwards. The man drops the ball to the floor and it breaks. The fiancé turns up and brings the woman home. The wind has calmed down.

Production

A recurring motif in

's film theory had from the beginning been cinema's capacity to provide perceptions of time alternative to what can be experienced in daily life. Around the time of the production of ''Le Tempestaire'', Epstein had begun to publish theories about sound in film. He was influenced by the

musique concrète Musique concrète (; ): " problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic ...

movement, and stressed that music and "the

phonograph A phonograph, later called a gramophone, and since the 1940s a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogue reproduction of sound. The sound vibration Waveform, waveforms are recorded as correspond ...

" were two separate artforms, the latter with the possibility to provide new dimensions to familiar, non-abstract sounds. ''Le Tempestaire'' was produced by France Illustration. It was shot at

Belle Île Belle-Île (), Belle-Île-en-Mer (), or Belle Isle (, ; ) is a French island off the coast of Brittany in the ''département in France, département'' of Morbihan, and the largest of Brittany's islands. It is from the Quiberon peninsula. Admini ...

and starred local fishermen and lighthouse keepers.

Release

The film premiered in 1947. It was included on the 2005 DVD '' Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s'' from

Kino International The Kino International is a film theater in Berlin, built from 1961 to 1963. It is located on Karl-Marx-Allee in former East Berlin. It hosted premieres of the DEFA film studios until the Berlin Wall#The Fall, fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. T ...

References

;Notes ;Bibliography *

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Tempestaire, Le 1947 drama films 1947 films Films directed by Jean Epstein Films set in France Films shot in France 1940s French-language films French drama short films French black-and-white films 1940s French films Films scored by Yves Baudrier French-language drama films

Plot

Production

Release

See also

References

External links