Le Silence de la Mer (Masters of Cinema)

Star Review

Made shortly after Jean-Pierre Melville was demobbed from the Resistance, Le Silence de la Mer marked the advent of a new kind of French director, one who spurned the comfortable restrictions of studio production for a freer, more personal filmmaking. It was the ripple that would rise into the nouvelle vague.

He drew his story from one of the most celebrated novels about the German occupation. Although an adaptation, the film is coloured by Melville’s experiences of the sacrifices and the painful moral intransigence that resistance demands. An unnamed Frenchman (Robain) and his niece (Stéphane) are obliged to provide lodgings for officer von Ebrennac (Vernon), registering their displeasure by refusing to speak to him. But maintaining their silence becomes harder as von Ebrennac talks to them and reveals his essential decency and his doubts about the war.

The "good German" would later become a commonplace but von Ebrennac is a much more developed figure than subsequent incarnations. He’s clearly related to von Stroheim’s sympathetic commandant in La Grande Illusion, a figure whose loyalty is to something greater than nationalism. The disdain that his unwilling hosts express – the echo chamber created by their mute opposition – makes him question both himself and his mission.

Melville made La Silence de la Mer in the face of numerous obstacles, not the least of which was a minuscule budget. Yet those limitations are no match for the director’s enthusiasm. This is a remarkably assured apprentice work. Melville and his cameraman Henri Decae show considerable cinematic technique: despite the fact that much of the film takes place in a single room, they avoid any sort of claustrophobia.

Those familiar with Melville’s taciturn later films may be amused at the amount of talk he here employs. Both von Ebrennac’s monologues and the extensive voiceover belie the ‘Silence’ of the title. For all that, this film shows Melville starting as he meant to go on; his themes, preoccupations and style are all on display. This is maybe his most personal work. It doesn’t simply address the events that moulded him. It also embodies his approach to cinema itself.

James Oliver on 13th June 2007

View all 34 of James Oliver’s reviews

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Film Description

Melville's cinematic adaptation of French Resistance writer Vercors' acclaimed 1942 novel is one of the most important French films dealing with WWII. It tells the story of a German officer who is billeted with an elderly French man and his niece in occupied France and is a lyrical, timeless depiction of the experiences and struggles of occupation and resistance. It marks the debut feature of one of France's greatest directors, who began filming without the rights to Vercors' novel; when Vercors heard of this, he met with Melville, who told him that if the film did not meet his apprval, he would burn the negative.

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Melville’s slow, hypnotic masterpiece (about a French family’s reluctant, growing relationship with a humane Nazi office billeted on them) demands much from the viewer... more >

Melville’s slow, hypnotic masterpiece (about a French family’s reluctant, growing relationship with a humane Nazi office billeted on them) demands much from the viewer, but amply replays it in terms of intelligence and emotion. Howard Vernon, better known for low-rent Euro-horror movies, give a career-best performance as the German officer. < less

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DVD Extras

• New high-definition progressive transfer
• Exclusive video discussion by Ginette Vincendeau
• 44 page illustrated booklet with an extended article by Ginette Vincendeau, author of Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris, and a vintage Melville interview by Rui Nogueira, author of Melville on Melville.

Film Details

Cast

Howard Vernon, Nicole Stephane, Jean-Marie Robain

Technical Details