O Braseiro ardente

I saw "Le brasier ardent" in Paris last fall on the Cine Cinema Classic channel on French cable television. This intriguing film combines several genres including romantic comedy, surrealism, and the secret society serials that were popular at the time. Produced in Paris, the film offers some great location shots of the city in the early 20s, including a car chase along the Champs-Elysées. Directed and starring Ivan Mosjoukine as a detective simply named Z, the plot involves an investigation to return an emotionally drifting young wife to her older husband. The film expertly uses the physical agility of the three stars, particularly the male leads, who jump, run, slide, and fall as the plot demands. The story continually surprised and delighted me with its plot turns and its forays into surrealism and breakneck comedy. Do yourself a favor and see it.

For a film that combines so many elements of avant-garde European film-making (surrealism, expressionism, futurism) and is a feast of different non-realistic styles, 1923 is a very early date and, although both expressionism and futurism had a following in Russia, there is not much in pre-revolutionary Russian cinema that would lead one to expect this. In Italy there had been the futurist film Thaïs as early in 1916; in Germany Richard Oswald had already produced The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Genuine in 1920 but in France Marcel L'Herbier's major films (L'Argent and L'Inhumaine) were still a few years in the future although he had already made the much less impressive Le Bercail (1919) and the short Prométhée….banquier (1921) and, although she was already a known film-maker, Germaine Dulac's first really memorable film (La souriante Madame Beudet) did not appear until this same year, 1923.

So the fact that Mozzuhkhin, freshly arrived from Russia and with no experience as a director (apart from the rather conventional comedy L'Enfant du carnaval also made in France in 1921)should have directed such an imaginative feast as this in 1923 is really rather remarkable. One should add that the set-decorator, Pierre Schild was also at the beginning of his career (he would later work on the Dali/Buñuel films Le Chien andalou and L'Age d'Or).

Perhaps the previous film most similar in style to this was Artur Robison's Warning Shadows which had been first shown in Berlin just the month before (even if the moral of this Mozzhukhin film turns out to be rather different).

Nathalie Lissenko,Mozzhukhin's actress-wife was by no means "hideous", but it is true that she does "look a fright" (more or less literally) and it is worth observing that this was itself an element in the art nouveau/art déco style of the period. One finds the same look with Navratilova in one the extremely rare US examples of an avant-garde film (Salomé, also 1923) and again with Jean Renoir's wife (Catherine Hessling) who appears in some of his early films even though she was reputed a beauty and had been one of his father's models. To appreciate the style, it might help to think in terms of some modern equivalent ("punk" is the obvious one). The style was already outdated by the 1930s and Elsa Lanchester's "look" as the Bride of Frankenstein might be considered a parody of the style.

This is a movie that requires several viewings to appreciate. It has a sort of hypnotic charm and oddness about it that I found gripped my attention throughout, even when I wasn't exactly sure I was understanding the message.

Ivan Mosjoukine plays the famous Detective Z who is hired by a husband to investigate his wife and persuade her to leave Paris and move with him to South America. The plot is superficially a standard detective story, but it has so many bizarre twists it ends up defying categorization. Mosjoukine shows his great talent for comedy in this film, and has a playfulness and charm that are really adorable. He's such a little boy, dissolving in tears when his heart is broken, and then bouncing with delight when all ends well.

There's one scene in this movie that's too difficult to describe, but it's a sort of crazed women's dance marathon, and the way it ends - with the women turning the tables and making the men all dance frenetically together - is so funny, it made me laugh out loud in a way no other silent movie has ever done. The sets have an overpowering, surreal effect - the human beings are always moving about in rooms and on staircases that are far bigger than anything a normal person would experience. The scene where the husband blunders into the detective agency, and is confronted by a synchronized line of tuxedoed detectives on traveling chairs that slide about in formation, is quite unforgettable. It's like a cross between a Fred Astaire dance number and a Kafka nightmare. The ending has a twist I never saw coming, and probably was a big reason why the movie failed at the box office. It's a happy ending, but just bizarre - even in France, I can't imagine an audience in 1923 thinking that this was a believable way to end a quasi-mystery, no matter how well Mosjoukine prepared them in advance with all the surrealist details. I'd really like to see this movie completely restored; it is visually exciting, and deserves a wider audience. Come to think of it, the time may be right for someone even to remake it - it's quite outside of any real time period, and would not come across as dated at all.

I just saw this film in Paris. The showing was accompanied by a band that played wonderfully. The film is very interesting. Some of the scenes seemed a little long and were not particularly innovative. I also wasn't that taken with the female protagonist-- not with her personality or the acting. However the film also includes couple of scenes that are mesmerizing. In particular the scene in which the husband goes into a mysterious building and encounters a roomfull of men, who are all potential detectives, is one of the most remarkable I've ever seen. Together with the music, the film is delightful.

Magnificent and surprising film, unfortunately little known. One of the relatively obscure jewels of silent cinema. In the midst of the effervescence of the French avant-garde, the talented Ivan Mozzhukhin came up with this hilarious, inventive and extravagant fantasy, a mixture of the most diverse genres: mystery, comedy, crime, melodrama.

The premise seems to be to disconcert and misplace the viewer, with infinite visual and narrative ideas, but at the same time, and despite the avant-garde and playful tone, to be interested in some characters and a story. In the first half that balance is achieved in a prodigious way. The second part drifts more towards the sentimental side.

To highlight the extravagant decorations, the setting that can be childish and fun, or dreamlike and threatening, and above all the interpretation of Mozzhukhin, between acrobat, clown and gallant.