Le gardien de phare

This film meant a very great deal in 1911 because it is the real-life story of the lighthouse of Kerdonis, what is called a "maison-phare", an ordinary house with a lighthouse mechanism on the roof,on Belle-Île-en-Mer in Morbihan in Brittany. When the lighthouseman died on 18 April 1911, his wife and two children kept the light going by hand all night (the mechanism having developed a fault). She was awarded a médaille d'honneur on the 16 June 1911. The Breton singer/songwriter composed a song on the subject Les Petits gardiens du feu. Gaumont filmed the medal-ceremony for Actualités (25 August edition) while this film appeared in October. The Kerdonis lighthouse is still there.

The lighthouse keeper has an attack while cleaning the light. He makes his unsteady way down to the living quarters and collapses. While his wife tends him, their children turn the lights that guide ships through saf passage by hand.

It's a simple and unremarkable drama from Eclipse Films, but this story of dedication meant much more in the days when lives depended on the operation of such edifices -- as, indeed, they still do. The acting is simultaneously florid in its staginess, and stoic in the children's performances. Some value is added to the film by the tinting, far more common in European films of this era than in American ones.

If you wish to see this movie for yourself, it can be found on the Eye Institute site on YouTube.