Quatre-vingt-treize – 1793 (1914) begins more or less like this: in a library, Henry Krauss (as tutor Cimourdain) is teaching Paul Capellani (the young aristocrat, Gauvain). We are in the Pathé studio, the actors are wearing wigs and gesticulating, as visual expression of the characters’ enthusiasm for the ideas of Rous- seau. We summon up all the patience we can muster, to survive three hours of an old costume drama. But in a short while – at the latest by the scene with the old Marquis de Latenac in the boat taking him from exile in England over to Brittany, where he is to lead the royalist rebellion against the Jacobin Republic – we are in a great, enthralling, serious lm. Just as Victor Hugo does in the novel, Capellani portrays the con ict of ideas embodied in the characters of Cimourdain, Latenac and Gauvain: he does it objec- tively, without setting up an antagonism between good and evil. Though nally coming down on the side of humanity (Gauvain), neither Capellani’s lm nor Hugo’s source novel condemns the other two positions, the revolutionary Cimourdain’s adherence to his principles and the loyalty of the traditionalist Latenac; they too are endowed with heroic stature.

After a screening of Quatre-vingt-treize at the Cinémathèque Française in 1957, Philippe Esnault and Pierre Philippe wrote that “Capellani’s Quatre-vingt-treize (1914) allows us to judge, through the work of an important pioneer, the situation of our national cinema during the war. A Pathé director from 1905, the maker of L’Homme aux gants blancs (1908) began in 1909 a non-stop series of screen adaptations, of Racine, Hugo and Zola, as well as Richepin and Eugène Sue. One cannot ignore the lmmaker who has given us Germinal and Quatre-vingt-treize in quick succession. This is one of the few pre-war lms dealing with a subject that can still interest viewers today. It was, more over, banned, and not released until 1921, with Antoine credited as co-director.” (Cinéma 57, no. 18, May 1957)

No complete original negative of this lm has survived (unlike Germinal). Pierre Esnault (1930-2008) reconstructed Quatre- vingt-treize in 1985, and his version is the basis of the 2010 Cinémathèque française colour print. (The Esnault and Philippe quote, as well as information on the copy, are from Camille Blot- Wellens’ contribution to the booklet of the DVD Albert Capellani, Édition Pathé 2011, pp. 30-31)

(ML)