There were no indications that this young man of the south of France, born in Lunel in 1880, would embark on a career in the cinema. Being a pupil of Vincent d’Indy at the Schola Cantorum he was destined for the world of music, but to earn a living, and thanks to his law degree, he practised as a lawyer in Paris before working in a minister’s cabinet, the secretarial office of a theatre and finally, after having had a few of his plays staged, in the editorial office of “L’Intransigeant”. In 1910 he interviewed Benoît-Lévy for this paper who, amongst widespread indifference, held ideas that anticipated the concept of film as art. Even Fescourt was not convinced by these ideas but in the winter of 1911-1912, he wrote a few screenplays to earn some money following a friend’s advice: “The more stupid the material you write, the better you’re paid”. He took his work to Gaumont’s artistic director, Louis Feuillade, to whom he was recommended by a winegrower from Lunel. Feuillade bought some of his work and then advised him to take it upon himself to film his own scripts. In some memorable and amusing pages, Fescourt tells how Léon Gaumont confirmed this decision. In February 1912 Fescourt filmed one of his scripts as La Méthode du professeur Neura, the first of around fifty films that he shot for Gaumont until August 1914. From the end of the war until 1929 he worked for the Société des Cinéromans, making mostly episodic films such as Mathias Sandorf, a masterpiece of special effects at the service of the poetic image, in 1919, Rouletabille chez les bohémiens and Mandrin. The latter with its overall lyricism, epic breadth and dynamic images established itself as a veritable French western. Special mention must also go to Les Misérables and Monte-Cristo, his last silent film, whose plastic beauty fascinated Alan Resnais. Following the arrival of talking pictures Fescourt worked in Sweden, England, north Africa and obviously France where he shot his last film, Retour de flamme, in which Roger Pigaut and Renée Saint-Cyr made their debut in 1942. All the great “vedettes” of the past feature in the opening credits of Fescourt’s films: René Navarre, Yvette Andreyor, Jean Toulout, Joé Hamman, Sandra Milowanoff, Renée Carl and Gaston Modot.

Francis Lacassin, Pour une contre-histoire du cinéma, Lyon 1994