LE CHEVALIER DE MAISON-ROUGE
Scen.: Albert Capellani; Scena storica in sei parti e 60 tableaux dal romanzo omonimo di Alexandre Dumas; F.: Louis Forestier; Int. P. Escoffier (Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge), Marie-Louise Derval (Geneviève Dixmer) Dorival (Dixmer), Rollan (Maurice Lindey), Léa Piron (Marie-Antoinette) Mévisto (Rocher). Prod.: Pathé (No. 6548). 35mm. L.: 2242 m. D.: 109’ a 18 f/s. Col.
Film Notes
Released at the very beginning of 1914, Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge is one of several films adapted from major works of literature directed by Albert Capellani for Pathé. The British weekly, The Bioscope of 5 March 1914, in a piece entitled “A Wonderful Drama of the French Revolution”, said of the film: “It is, indeed, a true masterpiece of the cinematograph producer’s art, worthy to rank beside those other great Pathé triumphs, The Mysteries of Paris, Les Misérables and Germinal… Each scene, whether a studio setting or a solid exterior, has been built or selected with infinite care for detail, and the resulting picture of Paris at the time of the Revolution is quite perfect. Magnificent as are the construction of the play, the settings and the general production, however, the film’s most outstanding feature is its wonderful acting.… The Chevalier de Maison Rouge is one of the most beautifully acted films ever seen upon the screen and its notability in this respect applies not only to the work of those in the leading rôles, but even to that of the “supers”. A more magnificent ensemble it would be scarcely possible to desire.…”
(Information published by Henri Bousquet in Catalogue Pathé des années 1896 à 1914, 1994-2004, pp. 743-744)
In 1987, the Cinémathèque Française preserved the negative, the only element of the film discovered up to now, and in 2010 went on to reconstruct and restore it. A list of title cards from the Swedish censor’s office enabled the Cinémathèque to reintroduce the titles and inserts, which were produced by the Süpor laboratory. Additionally, the colour indications appearing in the negative enabled the original colours to be restored (no fewer than fifteen different shades). A print of a 1914 Pathé film preserved in the collections of the Cinémathèque française was used as a reference for certain shades. Others were recreated using technical documentation of the period. The dupe negative was struck by the Ciné Dia laboratory and the colour print by the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory.
Camille Blot-Wellens