Nuits de feu (1937)
Directed by Marcel L'Herbier

Film Review

This fairly mundane historical melodrama is a world apart from the great works of cinema that earned Marcel L'Herbier his reputation as one of the leading figures of the French avant-garde of the 1920s, silent masterpieces such as L'Homme du large (1920), Feu Mathias Pascal (1926) and L'Argent (1928). Having neither the astonishing artistic innovation or dramatic scale of L'Herbier's earlier films, Nuits de feu is a comparatively low-key work which would be easy to overlook were it not for some fine performances from an impressive cast.  Victor Francen and Gaby Morlay, two of the actors most strongly associated with the French film melodrama, are on fine form and bring an emotional realism to the film that makes up for its complacency in other departments.  L'Herbier's half-hearted direction and a fairly lacklustre script fail to deliver the power and humanity of the Leo Tolstoy play on which the narrative is based (The Living Corpse, previously adapted for cinema by Fyodor Otsep in 1929), although the film is beautifully shot in a way that prefigures the work of the French poetic realists (Jean Grémillon, Marcel Carné, Julien Duvivier), adding a sense of dark foreboding and irony to the proceedings. In common with most of L'Herbier's films of the sound era, this one fails to leave much of a lasting impression.

Film Synopsis

In 19th century Imperial Russia, the state prosecutor Fedor Andreiev is presiding over the trial of a man who, in a fit of jealousy, killed his wife's lover.  The accused man has a sturdy defence, eloquently put forward by the brilliant lawyer Serge Rostoff, but in the end the case goes against him.  Found guilty of murder, he is condemned and sent off to Siberia.  Not long afterwards, Fedor Andreiev realises that his own wife is having an affair with another man.  The recent trial gives him an idea that will allow him to punish both his wife and her lover.  He will disappear, leading people to think he has been murdered.  The plan works exactly as the prosecutor knew it would, but when his wife is charged with his murder he has a change of heart and decides he must return to save her...