Léonce Perret
Encyclopedia
Léonce Perret was a prolific and innovative French
film actor, director and producer
. He also worked as a stage actor and director. Often described as avant-garde
for his unorthodox directing methods, Léonce Perret introduced innovative camera, lighting and film scoring techniques to French cinema.
Léonce Perret began his career as a relatively undistinguished stage actor. He was recruited to the film industry by the Gaumont Film Company
. His numerous short films gained significant accolade in French cinematography. Until his emigration to the United States in 1917, he was a fixture of the Gaumont Film Company. On American soil, he produced several popular films, the most notable being Lest We Forget (N’oublions jamais) in 1918.
After returning to France, he directed the successful Koenigsmark in 1923. His film Madame Sans-Gêne
(1925), starring Gloria Swanson
, was the first joint Franco-American film production. In addition, Léonce Perret collaborated with many of the French and American idols of his generation such as Abel Gance
, Gloria Swanson, Gaby Morlay, René Cresté
, Arletty
, Suzanne Grandais, Mae Murray
, and Huguette Duflos.
. Léonce showed a taste for the arts from an early age, in particular for acting
and poetry
. During his adolescence, Léonce fell seriously ill and had to go to Paris
to see medical specialists. He stayed in the capital for several months while being treated. It was during this brief stay that he began to dream of life as an artist.
After many discussions with his parents in Niort, he eventually received their blessing to pursue this dream. He returned to Paris and rented a small room on the Boulevard Saint-Michel
near the Luxembourg Gardens. Here, he was able to immerse himself in his favorite books. His health complications came back, but he made a slow recovery. Later, he was granted a medical exemption from military service on March 21, 1901.
, located in the Montparnasse
neighborhood of Paris. His talent as an excellent singer and flute
player soon became apparent, thus began his very prolific artistic career. During this time, he loved to watch plays at the theatre in his free time and felt more and more drawn to the stage. He participated in small stage productions in order to learn the trade; he had to accept any offer that came his way to get paid, which often amounted to a pittance. At the same time he continued to take music and theatre classes.
In 1899, Léonce got the call for a six month tour which enabled him to travel throughout Europe and to Russia
. He was finally noticed by the playwright Eugène Brieux
, who tapped him in the spring of 1890 for his first important role in the play La Robe rouge (The Red Dress). Then destiny smiled on Léonce in June 1900 when he got his first contract as a young headliner at the Athénée theatre, one of his longtime dreams. In 1902, he toured again in Europe visiting Italy
, Switzerland
, Germany
, Russia, etc., acting in plays by Alexandre Dumas, fils
, Alfred Capus
, Marcel Prévost
, and Émile Augier
. He gained much theatrical experience during those years. Léonce the actor began to get himself noticed by his performances, especially when he started acting at the Vaudeville
theatre in the beginning of 1903, notably playing the leading role in the play Ruy Blas.
In 1905, Léonce signed a new contract with the Odéon
, working first under the director Abel Tarride, then André Antoine
. He continued to tour in the theatres of Paris, the provinces of France, and sometimes Europe; however, he had severe financial difficulties during this period since he was rarely given the leading role.
In 1909, he was employed for several months in a Saint Petersburg
theatre during another trip to Russia. On the way back to France he stopped in Berlin
to act in the play Cyrano de Bergerac
. It was there that Mr. Grassi, the director of Gaumont Germany, recruited him for a new occupation: filmmaking.
From Berlin, he went back to Paris and found employment at the Gaumont Film Company
under the artistic direction of Louis Feuillade
. He started out there as an actor in a good number of films shot in the Gaumont studios at 53, rue de la Villette. He then moved up the ladder quickly at Gaumont thanks to his directing experience from Berlin. Around this time he met Valentine Petit, a singer and dancer who was working at the Folies Bergère. She became his wife several years later. Valentine acted in several of Léonce's films and helped him greatly in his business dealings.
Léonce Perret and the cast at Gaumont worked with many actors including Suzy Prim, Yvette Andréyor, Suzanne Grandais, etc. Léonce acted in many of the films he directed. Le Feu à la mine (1911), was one of his first films to be relatively successful. In 1913, he started the “Léonce” series which consisted of Léonce himself playing dramatic, comic and even burlesque characters; he would film around forty episodes of this series. That same year he directed the dramatic comedy Le Mariage de minuit (Midnight Marriage) featuring Suzanne Grandais, an actress he had discovered at the Moulin Rouge
. Suzanne subsequently became quite popular.
Even though the public still didn’t know Perret by name, his face was starting to become familiar. In fact, up until 1913, the names of the director and actors were not included in the credits due to the studios' near-prohibition. One day, Léonce demanded that Gaumont and Louis Feuillade include the leading actors’ names in the credits, a precedent that was soon followed by all the other directors of the time.
Trying new techniques, Perret progressively filmed more outdoors and, sometimes, outside of Paris. He even experimented with the police genre with the trilogy Main de fer. The same year Léonce directed L’Enfant de Paris, the film that would mark the end of his financial difficulties and make his reputation as one of the best French directors of his era. L’Enfant de Paris was subsequently remade several times. Léonce demonstrated with this film that French filmmaking technique rivaled that of the Americans, even the technique of the eminent American director D. W. Griffith
.
Furthermore, at a showing of L’Enfant de Paris at the French Film Library in 1951, Georges Sadoul
stated: "Perret made brilliant use of every editing resource at his disposal: varied camera angles, backlighting, his cameraman Specht's beautiful photography… all while working from a rather ordinary script that borrowed heavily from the Deux orphelines. Mixing Ennery's melodrama with a few jingoistic episodes, Léonce Perret was able to render a graceful and lively story by using an extraordinarily refined cinematic repertoire: backlighting, low-angle shots, close-ups, moving shots and numerous other innovations, all of which Perret implemented with flair, in stark contrast to Louis Feuillade's minimalist style and the still somewhat primitive technique of David W. Griffith at that time." Thus, Perret demonstrated that the French cinematic technique of that time transcended that of the Americans.
Like many of his peers during World War I
, Perret directed several patriotic and jingoistic movies such as La voie de la Patrie. Military music was played during the film's projection, an innovative idea for that period.
Perret was second in command at the Gaumont film company under Louis Feuillade during this very successful period of the French film industry; when French films were being shown in many foreign countries. However, in 1914, the war broke out and movie-making ground to a halt. Everyone was called up to serve in the army, including Léonce, who for a time was conscripted as a nurse's aide in Niort as he was unable to fight due to his health problems. At Léon Gaumont's request he returned to filmmaking in 1915 to make several patriotic shorts like Françaises, veillez! (Frenchwomen, take care!), a short film warning women on the home front to be aware of possible traitors. Soon after, he released Debout les morts, a film based on one of Victor Hugo
's novels.
Up until 1916, Perret alternated between patriotic and sentimental films. Even though he was named artistic director of Gaumont in 1915 in place of Feuillade (who was fighting on the front), he began complaining about the lack of financial resources Gaumont was willing to commit to his films. Perret wanted to direct bigger budget films. His contract with Gaumont was set to expire at the end of 1916.
in World War I. He settled in Richmond, Virginia
, a region that was at the time developing a filmmaking industry in competition with Hollywood.
A favorable contract was signed with the World Film Corporation, an independent production company founded by Jules Brulatour
and Lewis J. Selznick
. This was a sizable community of expatriate French directors in America looking to participate in the rapidly growing American film industry. His first film shot in the U.S. was The Silent Master, based on a novel by Phillips Oppenheim. A Modern Othello quickly followed, based on a short story by the French writer Ernest M. Laumann.
Shortly afterwards, he directed Lest We Forget, which showed the world the image of a heroic and wounded France. The postwar propaganda was released in 1918 and was enormously successful in France. Its release shortly preceded the signing of the armistice that ended World War I. This film and other film successes during that year supplied Perret with enough money to start his own production company: Perret Pictures, Inc., which was affiliated with the distributor Pathé Exchange.
With this new company, he produced and directed a series of films including La 13ème chaise based on the play by Bayard Veiller and Twin Pawns starring the Hollywood celebrity Mae Murray
. His 1920 film, The Lifting Shadows, strongly criticized the newly ascended powers in Russia and revealed Léonce's prejudices towards Bolshevism. His string of successful films continued until 1921 when an economic recession in the U.S. put the brakes on the burgeoning film industry.
Having benefited from the all research and progress made in the American cinema, he planned to adapt his newly acquired knowledge to the French film industry. Back in France, he became one of the great innovators of film direction. By September, he was already directing and producing his first film back on French soil: L’Ecuyère, distributed by Pathé-Consortium-Cinéma.
Around the same time he started considering doing a film adaptation of the Pierre Benoit
novel Koenigsmark. The completed film starring Huguette Duflos was released to French theatres in March 1924. Koenigsmark was tremendously successful with moviegoers and is still considered today to be one of the landmark films of the 1920s. Moreover, in 2002, the film was restored by the French Film Library under the direction of Claudine Kaufmann.
Madame Sans-Gêne
(1925), released by Paramount Pictures
and starring Gloria Swanson
, was the first joint Franco-American film production. The retelling of the French Revolution
overthrowing King Louis XVI
enjoyed record box office receipts in both France and the United States. Unfortunately, Madame Sans-Gêne is now considered a lost film
since no copies of the film are known to exist.
Perret was one of the benchmarks of French cinema in his era; his films were regularly greeted with critical acclaim. 1926 and 1927 saw the release of La Femme nue based on the play by Henry Bataille and Morgane la sirène based on the novel by Charles Le Goffic. A new production and distribution company entered onto the French film scene at the end of March 1927: Franco-Film. Perret was named artistic director and board member of this new company operating out of the Rex Ingram
studios in Nice, France
. The goal of the new production company was to make French films a worldwide success. Joining Perret at the helm of Franco-Film were: production director Edgard Costil, director Camille de Morlhon and several other pioneering directors such as Raymond Bernard, Jean Duran, Léon Mathot, etc.
The first film Perret distributed with Franco-Film, Morgane la sirène, was wildly successful in France, England and Canada, which confirmed the young company's international ambitions. Printemps d’amour, the first French color film using the new American technology Technicolor
, came out that same year starring Louis Lagrange and the American actress Hope Hampton
. Afterwards Léonce produced his last two silent films: La Danseuse Orchidée (with the American actor Ricardo Cortez
as well as Xenia Desni
and Marcya Capri) and another film adaptation of a Henry Bataille play called La Possession (with the Italian actress Francesca Bertini
).
Léonce Perret left an indelible mark on the cinema of the 1920s. Often called the "magician of film" by his peers, he clearly belongs in the silent film hall of fame. Henri Langlois
, a pioneer in film preservation, observed that "Léonce Perret's legacies to cinema are his aesthetic discoveries and priceless refinements."
. Perret's next project was Grains de beauté in 1932, followed by Enlevez-moi, a film that showcased the young actress Arletty
as well as the veteran actor Roger Tréville.
The next year Perret collaborated with the queen of stage and film Gaby Morlay and his former colleague André Luguet to shoot his new film Il était une fois with the company Pathé-Nathan. Based on a play by Francis de Croisset, the movie won the best French film of the year award from the weekly cinema review Pour Vous. Next Perret adapted Alphonse Daudet
's novel Sapho in 1933. As he had already acted in a stage adaptation of the novel when he was doing theatre, he knew the subject well. In 1934, while working with the Comédie-Française
, Perret tried an experimental type of play-documentary from Molière
's body of work. Although the experiment was met with limited success, it proved to be an inspiration for other artists such as Sacha Guitry
who later created similar types of experimental films.
While working on a new bilingual (French-English) talking version of Koenigsmark, Léonce Perret fell ill and had to be hospitalized at the Saint Jean de Dieu clinic in Paris. He died on August 12, 1935 and was buried in Niort.
However, Léonce Perret is surprisingly unfamiliar to the generations of movie buffs that followed him. Cinema historians give him little consideration in their published research. For example, the study of Léonce Perret did not exist until 2003, but it was not definitive. Entitled Léonce Perret, the biography was published by the French Association for Historical Film Studies in collaboration with the Bologne Film Library under the direction of Bernard Bastide and Jean A. Gili. In 2006, Daniel Taillé published a more thorough work giving homage to such a pioneering artist. This was entitled Léonce Perret, cinématographiste.
in New York City organized a film exhibition showcasing Perret's work. The Gaumont Film Company
exhibits recently restored films annually at the Museum of Modern Art. In 2003, a selected collection of Perret's best films were restored from nitrite negatives and showcased at this exhibition. The films were selected by Martine Offroy, who was the curator of Gaumont Film Company. The Gaumont Film Company and the Cinémathèque française
contributed in the restoration of the films, in collaboration with the Centre National de la Cinématographie and the Ministry of Culture
.
, the artistic director at Gaumont at that time. Several others from that period were written by other associates at Gaumont such as Abel Gance, Étienne Arnaud and Marcel Lévesque. After gaining the Gaumont Company's trust, Perret began directing his own screenplays starting around 1911.
From 1917 on, he adapted many screenplays from novels such as Folie d’Amour (1917), La treizième chaise (1919) and Koenigsmark (1923). He also collaborated with other filmmakers on some scripts such as Koenigsmark, which was co-written with René Champigny and Madame Sans-Gêne with the American Forrest Halsey.
The screenplay for La Danseuse Orchidée from 1928 is credited to Jean-Joseph Renaud. It is one of the rare postwar Perret films where he did not write the script himself.
After his return to France, he had the opportunity to produce several movies with the Franco-Film company (Morgane la Sirène and Printemps d’Amour in 1927; La Danseuse Orchidée, Poliche and La Possession in 1928; Quand nous étions deux in 1930).
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
film actor, director and producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
. He also worked as a stage actor and director. Often described as avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
for his unorthodox directing methods, Léonce Perret introduced innovative camera, lighting and film scoring techniques to French cinema.
Léonce Perret began his career as a relatively undistinguished stage actor. He was recruited to the film industry by the Gaumont Film Company
Gaumont Film Company
Gaumont Film Company is a French film production company founded in 1895 by the engineer-turned-inventor, Léon Gaumont . Gaumont is the oldest continously operating film company in the world....
. His numerous short films gained significant accolade in French cinematography. Until his emigration to the United States in 1917, he was a fixture of the Gaumont Film Company. On American soil, he produced several popular films, the most notable being Lest We Forget (N’oublions jamais) in 1918.
After returning to France, he directed the successful Koenigsmark in 1923. His film Madame Sans-Gêne
Madame Sans-Gene (1925 film)
Madame Sans-Gene is a silent romantic comedy/costume drama directed by Léonce Perret and starring Gloria Swanson.-Production background:The film was produced in France, as Swanson was on extended vacation there...
(1925), starring Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson was an American actress, singer and producer. She was one of the most prominent stars during the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille, made dozens of silents and was nominated for the first Academy Award in the...
, was the first joint Franco-American film production. In addition, Léonce Perret collaborated with many of the French and American idols of his generation such as Abel Gance
Abel Gance
Abel Gance was a French film director and producer, writer and actor. He is best known for three major silent films: J'accuse , La Roue , and the monumental Napoléon .-Early life:...
, Gloria Swanson, Gaby Morlay, René Cresté
René Cresté
René Cresté was a French stage and film actor and director of the silent film era. Cresté is possibly best recalled as Judex, the title character in the Louis Feuillade-directed crime-adventure serial Judex, which ran in twelve installments in theaters from 1917 until 1918.-Early life and...
, Arletty
Arletty
Arletty was a French actress, singer, and fashion model.-Life and career:Arletty was born Léonie Marie Julie Bathiat in Courbevoie , to a working-class family. Her early career was dominated by the music hall, and she later appeared in plays and cabaret. Arletty was a stage performer for ten years...
, Suzanne Grandais, Mae Murray
Mae Murray
Mae Murray was an American actress, dancer, film producer, and screenwriter. Murray rose to fame during the silent film era and was known as "The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips" and "The Gardenia of the Screen"....
, and Huguette Duflos.
Early life
Léonce Perret was born in 1880 to Eliès Ferdinand Perret and Marie Collinet. His parents owned a woodworking shop on Yver Street in Niort, FranceNiort
Niort is a commune in the Deux-Sèvres department in western France.The Latin name of the city was Novioritum.The population of Niort is 60,486 and more than 137,000 people live in the urban area....
. Léonce showed a taste for the arts from an early age, in particular for acting
Acting
Acting is the work of an actor or actress, which is a person in theatre, television, film, or any other storytelling medium who tells the story by portraying a character and, usually, speaking or singing the written text or play....
and poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
. During his adolescence, Léonce fell seriously ill and had to go to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to see medical specialists. He stayed in the capital for several months while being treated. It was during this brief stay that he began to dream of life as an artist.
After many discussions with his parents in Niort, he eventually received their blessing to pursue this dream. He returned to Paris and rented a small room on the Boulevard Saint-Michel
Boulevard Saint-Michel
The Boulevard Saint-Michel is one of the two major streets in the Latin Quarter of Paris . It is a tree-lined boulevard which runs south from the pont Saint-Michel on the Seine river and the Place Saint-Michel, crosses the boulevard Saint-Germain and continues alongside the Sorbonne and the...
near the Luxembourg Gardens. Here, he was able to immerse himself in his favorite books. His health complications came back, but he made a slow recovery. Later, he was granted a medical exemption from military service on March 21, 1901.
Introduction to theatre
Léonce enrolled in the new music school, Schola CantorumSchola Cantorum
The Schola Cantorum de Paris is a private music school in Paris. It was founded in 1894 by Charles Bordes, Alexandre Guilmant and Vincent d'Indy as a counterbalance to the Paris Conservatoire's emphasis on opera...
, located in the Montparnasse
Montparnasse
Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail...
neighborhood of Paris. His talent as an excellent singer and flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
player soon became apparent, thus began his very prolific artistic career. During this time, he loved to watch plays at the theatre in his free time and felt more and more drawn to the stage. He participated in small stage productions in order to learn the trade; he had to accept any offer that came his way to get paid, which often amounted to a pittance. At the same time he continued to take music and theatre classes.
In 1899, Léonce got the call for a six month tour which enabled him to travel throughout Europe and to Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. He was finally noticed by the playwright Eugène Brieux
Eugène Brieux
Eugène Brieux , French dramatist, was born in Paris of poor parents.A one-act play, Bernard Palissy, written in collaboration with M...
, who tapped him in the spring of 1890 for his first important role in the play La Robe rouge (The Red Dress). Then destiny smiled on Léonce in June 1900 when he got his first contract as a young headliner at the Athénée theatre, one of his longtime dreams. In 1902, he toured again in Europe visiting Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Russia, etc., acting in plays by Alexandre Dumas, fils
Alexandre Dumas, fils
Alexandre Dumas, fils was a French author and dramatist. He was the son of Alexandre Dumas, père, also a writer and playwright.-Biography:...
, Alfred Capus
Alfred Capus
Alfred Capus was a French journalist and playwright, born in Aix-en-Provence and deceased in Neuilly-sur-Seine.-Biography:Son to a lawyer from Marseille, Alfred Capus went to university in Toulon...
, Marcel Prévost
Marcel Prévost
Eugene Marcel Prévost was a French author and dramatist.-Biography:He was born in Paris on 1 May 1862, and educated at Jesuit schools in Bordeaux and Paris, entering the École polytechnique in 1882...
, and Émile Augier
Émile Augier
Guillaume Victor Émile Augier was a French dramatist. He was the thirteenth member to occupy seat 1 of the Académie française on 31 March 1857.-Biography:...
. He gained much theatrical experience during those years. Léonce the actor began to get himself noticed by his performances, especially when he started acting at the Vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
theatre in the beginning of 1903, notably playing the leading role in the play Ruy Blas.
In 1905, Léonce signed a new contract with the Odéon
Odéon
The Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe is one of France's six national theatres.It is located at 2 rue Corneille in the 6th arrondissement of Paris on the left bank of the Seine, next to the Luxembourg Garden...
, working first under the director Abel Tarride, then André Antoine
André Antoine (actor)
André Antoine was a French actor, theatre manager, film director, author, and critic who is considered the father of modern mise en scène in France.-Biography:...
. He continued to tour in the theatres of Paris, the provinces of France, and sometimes Europe; however, he had severe financial difficulties during this period since he was rarely given the leading role.
In 1909, he was employed for several months in a Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
theatre during another trip to Russia. On the way back to France he stopped in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
to act in the play Cyrano de Bergerac
Cyrano de Bergerac (play)
Cyrano de Bergerac is a play written in 1897 by Edmond Rostand. Although there was a real Cyrano de Bergerac, the play bears very scant resemblance to his life....
. It was there that Mr. Grassi, the director of Gaumont Germany, recruited him for a new occupation: filmmaking.
Film career
Perret saw working behind a camera as an extension of his theatrical work, unlike the rest of the theatre world who looked down on the cinema. In 1909, he directed his first three short films in Berlin. They included the pacifist film Pourquoi la guerre? Next, he began directing short films of 4-5 minutes from his own screenplays, such as Le Bon Juge and Fan-Fan le petit grenadier.From Berlin, he went back to Paris and found employment at the Gaumont Film Company
Gaumont Film Company
Gaumont Film Company is a French film production company founded in 1895 by the engineer-turned-inventor, Léon Gaumont . Gaumont is the oldest continously operating film company in the world....
under the artistic direction of Louis Feuillade
Louis Feuillade
Louis Feuillade was a prolific and prominent French film director from the silent era. Between 1906 and 1924 he directed over 630 films...
. He started out there as an actor in a good number of films shot in the Gaumont studios at 53, rue de la Villette. He then moved up the ladder quickly at Gaumont thanks to his directing experience from Berlin. Around this time he met Valentine Petit, a singer and dancer who was working at the Folies Bergère. She became his wife several years later. Valentine acted in several of Léonce's films and helped him greatly in his business dealings.
Léonce Perret and the cast at Gaumont worked with many actors including Suzy Prim, Yvette Andréyor, Suzanne Grandais, etc. Léonce acted in many of the films he directed. Le Feu à la mine (1911), was one of his first films to be relatively successful. In 1913, he started the “Léonce” series which consisted of Léonce himself playing dramatic, comic and even burlesque characters; he would film around forty episodes of this series. That same year he directed the dramatic comedy Le Mariage de minuit (Midnight Marriage) featuring Suzanne Grandais, an actress he had discovered at the Moulin Rouge
Moulin Rouge
Moulin Rouge is a cabaret built in 1889 by Joseph Oller, who also owned the Paris Olympia. Close to Montmartre in the Paris district of Pigalle on Boulevard de Clichy in the 18th arrondissement, it is marked by the red windmill on its roof. The closest métro station is Blanche.The Moulin Rouge is...
. Suzanne subsequently became quite popular.
Even though the public still didn’t know Perret by name, his face was starting to become familiar. In fact, up until 1913, the names of the director and actors were not included in the credits due to the studios' near-prohibition. One day, Léonce demanded that Gaumont and Louis Feuillade include the leading actors’ names in the credits, a precedent that was soon followed by all the other directors of the time.
Trying new techniques, Perret progressively filmed more outdoors and, sometimes, outside of Paris. He even experimented with the police genre with the trilogy Main de fer. The same year Léonce directed L’Enfant de Paris, the film that would mark the end of his financial difficulties and make his reputation as one of the best French directors of his era. L’Enfant de Paris was subsequently remade several times. Léonce demonstrated with this film that French filmmaking technique rivaled that of the Americans, even the technique of the eminent American director D. W. Griffith
D. W. Griffith
David Llewelyn Wark Griffith was a premier pioneering American film director. He is best known as the director of the controversial and groundbreaking 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and the subsequent film Intolerance .Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera...
.
Furthermore, at a showing of L’Enfant de Paris at the French Film Library in 1951, Georges Sadoul
Georges Sadoul
Georges Sadoul was a French journalist and cinema writer.Once a surrealist, he became a communist in 1932. He was a journalist of the Lettres Françaises....
stated: "Perret made brilliant use of every editing resource at his disposal: varied camera angles, backlighting, his cameraman Specht's beautiful photography… all while working from a rather ordinary script that borrowed heavily from the Deux orphelines. Mixing Ennery's melodrama with a few jingoistic episodes, Léonce Perret was able to render a graceful and lively story by using an extraordinarily refined cinematic repertoire: backlighting, low-angle shots, close-ups, moving shots and numerous other innovations, all of which Perret implemented with flair, in stark contrast to Louis Feuillade's minimalist style and the still somewhat primitive technique of David W. Griffith at that time." Thus, Perret demonstrated that the French cinematic technique of that time transcended that of the Americans.
Like many of his peers during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Perret directed several patriotic and jingoistic movies such as La voie de la Patrie. Military music was played during the film's projection, an innovative idea for that period.
Perret was second in command at the Gaumont film company under Louis Feuillade during this very successful period of the French film industry; when French films were being shown in many foreign countries. However, in 1914, the war broke out and movie-making ground to a halt. Everyone was called up to serve in the army, including Léonce, who for a time was conscripted as a nurse's aide in Niort as he was unable to fight due to his health problems. At Léon Gaumont's request he returned to filmmaking in 1915 to make several patriotic shorts like Françaises, veillez! (Frenchwomen, take care!), a short film warning women on the home front to be aware of possible traitors. Soon after, he released Debout les morts, a film based on one of Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
's novels.
Up until 1916, Perret alternated between patriotic and sentimental films. Even though he was named artistic director of Gaumont in 1915 in place of Feuillade (who was fighting on the front), he began complaining about the lack of financial resources Gaumont was willing to commit to his films. Perret wanted to direct bigger budget films. His contract with Gaumont was set to expire at the end of 1916.
American film producer
Perret believed that "the cinema has won the freedom to go where it chooses throughout the world and has become a universal medium that facilitates open artistic and commercial exchanges." He arrived in the United States in February 1917, just a few weeks before the U.S. joined the Allied forcesAllies of World War I
The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...
in World War I. He settled in Richmond, Virginia
Richmond, Virginia
Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...
, a region that was at the time developing a filmmaking industry in competition with Hollywood.
A favorable contract was signed with the World Film Corporation, an independent production company founded by Jules Brulatour
Jules Brulatour
Pierre Ernest Jules Brulatour was a pioneering figure in U.S. silent cinema. Beginning as American distribution representative for Lumiere Brothers raw film stock in 1907, he joined producer Carl Laemmle in forming the Motion Picture Distributing and Sales Company in 1909, effectively weakening...
and Lewis J. Selznick
Lewis J. Selznick
Lewis J. Selznick was a Jewish-Ukrainian-American producer in the early years of the film industry.-Personal life and early career:...
. This was a sizable community of expatriate French directors in America looking to participate in the rapidly growing American film industry. His first film shot in the U.S. was The Silent Master, based on a novel by Phillips Oppenheim. A Modern Othello quickly followed, based on a short story by the French writer Ernest M. Laumann.
Shortly afterwards, he directed Lest We Forget, which showed the world the image of a heroic and wounded France. The postwar propaganda was released in 1918 and was enormously successful in France. Its release shortly preceded the signing of the armistice that ended World War I. This film and other film successes during that year supplied Perret with enough money to start his own production company: Perret Pictures, Inc., which was affiliated with the distributor Pathé Exchange.
With this new company, he produced and directed a series of films including La 13ème chaise based on the play by Bayard Veiller and Twin Pawns starring the Hollywood celebrity Mae Murray
Mae Murray
Mae Murray was an American actress, dancer, film producer, and screenwriter. Murray rose to fame during the silent film era and was known as "The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips" and "The Gardenia of the Screen"....
. His 1920 film, The Lifting Shadows, strongly criticized the newly ascended powers in Russia and revealed Léonce's prejudices towards Bolshevism. His string of successful films continued until 1921 when an economic recession in the U.S. put the brakes on the burgeoning film industry.
International success
Perret decided to give up working in the United States for good at the end of summer 1921. His passion for the renewal of French cinematography was evident in this statement:"The artistic, economic, scientific and social ambitions of the film industry are so strong that its potential is limitless. It should be one of our most important domestic industries. But to get French film back on top, a place it never should have lost, and to assure its global expansion, the domestic film industry has to have a global vision in its subject matter, artisanship and casting. Our great history and tradition can provide the inspiration for international films, a fact that is not unknown to our foreign competitors who have pulled their story lines for their latest films from French history as told by our most famous novelists and playwrights."
Having benefited from the all research and progress made in the American cinema, he planned to adapt his newly acquired knowledge to the French film industry. Back in France, he became one of the great innovators of film direction. By September, he was already directing and producing his first film back on French soil: L’Ecuyère, distributed by Pathé-Consortium-Cinéma.
Around the same time he started considering doing a film adaptation of the Pierre Benoit
Pierre Benoit (novelist)
Pierre Benoît was a French novelist and member of the Académie française.Pierre Benoit, born in Albi was the son of a French soldier. Benoit spent his early years and military service in Northern Africa, before becoming a civil servant...
novel Koenigsmark. The completed film starring Huguette Duflos was released to French theatres in March 1924. Koenigsmark was tremendously successful with moviegoers and is still considered today to be one of the landmark films of the 1920s. Moreover, in 2002, the film was restored by the French Film Library under the direction of Claudine Kaufmann.
Madame Sans-Gêne
Madame Sans-Gene (1925 film)
Madame Sans-Gene is a silent romantic comedy/costume drama directed by Léonce Perret and starring Gloria Swanson.-Production background:The film was produced in France, as Swanson was on extended vacation there...
(1925), released by Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
and starring Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson was an American actress, singer and producer. She was one of the most prominent stars during the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille, made dozens of silents and was nominated for the first Academy Award in the...
, was the first joint Franco-American film production. The retelling of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
overthrowing King Louis XVI
Louis XVI of France
Louis XVI was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before being executed in 1793....
enjoyed record box office receipts in both France and the United States. Unfortunately, Madame Sans-Gêne is now considered a lost film
Lost film
A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in studio archives, private collections or public archives such as the Library of Congress, where at least one copy of all American films are deposited and catalogued for copyright reasons...
since no copies of the film are known to exist.
Perret was one of the benchmarks of French cinema in his era; his films were regularly greeted with critical acclaim. 1926 and 1927 saw the release of La Femme nue based on the play by Henry Bataille and Morgane la sirène based on the novel by Charles Le Goffic. A new production and distribution company entered onto the French film scene at the end of March 1927: Franco-Film. Perret was named artistic director and board member of this new company operating out of the Rex Ingram
Rex Ingram
Rex Ingram may refer to:* Rex Ingram , Irish film director, producer, writer and actor* Rex Ingram , African American film and stage actor...
studios in Nice, France
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
. The goal of the new production company was to make French films a worldwide success. Joining Perret at the helm of Franco-Film were: production director Edgard Costil, director Camille de Morlhon and several other pioneering directors such as Raymond Bernard, Jean Duran, Léon Mathot, etc.
The first film Perret distributed with Franco-Film, Morgane la sirène, was wildly successful in France, England and Canada, which confirmed the young company's international ambitions. Printemps d’amour, the first French color film using the new American technology Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
, came out that same year starring Louis Lagrange and the American actress Hope Hampton
Hope Hampton
Hope Hampton was an American silent motion picture actress, who was noted for her seemingly effortless incarnation of siren and flapper types in silent-picture roles during the 1920s....
. Afterwards Léonce produced his last two silent films: La Danseuse Orchidée (with the American actor Ricardo Cortez
Ricardo Cortez
Jacob Krantz , known by his stage name Ricardo Cortez, was an American film actor who began his career during the silent era.-Life and career:...
as well as Xenia Desni
Xenia Desni
Xenia Desni was a Ukrainian actress of the silent screen era.-Career:Desni began her successful career at the beginning of the 1920s with the movie Sappho, followed by a number of successful productions such as Der Sprung ins Leben, Die Prinzessin Suwarin, Wilhelm Tell, Die Andere, Ein Walzertraum,...
and Marcya Capri) and another film adaptation of a Henry Bataille play called La Possession (with the Italian actress Francesca Bertini
Francesca Bertini
Francesca Bertini was an Italian silent film actress. She was one of the most successful silent film stars in the first quarter of the twentieth-century.-Biography:...
).
Léonce Perret left an indelible mark on the cinema of the 1920s. Often called the "magician of film" by his peers, he clearly belongs in the silent film hall of fame. Henri Langlois
Henri Langlois
Henri Langlois was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema...
, a pioneer in film preservation, observed that "Léonce Perret's legacies to cinema are his aesthetic discoveries and priceless refinements."
Beginning of talking pictures
Convinced that there was a future in talking films, Perret directed an adaptation of Huguette Garnier's famous novel entitled Quand nous étions deux in 1929. However, his first talking film met with only mild success compared to the other competing films of that period. In general, the Franco-Film company was having difficulty adapting to talking films. After he finished Quand nous étions deux, Léonce Perret decided to leave the Franco-Film. He didn’t quit the film industry, however; his next project was a collaboration with Adolphe Osso, the founder of the production company Osso. Together they shot Perret's first live sound film Arthur. He followed that up in 1931 with a film adaptation of a play by Pierre Wolff and Henri Duvernois called Après l’amour starring Gaby Morlay, a film that was particularly successful in BelgiumBelgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
. Perret's next project was Grains de beauté in 1932, followed by Enlevez-moi, a film that showcased the young actress Arletty
Arletty
Arletty was a French actress, singer, and fashion model.-Life and career:Arletty was born Léonie Marie Julie Bathiat in Courbevoie , to a working-class family. Her early career was dominated by the music hall, and she later appeared in plays and cabaret. Arletty was a stage performer for ten years...
as well as the veteran actor Roger Tréville.
The next year Perret collaborated with the queen of stage and film Gaby Morlay and his former colleague André Luguet to shoot his new film Il était une fois with the company Pathé-Nathan. Based on a play by Francis de Croisset, the movie won the best French film of the year award from the weekly cinema review Pour Vous. Next Perret adapted Alphonse Daudet
Alphonse Daudet
Alphonse Daudet was a French novelist. He was the father of Léon Daudet and Lucien Daudet.- Early life :Alphonse Daudet was born in Nîmes, France. His family, on both sides, belonged to the bourgeoisie. The father, Vincent Daudet, was a silk manufacturer — a man dogged through life by misfortune...
's novel Sapho in 1933. As he had already acted in a stage adaptation of the novel when he was doing theatre, he knew the subject well. In 1934, while working with the Comédie-Française
Comédie-Française
The Comédie-Française or Théâtre-Français is one of the few state theaters in France. It is the only state theater to have its own troupe of actors. It is located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris....
, Perret tried an experimental type of play-documentary from Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
's body of work. Although the experiment was met with limited success, it proved to be an inspiration for other artists such as Sacha Guitry
Sacha Guitry
Alexandre-Pierre Georges Guitry was a French stage actor, film actor, director, screenwriter, and playwright of the Boulevard theatre.- Biography :...
who later created similar types of experimental films.
While working on a new bilingual (French-English) talking version of Koenigsmark, Léonce Perret fell ill and had to be hospitalized at the Saint Jean de Dieu clinic in Paris. He died on August 12, 1935 and was buried in Niort.
However, Léonce Perret is surprisingly unfamiliar to the generations of movie buffs that followed him. Cinema historians give him little consideration in their published research. For example, the study of Léonce Perret did not exist until 2003, but it was not definitive. Entitled Léonce Perret, the biography was published by the French Association for Historical Film Studies in collaboration with the Bologne Film Library under the direction of Bernard Bastide and Jean A. Gili. In 2006, Daniel Taillé published a more thorough work giving homage to such a pioneering artist. This was entitled Léonce Perret, cinématographiste.
Tributes
The Museum of Modern ArtMuseum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
in New York City organized a film exhibition showcasing Perret's work. The Gaumont Film Company
Gaumont Film Company
Gaumont Film Company is a French film production company founded in 1895 by the engineer-turned-inventor, Léon Gaumont . Gaumont is the oldest continously operating film company in the world....
exhibits recently restored films annually at the Museum of Modern Art. In 2003, a selected collection of Perret's best films were restored from nitrite negatives and showcased at this exhibition. The films were selected by Martine Offroy, who was the curator of Gaumont Film Company. The Gaumont Film Company and the Cinémathèque française
Cinémathèque Française
The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films from around the world.-History:...
contributed in the restoration of the films, in collaboration with the Centre National de la Cinématographie and the Ministry of Culture
Minister of Culture (France)
The Minister of Culture is, in the Government of France, the cabinet member in charge of national museums and monuments; promoting and protecting the arts in France and abroad; and managing the national archives and regional "maisons de culture"...
.
Filmography
A definitive filmography for Léonce Perret would be virtually impossible given that he wrote, acted in, directed or produced more than 400 films. Of those more than 400 films, only roughly one third are still available today. The remaining copies are stored mostly at the Gaumont Film Library, the French Film Library, the National Cinematography Film Archives and in several other European film libraries such as the Nederlands Filmmuseum in Amsterdam.Screenwriter
Léonce Perret wrote the screenplays for the vast majority of his movies, with the exception of those from his early apprenticeship period (before 1913). Most of the movies from his apprenticeship period were written by Louis FeuilladeLouis Feuillade
Louis Feuillade was a prolific and prominent French film director from the silent era. Between 1906 and 1924 he directed over 630 films...
, the artistic director at Gaumont at that time. Several others from that period were written by other associates at Gaumont such as Abel Gance, Étienne Arnaud and Marcel Lévesque. After gaining the Gaumont Company's trust, Perret began directing his own screenplays starting around 1911.
From 1917 on, he adapted many screenplays from novels such as Folie d’Amour (1917), La treizième chaise (1919) and Koenigsmark (1923). He also collaborated with other filmmakers on some scripts such as Koenigsmark, which was co-written with René Champigny and Madame Sans-Gêne with the American Forrest Halsey.
The screenplay for La Danseuse Orchidée from 1928 is credited to Jean-Joseph Renaud. It is one of the rare postwar Perret films where he did not write the script himself.
Producer
Léonce Perret produced many of his films, starting with his period of work in the United States. In 1917, he started his own production company Perret Picture Inc. Some of the films he produced in the U.S. were La Fayette, We Come (1918) and The Unknown Love (1918) as well as Twin Pawns (1919) and A.B.C. of Love (1919).After his return to France, he had the opportunity to produce several movies with the Franco-Film company (Morgane la Sirène and Printemps d’Amour in 1927; La Danseuse Orchidée, Poliche and La Possession in 1928; Quand nous étions deux in 1930).