The Chess Player

Raymond Bernard was born in Paris on 10th October 1891, the youngest of three sons of the successful playwright Tristan Bernard. He began studying drama at the age of 15, and in 1913 he starred opposite Sarah Bernhardt in a stage play Jeanne Doré, a part written for him by his father. He reprised the role in Louis Mercanton’s 1915 film adaptation of the play, his one and only significant film appearance.

In 1916, Raymond Bernard joined the film production company Gaumont, working as assistant to director Jacques Feyder. He took over from Feyder the direction of Le Ravin sans fond (1917), which was scripted by his father. Thereafter, he gave up acting and pursued a career as a film director. He adapted several comedies written by his father, including Le Petit café (1919) which starred the popular comic actor Max Linder.

Raymond Bernard’s artistic and commercial breakthrough came when he formed the company Société des Grands Films Historiques with the writers Henry Dupuy-Mazuel and Jean-José Frappa. This gave the young director the freedom to make films that were both artistic creations and hugely attractive to mainstream cinema audiences. These films included three of the most ambitious French productions of the silent era: Le Miracle des loups (1924), Le Joueur d’échecs (1927) and Tarakanova (1930).

The arrival of sound was no impediment to Bernard’s career. He was one of the few directors to make a successful transition from silent to sound cinema. Between 1931 and 1934 he worked under contract for Pathé-Natan. Here, he made two of his best known films, Les Croix de bois (1932), a harrowingly realistic depiction of the life of a soldier during the First World War, and Les Misérables, a monumental adaptation of Victor Hugo’s great novel.

When Pathé-Natan went bankrupt in 1936, Bernard couldn’t afford to be too selective about the films he made. His films alternated between humdrum comedies and banal dramas. Then, in the final years of the 1930s, he made two significant films which presaged the arrival of World War II: Cavalcade d’amour and Les Otages. In 1940, racial laws imposed by the occupying Germans compelled him, a Jew, to give up filmmaking for the duration of the war. He spent the next five years in obscurity.

After the war, Raymond Bernard resumed his career with Un ami viendra ce soir (1946), a deeply felt reaction to the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis during the war. He continued making films for another decade, and had some successes, such as La Dame aux camellias (1953) and La Belle de Cadix (1953). Although many of these later films were popular, they lacked the humanity, individuality and artistic flair of his earlier work.

Raymond Bernard died in Paris on 12 December 1977. Since his death, many of his early films have been restored and more widely distributed. Consequently, he has acquired a reputation, richly deserved, as one of French cinema’s most important filmmakers. —filmsdefrance.com