French Filmmaker Jacques Feyder is one of the founders of poetic realism in French cinema. Feyder came from a bourgeois family with a strong military tradition, but after flunking the entrance exams to officers school, Feyder began working in a canon foundry. Upon learning that his son really aspired to becoming an actor, Feyder’s father forbade him to use the family name on stage. Feyder went to Paris in 1911 where he played many small roles on stage and in film before becoming interested in filmmaking. Just before World War I, he began assisting director Gaston Ravel. As most of the regular directors were called to serve in the war, Feyder was assigned to direct. He began with nondescript little comedies, but in 1917, soon after he married famed actress Francoise Rosay, he was inducted into the Belgian army where he worked as an actor in a military troupe. He did not return to filmmaking until 1919. Over the next two decades, Feyder’s reputation as a filmmaker extraordinaire grew… read more
According to the notes on the back of this typically exemplary Eureka!/Masters of Cinema release, this 1934 film by Jacques Feyder, who from
