L'Homme des Confins - Ladislas Starewitch DVD Review

Format: DVD. Country and Year of Release: France, 2013.

UK/US Import Friendly?
Disc Region: Yes. The disc is Region Free.
DVD Video Format: PAL. (US viewers should ensure compatibility before ordering.)
Language: Yes. All of the films and extras are in French, but there are optional English subtitles throughout.

L’Homme des confins (The Man from the Borderlands) is a French DVD release that collects three short stop-motion films produced between 1920 and 1925 by the animator Ladislas Starewitch.¹ These are: Dans les grilles de t'araignée (In the Claws of the Spider, 1920), Les yeux du dragon (The Eyes of the Dragon, 1925), and Amour noir et blanc (Love in Black and White, 1923).

Starewitch was a Russian filmmaker, whose early works were particularly notable for the use of dead insects and creatures as protagonists. One of his best-known films – The Cameraman's Revenge (1912) – casts two beetles as husband and wife in a comic tale of infidelity (involving grasshoppers and dragonflies!). Despite the potential creepiness of the premise, the film is surprisingly charming and satirical. By the 1920s, however, Starewitch had emigrated to France, and increasingly moved towards constructing his own puppets, often collaborating with his daughter, Irène. The three films in this DVD collection are from this (generally lesser-seen) later period, and contain a mixture of animal characters (built from scratch rather than from a once-living creature) and human puppets.

Amour noir et blanc

Dans les grilles de t'araignée tells the story of a fly, Dame Aurélie, who casts aside her rural life and family for the bright lights of Paris, only to find the big city less welcoming than expected. Les yeux du dragon presents an old Chinese legend, as depicted on a shattered vase shown at the beginning of the film. Finally, Amour noir et blanc sees two mischievous cupids creating havoc, including establishing a love triangle between three performers (whose appearances happen to be based on Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Tom Mix). This period of Starewitch's filmmaking is sometimes criticized for being rather unfocused. It is certainly fair to say that, in each of these three films, the narrative is rather meandering and prone to diversions. A small number of sequences – particularly in Amour noir et blanc – are also marred by the inclusion of regrettable stereotypes. As such, this disc might not be the best introduction to Starewitch's work for newcomers.

For existing converts, however, there is a lot to admire in the animation itself. The attention to detail is often extremely impressive, with certain sequences of Les yeux du dragon proving particularly arresting. The various real-life personalities who crop up in Armour noir et blanc will also be of interest to fans of silent film.

Les yeux du dragon

Les yeux du dragon

Picture quality is very good throughout. There are moments of minor print damage and other small issues, but nothing unexpected from films of this vintage. All three films are tinted, while the print of Dans les Grilles de t'araignée also contains sequences using a stencil colour system.

Stencil colour system in Dans les grilles de t'araignée

With the exception of specific shots in Les yeux du dragon, where Starewitch intentionally masks part of the image, all three films are presented in their original full frame aspect ratio.

Les yeux du dragon

Les yeux du dragon

As these were silent films, the DVD retains the original French intertitles (although some have been recreated for this release), and provides English translations in the form of an optional subtitle track. The subtitles are accurate and clear throughout – I spotted a couple of typos (e.g. 'his is how…' rather than 'This is how…' at 40:50), but nothing that would prevent an understanding of the narrative.

Les yeux du dragon

The films are accompanied by a new piano score by Jacques Cambra. The intertitles are also spoken in French by Starewitch's granddaughter, Léona Béatrice Martin-Starewitch. I was a little disappointed that there was not an option to turn off this narration – the BFI’s release of The Adventures of Prince Achmed, for instance, allows the viewer to toggle between a purely musical score, and a second audio track with music and spoken word. Starewitch's diction is perfectly pleasant, and she limits her narration to simply reading the intertitles (rather than embellishing new dialogue or exposition), but this may be disappointing to some purists.

The DVD extras are relatively slight. Firstly, we get sound versions of Les yeux du dragon and Amour noir et blanc, released in 1932. This is perhaps less interesting than one might initially assume: as with many 'sound' cartoons of the early 1930s, producers simply took existing silent footage and attached a soundtrack. The films have music and (vaguely) synchronized sound-effects, but narration is solely conveyed via intertitles. For completists, this is a nice inclusion, but not something that the average viewer will immediately turn to after watching the originals. The other extra is a documentary – comment naît et s’aime une ciné-marionnette (How a Ciné-marionette Comes to Life and Moves, 1932) – which Doriane Films seem to be including on all of their Starewitch DVD releases. The film demonstrates how Starewitch builds and animates puppets for his films. Although disappointingly short (clocking in at just over three minutes), it is a thrill to see Starewitch on screen and get a brief glimpse behind-the-scenes. All extras are subtitled in English.

The DVD has a retail price of €20 (twenty Euros), which is arguably a little steep for the amount of content included. This is particularly annoying as the DVD packaging overstates the length of the films, claiming that Dans les grilles de t’araignée lasts 24m35s, Les yeux du dragon lasts 25m30s and Amour noir et blanc lasts 21min52s. In truth, each is less than 20 minutes long – the three films are edited into a single presentation, which totals less than an hour (including an introductory credit sequence for the DVD producers). Even when taking into account the three extra films, the footage on the DVD falls worryingly short of the 109 minute running time cited on the packaging, which is a shame.

The DVD is region free, and the video is in the PAL format. Coupled with the high quality English translation available throughout the disc, this is well worth an import by any Starewitch enthusiast. As noted above, it is expensive for what you get, but this is clearly a niche release – one imagines that the profit margins are not particularly high for the distributor, Doriane Films. There are still many more Starewitch films unavailable on home video, and so supporting these initial releases will hopefully encourage further dips into the filmmaker’s back catalogue.

L'Homme des confins is available to purchase from Heeza.fr.

---
NOTES:
^{1. The filmmaker actually spelt his name several ways over his lifetime, and it is often written slightly differently in different countries. There are various permutations of both his first name - including Ladislav, Ladislaw, Vladislav, Władysław and Wladislaw - and his surname - including Starewich, Starewicz, Starevich and Starevitch. This DVD collection, endorsed by members of the filmmaker's family, uses the spelling Ladislas Starewitch, and so this review will do the same.↩}