Prey to the Wind.

 
It’s sixty years since I saw Renè Clair’s 1927 La Proie du vent in a 9.5 mm print lovingly assembled by some British enthusiasts. I enjoyed it then so I was looking forward to seeing the much better copy on the Cinémathèque Française’ “Henri” site where you can still catch it if you hurry. I guess it’s like encountering an old friend after many years - welcome and agreeable though the things that irritated you way back re-assert themselves.

This one was made for the Producer Kamenka’s Russian expatriot Albatross group which put out films with Ivan Mozjoukine. It comes at the end of the silent period and shows European film technique at it’s most developed. Quite perversely it inverts our expectation of the principals. It’s not a comedy, the form to which Clair devoted himself, though it’s not too far away from And Then There Were None come to think of it. Burly Charles Vanel is not the heavy but the aviator hero and Jim Gerald (Clair's Un chapeau de paille d'Italie, Asquith's French Without Tears) plays a serious role. Well he did do Comissionaire Lohman in the Le testament du docteur Mabuse. The elegant, tragic Lillian Hall-Davies and the always touching Sandra Milovanoff  however do not disappoint the justified anticipations of their their admirers.

René Clair

The film kicks off with a bi-plane landing on a grass air strip, one of its several nicely cut passages. (no editor is credited and it may have been the work of the director) The airfield staff are discussing the unrest in Lebanon. (Russia in Armand Mercier’s original novel "L'aventure amoureuse de Pierre Vignal") Shifting there we find ourselves in the women’s prison cells where Milovanoff is tending her dying mother while her husband Jean Murat (La kermesse héroïque) is released and the crones around her accuse Sandra of being a married to a traitor - close up of the mother’s crucifix in her hands.

Flier Vanel takes off but is engulfed in a cloud bank and can find nowhere to land but in the grounds of a picturesque castle. His wing clips a statue and the resulting crash leaves him unable to walk. He is cared for by Hall-Davis, (Hitchcock's 1927The Ring and1928 The Farmer's Wife)  the sister in law of owner Murat. There's by-play between Charles and Lillian exchanging cigarettes and hand contact. We get a quite arresting dream sequence triggered by his suspicions.

Castle & car.

The distraught figure of Milovanoff appears at Vanel’s window and she warns him about her husband and sister in law. “They want me dead.” He soon manages to stagger round the grounds using a stick and contrives to conceal his picking up the note Sandtra throws him by dropping his cane on it and gathering up the two together. Lillian has put off their proposed chess game and when Sandra comes to his room at night he locks the door - ah but there is a secret entrance! One of the film’s several effective shock moments.

 There follows another nicely edited sequence, a car chase down the road through the forest which develops to an impressively delirious climax. Murat produces a pistol determined to resolve things.

Coming back from Paris, Vanel goes to the village inn where a letter of explanation has been left for him by shaven-headed Dr. Gerald. Notice we see Charles' reaction before the inset showing the contents. We get a coda on the Place de la Concorde which rounds out the film nicely.

Vanel

His Albatross films are the most flamboyant of Clair’s work. As well as the Russian fascination with montage, also evident in Clair’s La Tour the following year, we get the occasional Germanic dark foreground action - the unseen airport typist’s hands, the aged woman guardian at the bedside or the final embracing couple. The design co-credited to Lazar Meerson also registers, providing the striking  twisted pillar corridor to go with the imposing real castle exteriors. All this virtuoso trimming suits the melodramatic subject matter and La Proie du vent makes an entertaining viewing even though it remains a minor piece from an often over-rated director.

 

Barrie Pattison 2021