Imaginary Voyaging.

Facing Le voyage imaginaire again after all this time jets me back to my landfall in serious movie activity - the world of Penguin Film Review, Film Societies and “Film Appreciation.” where you could get by remembering half a dozen names - Sergei Eisenstein, John Grierson,  David Lean in his Dickens Period, Leni Reifenstahl, Charlie Chaplin  - and René Clair.

 René Clair was supposed to be the fun one. It came as a blow to find his work was so clumsy in comparison to his American and German Contemporaries.

The restoration on  Paris Cinémathèque’s Henri site prompted me to have another look at Le voyage imaginaire. By 1926, our man had gained some traction. It features a couple of the players who will figure in Clair’s more famous works - Albert Préjean and Jim Gerald, unfortunately not the leads but a comic duo backing a Swedish ballet dancer named  Jean Börlin and the winning Dolly Davis.

Voyage Imaginaire & decor

 Börlin’s bank clerk is harassed on all sides. Co-workers Préjean and Gerald bully him and he’s too timid to move on office Dactylo Davis. The bouquet he wanted to give her migrates round the bank ending in Prejean’s button hole in a lengthy, Chaplinesque routine that isn’t funny. A shawled crone arrives in a decorated auto and convinces Börlin that he will receive a magic ring guaranteeing a happy life. A loop falls off the curtain rail and his colleagues convince him it is the charmed object. Biographer Jean Mitry suggests this is derived from the fake enchanted umbrella in the Harold Lloyd Grandma’s Boy and we will get some of the trick photography (upside down camera, jump cuts) done better in the films of Buster Keaton.

The action moves outside and, like Nicolas Koline in  Le Braisier Ardent’s two years earlier,  Börlin tumbles down a (soso animation) rabbit hole, not into the Trouve Tout Agency this time but a fairy land - balloons, seashells, cellophane-covered walls and meshing teeth doors. The crone tells him that she is a fairy under an ugly spell which his kiss will remove and our hero reluctantly complies, turning her youthful. All her fairy sisters are eager for the same and soon the decor is full of underclad women. M. Clair’s notion of raunchy hasn’t come down the years well. The bad fairy is a fuzzy-haired (boot-polish) black girl who takes a dim view of our hero pairing with Mlle. Davis. Cinderella, Blue Beard (!) and Puss in Boots show up. Via some shonky mist FX work, the bank staff are transferred to the roof of Notre Dame - which does class up the visuals. Préjean, then a stunt actor, does all the dangerous stuff. (Clair will also shoot several films on the Eiffel Tower)

 From here, action moves to the Musé Grevin, where the waxworks (actors with painted eye lids) come to life after hours and their tableau of The Terror condemns Börlin, now transformed into a bull dog,

René Clair

 to the miniature guillotine (don’t ask) from which he is rescued by Jackie Coogan and Charlie Chaplin (a passable imitator). Curiously, this was the only part of the film which I remembered from a fifty year back one-night run at London’s French Institute. A Happy Ending follows.

Le voyage imaginaire is recognisably René Clair and visibly French silent cinema, between Meliés & Ivan Mozjoukine - between primitive and accomplished. Not the work of a major talent but it is intriguing to see someone trying to push the envelope.

Clair did have his moments - Le chapeau de paille d’Italie, a WW2 run in the ‘States and three films with Gerard Philippe. Unfortunately, he didn’t know how to play to his strengths. He should have stayed with Eugène Labiche and Hollywood. Too much of the rest was embarrassingly fun free and lame, outclassed by the best work of its day to which it was too often compared. With his  Académie Française status, no one was game to talk about the Emperor’s New Clothes.

 

The copy of Voyage imaginaire at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s9hj-Cjcts has English subtitles, while the one on the Paris Cinémathèque’s Henri site is slightly better quality.

Barrie Pattison 2023