In his day, René Moreau was a highly renowned cameraman, working with some of the great names of French cinema, including Julien Duvivier (Les Cinq gentlemen maudits – 1931) and Jean Bertin (Vocation – 1928). But alongside these fiction films, he also had a particular commitment to the expedition film genre.
More than 60 of his films, made between 1921 (A travers le Tyrol) and 1936 (Le vieux Montmartre) have been restored by the CNC. In film circles generally, he is particularly remembered for A l’assaut des cimes (1925) which is about mountaineering expeditions on Mont Blanc. However, from the point of view of ethnographic film-making, he is best known for the films that he shot in 1929-31, during an expedition to Central Africa and the Cameroon that he made in the company of the journalist-explorer, Jean d’Esme.
Background – This short film by Jean d’Esme and René Moreau was clearly made at the same time as À travers le Cameroun, le Gabon et le Congo, and particularly at the time that they were shooting the Brazzaville mass marriage sequence since the bearded priest who ‘saves’ a young girl for a Christian marriage in that sequence appears in this film as well.
Film content – Self-evidently, fictionalised, Fétichisme purports to show how a ‘sorcerer’ identifies the witch responsible for the sickness of a young boy. This involves a frenetic ceremony during which poison is given to two people, one of whom dies and is therefore presumed to be the guilty party. However, before the ceremony is concluded, the priest turns up and disperses the crowd, confiscating the small wooden statues that had served as the sorcerer’s fetishes.
A Sara Kaba woman demonstrates her lip-plates – ‘À travers Cameroun et Gabon’ (1928) – Jean d’Esme and René Moreau
60 mins., b&w, silent – French intertitles
Source : CNC at Bois d’Arcy
Background – This film was shot in the course of an expedition led by the then-renowned journalist and novelist Jean d’Esme, who was accompanied by a professional cinematographer, René Moreau. It appears to be the same as – or possibly a shorter version of – a film that under the title Peaux noirs, was released in 1932 and which is also held by the CNC, but which is currently not viewable.
Both film and journey involved visits not only to the French colonies listed in the title but also to Oubangui-Chari (now the Central African Republic) and Chad. In 1931, d’Esme published a textual account of the expedition, supported by photographs by Moreau (see ‘Text’ below).
Film content – Although largely structured by a journey narrative, there is little focus on the travellers themselves. Curiously however, as is clear from comparison with the textual account, the journey is presented in the opposite order to that in which it took place in reality. Moreover, at various points, the journey narrative is interrupted and instead a sort of catalogue of people or dances encountered throughout the region is presented. As a result, the film is rather disjointed editorially.
In the early part of the film (corresponding in fact to the last stage of the journey), the activities of various European religious orders are presented in a positive, even propagandistic light, culminating in the mass marriage of 60 couples in a Christian ceremony in Brazzaville. This sequence includes a fictionalised scene in which a bearded priest in a pith helment saves a woman from being married to a ‘pagan’ by paying off the prospective husband with some rolls of cloth so that she can marry a Christian instead.
Thereafter, following a catalogue of regional dances, the focus of the film moves north through Oubangui-Chari to Lake Chad, covering many of the same topics as the earlier expedition films in the region – the Banda Dapkwa initiation dance, the Sara Kaba women and their lip-plates, the Moudang “medieval” cavalry, the fishermen with butterfly nets on the Chari river.
Notwithstanding its ideological and editorial shortcomings, À travers … is well shot and contains a number of sequences of undoubted ethnographic interest.
You must be logged in to post a comment.