Le Grand Jeu

A Belgian who was at the helm of poetic realism in French cinema? That description captures Jacqyes Feyder: director, screenwriter and actor who worked primarily in France, but also ventured into filmmaking in the US, Britain and Germany. He started his career as a silent film director and successfully made the move into sound cinema. Feyder was known as an inventive director who pushed the limits of his craft. Feyder saw himself as an artisan, but firmly defended his creative freedom as a filmmaker.

For LE GRAND JEU, Feyder collaborated with the other Belgian who had moved to France, screenwriter Charles Spaak. Feyder and Spaak worked together on the screenplay about the young Parisian Pierre Martel, who is on the verge of financial ruin due to his and his lover Florence’s lavish lifestyle. He enlists into the Foreign Legion and together with his fellow mercenaries, he frequents a hotel, run by the shady Mr. Clement and fortuneteller Ms. Blanche. In the hotel, Pierre meets the mysterious Irma, who uncannily resembles Florence.

“Alors… je te fais le grand jeu?” Blanche asks her clients. Do you want to hear the whole story? And that is what Feyder asks his audience as well. During his time in Hollywood, Feyder came up with the idea of having an actor play a double role, but having one of the roles dubbed by the voice of another actor. He was finally able to develop this idea dor LE GRAND JEU and it has a very unheimlich effect. LE GRAND JEU became a key film in poetic realism and set the tone for a series of films that were driven by romantic fatalism, such as PÉPÉ LE MOKO, LE QUAI DES BRÛMES and LE JOUR SE LÈVE, and by a romanticized antihero. The dreamy melancholy of a doomed existence: that is the world of French cinema of the thirties.