This has got to be one of the most comprehensively French cultural artifacts ever created. From beginning to end, from the most basic formal elements up to the highest level of narrative theme, this film is steeped in French cultural traditions. The opening restoration notes are a perfect microcosm of just how different this film is from Anglo, German, or even Russian cinema of the same period. I’ve never seen anything like them before: the restorers felt the need to explicitly state that the soft focus and other touches in certain scenes were actually aesthetic decisions on the part of the filmmaker, and are definitely NOT a technical fault of the restoration process. This is just the cherry on top of the cultural milieu the film’s narrative is set in, of pantomime and performance in the 19th century.
The French cinematic tradition comes out of a much longer theatrical tradition than the American, to take an easy counterpart; even as late as 1945, you have epic mega-spectacles like this film, but who make aesthetic decisions that one might mistake for a technical flaw. You would never have a similar proviso in an American counterpart like Gone With the Wind. No restoration would need to excuse itself to the audience because American filmmaking is so rigorously formulaic (not necessarily in a pejorative sense). Films that try to attain this level of cultural touchstone are so deeply concerned with providing an utterly smooth and seamless experience for the viewer, that any outré choices made are going to be very clearly telegraphed as such.
There’s too much to say about this film, but this review is quite late and I just wanted to share this one observation. All week I’ve been thinking about that very simple note at the beginning of the film, and how outrageous it is.