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| Jean-Marie Robain, Howard Vernon, and Nicole Stéphane in Le Silence de la Mer |
The Niece: Nicole Stéphane
The Uncle: Jean-Marie Robain
The Fiancée: Ami Aaroë
The Orderly: Georges Patrix
The Friend: Denis Sadier
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Screenplay: Jean-Pierre Melville
Based on a novel by Jean Bruller aka Vercors
Cinematography: Henri Decaë
Film editing: Henri Decaë, Jean-Pierre Melville
Music: Edgar Bischoff
Le Silence de la Mer marked an extraordinary double debut: This was the first feature film for not only its writer and director, Jean-Pierre Melville, but also its cinematographer, Henri Decaë. Both were working under handicaps of budget and location -- the film was made in the home of Jean Bruller, who wrote and published the celebrated underground novel under a pseudonym, Vercors. Exterior shots, such as the countryside and the glimpses of Paris, were filmed mostly on the fly and sometimes rely for their effect more on editing than on camerawork. But it's the spareness and somewhat makeshift quality of the making of the film that gives it such a haunting quality. The novel was embraced by the French Resistance for its object lesson in resisting: Forced to house a German officer during the occupation, an elderly man and his young niece remain completely silent whenever he is present. The German comes to accept this silent treatment, and visits the two in the evening to deliver monologues about his life and his ideals, which were awakened, he says, by the Nazis. He sees the German occupation as a step toward a uniting of Germany and France. He admires French culture to the extreme, particularly its literature, fondling the volumes on the shelves in the room as the Frenchman smokes his pipe and the niece does her mending and knitting. The Germans, on the other hand, he claims are superior in music -- he was a composer before he became a soldier -- and he once sits down at the harmonium in the room to play a Bach prelude. The Frenchman occasionally gives a flicker of wanting to respond to the German's statements, but his niece's steadfast silence hold him in check. These visits continue from winter into summer, when the German goes away to Paris to meet with the German command. He returns a changed man: He has learned to his horror of the death camps and of the designs of the Nazis to obliterate the French culture he so admires. At the end he goes away, having volunteered to serve at the front, a suicidal gesture, and the niece speaks, in a faint whisper, the only word she has ventured in his presence: "Adieu." Melville's manipulation of the relations among the three characters, only one of whom speaks, is extraordinarily subtle, and Decaë's brilliant use of light and shadow -- when we first see the German, he emerges from the darkness in the doorway in a glare of light that makes him look like a sinister presence -- adds immeasurably to the quiet drama of the film.
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