The historical drama Mauprat is perhaps not the ideal novel for a silent film adaptation, it's a genre melange, with the courtroom element for example being a touch talky for a medium with no speech! On the other hand the Gothic novel element has very agreeable qualities for adapting in a visual medium! There are also elements of adventure, detective fiction, bildung and romance.
As usual with Epstein he does those superimposed shots and superimposed dissolves of his which make your heart float off.
The film also uses landscape to superb psychological effect and the tinting helps with this. Bernard is the only surviving member from the middle lineage of the Mauprat family; when he was an orphan the noble and ignoble sides of the family struggled over guardianship. It feels a little like Star Wars, the light and dark side of the force grappling for Bernard. The lowland Chevalier de Mauprat is an elegant and refined man, loyal to the king, whilst Tristan Mauprat up in his "Castle of Otranto", Roche-Mauprat, leads a group of his brothers who are atheistic libertines and brigands. Bernard is brought up in the heights of Roche-Mauprat, but a contrived series of events sees him attempting to become a gentleman living with the goodly Mauprats, who struggle to bring him out of his half feral half beautiful state.
This is the most compelling part of the story in which Bernard has to work to secure the affections of his cousin Edmée, who sees the good in him and has promised she will love no other (very different from promising to love him!). I thought that this was very resonant as many young men have to struggle to decide whether they will be inside predominant culture or sub-culture, whether they want to be self-effacing or self-serving, how much of themselves do they want to give up to lead their lives at a chosen level of comfort, and they have to learn how to be gentle around women. And so Bernard's story becomes something quite universal. Sandra Milovanoff's performance as Edmée is probably what makes the film, her face so emotive, so ardent, willing Bernard to temper himself. My favourite superimposition comes when Edmée appears in a vision of Bernard's, twice the size of him, and this is how I feel about love, it's aspiring to that which is greater than you, whether that is finding someone whose qualities insipires you, or in a religious sense.
88 minutes runtime is a very short time for all that happens in the film. Epstein makes some worthwhile changes to the novel, but the pacing feels very rushed at times. The secret I guess is to not be afraid of the chopping between genres, to luxuriate in some of the Gothic images, and to wait for the superimpositions to come like pennies from heaven.
