Dreyfus Meets His Wife at Rennes
L’Affaire Dreyfus, Entrevue de Dreyfus et de sa femme à Rennes, 1899, 1m05s
Star Film Catalogue No. 211
In the military prison at Rennes, Alfred Dreyfus is seated at a table poring over books. A guard enters and salutes him, indicating that there are people outside. Dreyfus asks him to show them in. His lawyers Edgar Demange and Fernand Labori enter and are greeted by Dreyfus prior to the three of them taking seats around the table. Dreyfus points out something in the book he was reading earlier, which leads to an animated conversation. He has just got up to show them another document when the guard re-enters to say that he has another visitor. It is his wife Lucie, and her friend Madame Havet. Clearly overwhelmed with emotion, the reunited couple embrace, prior to Dreyfus sitting on the bed with his head in his hands.
Dreyfus Meets His Wife at Rennes is the second of two films (the first being Landing of Dreyfus at Quiberon/L’Affaire Dreyfus, Débarquement à Quiberon, 1899)describing the events of the night of 30 June-1 July 1899, during which Dreyfus was transferred from Devil’s Island to the far more salubrious military prison in the city of Rennes, Brittany, northwest France. There, he was initially reunited with his legal team, Edgar Demange (1841-1925) and Fernand Labori (1860-1917), the latter the subject of the next film in Méliès’s Dreyfus cycle, The Attempt Against the Life of Maître Labori (L’Affaire Dreyfus, Attentat contre maître Labori, 1899). Finally, his wife Lucie (1869-1945) joins them, and the couple have an emotional reunion - rendered more so by Dreyfus’s evident despair at the end, as he knows the encounter will be all too brief. (Neither he nor Méliès would have known this at the time, but he was still seven years away from freedom).
Instead of the special effects-fuelled fireworks of the previous film, the focus here is on a realistic presentation of Dreyfus’s emotional state - in many ways an expansion of the two previous films about Dreyfus incarcerated, Devil’s Island - Within The Palisade (L’Affaire Dreyfus, A l’ile du diable) and Dreyfus Put In Irons (L’Affaire Dreyfus, Mise aux fers de Dreyfus, both 1899). The New York Times, in an article dated 2 July 1899 (i.e. the following day), described the encounter as follows: “The meeting between the long-parted husband and wife can better be imagined than described. Naturally, it was most touching. Both Dreyfus and his wife were deeply affected. They remained long clasped in each other’s arms, tears and smiles intermingling with tender endearments.”
So far so touching, but it went on to say: “Mme. Dreyfus issued from the prison in a state of collapse. She found her husband much aged, with beard and hair whitened, and body shrunk and stooped. She said Dreyfus knew nothing of the events of the past two years.” Presumably, French newspaper accounts proceeded on near-identical lines, because it seems clear that Méliès is trying to convey this impression in the final seconds of the film, when Dreyfus retreats into a world of his own and Lucie can offer no more than a comforting caress.
Aside from some chemical blotching at the beginning and intermittent damage thereafter, the untinted print on Flicker Alley’s DVD is generally in excellent condition, with plenty of fine detail - enough to appreciate that the roles have been casts with sufficient care to ensure a certain physical resemblance to their models. Eric Beheim’s electronic score is considerably less doom-haunted than has been the case with the earlier Dreyfus soundtracks, starting off in a stately mode for the conversation with the lawyers before becoming altogether sweeter-toned when Lucie Dreyfus enters.
Links
- Internet Movie Database entry.
- Contemporary New York Times account of the landing at Quiberon and the arrival at Rennes (PDF facsimile)
- BFI Film and TV Database entry on the whole cycle (including an invaluable synopsis sourced from assorted catalogues)
- Dreyfus Rehabilitated - a huge site about the Dreyfus affair that includes biographies of Edgar Demange and Fernand Labori.
- Wikipedia on the Dreyfus affair
- Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema - Stephen Bottomore’s entry on Dreyfus, which is a condensation of his Sight & Sound article.