In 1940 after France had fallen to the German army, journalist Jean Bruller and his wife, who lived outside Paris, were forced to share their home with a Nazi officer for an extended period of time. That experience inspired Bruller to write the novella Le Silence de la Mer (The Silence of the Sea) under the pseudonym Vercors. The book was secretly published in late 1941 and became known as “the first underground book of the occupation.” It also became an inspiration to the French Resistance in its depiction of using silence as a weapon against the enemy when no other option was possible. It might seem like an unusual choice for French director Jean-Pierre Melville’s feature film debut when you consider that he is mostly famous for his crime and gangster thrillers like Bob le Flambeur (1956), Le Deuxieme Souffle (aka Second Wind, 1966) and Le Samourai (1967). Then again, many consider Melville’s 1969 WW2 drama L’armee des Ombres (aka Army of Shadows) about French underground fighters in Nazi-occupied Paris his masterpiece. Add to this the fact that Melville was also an active member of the French Resistance and The Silence of the Sea makes perfect sense as his feature debut.
In Melville’s adaptation of the novella, the author and his wife have been turned into an elderly homeowner and his young niece and their unwanted boarder is the fictitious German officer Werner von Ebrennac (Howard Vernon), a cultured gentleman and patron of the arts whose naïve idealism about the German campaign leads him to believe that Germany and France will forge a powerful brotherhood after the war. Melville’s film adaptation is unlike most WW2 films about the Nazi occupation in which many Europeans fought back in often violent and bloody confrontations. Here there is an intellectual standoff between the captive hosts and their Nazi house guest which sounds like a cerebral three character play instead of a cinematic dramatization. What is surprising is how Melville transforms Bruller’s story into something that is tense and suspenseful but also visually eloquent in the way body language, gestures and facial expressions convey a world of suppressed emotions and thoughts.
The Silence of the Sea is partly narrated by the uncle (Jean-Marie Robain) as he reflects back on the past six months when a German officer was his mandatory house guest. At first the occupation of the uncle’s village is slow but ominous. Two soldiers come to the house to inspect and review it as possible lodging for their superior. Then two crates belonging to Officer von Ebrennac arrive followed by his trunk the following day. And finally their guest appears in the evening, standing in the doorway and looking menacing in the half light.
Despite first impressions, the German officer is the complete opposite of the type of sadistic authoritarian depicted in anti-Nazi movies. Von Ebrennac is courteous, well-mannered and complimentary on their home but he is still the enemy and the uncle and niece (Nicole Stephane) endure his presence in stony silence. “By unspoken agreement,” the narrator confesses, “my niece and I decided to change nothing in our lives, not the slightest detail as if the officer didn’t exist, as if he were a ghost. But it’s possible that another motivation tainted my decision. Even were he my enemy, I cannot without compunction offend a man.”
At first their daily routine is uneventful and formal with von Ebrennac arriving at their front door in the evening and entering after a polite knock to warm himself by the fire. He makes a few pleasantries and then bides them goodbye. All the while the uncle and niece remain mute and unresponsive with the former smoking his pipe and staring into the distance while the latter attends to her knitting and needlework without looking up. Over time their stoic demeanors will vary slightly in the presence of the German. Cinematographer Henri Decae, following Melville’s instructions, films these encounters in a mix of shadow and natural light, often from the German’s point of view, and, in the case of the niece, she is often filmed in close-up (but at an angle or in profile) and her stern demeanor becomes an impenetrable mask. She also becomes a figure of great curiosity and possibly something of a romantic obsession in the German’s eyes.
An abrupt change in the household’s routine occurs one snowy winter night when von Ebrennac stops using the front door and enters his quarters through a back door in the kitchen. He removes his uniform, puts on civilian clothes and enters the den to greet his hosts. Instead of his usual chitchat, however, he begins using his brief evening appearances to express his personal views on French culture, especially literature, his love of German music and his hopes that Germany will help France rebuild their country and preserve their culture after the war.
The German clearly wants to be understood and even perceived as a kindred spirit but he seems to want something more. At one point he discusses the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast and seems to be comparing the niece to the heroine and the Beast to himself, monstruous by reputation but a gallant, sensitive soul beneath the fierce façade.
Melville builds a taut tension throughout these passionate monologues by von Ebrennac. Is he trying to trick the duo into responding or reacting to his comments? He has already commented on their vow of silence with admiration and respect while condemning those French people that welcomed the German army into France as if they were liberators. That was true cowardice. But what would happen if the uncle or niece suddenly broke their silence? Would he lose all respect for them or is that his ultimate goal – to establish a genuine rapport? At one point, von Ebrennac even remarks, “I am happy to have found a dignified old man and a silent young lady. We must conquer this silence…conquer the silence of France.”
The director is a master at presenting scenes where character reveal themselves, not with words but with a look, a gesture or a simple detail like a close-up of a nervous, shaky hand. Melville made a whole movie about suppressed sexual desire and emotions raging beneath the surface in Leon Morin, Priest (1961) and he does something similar here with the uncle and niece slowly warming to von Ebrennac’s soulful discourse but fighting the urge to appear sympathetic. In an interview with film historian Rui Nogueira, Melville later stated, “The thing I liked enormously about Le Silence de la mer was the anti-cinematic aspect of the narrative, which immediately gave me the idea of making an anti-cinematic film. I wanted to attempt a language composed entirely of images and sounds, and from which movement and action would be more or less banished. So I conceived the film as a little like an opera.”
Certainly the film stands out for its dramatic use of music (composed by Edgar Bischoff) and sound effects. There is even a mesmerizing sequence where von Ebrennac reveals he is a musician and performs a composition on the host’s harmonium.
The Silence of the Sea was filmed on a micro-budget (Melville raised the production money himself) and finished in a remarkable 27 days over the course of six months (when you factor in the editing and post-production work, the film took a year and a half to complete). This is particularly significant when you consider Melville was working with a skeleton crew of himself, an assistant, his cinematographer, sound recorder and the small cast. The home seen in the film was also the actual residence of author Jean Bruller, which provided an intimate ambiance that couldn’t be recreated in a studio.
For the most part, The Silence of the Sea is remarkably faithful to Bruller’s novella with three exceptions. Melville changed the original ending in which von Ebrennac departs without saying goodbye to his hosts resulting in a much more powerful finale for the film. The other two additions include a scene where the niece is suddenly startled by the appearance of von Ebrennac on the snow-covered trail where she is walking her dog. He tips his cap in acknowledgement while she passes him in silence.
The other addition is a scene at the end where the uncle leaves a bookmark in a newspaper article by Anatole France in the hopes that the German will see it. It contains the line “It is a noble thing for a soldier to disobey a criminal order” but, even though von Ebrennac is shown reading it, it doesn’t affect his final decision of requesting the army to transfer him to the front lines of battle, where he will surely be killed. This suicidal act is the result of his final disillusionment with the Nazis.
Although most of The Silence of the Sea is shot in and around the Bruller home, there is one brief flashback sequence where von Ebrennac is shown leading a tank attack at Chartes and two sequences where the German visits Paris. The first trip is celebratory and shows the officer visiting all the cultural landmarks of the city but the second trip ends in despair with von Ebrennac learning about the horrors of the Treblinka concentration camp and having his fellow officers ridicule his idealism about a bond between Germany and France. “We have the opportunity to destroy France and we will do so,” a former colleague boasts. “Not only its might but its spirit…we will turn France into a cowering dog.”
Perhaps due to scenes like the above, The Silence of the Sea (which was completed in 1947) was not released until 1949, which was still only four years after Germany had surrendered but the bad memories and hostility toward that country was still too fresh in the minds of most European audiences. In fact, Melville opens his movie with the following scroll: “This film has no pretension of solving the problem of Franco-German relations for they cannot be solved while the barbarous Nazi crimes committed with the complicity of the German people remain fresh in men’s minds.”
Another interesting fact is that Melville hand-picked the cast himself for The Silence of the Sea and cast his old friend Jean-Marie Robain as the uncle and narrator. This was his first film and it launched his career as an actor. It was also the first film for family friend Nicole Stephane (birth name: Nicole Mathilde Stephanie de Rothschild), who would give her most memorable performance in his next feature, Les Enfants Terribles (1950), based on the Jean Cocteau novel. Stephane would later become a celebrated film producer and also become a close friend and lover of American writer/critic Susan Sontag during the 1970s.
Swiss actor Howard Vernon began making films in 1945, often playing German officers, and Melville saw him in Henri Calef’s Jericho (1946), a French Resistance drama, and decided he would be perfect for von Ebrennac. This might be Vernon’s finest performance but he rarely appeared in such prestigious projects with the exception of other Melville features in minor roles like Bob le Flambeur and Leon Morin, Priest or the occasional multi-international production like John Frankenheimer’s The Train (1964) or Roger Vadim’s The Game is Over (1966). He spent most of his career in B-movie genre efforts and exploitation pictures, especially those of Spanish director Jess Franco. Horror fans will recognize him for his iconic roles in The Awful Dr. Orloff (1962), The Sadistic Baron von Klaus (1962), The Diabolical Dr. Z (1966), Succubus (1968), and Lorna the Exorcist (1974).
The Silence of the Sea has been available on various formats over the years from international distributors but the best domestic release is the Blu-ray edition from The Criterion Collection in April 2015 which comes with a host of supplements including Melville’s first film short 24 Hours in the Life of a Clown (1946), Code Name Melville (2008), a documentary on Melville’s role in the French Resistance, Melville Steps Out of the Shadow (2010), a documentary about the making of The Silence of the Sea, an interview with film scholar Ginette Vincendeau and more.
Other links of interest:
http://www.frenchfilms.org/biography/jean-pierre-melville.html
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3542-le-silence-de-la-mer-stranger-in-the-house
https://family.rothschildarchive.org/people/159-nicole-mathilde-stephanie-de-rothschild-1924-2007
Cinema Sojourns 