La Nativité (1910)

My final seasonal offering this Christmas is La Nativité (1910) seemingly released in some English speaking regions as Herod and the New Born King as seen in this advert which I believe was from 1910.¹. 1910 was in the middle of peak production of biblical movies (1908-13) and was one of at lease four biblical movies Gaumont was promoting at the time, with Louis Feuillade behind them all (available on YouTube).

Despite the film's greater focus on Herod and the magi, the action starts with the shepherds inside some kind of shelter. The absence of any scenes featuring Mary and Joseph before the day of Jesus' birth is notable. The shepherds appear bottom left of the screen with the camera peering over their shoulder to a black void beyond. To anyone familiar with this era of filmmaking it's obvious what happens next. It's unclear if this is a double exposure technique or back projection, but a single angel appears in the darkness. Here Feuillade's work is rather clumsy compared to some of the work his forbears have already produced by this stage. The shepherds hold their somewhat awkward-looking pose for what seems like an age. Then the angel appears. They briefly turn to face him/her, bow, and then reconvene, holding their pose for long enough for the original angel to be joined by the full choir. Once the heavenly host has departed, the shepherds leave the shelter by the same exit to the rear of the set.

Interestingly, a similar composition is adopted for the next shot. Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus appear cramped into the bottom left of the screen, with a view extending into the distance occupying the majority of the remaining space. I've seen various version of this scene that were recorded before this one, and in every other one I've seen up to this point the camera peers into the stable from the outside. Here however things are the other side the camera (and so, by extension, the audience) is inside the stable looking out into the night. Naturally the shepherds soon appear from the rear. It's notable that neither shot would work in a theatre - they only work from the specific vantage point of the camera, not the multiple viewpoints required for successful theatre composition. Even if Feuillade's compositions don't match the standard of his later work, the idea that he just arranges his scenes as if he were arranging a theatre set doesn't hold water.    

The version I saw runs to almost 14 minutes, but these two scenes with the shepherds occupy only three and a half minutes. As the alternative title suggests, the film's main concern is with the magi and King Herod. The next two shots cover the arrival of the magi, both outside and then inside Herod's palace. What's noticeable here is that one of the wise kings, presumably Balthazar, is played by a Black actor. I haven't researched extensively into who the first Black actor was - a cursory google suggest that a comedian called Stepin Fetchit (aka Lincoln Perry) was the first Black actor to receive a screen credit/earn $1 million but neither of these are the same thing, I'd be interested to know if anyone knows of an earlier actor from the African diaspora.

Oddly, in contrast to the use of this actor, Herod seems to be played by someone in brown make-up. I'm curious to know how this inconsistency arose. Using a Black actor in a positive role seems somewhat progressive, but the racist use of "brownface" undermines this. What, if anything, they were trying to convey?

One possibility is that it was a way of "othering" Herod. Herod's father was an Idumaean – a people from Edom, South-West of Jerusalem who had converted to Judaism during the Hasmonean period – and his mother was Nabataean (Arab) princess.  At the time of this production, though, Josephus' designation of Herod as an "Idumaen i.e. a half Jew" was seemingly how his background would have been understood. Perhaps this othering is intended not just to place a barrier between Herod and the audience, but also between him and the other Jewish characters (who are otherwise played by white actors). But given that the historical Herod would most likely be physically indistinguishable from the other Jewish characters the clear determination to mark him as different from them is strange.

Herod's throne room here is quite dramatically lit, in a fashion that Feuillade also used for the scenes inside Moses' house in L'Exode (1910). There, though, they suggested secrecy, as if the family might have been hiding from the Egyptians. Here, however, the darkness feels more like a moral judgement. 

The magi head to Bethlehem and  arrive at the grotto, shot from the same angle as before (pictured above). Next there's a cut back to the palace where Herod discusses the matter with his queen before calling three soldiers or perhaps advisers and instructing them to go to Bethlehem. The massacre scene is left off camera, as is Joseph's dream, so the next shot is simply Mary and Joseph walking quietly away from Jerusalem.   

The author of glowing review in the December 17th edition of Moving Picture World found the film's final scene – where Mary and Joseph rest in front of the Sphinx (still above) – as particularly striking, describing the 50 ft long shot as:

...a real master in every sense of the word. It would be impossible to find a more beautiful composition, with such admirable light effects and of such superior photography... this last scene is art, pure and simple and will remain engraved in the memory of every person lucky enough to have a chance to gaze upon it.

What I find more interesting is the fact that the composition of this scene matches that from the same scene in the earliest extant Jesus film La Vie et la passion de Jésus-Christ (1898). As far as I can make out it's not based on Doré or Tissot so it's possible that this shot is derived in some way from the 1898, though Merson's "Rest on the Flight into Egypt" seems more likely².

The MPW review also mentions a scene "Herod and the Woman" which does not seems to appear in the version available on YouTube unless the palace scene with his queen(my assumption) is intended. There are further reviews in the 1910 Moving Picture World including the December 31st edition (available here) which described it as follows:

An illustration of the first part of Chapter II of the Gospel of St. Matthew. No more beautiful and artistic film has been shown during the year. Every scene is a marvel of accurate representation. The scene which Hoffman has so graphically portrayed as the "Repose in Egypt," is one of the most impressive ever shown on a motion picture screen. It depicts the search of Herod for the new born King and details the flight into Egypt to escape his jealous rage. A reading of that chapter in the Bible will supply a synopsis more graphic and complete than any that could be written now. (view on IMDb)

Overall though the film is a bit of a disappointment. It's overly slow, not only by today's standards, but even compared to other biblical films of the time, and not in a contemplative way. Moreover it lacks the spark of Feuillade's other work even from the same year. Hard to believe that he was only three years away from the first instalments of Fantômas (1913-14). Without the action or novelty of many of the other films from biblical cinema's boom years it drags, even for those 14 short minutes. It's not bad, and short enough that it's not a bad option to drag out at Christmas and for those who are interested in Feuillade and his development as a director it's certainly worth watching. 

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In addition to the version available on YouTube the film also appears as an extra feature in Kino's Fantômas Bluray set.

1 - I'm grateful to John Larsen for drawing my attention to the link between these two films. (If you haven't checked out his excellent website Between Movies, you really should. It looks like the add linked to actually came from 1910's Moving Picture News (not 1911 as stated in the tweet, though I have no idea how I got hold of it as the 1910 edition isn't in the MHDL archive). 

2 - I owe this observation to Twitter user @Zyber's post here.