NANA (France-Ger / 1926)



Influenced by the work of Erich von Stroheim (Foolish Wives [1922], in particular), Nana, perhaps the most engaging and technically sound of Jean Renoirs silents, is based on mile Zola's classic 1880 novel of the same name. Unlike Whirlpool of Fate (1925), which Renoir shot on-location in the countryside, Nana primarily unfolds on artfully and lavishly designed sets, the first of which in seen in the films opening moments as the titular stage actress (Catherine Hessling) with no singing or acting talent wins over the audience, bourgeois men in particular, with her calculatingly voluptuous performance. She soon manages to become the toast of Paris, but a minor scandal breaks out in the theatrical community. In order to keep her highly envious standing, Nana persuades the most influential of her bevy of admirers, Count Muffat (Werner Krauss, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [1920]; Nana was mostly shot in Berlin due to financial reasons), to have her cast in the troupes follow-up play. While she succeeds in her goal, the play turns out to be a disaster, relegating her to a role which perhaps suited her all along, that of a courtesan. Even though Renoir has marked Nana, which he primarily self-financed, as the true beginning of his career, it was a commercial failure, and caused the French master to sell off some of the work of his leading impressionist painter father, Pierre-Auguste. At 130 minutes the film feels a tad long, especially with the ever-grating Hessling who is unable to humanize the character at significant moments, but it does manage to provide a key early look at a couple of Renoir's thematic and formal concerns. Nana's beautifully tinted print was preserved earlier this decade by the Cineteca del Comune di Bologna and the Cinmathque Suisse, Lausanne.