" Pecheur d'Islande." At the Academy
It is difficult for anyone who has not read Pierre Loti'S novel to criticize this French talkie, which opens at the Academy on Saturday, May 19th. The story—concerned mainly with the hesitating courtship of a Breton fisherman and his death at sea soon after his marriage—is very slight, and probably the book depends largely on descriptive atm°. sphere. The film has some pleasant glimpses of ships at sea, but the director has made no serious attempt to reconstruct the life of the little fishing community in visual terms. English audiences may find the general background a little obscure, and the relationships of the characters are not always obvious.
The story is told through a series of rather abrupt dialogue scenes, usually with the speakers posed rigidly within a given setting, and the acting of the heroine is inclined to follow the same theatrical tradition. The appearance of Yvette Guilbert as a grandmother promises much, and her face—even in repose—is wonderfully expressive, but she has no chance to add much to the total effect. Throughout the film there are hints of promising local material which might have been worked up—for instance, the religious earnestness of the fishermen and their fatalistic beliefs about the sea. Not long before his marriage the hero insists that he is " wedded to the sea," and some of his comrades seem to think that he is drowned because by marrying he has invited the jealousy of the winds and waves. But the camera, all along, does far too little to help the players.
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