Marcel Carné - Nogent, Eldorado du dimanche (1929)

This was an amateur venture at making an atmospheric silent film, dealing with the simple pleasures of simple people on a Sunday afternoon, near Paris, along the River Marne. It showed couples dancing to accordion music, soldiers in the fields, and a little working-class girl, lonely in her bare bedroom. Carné shot his film with the help of Michel Sanvoisin, a clockmaker of some note in the amateur cinema world.







Nogent, Sunday Paradise
This was an amateur venture at making an atmospheric silent film, dealing with the simple pleasures of simple people on a Sunday afternoon, near Paris, along the River Marne.
It showed couples dancing to accordion music, soldiers in the fields, and a little working-class girl, lonely in her bare bedroom. There was not much of a story, and the photography as well as the montage was clumsy. But a sincere feeling for the people he was portraying and an obvious pictorial instinct gave this trifle distinction. It also represented a breakaway from the more elaborate avant-garde manner of the time.

Nogent, Eldorado du Dimanche was first released in the Paris cinema which had supported good films for many years : the Studio des Ursulines. It was also shown by another fashionable cinema, the Vieux-Colombier. Carné shot his film with the help of Michel Sanvoisin, a clockmaker of some note in the amateur cinema world : Sanvoisin provided him with camera and film, and also took part in the shooting. (He had been, incidentally, an unsuccessful entrant in the Cinémagazine competition.) The film plays in Carné's career a part not unlike Partie de Campagne in Renoir's, except, of course, that it is Carné's first attempt and he was not inspired by a father's pictorial genius. (Jean Queval)









Nogent, paraíso de domingo
La primera película de Carné, filmada a los 20 años y que trata de de los placeres simples de la gente sencilla en una tarde de domingo, cerca de París, a las orillas del río Marne. Carné filmó su película con la ayuda de Michel Sanvoisin, un relojero de cierto renombre en el mundo del cine aficionado: Sanvoisin le dio la cámara y película, y también participó en la filmación.







C’est un dimanche comme on n’en fait plus, à Nogent, sur les bords de la Marne. Ce qu’a vu un Marcel Carné de 20 ans, tout seul, sa caméra à la main, est un jaillissement de lumière et d’ombre, de foules ensoleillées, d’eaux accueillantes, de peupliers tranquilles, de baigneurs musculeux et sans chagrins, la fête de l’homme et de la femme. Un beau dimanche populaire d’avant la grande crise économique (1929), d’avant la guerre, d’avant la destruction des rivages de la Marne par la voiture, la construction, la pollution.






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