filmmaking in and around the forêt de Fontainebleau
In The Memoirs of Alice Guy-Blaché, the filmmaker and producer describes how Gaumont films took to using the forest of Fontainebleau as a location:
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We also made some films outdoors. Having discovered, during a walk in Barbizon, an old coach, I decided to use it to represent the mailcoach from Lyon. A professional troupe would have been too costly, but I persuaded our won personnel to replace them.
Supplied with a copious home-made lunch, costumes and necessary accessories, almost all of us with bicycles, we took the train as far as Melun. At the station two or three carriages, whose drivers called themselves guides to the forest of Fontainebleau, took the baggage and the less sportive young ladies and we rolled towards Barbizon where the stage waited for us. Then the guides led us to a site they thought suitable. There, after having wolfed the picnic, we distributed the costumes. The ladies hid as well as they could behind the bushes; the men, less prudish, dressed themselves anywhere. Happily the forest was empty as we must have made an odd spectacle. In spite of the autumn coolness the enterprise was a success. Gaiety and good humour went with us, and we promised ourselves that we’d repeat the experience. |
This first Fontainebleau film is L'Assassinat du courrier de Lyon, usually dated around April 1904, so the excursion described above must have been in the autumn of 1903. The film no longer exists but even if it did I would not have much hope of identifying the exact location used. In towns and cities I can manage - see here for the Paris locations of some Alice Guy films - but in nature I am lost.
Guy returned to the forest in 1906 for Le Fils du garde-chasse, a film that makes full use of the area's distinctive geology:
Guy returned to the forest in 1906 for Le Fils du garde-chasse, a film that makes full use of the area's distinctive geology:
The same year Guy came to the forest to film scenes for her life of Christ:
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I have no expectation that these wooded areas can be localised, but the rocks of Fontainebleau are all distinctive and documented, and it is possible that the locations below would be recognised by habitués of the forest:
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In 1907 Feuillade took over from Guy as head of production at Gaumont and continued the policy of using the forest of Fontainebleau as a location. Here are two examples from his own Sept péchés capitaux (1910), 'Greed' and 'Laziness':
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The rocks of Fontainebleau served easily as the setting for biblical dramas. In Jean Durand's Sous la griffe (1912) they represented the Transvaal:
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In episode 6 of Feuillade's Les Vampires (1916) the rocks are allowed to be themselves, and are even shown on a map of part of the forest:
I have tried to match this map to the actual place, but without much success (see here). The rock formations that we see in the film can probably be identified - but not, of course, by me:
to be continued...
