Decorum and the subject specificity of this blog prohibit me from displaying the astonishing sight of Von Stroheim in blackface, from the New York scenes with which this very peculiar film opens.
The maps that illustrate the crossing of the Atlantic and a plan to make a sea in the Sahara are splendid. Maps are just background detail, and don't appear again after first contact with the iceberg. The IMDB 'goofs' page points out three anomalies related to topographical detail, two of them bearing upon the images above:
(The film ends with a courtroom scene, featuring a bevy of press photogaphers; see here.)
Two last views of the Atlantic, one from today, the other from about 250 years ago.
Movement from the film's first location (the penal colony in French Guyana) to its second location (Belleville, Paris) is effected by this simple cinemap, presented in silence (where otherwise Grémillon's film is strikingly experimental in its use of sound).
A pan across the Atlantic brings us from Europe to the habitat of the film's principal subject, desmodus rotundus or the Common Vampire Bat. The map has been modified by hand to emphasise details in the narration: Prior to this the film had referenced non-zoological manifestations of vampirism:
|
|