Formal Analysis

     Establishing shot, high angle, of the courtyard. Medium shot of the actor who is looking up toward the camera and telling someone that Boëldieu is going to have to forego the armchair he wanted. Behind the actor, in the courtyard, some prisoners stroll. In the foreground a near shot of Rosenthal’s face looking up towards the camera. Tracking shot backwards as the camera comes through the window and enters, still moving backwards, the shower room of the officers’ barracks. In the same shot the camera pans towards the right to frame the engineer washing Maréchal’s feet.

Commentary

      In this shot (the beginning of a sequence shot), Renoir refuses the segmentation of the space which conventional editing would have produced. He wants to inscribe the action in the shower room, the conversation between Maréchal and the engineer, in its broader context. The presence of Rosenthal in the courtyard, but close to the window in the foreground, prompts the discussion which follows between Maréchal and the engineer inside the barracks.

      As is often the case in Renoir’s films, the window serves as a link between inside and outside, suggesting the extension of continuous space beyond the barrack walls. To achieve this effect, instead of shooting the interiors in the studio Renoir has a moveable décor built, a fake wall in the middle of the courtyard, with a window in it. The camera, placed on a crane, frames both the actor in the courtyard and, using deep focus, other prisoners strolling to pass the time. The effect is to highlight the prison context in which the conversation between Maréchal and the engineer takes place. In order to emphasize the continuity between the action inside the barracks and its broader context, Renoir chooses a sequence shot instead of a series of shorter shots. The camera tracks backwards through the window and pans to Maréchal and the engineer in order not to break this continuity. As André Bazin says, “The filming technique thus contributes to Renoir’s effort to represent accurately the relationship between men and the world in which they are plunged.”