Visages d'Enfants

Feyders family drama which is seen as the first masterpiece of Swiss Cinema is emotionally and visually gripping until the present day.
Little Jean can’t get over the death of his mother, while his father remarries with a young woman …

Jacques Feyder, who next to Marcel Carné would be one of the leading representatives of Poetic Realism, with VISAGES D’ENFANTS entirely takes on the perspective of its child protagonist. In such a consequent way that includes also camera angles, film history hadn’t seen this before.

Feyder who had started as an actor himself, worked intensely with his small main actor, whom for an earlier film he had literally found on the street in Paris. What comes about is a very authentic acting which, even before the end of the silent film era foreshadows the rise of a new acting style with more modest gestures. Also in the editing Feyder doesn’t trust iIllustration but rather searches for contrasts.

VISAGES D’ENFANTS is shot nearby Saas-Fee, in the villages of Saint-Luc and Grimentz.