"I Have Killed!" (J'ai tué!) is what one could call a worldly melodrama in the sense that the main dramatic spring is based on values so dated that a good part of our contemporaries could doubtless not accept as credible.
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| Sessue Hayakawa in the murder scene |
The Story of "I have Killed!"
Huguette Dumontal, married to a respectable orientalist scholar, leads a peaceful life with him and their young child Gérard until a blackmailer, probably a former lover, and her accomplice come to threaten her to denounce her past life, with compromising letters, if she does not give them the money.
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| Sessue Hayakawa & Denise Legeay (in the role of the accomplice) |
And that's where many modern viewers risk losing out: she'll let the situation escalate to the point of seeing her husband killed by the blackmailer before her eyes and letting the couple's best friend risk the death penalty rather than revealing an old affair that potentially may have happened before her marriage. It's probably just as unlikely these days, if not more, that the script for Alfred Hitchcock's Easy Virtue.
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| Huguette Duflos and Max Maxudian |
An Unexpected Cast
The calvary (in the comfort of a mansion in the rich suburbs of Paris) is interpreted by Huguette, the famous "Ex-Duflos". She then enjoys a well-established popularity in France and abroad. She is indeed coming off the set of Koenigsmark and will soon be shooting a big German production, Der Rosenkavalier. Her husband in the film is veteran Max Maxudian and the poisonous Baroness de Calix, lover of the blackmailer, is played by Denise Legeay, remarkable despite a very short career. In the role of the blackmailer is Pierre Daltour whose career will come to an end two years later following the scandal of the aggression of his neighbor. The film is however largely carried by the interpretation of its main star: the Japanese Sessue Hayakawa. It is he who pronounces the fatal sentence of the title by accusing himself of a crime he did not commit to protect the honor of a friend.
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| Huguette Duflos in I have Killed! |
Surprisingly, the cast was originally to be quite different: Le petit Marseillais from May 27, 1924 announces that Roger Lion has just finished his screenplay "It's I who killed" which is to be played by his wife Gil Clary, and Messrs André Nox, Donatien and by his assistant André Darel.
However, if we are to believe an interview with the director in Mon Ciné of January 8, 1925, the project was born out of a desire to shoot a film with a Japanese character in the leading role, which was in favor of the Japanese Embassy, determined to help find funds for this purpose, to feature the star Masao Inoue, passing through Europe at the time. Unfortunately, Roger Lion not only found the actor "not very photogenic, (...) of an indefinable age, with white hair and features too ... characteristic", but in addition, the actor abandoned him to the first more advantageous offer made to him by a theater company.
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| Sessue Hayakawa |
Sessue Hayakawa was a Japanese star who had enjoyed solid success in the United States since his role in The Cheat. This film by Cecil B. DeMille, praised by critics like Louis Delluc, had made an even greater and lasting impression in France (where a remake will even be shot), due to its innovative technique. The prestige of the actor remains then better than in America, and he decides to shoot The Danger Line in France which leaves a bitter taste to the critics. By pure chance, Roger Lion, manages to convince the actor to play the main role of his film, and he finds an unexpected producer to finance the entire business. The bill increases when Hayakawa decides that the female star cannot be, as expected, Gil Clary, wife of the director, because the actress is much too tall (1.74m-5.7f) compared to him.
Moderately a bargain on her salary, Huguette therefore agreed to shoot in the film, which transformed a small, almost confidential film into a large production with international potential. The film is therefore bought abroad on poster value, even before it is shot. All these negotiations must have been quick because Paris Soir already announces Sessue Hayakawa, but also Gil Clary and always André Nox on June 23, 1924. Two days later, in the same newspaper, it is revealed that André Nox will finally shoot After Love with Maurice Champreux. The very young Maurice Sigrist participates in the shooting of both the films! On the 26th, Andrée Brabant was announced in the leading female role and on the 27th, in Comedia, Huguette, Maxudian, Pierre Daltour and Denise Legeay were finally announced. However, Roger Lion himself declares having given the first turn of the crank on June 28, and having finished filming on August 1. It was on August 16 that I found for the first time mention in L'intransigeant of the final title. If we are to believe the Bonsoir newspaper on October 31, Andrew Pellenc also played in the film.
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| Maurice Sigrist & Sessue Hayakawa |
The production
In addition to the casting problems, Roger Lion must find the screenwriter Frances Guihan that Hayakawa imposes to do the cutting of the script, as he is used to working with her and she happens to be in Paris at the time. The planned cinematographer failed the director, and the second, "a young man", made him lose a few hundred meters of film that he had to reshoot. In the end, it is difficult to determine the names of these first two candidates, but imdb does retain three names, none of whom is a youngster starting his career at the time: Paul Castanet, of which it is on the contrary the last film, Segundo de Chomón, who is also closer to the end of his career as an operator and director than to the beginning, and finally Maurice Desfassiaux, best candidate despite the presence of several previous titles in his filmography.
It is in the previously mentioned interview that we learn that Huguette's friend at the reception is played by Thyra Seillière, the wife of producer Richard-Pierre Bodin. This explains why the production company created is called Thyra Film. It is the only film of this company, if only because the couple divorced in 1929.There is, when the professor gives his lecture at the Palais Galliera in Paris, a shot taken on avenue Pierre I of Serbia, with in the background, the old Trocadero Palace before it was destroyed a few years later. According to Mon Ciné of February 5, 1925, the exteriors were shot in Antwerp. This is probably referring to the scenes, without the main actors, in the harbor during the arrival and departure of the Japanese character.
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| Down the road, the old Palace of Trocadéro |
Release and Critics
On October 18, the editing was announced as finished by L'Intransigeant. The world premiere is organized on October 25 in Brussels, Belgium. The film is presented by the distributor Jean de Merly to the French press on November 8 at the Coliseum at 2:30 p.m. following which the first reviews are published, which already regrets the Victorian intrigue, like the Quotidien which speaks of "fake genre", from L'écho de Paris which compares the film unfavorably to The Cheat and finds it "not very good". Le Petit Marseillais is more enthusiastic and considers that it "meets the tastes of the public" and that it "deserves a special mention." In general, everyone agrees that the main attraction is its interpretation, especially its two stars.
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| Sessue Hayakawa in the final scene of I Have Killed! |
It exists in a version reconstituted in 1990 by Renée Lichtig viewable on YouTube in what looks like an overly contrasted 16mm print. It is always sad to see these copies where the faces, the main vectors of emotion in films without sound, are transformed into white halos where we sometimes cannot even make out the eyes! Yet this is a rare opportunity to find two international stars in a "classic" film: not a masterpiece that we talk about in all the books to this day, but not a turnip either. Hopefully someday, maybe, a good copy will turn up.
That's all for today folks!