Thierry Fremaux Breaks Down Charles Vanel’s ‘In the Night,’ Ignored When Released, Now Considered a Masterpiece

variety.com:

Lise Pedersen At a time when heritage cinema is booming – thanks to outstanding progress in conservation standards and a growth in demand – Lyon’s Lumière heritage film festival Lumière is playing a leading role in uncovering long-forgotten cinematic gems.  “Dans la Nuit” (“In the Night”), widely considered one of the last, if not the last major French silent film, is one of them.

It is the only film shot by French actor Charles Vanel, perhaps best remembered for his role as a desperate truck driver in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s acclaimed “The Wages of Fear,” which won both the Golden Bear and the Palme d’Or in 1953.

Vanel also stars in the film, alongside Russian-French actress Sandra Milovanoff, who became a silent film era casualty as her Slavic accent was considered unsuitable for talkies.

The newly restored version of the film is having its world premiere at the fest, which is headed by Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux. “You can compare contemporary cinema to classic cinema,” Frémaux told Variety. “Both are about celebration and discovery: You celebrate what is known, and then there is a part of discovery of what has become unknown, of what has disappeared.  “Dans la Nuit” is one of those films and we saw it as our duty to exhume it,” he said, speaking as director of the Institut Lumière, a Lyon-based organisation dedicated to the preservation of film heritage named after the Lumière Brothers, which owns the rights to the film.