Do you realize the inventor of the “western Camembert”, Joë Hamman? | EUROtoday
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It’sis an typically ignored web page within the historical past of the seventh artwork: France performed a central function within the emergence of the western. If the style was certainly born throughout the Atlantic originally of the twentieth centurye century, similtaneously the primary movie studios have been being created in Hollywood, movies that includes cowboys and Indians have been very quickly being filmed in Paris and its environment.
In 1904 (only one 12 months after the discharge of The Great Train Robberythe primary western “made in America”), Gaston Velle, a cinematographer working for the Lumière brothers, immortalized on movie two choreographic work proposed on the Casino de Paris and entitled The Kickaboo Dance And Apache ceremony.
The success of those movies pushed the fledgling trade to extend the variety of fictions impressed by this theme. This is the kick-off of what specialists will funnyly name “camembert westerns”, lengthy earlier than “spaghetti westerns”. It is that this singular and little-known journey that’s recounted in a retrospective proposed by the Pathé-Jérôme Seydoux basis in Paris, from November 19.
The founding journey of Jean Hamman
It all started in 1906. A younger Frenchman, Jean Hamman (1883-1974), performed the main function in a movie entitled The Cowboyin regards to the day by day lifetime of certainly one of these cowherd boys dwelling on the good plains of the New World. The brief movie, now misplaced, was shot for Lux studios within the Bois de Boulogne (Paris), on the Mer de Sable (Fontainebleau) and on the Arcueil quarries (present Val-de-Marne). In his wake, Charles and Émile Pathé began a number of movies of the identical sort in Vincennes and Meudon.
In 1907, Jean Hamman, till then an actor, moved behind the digital camera. Descendant of a line of painters (paternal facet) and members of the courtroom of Napoleon III (maternal facet), the Parisian was educated on the Condorcet highschool. At the age of 24, he’ll write an essential chapter within the historical past of French cinema.
A visit to the United States, made along with his father simply after his baccalaureate, launched him to the good American West. During this journey, he discovered to trip horses on a ranch in Montana and started to develop an creativeness through which Buffalo Bill occupies a central place. The former buffalo hunter, transformed to point out enterprise, has now turn out to be a circus boss. He created a troupe which performs main equestrian reveals.
On his return to France, Jean Hamman was impressed by this mannequin. He is rightly satisfied that the world of the Wild West can fascinate European audiences. He started to write down situations based mostly on what he had seen and determined to Americanize his first identify to present it extra “local color”. It was underneath the identify Joë Hamman that he participated, within the following many years, in at least 100 movies; typically as a screenwriter, typically as an actor, when not as a stuntman, director or producer…
Decors of the Camargue
Joë Hamman works more often than not in tandem with director Jean Durand, a former journalist who additionally needs to inform the story of the conquest of the West in a brand new method. Unable to movie within the United States, the 2 males transposed their intrigues to the Parisian suburbs earlier than taking the Camargue as their setting.
This is as a result of certainly one of their buddies, the author Folco de Baroncelli, opened the doorways of his manade in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer (Bouches-du-Rhône) to them in 1908. He places his horses, his bulls and his herds at their disposal. “This setting is clearly not American with its lakes full of reeds and its low houses with roofs covered with sagne, but the mixture of genres does not scare Joë Hamman,” smiles Samantha Leroy, who chosen the movies for the Pathé Foundation retrospective.
The programmer discovered round twenty westerns on which Joë Hamman labored. The oldest date from 1911. They are very transient. Their length varies between 6 and 12 minutes. The first is titled Hanging in Jefferson City and tells the story of a miscarriage of justice: the loss of life sentence of a person named Burton, wrongly accused of getting murdered his pal Bill, who in actuality disappeared by chance the day he was bringing their pay to miners.
Early westerns sort out a variety of themes. There are blueberries there. Such Marital revolverwhich particulars the adventures of Maud Baker, a younger girl in love with a cowboy, to the good dismay of her uncle. Such once more Burning Heartthe place Sun Ray, the daughter of Chief Sitting Bear, needs to marry a penniless hunter. Or even Borneo Bill, the courageous cowboya beforehand unreleased movie just lately discovered on the Belgrade cinema library (Serbia). A movie within the type of a variation across the theme of Romeo and Juliet…the hero having fallen in love with the daughter of his worst enemy.
Joë Hamman’s cinema is distinguished by its motion scenes. One hundred {dollars}, useless or alive thus accommodates the primary main brawl in a saloon. And The Prairie on Fire contrasts, in a dramatic mode, an Indian chief decided to take revenge on a authorities agent who humiliated him. But a few of these movies are filled with humor. This is the case of Calino needs to be a cowboy, whose hero is a suburban child who desires of collaborating within the gold rush and practices throwing the lasso in… Bagnolet.
A really wealthy filmography
Reducing Joë Hamman to only these movies exalting the American West would, nevertheless, be a mistake. As director Vincent Froehly, writer of a documentary devoted to the filmmaker (scheduled for November 22), explains, “Hamman suddenly stopped playing cowboy at the end of the 1920s, when Hollywood began to export its first productions to France.” Unable to compete with the most important American studios, he started producing function movies tackling different themes.
With Zigoto used plumberit explores the style of farce. The hero is a very clumsy boy who units out to restore a fuel leak with the consequence we think about. Joë Hamman performs a secondary function, a neighbor whose residence is devastated by a home catastrophe. In the collection Rouletabille among the many Bohemians (lasting greater than six hours!), the actor-filmmaker takes on a thriller, taking the viewer on the path of a burglar, Hubert de Lauriac…
ALSO READ Bernard Natan, forgotten cinema legendNo topic appears to frighten Joë Hamman. In 1923, he produced a implausible collection in ten episodes whose hero, Tao, is an adolescent carrying a dragon’s head who terrifies the inhabitants of a distant nation the place he’s attempting to take over an oil deposit! The identical 12 months, he entrusted Jean Kemm with the creation of The Child King. A cine-novel, because the collection have been then referred to as, which traces the story of the son of Louis XVI, from his childhood in Versailles to the Revolution. Joë Hamman slips into the costume of Knight Mallory.
In addition to those silent movies, the final of that are tinged with orientalism, Joë Hamman directs (or performs in) greater than ten speaking movies. In explicit an adaptation of the King of the Alders by Goethe in 1931, directed by Marie-Louise Iribe and through which he performed the title function.
The retrospective of the Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé Foundation permits us to rediscover these function movies which have been nice successes on the time. Particularly due to its devoted actors: Gaston Modot and Berthe Dagmar. Don’t miss the difference of Mireillea novel by Frédéric Mistral, delivered to the display screen in 1933 by René Gaveau and Ernest Servaès, the place Joë Hamman performs the function of the sensitive Ourias in a love story thwarted by social prohibitions.
The actor additionally appeared within the credit of two biopics devoted to Napoleon. Starting with that of Abel Gance, but additionally that of Sacha Guitry the place he lends his options to Kellerman. “Joë Hamman continued to film until the 1960s, focusing mainly on the villain characters,” notes Vanessa Leroy.
The actor publishes his memoirs, entitled From the Wild West to Montmartrein 1962. His star then light. He makes a ultimate look on the massive display screen, in entrance of Francis Leroi’s digital camera, in a movie, vaguely erotic, fairly heartbreaking, Pop Game.
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Kangaroo of the day
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He spent his final years working an “entertainment center” on the Jardin d’acclimatation. The kids do pony methods and be taught to make use of the whip and the lasso. He receives journalists in his museum residence at Porte de Champerret, the place he reveals them his outdated costumes, his toy troopers and his drawings and work – as a result of he’s additionally an artist. While telling them about his youthful adventures. He ended his life removed from Paris, in Dieppe the place he died on June 30, 1974.
* Retrospective “Joë Hamman, the Frenchman who invented the western”, on the Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé Foundation, in Paris, from November 19 to December 16, 2025.
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