Faces of Children
About Faces of Children
Jean’s mother has died. His father remarries, and a stepmother and a stepsister, Arlette, move into the house in the Swiss Alps. Jean will not accept them. He throws Arlette’s doll onto a track while they are sledding, then sends her onto a snow mountain to fetch it. She is lost, shelters in a chapel, and an avalanche covers the chapel. He tells his father. A search party digs her out.
Cast & crew
More about Faces of Children
Jacques Feyder wrote, directed, and edited this French-Swiss film. Léonce-Henri Burel photographed. Arthur-Adrien Porchet and Dimitri De Zoubaloff produced. The premiere was 24 January 1925. A published length is 117 minutes. Wikidata says 114. Jean Forest plays Jean. Victor Vina, Pierrette Houyez, Jeanne Marie-Laurent, Rachel Devirys, and Henri Duval are billed. Exteriors were shot at Saint-Luc and Grimentz in the Haut-Valais. The French title is Visages d’enfants.
Themes
Making
Feyder shoots the boy’s refusal in the villages where the snow is real. The doll on the track and the chapel under the avalanche are the plot’s two traps, and the confession is what starts the digging.
Look
Léonce-Henri Burel shot Saint-Luc and Grimentz, torch-lit nights, and a point-of-view rush for the avalanche that buries the chapel.
Music
Silent. Antonio Coppola wrote a score for the 2004 Lobster restoration.
Preservation
Restored in 1986 by the Royal Belgian Film Archive, tinted again in 1993 with help from Gosfilmofond and the Nederlands Filmmuseum, and digitally cleaned by Lobster Films in 2004 with the French titles put back.
Notes
- Burel lights night scenes with torches and uses a subjective angle for the rush of the avalanche.
- A 1986 restoration by the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique drew on prints from Brussels, Amsterdam, Lausanne, and the Cinémathèque française, without the intertitles or the tinting.
- A 1993 pass, with Gosfilmofond and the Nederlands Filmmuseum, put the tinting back.
- In 2004 Lobster Films in Paris cleaned the image digitally, restored the French titles, and commissioned a score from Antonio Coppola.
- Suzy Vernon and Charles Barrois are also on the cast lists.
Scenes
- Jean throws Arlette’s doll onto the track.
- He sends her onto the snow mountain after it.
- The avalanche covers the chapel where she has sheltered.
- He confesses, and the search party reaches her.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Faces of Children (1925) by Jacques Feyder.webm)
