Medieval Film Club: Perceval le Gallois

Éric Rohmer, Perceval le Gallois (France, Italy, West Germany, 1978; 140 minutes)

Chrétien de Troyes (active c.1160–c.1191) is generally considered to be the creator of Arthurian romance. Perceval, ou le Conte du Graal (c.1180) was his last and unfinished romance. Written in verse, in Old French, it is one of the earliest extant French sources to relate the legend of the Holy Grail. Éric Rohmer (1920–2010) was interested in Chrétien’s text for a long time even before he directed Perceval le Gallois: in 1964 he directed the educational short Perceval, ou le Conte du Graal. For the 1978 feature, Rohmer himself made his own verse translation into modern French of Chrétien’s octosyllabic verse, normally rendered into prose and modernised beyond recognition. His translation, which includes about two-thirds of the original verses, is considered to preserve some of the original’s musicality and even of its lexicon. The director created a ‘neo-medieval lingua franca’, peppered with well-known archaisms but meant to be accessible to contemporary viewers (there are no subtitles for the French audience). But the verbal language is only one of the challenges the film poses. In order to render ‘those elements of the medieval imaginary that can be recovered in modern times’, Rohmer also created a new film language. The film invents ‘an abstract, heavily symbolic mise en scène’, taking inspiration from the reigning art forms of Chrétien’s time, such as miniature illustration, sculpture, and music.

The twelve-minute Passion-play sequence is, itself, a representation of a representation – what we witness onscreen is a depiction of a medieval Passion play, and not a depiction of Christ’s arrest, flagellation, bearing of the cross, and crucifixion. This ‘second layer’, this breaking with any kind of ‘realism’, comes in many shapes and reminds the audience that we are not witnessing ‘the events’ portrayed in Chrétien’s romance, but individuals engaged in the enactment of a story. For example, musicians and chorus share the soundstage with the actors, which alerts us to the fact that we are always in the space of performance. Rohmer even gave his own interpretation to the Passion-play sequence (which in Chrétien’s text takes less than thirty lines, subsequent to the vision of the Fisher-King and to Perceval’s realisation of the true meaning of the Grail): Fabrice Luchini (b.1951) (Perceval) plays Christ, Pascale de Boysson (1922–2002) (la Veuve Dame, his mother) plays the Virgin Mary, dressed in blue, and Arielle Dombasle (b.1953) (Blanchefleur) plays Mary Magdalene, in red. The character of Perceval seems to find redemption in the body of Christ in the most literal fashion.

Part of the Medieval Film Club, for more information please visit the Centre for Late Antique & Medieval Studies website.

This screening is open to all and free to attend. No booking required.

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