Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

L’Appel du silence, Léon Poirier (1936).
Courtesy of Les Archives du film
et du dépot légal du CNC, Bois d’Arcy
the Sisters of Clarisse in Nazareth. By 1903, Foucauld had
established a retreat at Tamanrasset in the Algerian Sahara where he
worked to convert nomads and inhabitants of the region to Christian
faith. He died during a December 1, 1916 raid on the retreat by local
tribesmen resistant to the presence of the “Roumis” (an Arabic term
derived from the French Romain - “Roman” in English - that equated
all white Europeans with Catholic missionaries serving the Pope).
Numerous elements of L’Appel du silence set the conservative values of
a militant right-wing nationalism within the “deep” or spiritual
history of colonial France. A first element of this conservatism took
form in Foucauld’s growing alienation from the secular forms of faith
in new technologies and the concomitant lack of spirituality this
commitment to material forms of modernity entailed. On his return
to Paris in 1886, Foucauld openly scorned the progress that
pervaded urban life in the form of inventions such as the automobile,
the telephone, the steam engine, and - curiously enough - the
zoetrope. When a glib
journalist asks him with a glint
of complicity to comment on
what his experience in North
Africa had taught him about
the differences between
Muslims and “us,” Foucauld
states that the Muslims believe
in God while “we” [Christians]
only pretend to. The only
words that impress Foucauld
during his 1886 visit in Paris
are those of a young bearded
man who praises the advent of
a new world in which
technology would free people
from physical labor so that
they might devote efforts to the
peaceful establishment of a
future community (“cité future”).
The passion and idealism of the man, a certain Jean Jaurès, echo
those of an earlier conversation between Foucauld and a military
school acquaintance, the Marquis Antoine de Morès, during
Foucauld’s 1881 sojourn in the provinces near Evian. In the earlier
scene, Morès had announced his intention to travel to the United
States in search of the society of ardent and sincere men he could not
find in France. Foucauld responded that he had no interest in
cowboys and that he preferred the desert and rural villages. Or as he
puts it, “Je me charge du bled” (“I’ll take care of the hinterlands”).
Later in the film, Foucauld learns that Morès had died in the Sahara
in 1906, yet another premonition of his own fate to follow.
Both scenes suggest that Foucauld in the 1880s was not alone is his
44 Journal of Film Preservation / 63 / 2001