Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

idealism. But if Poirier portrayed Foucauld as impressed by the
words of Jaurès, the future leader of French Socialists assassinated on
the eve of World War I (“un bel orateur et un beau programme”), the
earlier conversation with de Morès suggests a markedly different
perspective. For the Marquis Antoine de Morès was, among other
things, an outspoken anti-Semite and one-time ally of Edouard
Drumont, author of the notorious 1886 anti-Semitic classic, “La
France juive”. A syndicalist of sorts, de Morès organized the butchers
of Paris. In an 1894 text titled “Le Secret des changes”, he advocated
a fusion of the labor union movement and anti-Semitism under what
he termed “la doctrine du faisceau.” As Jeffrey Mehlman has noted, it
is one of the earliest references to what he - and others such as Zeev
Sternhell - have referred to as a native French fascism.5
Foucauld’s responsiveness to both Jaurès and Morès signaled the
extent to which his growing dissatisfaction with the secular values
represented by science and material innovation clashed with the call
to silence and solitude that drew him to the desert and a spirituality
removed from urban modernity. In this sense, it is not at all
surprising that Poirier’s film received the endorsement of Field
Marshall Hubert Lyautey, the great “pacifier of Morocco” and resident
governor of the protectorate regime there between 1911 and 1925.
L’Appel du silence was fully in line with Lyautey’s desire to reconcile
Islamic and French cultures by bringing Islamic believers into the
Christian fold in what amounted to pacification in the mode of a
new Christian crusade. Poirier’s film biography of Foucauld
embodied the conversion on a personal level from militant
occupation to civilizing presence. Yet I see this conversion as
retaining aspects of bellicose occupation under erasure in the guise of
an evangelical and pacifist mission. It is no wonder that Lyautey
found Poirier’s film timely and important (Hayward, 150).
Another element in Poirier’s conflation of spiritual and nationalist
values comes to the forefront midway through the film after
Foucauld resigns his voluntary commission in the French colonial
forces and prepares his year-long reconnaissance mission in Morocco.
He recounts his projected itinerary to McCarthy, a European who
runs a bookshop in Algiers and who shares Foucauld’s passion for
the desert. The latter advises that Foucauld’s first concern should be
for a disguise without which any stranger in Morocco would
immediately be assassinated or kidnapped for ransom. When
McCarthy lists the possible options as those of Arab or Jew, Foucauld
answers without hesitating, “Je préfère les Arabes.”6 McCarthy points
out that if Foucauld betrays any kind of Western accent or commits
even the most minor infraction of Islamic practices, he will disclose
his cover. McCarthy has another suggestion: “As a Jew, on the
contrary, you can speak a mishmash (un sabir) of many languages.
Besides, Jews are so despised in Morocco that no one will pay
attention to you. This way you could also find shelter in synagogues”
(Poirier, 127). And so the future Christian hermit of Tamanrasset and
45 Journal of Film Preservation / 63 / 2001
El artículo aborda L’Appel du silence
(1936), película de ficción de Léon Poirier, a
la luz del estudio del cine colonial del
período de entre-guerras. Estudia a Poirier
en relación con su uso de los decorados
naturales, su concepción del documental y
los temas históricos usuales en sus películas
mudas de los años 20. El análisis de L’Appel
du silence se concentra sobre los elementos
de exotismo, militarismo y antisemitismo
contenidos en la narración de la vida del
Padre Foucauld, aristócrata francés que
deja su carrera de oficial castrense por
seguir el llamado lleno de misticismo del
desierto de Argelia. Este llamado confronta
al padre Foucauld con los valores
modernizantes del comienzo del Siglo en
Francia.