Sacrifice of Honor

Sacrifice of Honor (1935)

Veille d'armes

Before the Battle is the English-language title of this espionage melodrama. The first half of the film takes place aboard a French cruising ship, steaming through dangerous waters during WWI. Among the passengers is heroine Jeanne (Annabella), who was once in love with first-officer D'Artelles (Robert Vidalin) but he now seems strangely preoccupied. It turns out that the ship is on a secret mission, which ultimately dooms the vessel to a Lusitania-like death. After the sinking, Captain De Corlaix (Victor Francen) faces a court-martial, and it is at this point that the film clarifies several baffling plot points. Despite its complexity, the story is fairly believable, with the exception of the grafted-on romantic subplot.

Date of release
1935-01-04
TMDB
8.0 / 10 (1)
Runtime
1h 20m
Genres
War, Drama
Director
Marcel L'Herbier

Casting

Interesting facts

Veille d'armes is a 1935 French drama film directed by Marcel L'Herbier and starring Annabella and Victor Francen.

Production

In early 1935 Marcel L'Herbier was approached by the producer Joseph Lucachevitch who was planning a large-scale film which could match the increasingly dominant films imported to France from America. He proposed an adaptation of the 1917 play La Veille d'armes by Claude Farrère and Lucien Népoty, about the compromised relationship of the commander of a French battleship and his wife.

Lucachevitch had also secured the support of the French government and the cooperation of the Marine Nationale which would enable L'Herbier to give emphasis to a documentary aspect of the film, showing in detail the physical conditions and procedures of life on a naval vessel. To represent the fictional Alma in the story the navy's cruiser Dupleix was made available for location shooting in Toulon.

Although the original play imagined a setting during the First World War, it was updated to 1935 for the film, with a non-specific Mediterranean naval adversary. The screenplay was written by L'Herbier and Charles Spaak.

Location filming began in Toulon in August 1935.

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