Down to Earth: André Malraux’s Political Itinerary
257
Italian Renaissance art, as Marcel Oms argues.
15 As in the novel, the
film evokes the peasants’ intimate relationship with the world around
them. This fusion of the people with their inhospitable environment is
suggested in one of the final shots of the film. Here the villagers seem
to barely emerge from the rock of their buildings, which themselves
seem carved out of the face of the mountainside, suggesting both the
villagers’ struggle with the earth, but also their own rock-like permanence. The film closes on a shot of the people forming a Greek Z in
the mountainside, suggesting, Oms argues, immortality.
16 Again, we
sense the people emerging from the mountainside, but sharing with it
something of its permanence, a permanence that is suggested in the
inexorable movement of the cortege which, as Malraux wrote in his
own directions, “s’étend à perte de vue”.
17
In both L’Espoir and Sierra de Teruel, the descent from the
mountain following the return to earth suggests a form of human permanence through the notion of rhythm, a rhythm that is that of the funeral cortege, but which suggests the circle of life and death. The
apple tree with its ring of rotting apples, which Magnin notices on his
ascent of the mountain in L’Espoir, therefore becomes during the descent a metaphor for human existence; the death of one of Magnin’s
aviators is therefore no longer an individual tragedy, but integrated
into a wider notion of human community, a community that travels
through time, but which draws its strength to continue through its
struggle with an inhospitable world it now rivals. As Raymond states:
“In the descent from the mountainside, the amoral force of nature is
countered by the vigour of the spirit which animates the peasants and
fliers, and which establishes the parameters of the real space to be occupied by man [sic] in the world […]”.
18
___________________________
15 For Marcel Oms, therefore, the film’s greatest achievement is its “fusion de deux
esthétiques, la tradition chrétienne et l’art des visages et des foules mis au point en
URSS par Eisenstein et Dovjenko”, La guerre d’Espagne au cinéma (Paris: Éditions
du Cerf, 1986), p. 130.
16 Oms, La guerre d’Espagne au cinéma, p. 131.
17 André Malraux, Espoir: Sierra de Teruel: scénario du film (Paris: Folio, 1997), p.
165.
18 This space, Raymond goes on to state, is “not a space captured in an allencompassing ideological or proprietorial net, but a sense of place rooted in man [sic];
his compassion, moral autonomy and fraternity”. André Malraux: Politics and the
Temptation of Myth, p. 129.
257
Italian Renaissance art, as Marcel Oms argues.
15 As in the novel, the
film evokes the peasants’ intimate relationship with the world around
them. This fusion of the people with their inhospitable environment is
suggested in one of the final shots of the film. Here the villagers seem
to barely emerge from the rock of their buildings, which themselves
seem carved out of the face of the mountainside, suggesting both the
villagers’ struggle with the earth, but also their own rock-like permanence. The film closes on a shot of the people forming a Greek Z in
the mountainside, suggesting, Oms argues, immortality.
16 Again, we
sense the people emerging from the mountainside, but sharing with it
something of its permanence, a permanence that is suggested in the
inexorable movement of the cortege which, as Malraux wrote in his
own directions, “s’étend à perte de vue”.
17
In both L’Espoir and Sierra de Teruel, the descent from the
mountain following the return to earth suggests a form of human permanence through the notion of rhythm, a rhythm that is that of the funeral cortege, but which suggests the circle of life and death. The
apple tree with its ring of rotting apples, which Magnin notices on his
ascent of the mountain in L’Espoir, therefore becomes during the descent a metaphor for human existence; the death of one of Magnin’s
aviators is therefore no longer an individual tragedy, but integrated
into a wider notion of human community, a community that travels
through time, but which draws its strength to continue through its
struggle with an inhospitable world it now rivals. As Raymond states:
“In the descent from the mountainside, the amoral force of nature is
countered by the vigour of the spirit which animates the peasants and
fliers, and which establishes the parameters of the real space to be occupied by man [sic] in the world […]”.
18
___________________________
15 For Marcel Oms, therefore, the film’s greatest achievement is its “fusion de deux
esthétiques, la tradition chrétienne et l’art des visages et des foules mis au point en
URSS par Eisenstein et Dovjenko”, La guerre d’Espagne au cinéma (Paris: Éditions
du Cerf, 1986), p. 130.
16 Oms, La guerre d’Espagne au cinéma, p. 131.
17 André Malraux, Espoir: Sierra de Teruel: scénario du film (Paris: Folio, 1997), p.
165.
18 This space, Raymond goes on to state, is “not a space captured in an allencompassing ideological or proprietorial net, but a sense of place rooted in man [sic];
his compassion, moral autonomy and fraternity”. André Malraux: Politics and the
Temptation of Myth, p. 129.