VIENNALE: La Belle Nivernaise
Mon, Nov 03
|Wien
Silent Film & Live Music with Elaine Brennan. Part of the extensive Jean Epstein Retrospective presented by Viennale at the Austrian Filmmuseum.
Time & Location
Nov 03, 2025, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Wien, Augustinerstraße 1, 1010 Wien, Austria
About the event
La belle Nivernaise
The Beauty from Nivernais
An abandoned boy named Victor is picked up by barge owner Louveau, who decides to make the young lad part of his family. While Louveau’s grumbling wife isn’t initially enamoured of the idea, their daughter Clara and Victor end up falling in love. But then Victor’s biological father turns up to send the boy to boarding school... One of Jean Epstein’s key films and a central work of cinematic impressionism, with its atmospheric depiction of the barge workers’ milieu and the melancholic river landscapes, the shots of bridges and banks wreathed in mist recall the paintings of Corot and Renoir. LA BELLE NIVERNAISE doesn’t just suggest Epstein’s later, fascinating work at the start of the sound film era, but also anticipates Jean Vigo’s significantly more famous L’ATALANTE (1934). Henri Langlois: “One of the purest, most classical and exquisite works of French silent cinema.…
