“This is my offering; I have given up entirely my life as a woman. I shall be stronger than murderous space.” (“C’est mon offrande, j’ai renoncé à toute ma vie de femme. Je serai plus forte que l’espace assassin.”) – Canudo

In 1920, Ricciotto Canudo (1877-1923), the man who first used the expression “the seventh art” to describe cinema, launched a serialization of his short novel L’Autre Aile in the December pages of Le Figaro, subsequently published in book form by Eugène Fasquelle in 1922. The story forms part of what the author called “les romans des foules nouvelles” (“novels of the new crowds”), using a sparse, summary writing style unburdened by descriptive passages, and focused on “modern” life, its technology, speed, and new modes of transportation. In 1923 the author-poet went back to his initial text and turned it into a “roman visuel,” a sort of cine-novel, complemented with photos from the film, which appeared in book form the following year. This was no standard reissue divided into chapters, but rather a new construction made up of short paragraphs, each describing a shot, with black-bordered inserts representing intertitles. While Henri Andréani’s 1924 film (shot in 1923) is faithful to the dry ellipses of the initial novel, Canudo seems to invent a film with an aesthetic that was even more flamboyant (spectacular double exposures) and melodramatic (the heroine is described in multiple shots wringing her hands in pain).
Thanks to this film, Canudo’s name endured while Andréani’s fell into oblivion; his career failed to survive the transition to sound. Before the Great War he had specialized in historical and religious films (Le Jugement de Salomon, 1910; Les Enfants d’Edouard, 1914), achieving a degree of success and directing a series under the banner “Le Film Biblique” for Pathé Frères. He was also one of the (numerous) assistants of Abel Gance during the shooting of Napoléon. For L’Autre Aile, he brought together popular actors who could be seen playing against type, including the Opéra-Comique singer Marthe Ferrare, in her third film, and Mary Harald, whose features lent themselves to every kind of Orientalizing role (she remains best known as the eponymous heroine of Feuillade’s Tih-Minh), here playing the rather minor role of the jealous woman. Of the male leads, Jean Murat, used to playing disagreeable characters, is the brilliant young flyer, and Charles Vanel is the aviator unhappy in love and manipulated by his mistress. René Clair reunited these last two actors in another aviation film two years later, La Proie du vent, produced by Albatros.
Canudo’s novel and the film both echo the fascination exerted by pioneering aviatrixes such as Raymonde de Laroche (whose beautiful attire recalls the dresses created for the film by Paul Poiret), Marie Marvingt, and Adrienne Bolland, who flew across the English Channel in 1920 . Yet beyond the depiction of a strong and independent female character, Canudo paints a portrait of a society in decay, four years after the end of the war, in which the aviation heroes of yesteryear are forced to survive as machines to be exploited, and where memories of shared suffering are submerged by the interests of capitalism – and sometimes love. Even if Andréani chose not to present a direct evocation of this darker side, he selected actors such as Jean Murat, himself an aviator during the war, and the twice-wounded Charles Vanel, men who embodied the experience of “the war to end all wars”. Flashbacks of their wartime past only become more pregnant with meaning.
L’Autre Aile came out just after Canudo’s death in November 1923, and made the cover of Ciné-Miroir, but the film was criticized by Cinémagazine for lacking originality and under-using its actors. However, it remains striking for its numerous aerial scenes, extensive location shooting at Le Bourget airport, and the lavish wardrobe designed by Paul Poiret, in addition to a special attention to colour, and art intertitles featuring aerial motifs (airplanes, motors, etc.). The transformation of the heroine from a tearfully elegant woman to a person of action, able to cope on her own, lends the film an entirely individual energy.
The film was restored in 2016 by the Cinémathèque française from the original nitrate negative in its collections. Colour was reintroduced via the Desmet process, thanks to the indications of tinting notes on the negative and tinted positive. The narrative was reconstructed with the help of the 1924 cine-novel housed at the Cinémathèque française.

Wafa Ghermani

Poiret’s fashions for L’Autre Aile
It is scarcely remembered that the famous French couturier Paul Poiret (1879-1944), a passionate advocate of modernism, worked on a number of films between 1923 and 1925, at a time when his fashion house was facing serious financial problems. (In 1924 it was acquired by a consortium headed by Georges Aubert, grouping together several Parisian haute couture establishments prior to the Wall Street Crash, which led to their total demise.)
Accustomed to creating dresses for the theatre and grand social balls, and décor and accessories (produced by his Atelier Martine, a school and workshop named after his granddaughter), Poiret tried his luck in America in 1922, producing spectacular costumes for the Victor Herbert musical comedy Orange Blossoms, and one year later for Alan Crosland’s film The Enemies of Women (Cosmopolitan Productions), starring Alma Rubens). In 1923-1924 Poiret was engaged on three celebrated French films, La Garçonne by Armand du Plessy (censored), Marcel L’Herbier’s L’Inhumaine, and Le Fantôme du Moulin Rouge by René Clair, providing costumes, part of the set decoration, and rugs and furniture from his Atelier Martine. Finally, in 1925, he worked on Carmine Gallone’s La cavalcata ardente and Jean Epstein’s Le Double amour.
Henri Andréani’s L’Autre Aile has invariably been overlooked, but the “roman visuel” (ciné-novel), illustrated with stills from the film, was published by Fasquelle in 1924 (René Clair’s Le Fantôme du Moulin Rouge also appeared in “ciné-novel” form, in 1925). Star Marthe Ferrare’s dresses exemplify the Oriental style of Poiret’s 1922-1923 collections, especially in the scene set in Hélène’s Chinese drawing-room, in which she wears a form-fitting bodice topped by a square piece of satin ending in a high-necked collar, finely pleated skirt, and long, wide chiffon sleeves trimmed with bands of black paillettes. Other Poiret creations of 1922-23 inspired the dress she wears at the air show at the beginning of the film, which has a chiffon overlay decorated with a gold-thread weave and a long, full skirt with scalloped flounces; as well as the evening dress in silk floral brocade with an asymmetrical draped hem worn in the airport lounge on the eve of her maiden solo flight – which can be compared with the fashion plate of the Poiret evening gown “Le Pouf”, in La Gazette du Bon Ton, no. 7, 1924, plate 38, by A. E. Marty.
In the film, Poiret references his own style, and other dresses can also be attributed to him: the richly patterned coat worn by Mary Harald as Diane de Kenn at the airfield, as well as her Oriental dress; and especially the first dress worn by Claude France as the Countess d’Aibet, sporting a chapeau marquise (tricorne hat), and a print dress very similar to one in another fashion plate by A. E. Marty illustrating a dress by Poiret, entitled La Biche apprivoisée (The Tame Deer), in La Gazette du Bon Ton, no. 4, 1922, plate 32.
Despite Poiret’s distaste for sports fashions, the very nature of the heroine’s role in this film obliged him to espouse it, and he designed a fringed suede jacket for the aviatrix similar to one he had created in the summer of 1922, with a Western idiom he was fond of. He must also have remembered the character Hélène Tarnière in 1925, when his milliner Madeleine Panizon created a suede jersey hood for motoring or flying which won the Prix d’honneur at the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Poiret kept his historicizing approach in reserve for the film’s final sentimental scenes, when Hélène wears a Louis XIII-inspired dress with voluminous sleeves trimmed with ruffles, and frilled cuffs.

Françoise Tétart-Vittu