Ernst Moerman

Ernst Moerman is a writer and Belgian scenario writer born in 1897 and deceased in 1944.

Since happiness does not exist, let us try to be happy without him. (Ernst Moerman)

It is especially known to have turned in 1937 one of the tops of the Belgian cinema: the Surrealist “Mr Fantômas”, whose interprête the male main thing is Jean-Michel Smet, father of Johnny Hallyday.

A script entitled “Fantômas 1937” (surrealist film), the month of April 1937 is preserved by the Royal Cinémathèque of Belgium. This document comprises 9 layers and lays down 98 plans and 35 subtitles. Cutting envisaged differs slightly from the final assembly.

Ernst Moerman wrote in the special issue of the September 29th 1937 of the review “the Red and the Black”: many years ago already that the poem and, in general, the written thing ceased being the messengers listened of those which poetry can reach, refresh, release and who, more than it is believed, await it. The beings are not tired of the wonders and the marvellous one. More than ever perhaps, to these heavy hours where the trouble is done heavier, they aspire to flee a made reality of their room and their daily concern, stories cut with common measurement, tables which imitate well, of the spectacles played by their similar in a decoration hardly more luxurious. Too many people still confuse poetry and the worms, the poetry and a collection of poems. To note that it will not come any more to the idea of anybody to enter in a bookseller to buy a volume of worms there and to conclude from it that poetry interests only one negligible minority, is an error. It would be wiser to wonder whether, presented in another form, it would not succeed in better including in the heart of any man the place than, secretly, it always kept to him. Consequently, giving up the written thing, ink and the Linotype machines, I conceived the intention serving poetry by ensuring an audience broader to him than that which the book reaches, to return it visible and to impose it by the image. The eyes which see a film are not the same ones as those which traverse a poem abstractedly; they more attentive, are waked up, more sensitive. An abyss exists between a poem of Salvator Dali and a painting of Salvator Dali; when it paints, Dali is right always. The virtue of the image imposes the presence of poetry immediately; she convinces the tepid ones, rejoins the partisans, she attracts the curious ones: everyone wants to see, and here often new followers. There is, for poetry. predestined subjects: it will be able to pose all its traps there, there to register all its magic spells, to exert all its fascinations; among the subjects in which the myths of our childhood take part, the Redskins, the trappers, corsairs. Fantômas is almost miraculous. I preserved reading of 35 volumes of Fantômas, this obsessing and diffuse memory which one sometimes keeps of a dream, of an epopee more unreal than real, of a world where nothing is impossible, where the miracle is the shortest way of our concern to the mystery, of this world where all denies reality, probability, gravity, balance, and in which take refuge those to which so many laws gives nausea. By composing the scenario of " Mr. Fantômas" it is with this recreated world that I tried to establish a communication; it reigns there a supernatural reality where each object, become visible, found its true light, its vital lighting, while each object which surrounds it, confronted suddenly with him, stripped cover that centuries of practices deposited on him, cease to be invisible to reveal us his ignored beauty. It must be the same about it for all: the human gestures will cease obeying the mobiles simpletons which divide the beings in goods and bad; thus, I made cheap this probability connect whose concern is posted in any work, and even at worst the expédients. One should not confuse poetry and lie. To ensure the characters the same naturalness as that where the objects excel which surround them and so that never the film does not lose this oneiric character which owes all dépersonnaliser, we attempted to repress in the actors individual virtuosity, any inclination of play. In the same way, we banished catch of sights any photographic or technical skill. Having pecuniary means more than modest, we made film in the open air, in decorations reduced to the strict minimum and in dumb version. All this work was carried out with the collaboration and under the artistic director of E. Van Tonderen whose workshops made the decorations and the costumes. The catches of sights were ensured by Roger Van Peperstraet, the control by Jean Michel. Work will be enriched by an original partition of Robert Ledent who will direct the orchestra personally. With this meeting of October 12th we invite all those which kept in them the nostalgia of silent film. Abundant in images and put entire, without restriction nor concession of any kind, with the service of poetry.

See too

External bond

Its card on IMDb

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