Deuville, Trouville, La plage, et le front de mer is an early Gaumont short that contains one of the most memorable images of the whole of the festival, made more so by seeing that red sail on a huge screen in the Piazza Maggiore in Bologna. One of the earliest colour films. It reminds us that cinema is not just about telling stories, evoking meanings or inciting feelings but also simply as a social document of how things once looked….or almost (was that red on the sail painted in manually, was the colour dreamed up to make the image more striking, were the different tints of red on the sails deliberate or accidental? So many questions, so beautiful.
José Arroyo
