L'art du silence
Maurizius Staerkle-Drux, Switzerland, 2022o
Marcel Marceau inspired generations as a mime. Overtaken by the Second World War at a young age, he joined the French Resistance and smuggled Jewish children into Switzerland, teaching them to express themselves using only gestures and facial expressions. This is how he found his unique art form, which he perfected on the world's theater stages from 1945. The documentary rolls up the life of the artist of the century, brings us closer to his dazzling personality and his timeless art, of which today's artists also give great samples in his footsteps
Anyone who thinks that pantomime is an art form of yesterday will be proved wrong by this documentary film about the French virtuoso of the century Marcel Marceau (1923 - 2007). With the help of two daughters (and excellent narrators), a grandson following in his footsteps and more recent representatives of the expressive art of gesture between theatre and dance, Swiss director Staerkle-Drux unravels, how the Jewish butcher's son from Strasbourg became involved in the war at the age of 17, joined the Resistance at 19, where he saved hundreds of Jewish children, and how he built up a world career from the post-war period to the 1990s with an audience of millions and 300 performances a year. Staerkle-Drux and his editor Tanja Stöcklin seamlessly insert fragments of Marceau's work and evidence of his phenomenal body control into the narrative flow - in combination with the strong camera work, another example of the world-class craftsmanship of Swiss documentary filmmaking.
Andreas FurlerGalleryo
