Genevieve of Brabant

Siegroy sets out for war, leaving Genevieve and their infant son. Almost immediately the steward, Golo, makes advances. She rejects him and he accuses her of unfaithfulness and has her and her son driven into the forest. There they are succored by a roe. Seven years later, Siegroy returns from the war and goes hunting. He pursues the roe, finds his wife and his son, restores her to her rightful place and Golo is hanged to the joy of the cast.

It's based on a popular fable; Proust wrote about it and it was turned into a comic opera by Offenbach.

The film is a handsomely mounted one for the era, in twelve handsomely toned scenes. The acting, as was typical of the era, was very stagy. Like many a movie of the era, it was intended for an audience familiar with the story. If you wish to look at it, there is a handsome print on the Cinematek Films site on Youtube.

This film from 1907 is quite crude but it provides a nice depiction of the tale from French folklore about infidelity and traitorous betrayal of a servant against his lord. The film is divided into twelve short scenes which provide key depictions of the events of the story beginning with Siffroy leaving for the Seven Years War and ending with him hanging Golo and with Genevieve dying peacefully afterwards. A poetic glimpse of her grave at the very end shows the deer which had nourished her in hiding for seven years is paying tribute at her grave. This is a very short film and the acting skills are the creaky pantomime you come to expect of the stuff from this era. This is interesting as a curio. Seeing as it debuted in 1907, one wonders if Marcel Proust (whom most nowadays are aware of this tale only for his inclusion of the gas lantern recreation the narrator watches in the overture of ISOLT) ever saw this film. Either way, it is a fun watch to get one in the mind of the narrator as the gas lantern shadow play the grand-aunt gives in the book though equally crude and of the same era imbibes the child with a sense of awe and moral consternation showing that to a child, even something as crude as a folk play can have serious influence which most take for granted.