Au pays des ténèbres
R: Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset. B: Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset (scenario), André de Lorde (play). Based on the novel “Germinal” by Emile Zola. K: Lucien Androit. D: Charles Krauss, André Liabel, Paul Guidé, Marcel Vibert, Maryse Dauvray, Cécile Guyon. P: Société Française des Films Éclair. Fr 1911/1912
Print: CINEMATEK
Dutch titles
French subtitles

“Au pays des ténèbres est un film français réalisé par Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset en 1911 et sorti en 1912. Il est adapté du roman ‘Germinal’ d’Émile Zola. Le film raconte l’histoire d’une communauté qui subit une catastrophe minière, probablement inspirée par la catastrophe de Courrières. La plupart des scènes ont été tournées à Charleroi.
Musique: Dion de Syracuse”
CINEMATEK/YouTube

“Au pays des ténèbres (The Land of Darkness, 1912), a drama about miners. This was released in the Netherlands under the German title ‘Glück auf!’, which referred both the greeting exchanged by miners and a play of the same name by Herman Heijermans, which had been staged in the Netherlands in 1910.”
Ivo Blom: Jean Desmet and the Early Dutch Film Trade. Amsterdam University Press, 2003, p. 160

“Both Éclair and Pathé (…) released adaptations of  Zola’s ‘Germinal’ (1885), a work whose ambivalent attitude toward violence as a means of improving industrial labor conditions may have seemed relatively safe for the screen now that the syndicalists and their general strike strategy were on the decline. Jasset’s adaption, Au pays des ténèbres (1912), was part of a series of so-called social dramas that Éclair  began to produce in late 1911. This two-part film updated Zola’s story to the present and condensed it into the rivalry of two miners, Charles Mercourt (Charles Krauss) and Louis Drouard (Marcel Vibert), over an orphan girl, Claire Lenoir (Cécile Guyon), who is torn between them and her own attraction to a young engineer, Roger Joris (Liabel). There is some truth to Sadoul‘s charge that this film reduces the working-class milieu of the northern coal fields to an exotic backdrop for romantic intrigue, ‘in which princes [still] marry shepherdesses.’ But Jasset’s work does have considerable merit, as Sadoul himself acknowledged. For one thing, Éclair’s publicity drew attention to the location shooting in Belgium, which is especially notable in the first reel where the two miners walk with Claire along a country canal and Claire later persuades Charles not to drawn himself. For another, the studio decors for the mine interiors are quite detailed, and the acting of the principals is consistently restrained.”
Richard Abel: The Ciné Goes to Town. French Cinema 1896 – 1914. Updated and Expanded Edition. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1998, p. 344

>>> Capellani’s Germinal

Le mystère du pont Notre Dame
R: Emile Chautard, Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset. B: Emile Chautard (scenario), Pierre Sales (novel). D: Germaine Dermoz, Gilbert Dallev, Henri Gouget, Roger Karl, André Liabel, Renée Sylvaire, Edmond Duquesne. P: Société Française des Films Éclair. Fr 1912
Print: EYE
Dutch titles

Summary
“Germaine Darlot’s father forbids a marriage between her and Claude Duval. Claude wants to commit suicide because of this, but when he wants to jump into the river he drives away a robber who has just robbed a rich gentleman. He drags the rich gentleman to his house, who dies there. Claude and Germaine flee to the colonies, where Claude becomes the mining director. When another woman fancies Claude, Germaine becomes jealous, suspects him of adultery, and reports Claude. He is sentenced to twenty years in prison. Germaine becomes a nurse at the prison where Claude is being held and where the ‘real’ robber also happens to be. He was seriously injured in an explosion and on his deathbed he confesses to Germaine the true story. Claude is restored to honor, and their marriage receives the blessing of Germaine’s father.”
EYE/YouTube

>>> Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset (1),  Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset (2), Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset (3)

>>> Emile Chautard

TRAUM UND EXZESS, S. 305