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Sets of the Imagination: Lazare Meerson, Set Design and Performance in Knight Without Armour (1937)

2005; Edinburgh University Press; Volume: 2; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3366/jbctv.2005.2.1.18

1755-1714

Sarah Street,

Art History and Market Analysis

Set design is rarely considered as a subject in its own right and so far has received only limited academic analysis (Barsacq 1970; Affron and Affron 1995; Tashiro 1998 and Barnwell 2004). Lazare Meerson (18971938), one of the most celebrated set designers to be associated with French poetic realism, has however had his work referenced as a key instigator of that influential style on films including Sous les toits de Paris (1930), Le Million (1931) and Quatorze juillet (1932). (Andrew 1995: 179). Poetic realist designs have been interpreted as significant in their consistency in playing a narrative role and as key elements in the establishment of place, particularly as evocative creations of a cinematic conception of ‘Paris’. As Ginette Vincendeau has noted: ‘Poetic realism proposes a duality between the everyday and the lyrical/emotional, the poetry arising precisely from the everyday, from a world created – beyond individual directors – by an exceptional ensemble of craftsmen and artists’ (Vincendeau 1995: 336). Also, in its European aesthetic particularity, this style has been admired for its challenge to Hollywood. While Meerson was a key figure in the development of the distinctive poetic realist aesthetic during the late 1920s to the mid-1930s, far less is known about the work he completed in Britain, 1936-38, where he designed eight films: As You Like It (1936), Fire Over England, Knight Without Armour, The Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel (all 1937), South Riding, The Divorce of Lady X, Break the News, and The Citadel (all 1938), although Alfred Junge had to complete the designs for The Citadel because of Meerson’s untimely death from meningitis. Using Knight Without Armour as a case-study, this article will explore some of the issues raised by Meerson’s period in Britain and the implications this has for the study of set design more generally.