La Croisière Jaune, 1933
La Croisière Jaune (The Yellow Cruise), the 90 minute documentary produced in 1933 by French directors Léon Poirier and André Sauvage, is remarkable in many respects: by the story it tells, also by the story of its making, and not less important by the story of its post-release life.
This movie documents the Citroën Kégresse expedition made across Asia in 1931-1932: 30,000 km from Beirut to Beijing on the ancient Silk Road.
The Kégresse boogie was named after his inventor, the French Adolphe Kégresse, who created it in 1910-1912. By that time he was chief engineer at the court of Russian Czar Nicholas II.
After the Russian Revolution Kégresse returned to France and in 1919 he started to work for Citroën. He enhanced there his invention and the result was the Citroën Kégresse half-track: the front gave the steering for the car, the rear gave the driving force. A cross-country car, perfect for the military. It was used by the French army, and not only: US, Danish, and Polish armies used the Citroën Kégresse as well.
André Citroën decided to use the half-track in ambitious expeditions across Africa and Asia. The purpose was to demonstrate in a spectacular way the resilience of Citroën products, but also to open important routes for the wheels, with calculated political and economic gains.
Two expeditions took place in Africa, by the mid 20's. I'd like to talk a little bit about them in a future post. Let's only note that the second African expedition was also filmed: La Croisière Noire (Black Journey), released in 1926.
But let's focus here on the Asian trip.
For all these expeditions in Africa and Asia the lead was Georges-Marie Haardt, the general manager at Citroën, a man of great style and strict discipline. The success of these cruises is largely due to him.
For the Asian expedition Haardt decided to split the team in two: the Pamir group started from Beirut heading to Kashmir, to pass the Himalayas and then the Gobi desert and to make the junction with the China group who was coming from Tien Tsin.
On the Bourzil Pass, Kashmir(http://www.piecescitroensport.citroen.com/CWW/en-US/HISTORY/ADVENTURE/YellowCruise/)
It started in April 1931. Haardt was with the Pamir group. Climbing the Himalayas was beastly hard and at a certain point they had to dismantle the cars and to carry the parts on the footpaths at 5,000 m altitude.
On the Gilget Road in Kashmir(http://www.myartprints.co.uk/a/georges-marie-haardt/onthegilgetroadinkashmir1.html)
Eventually they made it and arrived at Aksu in October. The China group was already there (together with Father Teilhard de Chardin). They, too, had had all kind of difficulties and at a certain moment had become the captives of a local warlord in Urumchi. André Citroën had sent the ransom from Paris.
The reunited team arrived at Beijing in February 1932. Sadly, Georges-Marie Haardt was no more with them. Weakened by the whole adventure he took a ship to return home. On the way back he contracted a double pneumonia and passed away at Hong Kong.
The Pamir group included also some movie specialists who filmed the voyage. Shooting at extremely low temperatures and extremely high altitudes on the Himalayan footpaths was as adventurous as the adventure captured by the camera, but it was this way that they got the day after day chronicle. The movie was released in 1933 and it had the success it deserved. NY Times would write in 1936 (when La Croisière Jaune was screened at the 55th Street Playhouse) that the pictorial record of their odyssey, photographed with technical painstaking and an eye to the unusual as the motor caravan toiled between Beirut and Peking, has been edited into a remarkable travel film by Léon Poirier; one which definitely rescues the cinema travelogue from the ho-hum class.
Later in the fifties La Croisière Jaune was part of the selection for Cinema 16 and here is what Jack Goelman says about it: I remember I fell in love with Yellow Cruise. Amos (Vogel) was not excited about it, but I thought it was quite unique and that up until that time no one had really explored the travel film, except by incorporating it into another kind of film. I loved this film, but there was no information about it, so Amos said, okay, you write the program notes. I went to the library and dug up all sort of things, trying to piece my ideas together. I didn't know how good a film it was.
And La Croisière Jaune continued its carrier: in 2006 ARTE presented a documentary that was based on footage from the Black and Yellow Cruises. But I will leave this for the next post. Now you'll enjoy a few videos with sequences from La Croisière Jaune.
(Jack Goelman)
(Cinéma Français)
Labels: Jack Goelman
posted by Pierre Radulescu at
10:37 AM
2 Comments:
When I was a small child in the mid 1930s I was taken to see a film of a caravan of cars and trucks crossing the vast expanse of
Asia. Even tho I was only five or six at the time the pictures of this adventure stayed in my mind for all these years. I have often wondered who these people were and exactly where they were going and why. Just this week I have been reading the book The Golden Oriole by Raleigh Trevelyan and he tells about seeing the members of the Croisiere Jaune come through Gilgit,in 1932. I am sure it was this group that were in the film I saw. I am thrilled to have discovered this and I hope to find a video made from the film. Any suggestions? June Hagen
asia
By
june hagen, at 2:17 PM
Thank you for the nice comment. I included within the post some very small excerpts from the original film. I have found them on youTube. I could not find the entire film.
What I found was another documentary made in 2006: this one uses intensively the footage from the original film. I included this film in another post on the blog: http://updateslive.blogspot.com/2010/11/la-croisiere-noire-1926.html
Thank you again,
Pierre Radulescu
By
Pierre Radulescu, at 2:30 PM
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