Spanish collectors card by Chocolate Pi, Barcelona, no. 1 of 6 cards. Photo: SCAGL / Pathé Frères. Louis Azéma in Les Alpes rouges (Maurice Challiot, 1917).
Spanish collectors card by Chocolate Pi, Barcelona, no. 2 of 6 cards. Photo: SCAGL / Pathé Frères. Louis Azéma in Les Alpes rouges (Maurice Challiot, 1917).
Spanish collectors card by Chocolate Pi, Barcelona, no. 3 of 6 cards. Photo: SCAGL / Pathé Frères. Louis Azéma in Les Alpes rouges (Maurice Challiot, 1917).
The great lady and the smuggler
The Marquise de Valbrun is proud of her nobility dating back to the Crusades. She lives with her brother, the Count of Haute-Luce, in a wild gorge in the Alps, at the Château de Haute-Luce. The Marquise spends her leisure time poring over the family scrolls, while her brother divides his time between hunting and excursions in the surrounding area.
But an intruder slips into the seigneurial residence. Marthe Leclerc, a commoner once loved by the Count, recommends their daughter, little Violette, to him on her deathbed, and has her brought to him by a servant. The Count willingly makes room in his heart and home for the child. This is not the case with the marquise, who hates the little girl and has only one desire: to take her away.
A smuggler who has been caught on the Count's land serves her purpose. One evening, the latter, guided by the great lady, kidnaps Violette. Violette, entrusted to the care of a brave peasant woman, grows up next to the son of her adoptive mother. A beautiful love story begins between the two young people. And after some dark adventures in which Cavalotti the smuggler plays a tragic role, Violette is reunited with her father and marries the man she loves.
The leads in Les Alpes rouges (1917) were played by Mlle Mary Margay or Margoy and M. Azéma, both from the Parisian Opéra-Comique. Intended is probably the French singer and painter Louis Azéma (1876-1963), who somewhere between 1902 and 1935 was engaged for a long time by the Opéra-Comique. It seems that Les Alpes rouges (1917) was his only film.
The film magazine Hebdo-Film was not particularly impressed by the script and the acting but loved the location shooting in the French Alps. It is not exactly clear which part Azéma and Margay played, but he may have been the smuggler Cavalotti, who kidnaps little Violette.
Spanish collectors card by Chocolate Pi, Barcelona, no. 4 of 6 cards. Photo: SCAGL / Pathé Frères. Louis Azéma in Les Alpes rouges (Maurice Challiot, 1917).
Spanish collectors card by Chocolate Pi, Barcelona, no. 6 of 6 cards. Photo: SCAGL / Pathé Frères. Louis Azéma in Les Alpes rouges (Maurice Challiot, 1917).
Sources: Gallica (French), Fondation Seydoux-Pathé (French), Cine-Ressources (French), and IMDb.
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