This article is all about how an Invisible Bordeaux blog post about the influential silent movie star Max Linder became a song, and has just been adapted into a powerful short-form movie. Who would have thought it?
Way back in 2012, the Invisible Bordeaux blog teamed up with Adam Roberts over at Invisible Paris to produce a joint item about Max Linder. In short, Max Linder, who was born Gabriel Leuvielle in Saint-Loubès slightly to the north of Bordeaux, was a prolific comedy film-maker who achieved tremendous fame far and wide in the early years of the 20th century, heavily influencing later greats including Charlie Chaplin.
At the time of their death, Max and Ninette's daughter Maud was not even two years old. She was subsequently looked after by her maternal grandparents and Max Linder's very existence was almost airbrushed out of history, so much so that she initially grew up unaware of who her illustrious father was.
When she found out, she sought to reconstruct his legacy piece by piece, compiling, documenting and restoring films (including reels that were reportedly found in the garden of the family residence, having been buried there by Max's brother). This resulted in Max Linder's work regaining its rightful place over the years, with Maud Linder producing books, documentaries and collectible box sets, and today much of what she uncovered is freely available on Youtube. Her labour of love lasted a lifetime, until her death aged 93 in 2017.
All of the above formed the unusual basis of a song written, recorded and released by my band Slowrush in 2021: 'Secret Garden'. Fast-forward to 2025 and we were approached by a group of students at the ESD Bordeaux, École Supérieure du Digital (including my elder son, Nathan Pike), who for an end-of-year project used the song as the basis for a moving short-form film that was tightly scripted over a fortnight ahead of being shot and edited in under a week.
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| The team behind the video presenting it to fellow ESD students and teaching staff. |
The video closely follows the structure of the song, focusing first on Maud Linder (played by Anouchka Csernakova) literally unearthing evidence of Max Linder's past, and then striving to sort through her father's output. The action then shifts back to 1925 and a visibly disturbed Max Linder (Rémy Dhelias) sharing a last dance with Ninette Peters (Léa Ray) ahead of their untimely death. The video closes with a long timelapse sequence that shows Maud sharing her findings with an impromptu gathering of acquaintances of all generations, keen to find out more about the overlooked Girondin movie star during an open-air viewing of the Max Linder canon. All the while, the backing music builds up into a crescendo, adding extra layers of tension until a lonesome Maud switches off the film projector.
The end-product is an absolute delight to watch and everyone involved is very proud of playing a small part in raising awareness of what an incredible artist Max Linder was, and of the time, effort and energy that daughter Maud put into sharing his work with the world. Big thanks to the talented and inspiring actors Anouchka Csernakova, Rémy Dhelias, and Léa Ray, to the extras and musicians who were part of the one-off open-air movie theatre scene, and to everyone in the ESD team who translated a Slowrush song into the short feature... which can be viewed below. Enjoy!
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