Mothers of France (1917) review

World War I is underway in France and able-bodied men, including schoolmaster Guinot (Gabriel Signoret), are sent to fight in the trenches, leaving Jeanne d'Urbex (Sarah Bernhardt) to volunteer as a nurse in Reims - after she hears her son (Jean Angelo) is seriously injured she goes looking for him ... and then her husband (Georges Deneubourg) is killed as well.  It is clearly propaganda (and hardly original at that) and feels like a steady stream of sadness ... although a little sympathy should be given because it was filmed when the conflict was still going on, and the Allied Powers were up against it.  But the real reason to see it is that it's a rare film appearance by Ms. Bernhardt, one of the greatest stage actresses of all time: she may have been in her early seventies, but she can weep with the best of them.  Also, as with so many other silent pictures, I couldn't stand the stock score, so instead I viewed this while listening to Hania Rani's 2019 album Esja and then her 2023 release On Giacometti.