This is a really sad film, this french movie once again, had a very bold storyline, the dad falling in love with his daughter who he marries off to a man who blackmails him once he learns this. We’re seeing raw humanity reflected in the storylines of the time. Men raped, and blackmailed, and killed, and getting into fights. You see the conditions of still pre-industrial society, but that being put onto film as the times change.
The shots are out in nature, vast nature, you can see the forests as they used to be, really a glimpse at the time. The camerawork and lighting too are pushing the medium away from the flat stagey, two dimensional theater-like aesthetic that film started out with great train robbery and A trip to the moon and more and more into cinematic convent and look as we know it, i.e. the use of close ups, shallow depth of field and medium shots.