L'inhumaine

France

1924

135 Min

Black and White

1.33:1

Silent

Currently 4.1/5 Stars.
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SCR Pierre Dumarchais, Georgette Leblanc, Marcel L'Herbier

CAST Jaque Catelain, Léonid Walter de Malte, Philippe Hériat, Fred Kellerman, Georgette Leblanc

Cannes (Out of Competition), Berlinale (Retrospective)

Synopsis

It is hard for film buffs today to see silent cinema as a modern art. What strikes us nowadays is the immense debt that DW Griffith owes to Victorian fiction, that FW Murnau owes to Romantic painting, that Fritz Lang (and this is true even in Metropolis) owes to ancient German myth. How strange and wonderful then, to see a silent film that owes no debt to anything or anybody, that sums up the notion of ‘modernity’ in a way no work of art had done before – and precious few have done ever since. Eighty years on from its catastrophic release, Marcel L’Herbier’s 1924 masterpiece L’Inhumaine remains the first, perhaps the only, totally modern film.

Most famous, of course, are the sets. A Cubist and Art Deco fantasy world designed by the artist Fernand Leger. Whether it’s the salon of seductive chanteuse Claire Lescot (Georgette Leblanc) – a dining table afloat on an indoor pool, servants hidden by perpetually smiling masks -or the laboratory of visionary inventor Einar Norsen (Jacque Catelain) -vast and potentially lethal electronic gadgets, assistants in black leather fetish gear – we have entered a world where the past might never have existed, where the future can only be a continuation of now.

Just as striking, though, is L’Inhumaine’s ‘emotional modernism’. While so much silent film acting makes us laugh at its melodramatic excess, Claire and her circle of admirers underplay their emotions as coolly as the high-fashion zombies in Last Year at Marienbad by Alain Resnais. (A fervent admirer of L’Herbier, Resnais has acknowledged the influence of L’Inhumaine on his own work, though he insists that “its ambition is more impressive than its achievement.”) Leblanc and Catelain make a gorgeously impassive pair of lovers. Hieratic icons for an age whose one true god is the Image. –IMDb

Director

Marcel L'Herbier

Marcel L’Herbier is unquestionably one of the most important figures in the history of French cinema. His contribution is not restricted to the films he directed, many of which are widely recognised as genuine masterpieces. He also worked actively to promote cinema as an art form in its own right, helping to ensure that France maintained its position of eminence in a medium which was becoming increasingly dominated by the Americans. Moreover, his films and his writings have inspired successive generations of filmmakers, many of whom went on to become just as influential in French cinema.

L’Herbier was born in Paris is 1888. Having studied law at the Sorbonne, he was drawn to literature (particularly the works of Oscar Wilde and Nietzsche) and he decided to pursue a career as a writer. He published his first novel, “In the Garden of Secret Games”, in 1914. He wrote a stage play “L’Enfantement du mort, miracle en pourpre, noir et or”, an anti-war piece which was not performed until… read more

Marcel L’Herbier is unquestionably one of the most important figures in the history of French cinema. His contribution is not restricted to the films he directed, many of which are widely recognised as genuine masterpieces. He also worked actively to promote cinema as an art form in its own right, helping to ensure that France maintained its position of eminence in a medium which was becoming increasingly dominated by the Americans. Moreover, his films and his writings have inspired successive generations of filmmakers, many of whom went on to become just as influential in French cinema.

L’Herbier was born in Paris is 1888. Having studied law at the Sorbonne, he was drawn to literature (particularly the works of Oscar Wilde and Nietzsche) and he decided to pursue a career as a writer. He published his first novel, “In the Garden of Secret Games”, in 1914. He wrote a stage play “L’Enfantement du mort, miracle en pourpre, noir et or”, an anti-war piece which was not performed until 1919. He discovered cinema whilst serving in the army during the later years of the First World War, when he worked in the film department. He began making his first film, Phantasmes, in 1918, but it was never completed.

After the war, L’Herbier worked for a time with the recently formed Gaumont film company, before founding his own film production company, Cinégraphic, in 1922. Here, he began making his own films, whilst working alongside some other promising young directors, such as Jean Dréville, Claude Autant-Lara and Alberto Cavalcanti.

L’Herbier’s early film triumphs were the L’Homme du large (1920), El Dorado (1921), L’Inhumaine (1924), each a masterwork of visual poetry. His finest work was L’Argent (1929), a monumental work, based on Zola’s novel, which condemned the world of high finance. With L’Enfant de l’amour (1930), L’Herbier demonstrated his mastery of the innovation of sound cinema, despite the primitive technology. He continued making films into the 1950s, although his work would rarely ever achieve the popularity or quality of his early, silent films.

During his film-making career, L’Herbier actively promoted the rights of the filmmaker and sought to protect his country’s film legacy. In 1937, he co-founded the technician’s union, the CGT, and during the Occupation, he presided over the Cinémathèque française. In 1943, he created the first film school in France, the IDHEC, whose alumni include Alain Resnais, Louis Malle, Claude Sautet, and many other pivotal figures in French cinema. In the 1950s, as his filmmaking career declined, he influenced the direction of the comparatively new medium of television, ensuring that classic films were aired regularly. In 1978, Marcel L’Herbier published his memoirs, “La Tête qui tourne”, the final chapter in a life devoted to French cinema. In 1979, he died in Paris. —Films de France

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