#Marcel L&039;Herbier

[silentlondon]

Brigitte Helm: the perils of hedonism

There is no face more closely associated with the grandeur of Weimar Cinema than that of Brigitte Helm. Her first appearance on film was in the iconic dual-role of the teacher and the robot in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). As the villainous clone, her frenzied dancing and her kohl-rimmed eyes in winking close-ups incarnated a particularly timely force of evil: the giddy whirl of decadent 1920s…

[laurent-bigot]

CES MESSIEURS DE LA SANTÉ - LAC AUX DAMES - LE BONHEUR

CES MESSIEURS DE LA SANTÉ – LAC AUX DAMES – LE BONHEUR

Parce que la mémoire collective est vite saturée, elle ne peut retenir, d’une époque ou d’un style, que cinq ou six noms. C’est un phénomène profondément injuste, puisqu’il privilégie les signatures que le souvenir a retenu dans sa passoire, mais il répond à un penchant naturel de l’esprit. Le but de cette série de publications sur les films français des années 1930 est justement de faire échec à…

[silentlondon]

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2023: Pordenone Post No 5

Pordenone changes a person. I don’t just mean in the way that my bloodstream is now 80% espresso. It changes your aspirations. My dream now is to live in an apartment designed by Sonia Delaunay, watching Peter Elfelt’s dance films (they are playing before several of the screenings) all day. For loungewear, I would choose the louche shawl-collared robe sported by Jaque Catelain in Le Vertige, and…

[hjfoley]

Vertigo 1926

  The film opens with the overthrow of the Czar during the 1917 Russian revolution. The family of General Count Svirsky (Roger Karl) cower in their home, certain that the mobs of angry peasants will tear them apart. But even in this moment of crisis, Svirsky can find time to murder the young officer who has been having an affair with Countess Svirska (Emmy Lynn). The Countess knows what has…

[hjfoley]

L' Αrgent 1928

L’ Αrgent 1928

The business tycoon Nicolas Saccard is nearly ruined by his rival Gunderman, when he tries to raise capital for his company. To push up the price of his stock, Saccard plans a publicity stunt involving the aviator Jacques Hamelin flying across the Atlantic to Guyana and drilling for oil there, much to the dismay of Hamelin’s wife Line. While Hamelin is away, Saccard tries to seduce Line. Line…

[hjfoley]

El Dorado (1921)

Imdb 7.2 El Dorado is a French silent film directed in 1921 by Marcel L’Herbier. The film was notable for integrating a number of technical innovations into its narrative of a “cinematic melodrama”. Wikipedia In Granada in Spain, Sibilla works as a dancer in a squalid cabaret called El Dorado, struggling to earn enough to care for her sick child. The boy’s father Estoria, a prominent citizen,…

[silentlondon]

L'Inhumaine (Marcel L'Herbier, 1924) Blu-ray review: the high art of cinema

L’Inhumaine (Marcel L’Herbier, 1924) Blu-ray review: the high art of cinema

L’Inhumaine poster designed by Fernand Léger, 1924 In the silent era, films were far more ephemeral than they are today. The fragile nitrate was unspooled for a few shows in each cinema that rented them, and then sent away, re-used, melted, left to crumble and decay or burst, suddenly, into flames. It was a time before retrospectives and archives and museums of the moving image. Now we see films…