Shohei Imamura’s brutalist depiction of female resilience in his masterwork of 1963, The Insect Woman, echoes the beloved French filmmaker Marcel L’Herbier‘s monumental silent avant-garde narrative L’inhumaine, which translates to The Inhuman Woman, in both name and loosely, in theme. Centering its Frankensteinian tale of high class love, loss and reanimation around a hardened woman of the world whose apathy toward men of all classes guides her way through parties and performances, L’Herbier’s brilliant collaboration with fellow art deco artists like the painter Fernand Léger, the architect Robert Mallet-Stevens, and soon-to-be-filmmakers themselves, designers Alberto Cavalcanti and Claude Autant-Lara, is nothing short of a cinematic masterpiece of modern invention.
Making use of a beautiful and thrilling combination of highly stylized studio sets and on location shoots on the outskirts of Paris, L’inhumaine trains its often matted eye on the famed singer Claire (real life opera star Georgette Leblanc,...
Making use of a beautiful and thrilling combination of highly stylized studio sets and on location shoots on the outskirts of Paris, L’inhumaine trains its often matted eye on the famed singer Claire (real life opera star Georgette Leblanc,...
- 2/23/2016
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Here's something for hardcore cineastes: an incredible restoration of Marcel L'Herbier's avant-garde silent feature, which looks unlike any other movie of its time. The weird story is about a Swedish engineer who wins the hand of famous singer by demonstrating a machine that can revive the dead. The film's designs are by score of famous architects and art notables of the Paris art scene circa 1924. L'Inhumaine Blu-ray Flicker Alley 1924 / Color tints / 1:33 Silent Aperture / min. / Street Date March 1, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Georgette Leblanc, Jacque Catelain, Léonid Walter de Malte, Philippe Hériat, Fred Kellerman, Robert Mallet-Stevens. Cinematography Roche, Georges Specht Art Direction, design, costumes, Claude Autant-Lara, Alberto Cavalcanti, Fernand Léger, Paul Poiret, Original Music Darius Milhaud (originally), Aidje Tafial / Alloy Orchestra Written by Pierre MacOrlan, Marcel L'Herbier, Georgette Leblanc Produced and Directed by Marcel L'Herbier
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Followers of art, architecture, literature and French art movies of the early 1920s...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Followers of art, architecture, literature and French art movies of the early 1920s...
- 2/21/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
'L'Inhumaine': Marcel L'Herbier silent classic stars Jaque Catelain and Georgette Leblanc. Marcel L'Herbier silent 'L'Inhumaine': 'Intense sensory integration of sight' For me, the real jewel in the crown of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's “A Day of Silents,” held on Dec. 5, '15, at the Castro Theatre, was Marcel L'Herbier's The Inhuman Woman / L'Inhumaine (1924). The screening of this mix of desire and seduction with science fiction turned out to be an intense sensory integration of sight and sound. First, the sight. I had not seen any other films directed by L'Herbier (e.g., L'Argent, La Comédie du bonheur), so L'Inhumaine, with its spectacular visuals, came as a big surprise to me. For instance, the film features a stand-out scene of a car racing down a wooded highway from the driver's point of view, while in a party sequence I really liked the effect of the serving staff wearing sardonic face masks,...
- 12/21/2015
- by Danny Fortune
- Alt Film Guide
The San Francisco Silent Film Festival presents "A Day of Silents" tomorrow featuring The Black Pirate with Douglas Fairbanks, a long lost Harry Houdini film (The Grim Game), Marcel L'Herbier's L'Inhumaine, Anna May Wong in Piccadilly and more. Meantime, Ben Rivers will be presenting work in Los Angeles, there's an Antonio Pietrangeli retrospective on in New York, the Notebook reviews an exhibition of installation work by Chantal Akerman in London and, in Gateshead, in the UK, there's an exhibition devoted to Bill Murray. » - David Hudson...
- 12/3/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
The San Francisco Silent Film Festival presents "A Day of Silents" tomorrow featuring The Black Pirate with Douglas Fairbanks, a long lost Harry Houdini film (The Grim Game), Marcel L'Herbier's L'Inhumaine, Anna May Wong in Piccadilly and more. Meantime, Ben Rivers will be presenting work in Los Angeles, there's an Antonio Pietrangeli retrospective on in New York, the Notebook reviews an exhibition of installation work by Chantal Akerman in London and, in Gateshead, in the UK, there's an exhibition devoted to Bill Murray. » - David Hudson...
- 12/3/2015
- Keyframe
The Telluride Film Festival's announced the lineup for its 42nd edition. Among the highlights: Todd Haynes's Carol, Laurie Anderson's Heart of the Dog, Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs, Scott Cooper's Black Mass, Adam Curtis's Bitter Lake, Andrew Haigh's 45 Years, Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa, Tom McCarthy's Spotlight, Lázló Nemes's Son of Saul, Jafar Panahi's Taxi, Sydney Pollack's Amazing Grace as well as revivals such as Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen and Marcel L'Herbier's L'Inhumaine. Guest Director Rachel Kushner's selected, among other titles, two classics by Jean Eustache. » - David Hudson...
- 9/3/2015
- Keyframe
The Telluride Film Festival's announced the lineup for its 42nd edition. Among the highlights: Todd Haynes's Carol, Laurie Anderson's Heart of the Dog, Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs, Scott Cooper's Black Mass, Adam Curtis's Bitter Lake, Andrew Haigh's 45 Years, Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa, Tom McCarthy's Spotlight, Lázló Nemes's Son of Saul, Jafar Panahi's Taxi, Sydney Pollack's Amazing Grace as well as revivals such as Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen and Marcel L'Herbier's L'Inhumaine. Guest Director Rachel Kushner's selected, among other titles, two classics by Jean Eustache. » - David Hudson...
- 9/3/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
Images Of Black Women Film Festival | London Palestine Film Festival | Marcel L'Herbier: Fabricating Dreams
Images Of Black Women Film Festival, London
This festival has a clear mission: to promote women of African descent, in front of and behind the camera. The result is a spread of films from around the globe that you're unlikely to see anywhere else. Family drama Elza is the first female-directed feature from Guadeloupe; Pariah charts the coming out of a Brooklyn lesbian; and Black is a polished Senegalese action-thriller. There are docs on Nigerian women who protest against oil companies by threatening to strip naked, plus various art and children's events.
Various venues, Sat to 11 May
London Palestine Film Festival
History inevitably weighs heavily on Palestinian culture, but this festival regularly finds fresh perspectives on what feels like an age-old issue, both from the past and the present. Director David Koff revisits his once-controversial...
Images Of Black Women Film Festival, London
This festival has a clear mission: to promote women of African descent, in front of and behind the camera. The result is a spread of films from around the globe that you're unlikely to see anywhere else. Family drama Elza is the first female-directed feature from Guadeloupe; Pariah charts the coming out of a Brooklyn lesbian; and Black is a polished Senegalese action-thriller. There are docs on Nigerian women who protest against oil companies by threatening to strip naked, plus various art and children's events.
Various venues, Sat to 11 May
London Palestine Film Festival
History inevitably weighs heavily on Palestinian culture, but this festival regularly finds fresh perspectives on what feels like an age-old issue, both from the past and the present. Director David Koff revisits his once-controversial...
- 5/4/2013
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Concluding a three-part series on cinema's most flamboyant production designers.
Marcel L'Herbier arguably confused great design with great filmmaking, but he did deliver consistently on the former. And some of the time, influenced by and in rivalry with Abel Gance, he produced the latter.
Years before the moderne/streamline/art deco style conquered Hollywood, L'Herbier was featuring minimalist art nouveau decor and Bauhaus architecture in his French productions. In L'inhumaine (The Inhuman Woman, 1924) he has the services of Alberto Cavalcanti as production designer.
Cavalcanti's career took not only design, but experimental sound editing (Night Mail, 1936), and the production, writing and direction of both documentaries and dramas (Dead of Night, Went the Day Well?) in France, Britain and his native Brazil. And everything he did was touched with genius.
In L'inhumaine, his work is supplemented by the art of Fernand Leger (cubist-tubist-mechanist) and the costumes of future director Claude Autant-Lara.
Marcel L'Herbier arguably confused great design with great filmmaking, but he did deliver consistently on the former. And some of the time, influenced by and in rivalry with Abel Gance, he produced the latter.
Years before the moderne/streamline/art deco style conquered Hollywood, L'Herbier was featuring minimalist art nouveau decor and Bauhaus architecture in his French productions. In L'inhumaine (The Inhuman Woman, 1924) he has the services of Alberto Cavalcanti as production designer.
Cavalcanti's career took not only design, but experimental sound editing (Night Mail, 1936), and the production, writing and direction of both documentaries and dramas (Dead of Night, Went the Day Well?) in France, Britain and his native Brazil. And everything he did was touched with genius.
In L'inhumaine, his work is supplemented by the art of Fernand Leger (cubist-tubist-mechanist) and the costumes of future director Claude Autant-Lara.
- 3/14/2013
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Marcel L'Herbier's L'Inhumaine screens tonight as part of the film series running in conjunction with Cinema Across Media: The 1920s, the First International Berkeley Conference on Silent Cinema. "L'Inhumaine reflects its moment as much as the next year's Battleship Potemkin (1925)," writes Dennis Harvey in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. "That it was received more like 1923's Salomé — the infamous Rudolph Valentino-funded Art Nouveau version of Oscar Wilde's play, which for reasons both credible and malicious was branded a 'riot' of homosexual aesthetics — laid in the extreme disconnect between cutting-edge techniques and woozily old-hat theatrical content. There's no denying the film is whopping camp, albeit camp curated (as L'Herbier intended) to complement the hugely influential International Exhibition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts opening in Paris in 1925."...
- 2/24/2011
- MUBI
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