Summary
A young scientist, Einar Norsen, has fallen in love with the world famous singer Claire
Lescot. She of course rejects his mad protestations of love, and, heart-broken,
Einar resolves to kill himself. The scientist then decides to use his discovery
of resurrecting the dead to win the object of his desire…
Review
With contributions from the artist Fernand Léger, the architect Rob Mallet-Stevens,
the couturier Paul Poiret and the Swedish ballets of Rolf de Maré, L’Inhumaine
is not such much a film drama but more a striking celebration of mid 1920s art, in
its various forms. Most impressive are the art-Deco sets, which seem to be
a feature of Marcel L’Herbier’s films (most famously in his 1929 masterpiece L’Argent
).
The film illustrates L’Herbier’s impulse to reconcile the avant-garde, with its emphasis
on artistic form and style, with the popularist, although perhaps less successfully than
some of his other works. The contrived fantasy plot robs the film of any sense of
realism and perhaps too much emphasis is given to its visual side, putting artistic form
before characterisation and narrative coherence. Nevertheless, the film is
undoubtedly a work of art which conveys the unbridled excesses of the 1920s more vividly
than most films from this period.
© James Travers 2002
|
