Marcel L'Herbier
1888 - 1979In 1921, only three years after his first film, Marcel L'Herbier was voted by readers of a French film magazine as the best French director. In the following year, the critic Léon Moussinac marked him as one of the filmmakers whose work was most important for the future of cinema. In this period, L'Herbier was linked with filmmakers such as Abel Gance, Germaine Dulac and Louis Delluc as part of a "first avant-garde" (Impressionism) in French cinema, the first generation to think spontaneously in animated images.
La Femme d'une nuit
Marcel L'Herbier
Francesca Bertini, Jean Murat
A lieutenant of the French navy, ready to kill himself in despair, renounced his project after spending a night with a beautiful stranger. He ends up finding her, the heiress princess Lystrie. The German version (Königin einer Nacht) was an operetta, the Italian version (La donna di una notte) was a comedy, while the French version (La Femme d'une nuit) was a dramatic film.
One night woman
L'Inhumaine
Marcel L'Herbier
Jaque Catelain, Léonid Walter de Malte
A famous singer Claire Lescot, who lives on the outskirts of Paris, is courted by many men, including a maharajah, Djorah de Nopur, and a young Swedish scientist, Einar Norsen. At her lavish parties she enjoys their amorous attentions but she remains emotionally aloof and heartlessly taunts them. When she is told that Norsen has killed himself because of her, she shows no feelings. At her next concert she is booed by an audience outraged at her coldness. She visits the vault in which Norsen's body lies, and as she admits her feelings for him she discovers that he is alive; his death was feigned. Djorah is jealous of their new relationship and causes Claire to be bitten by a poisonous snake. Her body is brought to Norsen's laboratory, where he, by means of his scientific inventions, restores Claire to life.
L'Inhumaine
El Dorado
Marcel L'Herbier
Ève Francis, Jaque Catelain
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 Estiria, a prominent citizen, refuses them both help and recognition, fearful of jeopardising the engagement of his adult daughter Iliana to a wealthy nobleman. Iliana however slips away from her engagement party to meet her real lover Hedwick, a Swedish painter. Sibilla, in desperation after a further rejection by Estiria, sees an opportunity to blackmail him by locking the lovers overnight in their meeting-place in the Alhambra.
El Dorado
Le Bonheur
Marcel L'Herbier
Gaby Morlay, Charles Boyer
Philippe Lutcher, an anarchist, fires a shot at Clara Stuart, a famous stage and screen actress, but only wounds her. The star, through affectation and curiosity to know his motives, pleads in his favour at his trial, but he rebuffs her pity. After he has served 18 months in prison, they meet and fall in love.
Le Bonheur
Le Diable au cœur
Marcel L'Herbier
Betty Balfour, Jaque Catelain
Ludivine, a lttle tomboy, takes on the too polite Delphin. Being caught, and punished, she wants him and his father to be dead. When the latter dies, she feels guilty and takes Delphin under her wing.
Little Devil May Care
Feu Mathias Pascal
Marcel L'Herbier
Ivan Mosjoukine, Marcelle Pradot
Mathias Pascal, only son of a once-rich family, marries beautiful Romalinda, who has a terrible mother-in-law. She controls her daughter, and soon his home life becomes a nightmare. His only moments of lights are his mother and baby, but both die on the same day. Shocked, he leaves his hometown and goes to Monte Carlo, where he wins a fortune at the casino. Returning home, he reads his own obituary in a paper. They have found a corpse in a creek and connected it with his disappearance. Mathias, noticing that he is now free from all ties to his old life, decides to start a new one.
The Late Mathias Pascal
L'Affaire du collier de la reine
Marcel L'Herbier
Viviane Romance, Maurice Escande
The adventurer Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, descendant (by the left hand) of the king of France Henri II, and who claims to be "Countess de la Motte", imagines a tortuous plan to steal a magnificent diamond necklace that the queen Marie-Antoinette refused to buy from the jewelers Boehmer and Bassange.
Queen's Necklace
La Comédie du bonheur
Marcel L'Herbier
Michel Simon, Ramon Novarro
Monsieur Jourdain is a dangerous madman : he wants to share his fortune! His relatives do what any sensible fellow on earth would do: they have him committed to a mental hospital. But Jourdain manages to escape and decides to make everybody happy except... his heirs!
Comedy of Happiness
L'Homme du large
Marcel L'Herbier
Jaque Catelain, Roger Karl
Nolff, a tough Breton fisherman is happy: his wife has just given birth to a son, Michel. His only wish is to make him a fisherman like him. But when he becomes a man, Michel becomes a good-for-nothing who spends his time in taverns.
The Man of the Sea
Rose-France
Marcel L'Herbier
Claude-France Aïssé, Jaque Catelain
A poem to love & patriotism soon after the end of WWI. A highly original and poetic film using many experimental camera techniques, which proved too fanciful for many but which established his reputation as a talented innovator. This is the director's debut film and it is considered the second impressionist film, the first being Abel Gance's, 1918, La Dixième symphonie (The Tenth Symphony).
Rose-France
La nuit fantastique
Marcel L'Herbier
Fernand Gravey, Micheline Presle
Denis, a poor student in philosophy, works as a night porter in the Paris market of Les Halles in order to pay for his studies. Constantly weary, he falls asleep and dreams of a beautiful girl in white, Irène, with whom he falls in love.
Fantastic Night
