The inhuman one

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Movie
German title The inhuman one
Original title L'Inhumaine
L'inhumaine film1924.jpg
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 1924
length 2500 meters, at 16 fps 135 minutes
Rod
Director Marcel L'Herbier
script Pierre Dumarchais (as Pierre MacOrlan)
production Cinégraphic
music Darius Milhaud (1924), Galeshka Moravioff (2013)
camera Roche , Georges Specht
occupation

The Inhumane is the German title of the French silent film melodrama L'Inhumaine with the subtitle histoire féerique (fairy tale), which Marcel L'Herbier realized in France in 1924 in his own production company Cinégraphic. He wrote the script together with Pierre Dumarchais, who wrote under the stage name Pierre Mac Orlan . The film became famous for its experimental cinematic techniques and the involvement of leading artists from architecture, decoration and music in its creation. The title role was played by the opera singer Georgette Leblanc , who was also involved in the production costs and was supposed to take care of distribution in America.

action

The famous singer Claire Lescot is courted by many men, including the Maharajah Djorah from Nopur and Einar Norsen, a young scientist from Sweden. In her salon, she enjoys their loving attention at extravagant evening parties, but remains aloof in her feelings towards them, even mocking them mercilessly. When she learns that Norsen killed himself because of her, she shows no emotion. At her next concert she will therefore be booed by the audience for her coldness. She visits the crypt where Norsen's body lies, and when she allows her feelings for him, she notices that he is still alive; his death was only faked. Djorah is jealous of their new relationship and lets Claire be bitten by a poisonous snake. Her corpse is taken to Norsen's laboratory, where he brings it back to life using his scientific inventions.

Origin and performance history

Filming began in September 1923 in the Joinville studios near Paris . Since Georgette Leblanc had to be back in America for a concert tour in mid-October, work was under considerable time pressure. L'Herbier therefore demanded a number of things from his staff, including night work. Nevertheless, Mlle. Leblanc had to leave before the film was finished, so some scenes could only be shot after her return to France in the spring of 1924.

The film has three locations: the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées as the original location and two buildings, the exterior views of which were designed by Robert Mallet-Stevens , and which served as villas for Claire Lescot and Einar Norsen .

L'Herbier wanted to create a film in which many forms of artistic expression should be united. Accordingly, well-known artists from various disciplines were involved. The stage and equipment were created under the guidance of Claude Autant-Lara and Alberto Cavalcanti . The costumes were designed by Autant-Lara and Paul Poiret , the furniture by Pierre Chareau and Michel Dufel. Claude Autant-Lara laid out the gardens again. The chief architect was Robert Mallet-Stevens , who created cubist buildings for the film. Finally, the technical laboratory of the inventor Norsen was designed by the painter Fernand Léger . Allegedly Pablo Picasso , James Joyce and Man Ray also starred in the film as extras. The Danish graphic artist Erik Aaes designed cinema posters for L'Inhumaine . L'Herbier commissioned the young Darius Milhaud with the composition of a film score in which the drums should take a prominent position; the images should be cut synchronously. This score, which was so crucial for L'Herbier's cinematic concept, is now lost.

The film premiered in France on December 12, 1924. In 1925 he opened the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et industriels modern in Paris. It premiered in America on March 14, 1926. It also ran across Europe in Great Britain, Italy and Spain, Portugal and Poland. In Germany the film got the title Die Inhenschliche .

reception

After its premiere, the film met with a lack of understanding among audiences and critics alike; the reactions were all negative. Many reviewers ridiculed the film as a “misguided attempt to celebrate film as art” or “to reconcile the popular with the elite”. Proponents, on the other hand, emphasized the daring and originality of L'Herbier's design. But it was also a financial failure for L'Herbier as a producer.

The actor of Einar Norsen, Jaque Catelain, reported on the reactions of the audience: “At every performance the audience insults one another, there are just as many frenetic supporters as inveterate opponents. The multicolored and syncopated images with which the film ends, run across the screen in a real hell of a noise. Women with their hats on askance for their money back; Men with contorted facial features rush out onto the sidewalk, where the brawls sometimes continue ... "

On the other hand , L'Inhumaine met with enthusiastic approval from the Austrian architect Adolf Loos : “It's a song about the size of modern technology. [...] the final pictures of L'Inhumaine exceed the imagination; when one emerges from them again, one has the impression of having witnessed the moment of the birth of a new art. "

In the summer of 1924, photos of Jaque Catelain as Einar in the winter garden and of the laboratory with its movable backdrops designed by Fernand Léger appeared in the Berlin magazine Der Cross .

L'Herbier also paid his respects to the wonders of modern technology to entertainment broadcasting, which has only just entered public awareness. In a scene in his laboratory, inventor Norsen the Inhuman shows how she can transmit her voice on radio waves to all parts of the world by singing into a microphone. In a sequence of images you can see how Africans and Indians, Eskimos and Chinese listen enthusiastically to the singer in front of funnel loudspeakers and with headphones.

That L'Herbier recognized the connotative value that jazz music already had in the film back then, also musically at the height of its time, is shown by the pictures of a véritable jazz band with colored musicians in the salon of the “Inhuman”, which he played in a “symphony from shot and reverse shot ”rhythmically assembled against recordings of the guests, the rhythm being dictated by the playing movements of the black banjoist. In L'Inhumaine , too , jazz stood for “confusion, increased desire, exoticism”, for “modernity”.

After the first demonstrations, L'Inhumaine fell into oblivion fairly quickly. It was only after more than 50 years that the value of L'Herbier's film for both film and art history was recognized by the critics. Marcel L'Herbier's 1924 film L'Inhumaine is seen as the triumph of avangarde culture, a strange science fiction story with Cubist backdrops by the painter Fernand Léger and the pioneer of modern architecture Robert Mallet-Stevens. According to L'Herbier, his goal was to “present a 'collection of modern arts'” (David Pescovitz).

“With 'L'Inhumaine', Marcel L'Herbier created a synthesis of all arts together with outstanding artists. He showed not only how these artists imagine the union of modernity and technology, but also how the French universalism of the 1920s stages the categories of the human and the inhuman ”( Simon Berz ).

“The French director of the film 'L'Inhumaine' (The Inhuman), Marcel L'Herbier (1890–1979), was a representative of the Impressionists. The form seems to have been more important to him than the content. His films were not necessarily popular with the public, but his techniques, such as the deliberately blurred image, the moving camera or the plasticity of the image space, renewed the cinema. The avant-garde design of 'L'Inhumaine' can also be found partly in the subtitles, sometimes the writing is even on the film image. ”(André Stratmann)

Re-performances

After a new circle of interested parties became aware of it around 1968, the film was extensively restored in 1972 by the archives of the Center National du Cinéma; In 1975 it was shown as a kick-off event on the occasion of the opening of an exhibition on the 50th anniversary of the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs . In 1987 it ran out of competition at the Cannes International Film Festival .

L'Inhumaine was presented at the Munich Film Museum on the occasion of the 14th Architecture Film Days of the Bavarian Chamber of Architects from April 4 to 9, 2014 as an example of the work of Robert Mallet-Stevens, who designed “two villas with strongly cubist features” for the film.

The Zurich pianist and composer Galeshka Moravioff wrote a new film music for L'Inhumaine in 2013 .

The Institute of Incoherent Cinematography IOIC , “L'immagine e la parola” (spin-off of the Festival del Film Locarno ) and YOUTOPIA performed the new setting of L'Inhumaine on April 12, 2014 with an orchestra of improvising musicians under the direction of Simon Berz in the Teatro Kursaal, Locarno, at the “Primavera Locarnese”.

In May 2015, it was broadcast in Arte's Masterworks of Silent Film series.

literature

  • Dorothee Binder: The film “L'Inhumaine” and its relationship to art and architecture of the twenties. Master thesis. LMU Munich: History and Art Studies 29, 2005. Illustrations and film stills, ub.uni-muenchen.de (PDF)
  • Jaque Catelain: Jaque Catelain présente Marcel L'Herbier . E. Jacques Vautrain, Paris 1950 (French)
  • Hans Emons: Film - Music - Modern: On the history of a changeable relationship (= volume 14 of art, music and theater studies). Frank & Timme, 2014. ISBN 978-3-7329-0050-3 , here pp. 78, 226
  • Lynn Garafola: Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance. Illustrated edition. Wesleyan University Press, 2005, ISBN 978-0-8195-6674-4 (English)
  • Marcel L'Herbier: La Tête qui tourne . Belfond, Paris 1979 (French)
  • Matthew F. Jordan: Le Jazz: Jazz and French Cultural Identity. University of Illinois Press, 2010, here pp. 82–83, 261, 296 (English)
  • Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink: French culture and media studies: an introduction . Narr, Tübingen 2004, ISBN 978-3-8233-4963-1 , here p. 115
  • Joachim Paech: The beginnings of the avant-garde in film: The Inhuman (1924) . In: Werner Faulstich, Helmut Korte (ed.): Fischer film history . Volume 1: From the beginning to the established medium 1985-1924 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-596-24491-9 , pp. 412-430.
  • Jens Rosteck: Darius Milhaud at LexM Hamburg (2007, updated on May 8, 2014) lexm.uni-hamburg.de
  • Maureen Shanahan: Indeterminate and inhuman: Georgette Leblanc in L'Inhumaine (1924) . In: Cinema Journal Vol. 43, No. 4 (Summer, 2004), pp. 53–75 (English)
  • Christine Stenzer: main character writing. An overview of writing in film and video from 1895 to 2009 . Königshausen & Neumann , Würzburg 2010, here pp. 48–51, 477, ISBN 978-3-8260-4237-9 .

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Marcel L'Herbier called his project in his autobiography from 1979 "  histoire féerique de l'Art décoratif moderne  ". In: La Tête qui tourne. 1979, p. 102.
  2. ↑ According to Marcel L'Herbier (in La Tête qui tourne. 1979, pp. 100-102) it was agreed with Leblanc that they would cover half the costs, about FF130,000, as well as advertising and distribution of the film in the United States where it should be called The New Enchantment ; L'Herbier's own company, Cinégraphic, would bear the rest of the production costs.
  3. ↑ L'Herbier in: La Tête qui tourne. 1979, p. 105.
  4. ^ "L'Inhumaine" by Marcel Herbier . Introductory lecture at the Architektur-Filmtage, Munich Filmmuseum, April 5, 2014 (PDF)
  5. ↑ Photo at wordpress.com
  6. ↑ Images and film stills, ub.uni-muenchen.de (PDF)
  7. ↑ David Pescovitz: "Indeed, legend has it that Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, and Man Ray were extras in the film."
  8. ↑ Madeleine L'Herbier told the film music historian Theodore van Houten in 1982 that the music for the scene in the laboratory, which the painter Léger had designed, ended with the short Percussion Concerto, Op. 109 published in 1930 . See en.wiki .
  9. ↑ Quoted from en.wiki , cf. also Dennis Harvey: Unfortunately, actual public response to their end-product was equally rowdy. Critics heaped scorn; box office was catastrophic .
  10. ^ "A chaque séance, les spectateurs s'insultent, il ya autant de partisans frénétiques que d'adversaires acharnés. C'est dans un véritable vacarme que passent sur l'écran, à toutes les représentations, les images multicolores et syncopées sur lesquelles se termine le film. Des femmes, le chapeau de travers, exigent d'être remboursées; des hommes, les traits convulsés, se précipitent sur le trottoir où, parfois, les pugilats continuent… ». In: Jaque Catelain présente Marcel L'Herbier 1950, p. 82. Own translation.
  11. ^ Adolf Loos, in: Neue Freie Presse, July 29, 1924.
  12. ↑ Volume 4, issue number 2/3, art print part 7 “From the film L'Inhumaine by Marcel L'Herbier”, cf. illustrated-presse.de .
  13. ^ Frankreich-experte.de : “The first French radio station, Poste de la Tour Eiffel , started its work on December 24, 1921. His daily broadcasts lasted half an hour and included a press review, the weather report and music performances ... "
  14. ^ Dennis Harvey: Gleaming the Cubist. 2011 “ … and sci-fi eventually sees our songbird - not silent cinema's most vivid profession - conquer tout le monde via a radio-television transmission. "Shanahan, p. 43:" ... who woos her with promises to transmit her voice around the world via radio ... "
  15. ↑ The banjo player on the photo, however, is white!
  16. ^ Matthew F. Jordan: Le Jazz 2010, p. 83: “ His view of this whirling modern world is presented as a symphony of shots and countershots cutting back and foth between the figures of the salon and the jazz band. The rhythm established by the visual editing is synchronized to the strumming motions of the black banjo player. ”
  17. ↑ “ Marcel L'Herbier's 1924 film L'Inhumaine is considered to be a triumph of avant-garde culture, a strange science fictiony story with cubist sets by proto-pop art painter Fernand Léger and pioneering modernist architect Robert Mallet-Stevens. According to L'Herbier, his goal was to present 'a miscellany of modern art'. ”David Pescovitz: L'Inhumaine, quintessentially avant-garde 1924 film, at boingboing.net , Thu, March 10, 2011 (own translation).
  18. ↑ See youtopia-festival.ch ( memento of the original from March 30, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.youtopia-festival.ch
  19. ↑ On the use of text overlays at L'Herbier cf. also Stenzer: main actor writing 2010.
  20. ↑ The Official Selection 1987, Out of Competition: L'Inhumaine. Festival de Cannes
  21. ↑ Program at byak.de and Deutsche Bau-Zeitung from April 2, 2014: "The French silent film" L'Inhumaine "from 1924, for which Robert Mallet-Stevens designed two villas with strongly cubist features, is considered a treat."
  22. ↑ The inhuman in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  23. ↑ cf. youtopia-festival.ch ( Memento of the original from March 30, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.youtopia-festival.ch
  24. ↑ ARTE Cinema ( Memento of the original from September 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.arte.tv