Parisians in 1924 took their cinema seriously. As an example, when November 1924's "L'Inhumaine" was being screened at a Paris theater, it was reported audience members shouted insults at one another inside while the movie was being shown. Those viewers who hated the movie voiced their displeasure against those who passionately loved it, and vice versa. Female patrons especially were in the majority who disliked "L'Inhumaine" and demanded their money back. The men, if they weren't engage in fisticuffs inside the movie houses, would carry on with the fighting outside.
The amazing aspect of "L'inhumaine" was the conflicts were over its visual and technical innovations the movie introduced to cinema, which was a focus more on the art than an actual plot-driven film. The so-called elites loved its presentation, with architect Adolf Loos commenting, "As you emerge from seeing it, you have the impression of having lived through the moment of birth of a new art."
French artist Marcel L'Herbler, a former auxiliaryman during the Great War, saw the potentiality of silent movies when viewing Cecil B. DeMille's 1915 'The Cheat.' After writing a few screenplays, L'Herbler directed several films before forming his own production company, Cinegraphic, in 1923. His background in canvass painting, almost bordering on the avant-garde, steered him towards the direction of creating a novel filmmaking process geared more towards its artistic merits than the standard run-of-the-mill productions. An old friend, opera singer Georgette Leblanc, proposed she could obtain at least half of the financing and United States distribution costs for a film she would star in. L'Herbler saw this as an opportunity to synthesis all the known arts into a motion picture, securing the services of Paris' greatest talents in painting, set design, clothing fashion, and dancing, along with an original live accompanying musical score, all in a "fairy story of modern decorative art."
Leblanc plays a famous cold-hearted singer who's wooed by almost every man meeting her, especially a young scientist. She later discovers the admiring scientist killed himself over her, but feels no pangs for his loss during a concert she gives that was greeted by a boisterous audience upset by her apathy. She later dies from a snakebite administered by a jealous boyfriend, only to be resurrected by the alive-again scientist that was previously thought to have killed himself.
The barebones plot gave L'Herbler the opportunity to film one of the liveliest theater crowd scenes captured on celluloid. Renting out Paris' Theatre des Champs-Elysees, he invited society's elites, including Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, the Prince of Monaco among others to act displeased, appreciative, aggressive and even belligerent to each other during the filming. Other scenes incorporated surrealistic cubist-designed art deco settings that shook the sensibilities of viewers, while the actors floated in and out of the unique backdrops comfortably.
One sequence especially prescience about future communications is the young scientist demonstrates his television linkage to several parts of the globe while Leblanc sings into a studio microphone. Television was at the very early experimental stage in the mid-1920's and was more of a theoretical possibility than a practical device.
L'Herbler threw every cinematic device known to filmmakers up to that time in the concluding sequences. When the scientist and his assistants throw the switch to begin the resuscitation mechinism to revive the dead singer, the director showcases a orange-tinted kaleidoscope of effects bouncing around in every direction. The whirlwind action created a unique otherworldly view of a soul being reinjected into the body.
Movie goers worldwide weren't as aggressive as the Parisians were when "L'Inhumaine" was distributed. Today's critics have appreciated L'Herbler's innovative work, with one blogger writing it's "the sort of film that commands a little more respect - and attention. Without films like this, cinema would be lost."
