The Inhuman Woman (1924)

Claire Lescot is a famous prima donna. All men want to be loved by her. Among them is the young scientist Einar Norsen. When she mocks at him, he leaves her house with the declared intention to kill himself... But the story is much less important than the scenery : this movie intended to be a manifesto of the modern decorative arts.

The most self-consciously modernist French movie of 1924, lovingly restored on a new Flicker Alley Blu-ray, Marcel L’Herbier’s “L’Inhumaine” (“The Inhuman Woman”) is in some ways also the most old-fashioned — a super-stylized amalgam of mad science, stodgy acting and elaborate sets.

Mr. L’Herbier (1888-1979), a prominent silent cinema innovator, hired a number of vanguard artists to work on “L’Inhumaine,” including the painter Fernand Léger and the composer Darius Milhaud. Like most silent film music, Mr. Milhaud’s jazz-inflected score has been lost. (In its absence, the Blu-ray offers the option of contemporary accompaniments by the percussionist Aidje Tafial or the Alloy Orchestra.) The restoration, however, shows “L’Inhumaine” in its original tinted format to have been as noteworthy for its use of color, incorporating pure red and blue flash-frames, as its extravagant mise-en-scène.


Following “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” (1920), a cult movie in Paris throughout the 1920s, “L’Inhumaine” presented itself as total concept. Every element, from the intertitles to the costumes to the makeup, was highly designed — and, as “Caligari” served to market German Expressionism (and German cinema) as a brand, so “L’Inhumaine” might have been made to promote the term Art Deco, which was popularized in 1925 by the mammoth International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in Paris.

Still, despite a notably stormy premiere, complete with smashed seats, “L’Inhumaine” was not an avant-garde succès de scandale — at least not in Paris, where it was largely panned. Elsewhere the film garnered more respect. Titled “The New Enchantment,” “L’Inhumaine” had a limited run in New York; the review in The New York Times was headlined, “Exotic French Picture Contains Bright Ideas.” It was also well received in Italy and Germany, where it may have inspired some of the designs for Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis.”

Jaque Catelain in “L’Inhumaine.” Credit Lobster Films and Flicker Alley
In France, the movie’s failure was often blamed on the middle-aged opera diva Georgette Leblanc’s off-putting performance in the title role. Ms. Leblanc, a renowned interpreter of Carmen in her youth and a champion of modern music, suggested the project to Mr. L’Herbier. She also helped to underwrite the movie’s cost and tailored the script to suit herself in the role of a famous concert singer, Claire Lescot, a woman who, seemingly by fiat, casts her spell over some of the most powerful men in Paris.

“L’Inhumaine” opens with a 40-minute scene chez Claire, an extravagant Deco villa, complete with interior moat. There, entertained by circus acts and dance numbers, a scarcely less grotesque band of distinguished rivals vie for the attention of their fancifully cloaked hostess. (Ms. Leblanc’s preening performance may also account for what the film historian Noel Burch called the movie’s appeal for “devoted followers of camp.”)

Mockingly spurned by Claire, Einar Norsen (Jaque Catelain), a young engineer who is evidently her most ardent admirer, threatens suicide and apparently makes good on his threat by driving his racing car off a cliff. There’s an uproar in the press, but, despite his death, Claire goes ahead with her scheduled recital of “modern music.”

The ensuing tumult makes for the movie’s most dramatic scene, which incorporates something of a documentary technique. L’Herbier arranged for a concert by the avant-garde composer George Antheil, instructed him to play his most dissonant pieces and used hidden cameras to film the violently mixed audience response. (Multiple sources maintain that Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Eric Satie, James Joyce, Ezra Pound and various Surrealists were among the invited guests in the crowd.)

The rest of “L’Inhumaine” concerns Claire’s gradually achieved “humanity” through the idea of love and the resurrection of her career. Scientific contraptions proliferate — most spectacularly in the playfully geometric laboratory designed and built by Mr. Leger. Claire is also introduced to the new miracle of radio and, in what might be a movie first, the futuristic promise of television.

The opera singer Georgette Leblanc with a co-star in “L’Inhumaine” (1924). Credit Lobster Films and Flicker Alley
Ultimately, “L’Inhumaine” seems less a vision of total design or, as some scholars have suggested, a psychodrama in which Ms. Leblanc celebrated her sexual independence, than an allegory on the new condition of stardom (made possible by the emergent technology). Claire’s final conquest seems less about true love than it is a victory over performative time and space. Broadcast media permits her to be everywhere at once, and even allows her to survive her own death.