L'Inhumaine

L'Inhumaine ("the inhuman woman") is a 1924 French science fiction drama film directed by Marcel L'Herbier. It has the subtitle histoire féerique ("fairy story", "story of enchantment"). L'Inhumaine is notable for its experimental techniques and for the collaboration of many leading practitioners in the decorative arts, architecture and music. The film caused controversy on its release. Background In 1923, while seeking to recover his health after a bout of typhoid, and his fortunes following the collapse of his film adaptation of Résurrection, Marcel L'Herbier received a proposal from his old friend the opera singer Georgette Leblanc to make a film in which she would star and for which she would secure partial funding from American financiers. L'Herbier revived a scenario which he had written under the title La Femme de glace (Woman of Ice); when Leblanc declared this to be too abstract for her liking and for American taste, he enlisted Pierre Mac Orlan to revise it according to Leblanc's suggestions, and in its new form it became L'Inhumaine. The agreement with Leblanc committed her to provide 50% of the costs (envisaged as FF130,000), and she would distribute and promote the film in the United States under the title The New Enchantment. The remainder of the production costs were met by L'Herbier's own production company Cinégraphic. The plot of the film was a melodrama with strong elements of fantasy, but from the outset L'Herbier's principal interest lay in the style of filming: he wanted to present "a miscellany of modern art" in which many contributors would bring different creative styles into a single aesthetic goal. In this respect L'Herbier was exploring ideas similar to those outlined by the critic and film theorist Ricciotto Canudo who wrote a number of texts about the relationship between cinema and the other arts, proposing that cinema could be seen as "a synthesis of all the arts". L'Herbier also foresaw that his film could provide a prologue or introduction to the major exhibition Exposition des Arts Décoratifs which was due to open in Paris in 1925. With this in mind, L'Herbier invited leading French practitioners in painting, architecture, fashion, dance and music to collaborate with him (see "Production", below).