User Reviews

The introduction to the movie on the UK Masters of Cinema DVD is quite good if spoken with a remarkable French certitude. The film is revealed as being, to a large extent impressionistic, L'Herbier is compared to directors such as Jean Epstein, Germaine Dulac, and Jean Gremillon. This means that the story line, although present, shouldn't be your main anchor for this viewing. It should be the images.

The film, in the main is about money, of course, the two main characters are Saccard and Gunderman, two financiers. Gunderman is a remarkably well dressed prissy man who is a kind of financial magus, like a Rothschild. Saccard owns a bank but he's down the food chain. Gunderman is intent on persecuting Saccard, we're not totally sure why but Gunderman alludes that he likes financial stability and abhors the destabilising nature of financial speculation. If only Gunderman had been advising the US government in the last few years! However to an extent Gunderman is a bit of a hypocrite as he is using rash speculation to annihilate Saccard.

Saccard uses Hamelin, a dare-devil aviator, to restore confidence in his bank. He arranges a publicity stunt, making Hamelin co-vice-chairman of the board and having him fly off in a plane to break the non-stop solo transatlantic flight record. Once in Guyana, Hamelin is then to set up some oil rigs on land he has options on. The cash from this operation will then restore the fortunes of the Banque Universelle, whilst the publicity stunt will move emotional speculation in BU's favour.

It's a two and a half hour film so there is a lot of plot. What's good though is the way the plot is worked. There is an incredible amount of suspense in the movie, it's dragged out until you're left holding tufts of hair. The level of camera-work is also astonishing, when you watch films from this era you're used to pretty static camera. Well l'Herbier is going bonkers with his camera. He has a vertical camera over the top of the Bourse (Paris stock exchange) swinging about in delirium whilst Hamelin readies to fly away. It's like watching cellular bodies under the microscope, all the little bodies polarised around the nucleus of the central dealing table.

There is a swinging shot of a street crowd that made my jaw drop, and I had to rewind. I suppose the most effectual shot for me though was quite a simple one where he let Hamelin's plane fly of the side of the frame. This is cinematic heterodoxy from what I'm aware. Usually with a shot of a plane you will see it disappear as a dot in the distance or the shot will just cut to another. But you feel a sense of loss as the plane flies off, as it's all cut with shots of Hamelin's wife, you feel what she's feeling, with her husband disappearing off for a desperate maniac flight over the abyssal blue ocean.

L'Argent is also a very glamorous movie, some of the costume jewellery on display in this movie is tres chic! The Baronin Sandorf, a very well cast lady (Brigitte Helm) who really is a human cobra, plays a minor character with Vicar of Bray leanings. She wears a solid gold headpiece and matching earrings at a party that are almost unreal. There's also some costume jewellery that Saccard gives to Line, the wife of Hamelin, that widen the eyes.

As in the early study for this film L'Herbier's 1921 "Prométhée... banquier", we are shown a banker who literally can't get away from his desk, tied down by phone calls, totally unable to give a desperate woman important human news. The movie is, however, not a paroxysm of anti-capitalist rage, it's more of a gorgeous heady melodrama that tries to have it's cake and eat it. However it does lead one's thoughts in the right direction ultimately.

The one real fault I can find with the movie was the ending 10 minutes which were clumsy. It felt like L'Herbier didn't know how to end his film. The very very last scene saved the day a bit.

After the financial crisis of 2008 a lot of (anti) Wall street films were released, such as "Margin call" (2011, J. C. Chandor) and "The big short" (2015, Adam McKay).

Films about the financial system (not necessarily about Wall street) are however nothing new. In 1928 Marcel L'Herbier adapted a novel of the same name by Emile Zola. The novel of Zola is situated in the second half of the 19th century but L'Herbier modernizes the story to the roaring twenties. Contrary to the above mentioned movies L'Herbier made his film before the crash of 1929.

By the way in 1983 Robert Bresson made a film of the same name. This is however not an adaptation of the same novel by Zola, but an adaptation of "The forged coupon" by Leo Tolstoy.

In "L'argent" there are two rival capitalists. The hot blooded predator Nicolas Saccard (played by Pierre Alcover) and the cold blooded reptile like Alphonse Gunderman (played by Alfred Abel). Neither of them is very sympathetic.

On top of these characters Brigitte Helm plays with baroness Sandorf a sort of "femme fatale" avant la lettre. Avant la lettre because the film noir would appear much later.

The storyline is not the best part of the movie. It is rather simple and is rushed in the last fifteen minutes. The storyline revolves around the slogan "Money is a faithfull servant but a terrible master". This combination of a quasi profound slogan and simple storyline reminded me of the slogan "Head and hands need a mediator. The mediator between head and hands must be the heart!" from "Metropolis" (1927, Fritz Lang) a year earlier. This is not the only link between the two films, because Alfred Abel and Brigitte Helm also played in "Metropolis".

The strong point of "L'argent" is not the storyline but the ambiance. With very innovative cinematograhy the film sketches the hectic, oppurtinistic and sometimes panicky atmosphere at the stock exchange. Tribute to cinematograhper Jules Kruger, who also made "Napoleon" (1927) with Abel Gance.

Marcel L'Herbier's "L'Argent" clocks in at 195 minutes. Nothing strange about that you might think but this is a silent film, made in France in 1928 and dealing, not in the epic themes of a "Ben Hur", an "Intolerance" or a "Napoleon" but in the contemporary, in the everyday, though not in the mundane. The title translates as 'Money' and money permeates every aspect of this picture which is 'inspired by' rather than based on a novel by Zola. It may not be a masterpiece but it is quite extraordinary just as it is extraordinary to think audiences ever took to this film, set largely in the world of stock exchanges and high finance, which isn't just on the long side but is also sophisticated and challenging. It requires more than patience; it requires intelligence. The plot may be melodramatic, necessary at the time perhaps to draw its audience in, but it is a film that deals in depth with unusual themes. It is also superbly acted, (the large cast includes the great Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel and in a small part, Jules Berry), photographed and edited. Indeed, this is one of the great 'lost' silent pictures and it really needs rediscovery.

Near the end of the silent cinema period, at opposite ends of Europe, two films were being planned on the subject of money or capital: Sergei M. Eisenstein's project for a film based on Karl Marx's Capital, and Marcel L'Herbier's film adaptation of Emile Zola's L'Argent. Eisenstein's project, unfortunately, never got beyond the preliminary stage of diary notes, recorded discussions with G.V. Alexandrov, and the rough outline of a scenario. L'Herbier's project, of course, was completed and released as L'Argent, in the midst of controversy, critical condemnation as well as acclaim, and uncertain commercial success, at least in France.

Undoubtedly influenced by Abel Gance's experiments with camera mobility, L'Herbier turned this very free, modern-day version of Zola's celebrated novel into a series of pretexts for outbursts of striking cinematic excess, creating a strikingly modern work marked by its opulent, over-sized sets and a complex, multi-camera shooting style. The result is a film resolutely split between narrative and spectacle, between straightforward storytelling scenes typically dominated by shot-reverse shot cutting and chaotic, exciting impressionist sequences, as when, at the Paris stock market (shot on location) a camera hanging from a pulley apparatus high above the trading floor sweeps down on the traders. The effect, presumable, means to evoke the irrational frenzy of capitalist from a decidedly right-wing perspective.

If Gance's Napoleon and Carl Th. Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc constitute the apex of big-budget historical reconstruction films in the French silent cinema, then L'Argent certainly can be taken as the culmination of the modern studio spectacular. With a five-million franc budget, L'Herbier was given privileged access to the Paris Bourse for three days of shooting (with 1,500 actors and over a dozen cameramen) and was permitted to electrify the Place de l'Opera in order to shoot a night scene of the huge crowd awaiting news of Hamelin's solo transatlantic flight. At the newly opened Studios Francoeur, Lazare Meerson and Andre Barsacq constructed immense set decors, including an enormous bank interior, several large offices and vast apartments, a dance stage for Saccard's celebration party, and an unusual circular room next to Gundermann's office whose entire wall length was covered with a giant world map.

Many of these studio spaces have smooth, polished surfaces and are stylized to the point of exhibiting little more than walls, ceilings, and floors. This stark simplicity, especially in such monumental designs, undermines any appeal to verisimilitude and tends to dissolve the boundaries differentiating one space from another. The indeterminacy of these decors, although exemplary of the modern studio spectacular, thus specifically functions to further abstract the film's capitalist intrigue. Together withe crowds of extras that often traverse the frame and chief cameraman Jules Kruger's selection of slightly wide-angle lenses and high- and low camera positions, especially for the frequent long shots or extreme long shots they produce a consistently deep-space mise-en-scene and larger than life capitalists. Furthermore, the highly stylized or generalized milieu of the film actually serves to foreground the nationalistic and class-based terms of the intrigue, articulated through the casting, and allows them to read all that more clearly.

The Modernizing strategy that shapes L'Argent's set decors and deep-space mise-en-scene was also governed, finally, by a loosely systematic discursive which many French filmmakers shared in the late 1920s. Generally, the French tended to privilege the specifically 'cinematic' elements of framing and editing - close ups (especially of objects), unusually high and low camera position, extensive camera movement, superimposition's and dissolves, various forms of rhythmic montage, associative editing. But L'Herbier's L'Argent offers another, perhaps even more interesting model for the way its reflexive style ultimately helps to articulate the film's critique of capital.

At least two particular features of this film practice loom large in L'Argent. The first feature as an absolutely unprecedented mobile camera strategy, whose high visibility and extreme dynamism render its effect peculiarly ambiguous. The range and extent of the film's camera movement is unmatched except perhaps by that in Gance's Napoleon (for which Kruger was also chief cameraman). Largely because of such unusual camera movements, in L'Argents space oscillates uncannily between the fixed and the fluid. A second feature of the film's discursive practice is its rather unconventional editing patterns, which sometimes work in tandem with camera movement. There is the uniquely persistent pattern of cutting a stable shot as a sudden camera movement becomes perceptible, which creates a slightly jarring effect in the film's rhythm that ruptures its sense of spatio-temporal continuity and foregrounds the very construction of filmic space-time.

The reflexivity of this discursive practice marks L'Argent as a Modernist text, of course, at least to the extent that the materials of the film medium and their deployment as a disruptice system become an ancillary subject of the film. L'Argents framing and editing techniques, in conjunction with set design and acting style or casting, more closely resemble those of Jean Renoir's Nana or Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, both of which serve to subvert the conventions of another genre, the historical reconstruction. Yet reflexivity here bears a subversive significance that exceeds the genre of the modern studio spectacular precisely because of L'Argent is a story of capital.

L'Argent's achievement, in the end, rests on the correlation it makes between discourse, narrative, and the subject of capital. Capital is both everywhere and nowhere, echoing Marx; it motivates nearly every character in the film and is talked about incessantly, but it is never seen or - as the dung on which life thrives - even scented.

Nevertheless, L'Argent is a beacon of modernity, an over-sized hymn to music of light, where everything is rhythm, movement, and a fantastic spiral of financial manipulations. Even today, the subject is astonishingly relevant.

It does not matter that this is adapted from Zola, and generally received then and now as a prestigious release that should be accorded a place in history. It matters because it's one of the most striking films in the transition towards a cinema that does not merely chronicle life, whose primary means of expression is no longer drama and does not aspire to emotion, but instead sculpts from space and uses the camera as a calligrapher would a brush.

There is a match-cut from the engine of a plane to a madly spinning camera looking down from a ceiling that is perhaps the most impressive in the entire 30 years of cinema until then. And there is a lot of the camera choreographed to dance, or painting with our gaze incomplete motions across rooms.

Resnais would take all this thirty years later to revitalize French cinema.

Story-wise, it is about two puppet-masters vying for the control of the same world. The film begins on the level of the stage, the stockmarket, this new temple of the modern world devoted to capital, and pulls back to reveal who holds the strings, who re-invents the broadcasted reality.

Like Zen calligraphy, this is not about the painted signs on the scroll and what they mean, but the disciplined soul revealed by the flow of ink. Watch it like you would unfold a scroll, the ink is in the image.

Nowhere is the constant struggle between art and commerce so apparent as in the world of Film and in this distinctly loose and updated adaptation of Emile Zola's novel depicting the evils of financial speculation, director Marcel L'Herbier is pointing the finger at the money men who feel that their profit-driven investment gives them the divine right to meddle in the creative process. Ironically, L'Herbier would have been unable to make the film without its being financed to the tune of five million francs!

The tug of war between director and producer resulted in the latter excising thirty minutes from the film and not until its restoration half a century later were the lost scenes restored. Indeed it was not until the restoration that the film's acclaim finally matched its reputation and it has belatedly been acknowledged as one of the true masterpieces of silent cinema. As a bonus this same restoration has gifted us a highly charged score for piano composed and played by Jean-Francois Zygels.

The technical virtuosity of this film is simply stunning with the sweeping camerawork of Jules Kruger, low and high angle shots and Eisensteinian montage. L'Herbier's love of Art Deco is again evident in the magnificent sets designed by Lazare Meerson and André Barsacq. We are also treated to spectacular scenes in the Bourse, the fictitious World Bank, the Place de l'Opéra and the piéce de resistance, the financier Saccard's evening party.

L'Herbier has made sure that his film's immensity does not diminish the characters. This is surely Pierre Alcover's finest hour as Saccard, a monster of greed and rapacity who is also a pitiful creature. By arrangement with UFA the film also stars Brigitte Helm and Alfred Abel, both fresh from 'Metropolis'. Miss Helm as Baroness Sandorf has never been quite as sinuous and sensuous as she slithers around encased in Jacques Manuel's fabulous costumes. As she writhes on the sofa she epitomises the sheer carnality of wealth. The slight frame of Alfred Abel as Gunderman is in striking contrast to the corpulence of Alcover as his arch rival and his reptilian-like portrayal makes one think what a marvellous Professor Moriarty he would have made. As a contrast to the slinky Baroness we have the full-figured Marie Glory who is at her most appealing here in probably her finest role as Line Hamelin who is intoxicated by the lifestyle offered by Saccard's money but is not prepared to pay the price required. Dramatically effective is a rare appearance on film of Yvette Guilbert, former cabaret artiste immortalised by Toulouse-Lautrec, as a figure of Doom whose presence has always haunted Saccard and is there to witness his downfall.

This monumental piece is L'Herbier's greatest achievement and in his own words, 'the summit of my silent career'. No true cinéfile I am sure would disagree.

A masterpiece of film making, the thoughtful and observant will find much to enjoy in it. The use of camera angles and light/ shadows is astonishing at times. Then pause to consider the electrifying timing of this film - released a year before the Wall Street crash and when the National Socialism was on the rise in Germany. Then the performances - the unforgettably snake-like Baroness or the innocent beauty of Line. Then look at the expansive sets and the breathtaking - and authentic - late 20's wardrobe and art deco styling. The chessboard motif, the puppet masters inhabiting rooms behind rooms behind rooms. And the Gatsby-esque party scene against which the plot finally unravels, cutting back and forth in a giddying climax. The build-up of suspense in the radio broadcast... The intoxicating rush of the Paris crowd scene... It's easy to poke fun at a silent film and moan about its pace, which was pitched at the audience of 96 years ago; for those who have the patience to watch and appreciate it for what it is, L'Argent is a bloody brilliant film.

I always feel sort of obliged to be impressed by films like this: made by Marcel L'Herbier, one of the giants of French silent cinema from a book by Zola, filmed on a grand scale that gives it an air of Importance (with a capital I), you really feel as though it would be sacrilegious to say anything but good things about it. But, to be brutally honest, this tale of lust and betrayal among financial high-fliers is a bit of a plod. It's not helped by the fact that its running time is a gargantuan three hours. It must have been difficult to make a film like this, where much of the 'action' relates to financial shenanigans, without the luxury of sound, which may be why L'Herbier felt it necessary to take so long to tell his tale, but maybe it would have been better to have waited until he could have made use of sound.

Pierre Alcover who plays Saccard, the treacherous financier who falls for the hapless heroine whose pilot lover has conveniently flown to Equatorial Guinea to drill for oil, is quite good, but Brigitte Helm, the comely object of his affections is just awful. She's the kind of actress who would overact when pretending to be asleep, and when she is on the brink of suicide she wanders into Saccard's office and stumbles around as if wounded by a sniper's bullet. Saccard looks like the manipulative weasel that he is. He fancies himself as a Napoleon of the financial world but, like Napoleon, he bites off more than he can chew when he locks horns with the urbane Gundermann.

The film does have some saving graces. L'Herbier's use of the camera is sublime, and gives the bored viewer something to concentrate on when the sluggish pace gets too much. Perhaps that is why he chose to film as a silent – the use of sound, while making the story easier to convey, would have restrained the camera and robbed the film of what vitality it possesses. The film does a good job of illustrating the corrupting influence of money, only over-emphasising its message on the rare occasion. As the character's become more depraved and self-absorbed their surroundings become more opulent, their clothes more refined, and it is clear that they are becoming prisoners of their possessions. There's also a great last scene – but you have to wait an unrealistically long time to get to it.

By the time this was first released in 1928 a great many things had already been innovated, developed, and advanced in cinema, each step along the way seeming more like a leap for the new medium. And still the picture absolutely dazzles with the artistry and ingenuity of its visuals alone. I'm hard-pressed to think of any other title in the silent era, or even immediately after the advent of talkies, that could claim camerawork as active, dynamic, and downright incredible as what we see here. Cinematographer Jules Kruger was having a total field day, pushing the envelope far beyond any conventions to give viewers the biggest spectacle possible even with his contribution by itself. Not to be outdone, art directors André Barsacq and Lazare Meerson shared their vision of outstanding, breathtaking sets with relatively few points of comparison in the late 20s. Marcel L'Herbier's own 'L'inhumaine' (1924) comes to mind, perhaps, or maybe Fred Niblo's 1925 rendition of 'Ben-Hur.' Or maybe Fritz Lang's momentous 'Metropolis' is a better frame of reference for the sets, for that's almost certainly the case when it comes to instances of rapid editing, and flashing imagery of the cold machinery of human invention, in this case representing the arbitrary, foul devilry of the world of finance. And with all this firmly in mind, L'Herbier demonstrates at no few points a tremendously keen eye for shot composition, arranging all the players and pieces in alignment with the camera in a wonderfully smart way that only further cements the marvelous skill and intelligence behind 'L'argent.'

All that's to say nothing of the many, many extras on hand, nor those fetching facets like costume design, hair, and makeup that tend to be overlooked. It's just as impressive that the feature manages to do all this with tale set in contemporary France, rather than a period piece or a work of fantasy or sci-fi; it's certainly more infrequent that cinematic storytelling of a more realistic nature is able to conjure such visual wizardry - but here we are. And then there's the plot: a vortex of greed, manipulation, corruption, deceit, and the destruction that follows in the wake of such iniquities, as infuriatingly relevant in 2023 as it was ninety-five years ago, or decades prior when Émile Zola's novel was written, or further back still when it was set. There are no surprises here, for wealth, power, and the pursuit or promise of either only ever bring out the worst in people; there are no singular lightning bolts of brilliance in the screenplay, as all the best creativity the film boasts is found in its craftsmanship. Nonetheless the story is absorbing and compelling, and ably keeps us engaged from start to finish, and as scenes are both written and directed we get no few moments that are especially potent. It helps that the cast is terrific across the board, with Pierre Alcover, Brigitte Helm, and Marie Glory particularly standing out not just for the amount of time they have on-screen, or their prominence in the story as we see it, but definitely too for the strength of their vibrant acting of range and nuance.

I don't think it's unfair to say that the building blocks of the movie kind of outshine the tale it imparts. This isn't to say that the writing is weak, but for as excellent as it may be, the title's construction is altogether extraordinary. Then again, I'm inclined to think that the plot is better about conveying major ideas rather than minute details, and also advances somewhat gradually given the length of over two and one-half hours - with a fair amount of story reserved for just the last twenty minutes. In fairness, should one read up on the history of 'L'argent' even the slightest bit it's clear that the version that now exists is not what L'Herbier originally envisioned, so one can reasonably assume that some elements were lost over time. In any event, however much one wishes to him and haw about This and That, by and large the fact remains that this is a superb, fabulously well made silent classic that continues to hold up all too well. What excitement it may not wholly, immediately foster with its narrative, it more than makes up for with the genius of the work behind the scenes, and the result all around is unquestionably grand. As a matter of personal preference some of its contemporaries may stand taller still, but one way or another 'L'argent' is fantastic, highly deserving of recognition and remembrance, and it earns a solid recommendation for anyone who appreciates older cinema.

With all the raves of the camera work in the reviews, I anticipated a masterpiece. What I saw was amateur film making. The lack of focus would have been acceptable, if it targeted on the players or the action. Instead, it merely appeared as a combination of lack of lighting and a focus puller. The camera movement was unacceptable; jerky and out of focus. Some scenes appeared to have Vaseline smeared around the edges of the lens. That would be fine, but the next scene, just taken from another angle, did not. Medium shots alternated between in-focus and out. All of this created eye strain.

But beyond this, the plot was not understandable at points, and repetitive. I had wanted to see the film for the impressive sets, yet the excessive camera movement and overlays of scenes during the party, made we want to search for stills. As far as I'm concerned, the only saving grace is the excellent acting.

Bottom line is do you want a fat sweaty bloke in your face for over two hours.

This film technically comes across as almost amateur the picture wobbles and moves about most of the time for no real needed effect the grain is very harsh the extreme wide angle lenses cause a lot of distortion. This film needed tighter editing and a much reduced running time. The stories not that interesting to the point of being boring. When you think about the same time Fritz Lang was making Spione with much imagination and flare where's this looks like the director's been given the toy box with no follow through talent.

As a treatise on the evils of bankers, this film was quite prescient. However, this nearly three hour film is quite a slog. Recounting the story, I cannot come up with a reason it needed to run over 90 minutes. Pierre Alcover is the fat, evil banker in question (he might even be Jewish; he sort of looks it). He comes up with a scheme to increase his banks funds by backing a trans-ocean flight using a new fuel in which his bank is investing. Henry Victor is the victim. As a bonus, his beautiful wife, Marie Glory, is left alone for Alcover to hit on when Victor is dead, or at least trapped in South America. Brigitte Helm also co-stars. I was never 100% sure how she fit in, but it's nice to have her here. The performances are all very good, and there are actually plenty of fine moments, and L'Herbier's camera glides around beautifully. Unfortunately, the excellent filmmaking is only in small portions of the film. Since its subject is financial wheelings and dealings, most of the time the film consists of people standing in rooms and talking to each other.