El Dorado
"The mysterious work of Marcel L´Herbier was EL DORADO, which was mentioned as a melodrama in its subtitle. This important point indicates the contempt of a story which was a common theme with Thomas Ince: Spanish dancer Sybilla (Eva Francis), who would do anything for her baby, secretly loves a beautiful Scandinavian painter (Jacques Catelain), who is engaged to a rich Spanish woman (Marcelle Pradot). She entrusts her son to the young husband and wife, and shortly thereafter is killed by a man of faint intellect (Philippe Hériat). The audience enjoyed the action in the many stories, which included the fanciful chamber plays (Kammerspiel), but the enlightened film lovers, including Delluc, in their Cinéclub, and Ricciotto Canudo, in the Club of Friends of the Seventh Art, valued the style most of all.
The style of EL DORADO was noted for its subjectivism. Its recourse was not the German expressionism (at that time, it was still unknown in France), but the French impressionism and its discovery by Griffith and Sjöström. Tricks were used to create the expression: when the painter looks at Granda's Alhambra, he looks at it as if it were painted by Monet, indefinite and a little bit distorted; in the scene with the dancers, the "non-present" heroine, who is thinking of her baby, is shown in the clouds among her companions; in the scene with the drunks, there are some faces shown in the crooked mirror, etc. This progress was interesting news that time. The entire film was professionally photographed, and very refined. The photos gave a drama to the Spanish countryside. These exteriors are not in disharmony with the beautiful modern architecture of pub. In general, in EL DORADO, there is in the majority the could. But Sybilla's death scene, where she leans against the supple decoration where the giant shadows of the dancers appear, connects the true emotion with virtuosity. It was the discovery that preceded similar German experiments, and perhaps guided them."
George Sadoul, The History of Film
Marcel L'Herbier (1890-1979): his work began - in the same fashion as Jean Epstein - in the circle of the (Paris') First Film Avant-garde, who famously co-produced it with his short films, essays and poetry. His top feature-films were made also during the silent film era (Inhuman, El Dorado, Money). The the invention of sound, his work became more commercial; from the fifties, he directed many TV films and spectacles. In 1943, he founded the oldest French film academy, I.D.H.E.C..