Le Diable au Coeur (no 53)

by Allan Fish

(France 1928 122m) not on DVD

Aka. The Devil in the Heart

Ship in a bottle

p  Marcel l’Herbier  d/w  Marcel l’Herbier  novel  “L’Ex-Voto” by Lucie Delarue-Mardrus  ph  Lucien Bellavoine, Louis le Bertre, Jean Letort  art  Lucien Aguettand, Claude Autant-Lara, Robert Jules-Garnier

Betty Balfour (Ludivine Bucaille), Jaque Catelain (Delphin Leherg), Roger Karl (Mons.Leherg), André Nox (Pierre Lauderin), Kissa Kouprine (Thania), Catherine Fonteney (Mme.Bucaille), Magda Aranyi (La belle mere de Lauderin), Leo da Costa (Gaston Lauderin), André Hauze (André Bucaille), Auguste Picaude (Maurice Bucaille), Jane Pierson, Marie Glory,

If ever a director of the French silent cinema demanded a reappraisal, c’est Marcel l’Herbier.  There was a time, back when Georges Sadoul wrote his legendary Dictionary of Film, when he was most fêted for The Late Mathias Pascal, L’Inhumaine and El-Dorado, which Sadoul wrote of with differing levels of respect.  No sign of his magnum opus, L’Argent, and no mention either of Le Diable au Coeur.  The former may now be well known, and the other l’Herbiers listed above have been restored lovingly to dizzy repute, but Le Diable remains an absolute anomaly, nay, an anonymity, in his filmography.

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