Famous singer Claire Lescot (played by operatic soprano Georgette Leblanc) is the “Inhuman Woman” of the title of Marcel L’Herbier’s elaborate fantasy. Lescot lives on the outskirts of Paris, where she draws men to her like moths to a flame. Her lavish parties are settings for amorous attention, but she remains always aloof. When it seems that Lescot is the cause of a suicide, her fans desert her. The filming of the concert where she’s raucously booed is a legendary bit of cinema history: L’Herbier invited more than 2,000 people from the arts and fashionable society to attend the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and play the part of the unruly audience. Among the attendees were Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Erik Satie, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound! L’Herbier’s conception for the sets of the film were no less ambitious. Painter Fernand Léger and filmmakers Alberto Cavalcanti and Claude Autant-Lara had parts in the design. The film was recently restored by Lobster Films, who commissioned a new score by Alloy Orchestra.
1924, France, Directed by Marcel L’Herbier, Cast: Georgette Leblanc, Jaque Catelain, Fred Kellerman, Léonid Walter de Malte, Philippe Hériat
Co-presented by the Alliance Française de San Francisco, Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, the French American Cultural Society, the Art Deco Society of California, and the San Francisco Film Society
ASL interpretation provided