Les Derniers jours de Pompei (1950) - film review

In the town of Pompeii, 79AD, a few weeks before the volcanic eruption of Versuvius, a Roman lady Hélène meets and falls in love with a young Greek man Lysias.  He is betrothed to another woman who, to win him back, acquires a potion to make him love only her.  The potion was prepared by the Egyptian priest, Arbax, who has a grudge against Lysias, and is not what it seems – it is intended to drive whoever takes it insane. Hélène’s new slave is also in love with Lysias.  She steals the potion and gives it to Lysias – who hurries away in a mad rage.    When the slave girl confronts Arbax, she is killed by the evil priest, and Lysias is charged with her murder...

Marcel L’Herbier’s last film but one is largely a disappointment, exhibiting very little of the cinematic quality and dramatic intensity of the director’s earlier works (particularly his silent masterpieces).   Although the film is said to be based on the novel by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, it differs markedly, the main plot centring around a rather pedestrian tale of romance and revenge, employing all the stock characters from a standard 19th century melodrama.

What saves the film is the impressive cinematography and the quality of the visual effects.  As in many of L’herbier’s earlier films (most notably his 1929 classic L’Argent ), the characters in the film are dwarfed by their surroundings, emphasising their sense of vulnerability in the face of impending disaster.

L’Herbier was fortunate to be able to re-use the sets from Alessandro Blasetti’s Roman epic Fabiola (1949), although it is interesting how differently the same sets are photographed in the two films, L’Herbier somehow managing to achieve a greater impression of scale and artistic grandeur.   Unfortunately, it also looks as if L’Herbier recycled much of the plot from Fabiola , and you often get the impression this is a poor man’s version of that film.

Whilst the first half of Les Derniers jours de Pompei is almost unbearably static, it manages to redeem itself with a vengeance in its dramatic conclusion.  Here, a combination of stunning special effects and masterful photography recreate the devastation and sheer blind terror of the destruction of Pompeii under a volcanic eruption.  For these brief few minutes of artistic brilliance, we are reminded of what a great filmmaker Marcel L’Herbier was and also of the enormous debt that French cinema owes him.

© James Travers 2002

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