Summary
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...
Review
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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