Le Vertige (1926)
Directed by Marcel L'Herbier

Film Review

Marcel L'Herbier's hopes of artistic independence had received a severe buffeting after the abandonment of Résurrection (1923) and poor reception of L'Inhumaine (1924), the first two films he made for his film production company Cinégraphic.  Even though the film he made next, Feu Mathias Pascal (1926), had been a commercial and critical success, L'Herbier's financial worries were far from over.  He would have to take drastic steps if his company was to remain solvent.  For his fourth independent feature, the director was compelled by economic necessity to reign in his ambitions and instead commit himself to delivering a film that could not fail to attract a large audience.  That film, Le Vertige, is one of the director's lesser known films, a crowd-pleasing run-of-the-mill melodrama that, whilst popular in its day, is now massively overshadowed by the much grander films that L'Herbier made either side of it, most notably the magnificent L'Argent (1928).

Le Vertige was adapted from a stage play of the same title by Charles Méré, which was first performed in Paris in 1922.  Méré was a popular, not particularly distinguished, playwright of the era and many of his plays were adapted for cinema, most famously André Hugon's Les Trois Masques (1929), which has the distinction of being the first sound film to have been made in France.  Paul Schiller directed a subsequent version of the play in 1935, with Alice Field and André Burgère taking the lead roles.  In L'Herbier's far more impressive version, the leading parts are played by two of the most bankable stars of the era, Emmy Lynn and Jaque Catelain, with the inordinately talented Roger Karl turning in another memorable character performance as the central villain of the piece.  It was the perfect line up for a classic melodrama - one that could hardly fail to replenish Cinégraphic's dwindling coffers.

Performing at her theatrical best as the hysterically overwrought female lead - an essential staple of this species of old-school film melodrama - is the wonderfully expressive Emmy Lynn.  Mannered though her performance is, Lynn brings a compulsive reality to her neurotic portrayal of a woman who, having lost one lover, is tormented by the prospect of losing another who is his exact likeness.  One of the biggest stars in French cinema at the time, Lynn had previously distinguished herself in two of Abel Gance's more enjoyable melodramas, Mater Dolorosa (1917) and La Dixième symphonie (1918).  She also graced several films directed by her real-life lover Henry Roussell, most notably La Faute d'Odette Maréchal (1919).  L'Herbier had previously given Lynn a leading role in his Tolstoy adaptation Résurrection a few years earlier, although that film had to be abandoned when the director fell ill with typhoid.  For a film that derives most of its dramatic power from the sheer mental anguish of its central female protagonist, Emmy Lynn's characteristically expressive style of acting - complete with frantic wringing of hands and ghoulish widening of eyes - was especially suitable, perhaps more so than on any other film she lent her talents to.  That Le Vertige rises above the usual standard of 1920s melodrama and achieves a level of psychological realism that still impresses is down to its lead actress's ability to connect with her audience and convey so powerfully the horrifying trauma of a woman succumbing to the worst terrors of her imagination.

As the object of Lynn's wildly vertiginous obsession, Jaque Catelain is just as well cast and makes no less an impact in the dual role of one tragically fated Russian officer and his equally vulnerable French doppelgänger.  Catelain was a favoured protégé of L'Herbier since the latter had landed him his first screen role in René Hervil and Louis Mercanton's Le Torrent (1917), a film which the future director had scripted.  Catelain had taken the male lead in L'Herbier's first feature Rose-France (1918) and subsequently appeared in most of the director's silent films.  At the time Le Vertige was released, he had become one of Europe's pre-eminent matinee idols, deserving of the soubriquet of France's Rudolph Valentino.  Catelain wasn't just stunningly handsome with his seductive boyish features and perfect physique, he was also an incredibly accomplished screen actor, bringing an almost unrivalled level of sensitivity and pathos to his performances.  With two very different characters to portray - the heroic military man and a far less self-controlled diplomat - Le Vertige shows the actor at his best.  Catelain's natural air of vulnerability and his aptitude for playing strong emotions convincingly (without his co-star's stagy histrionics) give his performance a very modern feel.  L'Herbier could not have chosen a better actor for the part of the sympathetic innocent who succumbs to a fatal attraction for an enigmatic mystery woman, progressively losing his grip on reality as she herself is drawn to the edge of sanity by passion and paranoiac fear.

And who better to play the satanic villain of the piece than Roger Karl, an immensely gifted character actor with a screen presence of almost monstrous proportions.  Karl was another actor that L'Herbier greatly admired and made use of a number of times - most significantly in his first great film, L'Homme du large (1920).  Karl had previously played opposite Catelain in L'Inhumaine, and then subsequently in Le Diable au coeur (1926).  Le Vertige provides the two actors with their most memorable on-screen clash, a David and Goliath confrontation in which Catelain's slender shouldered romantic is pitted against Karl's screen-filling hulk of psychotic nastiness.

In English, Le Vertige translates as Vertigo, and knowing this makes it irresistible to seek a connection with Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film of that name.  The two films certainly have some striking plot similarities (even if the lead male and female roles are reversed).  Mirroring what we see in Hitchcock's famous thriller, the female protagonist in Le Vertige has the misfortune of witnessing the violent death of the man she has fallen in love with, and thereafter develops an all-consuming obsessive fascination for another man she later meets who happens to be his exact likeness.  As Le Vertige races towards its dizzying climax, it looks as if the tragic events that set the story in motion are about to repeat themselves, and it is with bated breath that we watch the drama's nail-biting resolution unfold, with the similarly constructed Vertigo leading us to expect the worst.  So unbearably tense and dramatic is the film's climax, its bold use of crosscutting and atmospheric lighting heightening the impact to an excruciating level, that it might well have been directed by Hitchcock himself.  It is interesting to speculate the extent to which Le Vertige may have impacted on the Master of Suspense, who began making his own thrillers around the time that L'Herbier's film first saw the light of day.

One technique that L'Herbier uses particularly well in the nerve-racking denouement is his so-called 'deep space' photography, which extends the field of view far into the background to allow crucial action to take place at multiple distances from the lens, not just the foreground.  As the drama builds to the inevitable confrontation between the two male protagonists, L'Herbier creates a terrible sense of foreboding by having the General and his wife (Karl and Lynn) positioned towards the back of their drawing room set, viewed through an exterior window that has just been blown open by a sudden gust of wind.  The camera puts us in the place of an anticipated intruder about to burst into the room - our point of view is that of a living manifestation of the external threat that has been conjured into existence by the General's manic fear of impending death and his wife's equivalent concern over the safety of her reincarnated lover.  It is a genuinely heart-stopping moment when the shot is suddenly reversed to reveal Henri (Catelain) standing in the window, with a raised gun in his hand.  This is the point at which the giddying torrent of emotion almost knocks you out of your seat. The storm that has been building right from the start of the film now reaches its dizzying climax and it is with a sense of fatalistic dread that we watch the three protagonists being propelled to their doom by the most primitive of human feelings.  It is a scene of such harrowing intensity that not even Jean Epstein could surpass it with his similarly delirious conclusion to La Chute de la maison Usher (1928).

By virtue of its brazenly populist subject matter, Le Vertige can easily be written off as a minor work in Marcel L'Herbier's oeuvre, seemingly having more in common with the  lacklustre offerings he routinely trotted out for an easy buck after making the transition to sound cinema.  It certainly doesn't have the artistic grandeur and dazzling visual impact of L'Inhumaine (despite sharing the same set designer, Robert Mallet-Stevens), nor is there any sign of the epic scale of the director's magnum opus L'Argent.  It is unapologetically a pretty conventional melodrama intended to draw the crowds and make a healthy profit - which it did.   (If the film had not been a commercial success L'Argent would probably never have been made.)  Like his contemporaries Jean Epstein and Abel Gance, L'Herbier was compelled by financial expediency to make a film with public appeal, and just as they did, he applied his talents with as much skill and commitment as if he were tackling a work more in keeping with his avant-garde status.

One of the strengths of Le Vertige is that its director uses his trademark impressionistic techniques (including superimposition, camera angles, camera movement and flashbacks) far more sparingly and subtly than on his grander, more artistically self-conscious films - to serve the narrative rather than merely to make a bold aesthetic statement.  With less visual stylisation to distract us, there is a greater emphasis on the performances, and it is in this domain that the film is particularly strong, thanks to the arresting contributions of the three lead actors.  The fact that the film was a great hit with the cinemagoing public of the day (one of the few L'Herbier films to achieve this feat in the silent era) should not lead us to regard Le Vertige as merely populist trash.  It is as slick and emotionally involving as any popular entertainment of its day, and with its gripping anxiety-inducing denouement it feels eerily prescient of the modern psycho-thriller and slasher movie.  What is the phrase that constantly repeats itself as you watch the film?  By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes...

Film Synopsis

Russia, March 1917.  With a fierce revolution threatening to engulf the entire country, the Petrograd estate of General Svirsky is hours away from being overrun by the peasant mob.  As she awaits her fate, the General's young wife Natacha thinks only of the man who has stolen her heart, the gallant Lieutenant Dimitrief Dimitrievith.  If only she hadn't been forced into marrying the General, a brutal man many years her senior.  It was to save her father from ruin that she agreed to the marriage, but she has regretted it ever since, especially now that she loves Dimitrief.  Suspecting he has a rival, the General orders one of his underlings to spy on his wife and report any signs of infidelity.  On hearing that Natacha and Dimitrief have been meeting in secret, the General is outraged and immediately summons the lieutenant.  Convinced that Dimitrief is his wife's secret lover, the General shoots him dead, to the distress of Natacha as she witnesses the vile act of revenge.

Some years later, the General and his wife are comfortably settled on the Côte d'Azur in southern France.  One day, Natacha's gaze is drawn to the face of a young man who has just won a speed boat race.  She can hardly believe her eyes.  Surely it cannot be her beloved Dimitrief?  From that moment, she becomes obsessed with meeting the handsome stranger, and he in turn is flattered but puzzled by the interest she shows in him.  He may be the spitting image of the long dead Russian lieutenant, but he is in fact a different man - a promising young French diplomat named Henri de Cassel.  Mistaking Natacha's interest in him for love at first sight, Henri returns her signs of affection and soon discovers that he is in love with her.  It troubles Henri that the Russian woman refuses to disclose her identity or indeed tell him anything about herself.  Then he makes a terrible discovery - it is another man who resembles him that Natacha loves!  In a fit of pique, Henri ejects his new love from his apartment and insists he can never see her again.

Unable to subdue his strange yearning for Natacha, the young diplomat attends a society reception to which the General and his wife are invited.  On learning the truth about Natacha - her unhappy marriage to a tyrant and her former ill-fated liaison - Henri has a change of heart and realises he is too much in love with the Russian woman to give her up.  History seems to be repeating itself, and once again the General risks taking drastic action against his rival after discovering his wife has been unfaithful to him.  Fearing that her husband may kill Henri, Natacha urges her young lover to stay away from her.  The General and Natacha leave Paris and return to their Riviera villa.  By now, the Russian officer's health is failing and his wife becomes his devoted nurse.  One night, resolved to rescue the woman he loves, Henri breaks into the General's estate, ready for a final confrontation with his deadly rival.  As Natacha watches on in horror, the two men aim guns at each other and position themselves for a decisive duel.  At the fateful moment, the General suffers a fatal heart attack.  Natacha is at last free to marry the man she loves.