El Dorado
About El Dorado
In Granada, Sibilla dances at the cabaret El Dorado to pay for her sick child. The boy's father, Estiria, will not acknowledge them, because he is marrying his daughter Iliana to a nobleman. Iliana slips away from the engagement party to meet Hedwick, a Swedish painter, in the Alhambra. After another refusal, Sibilla locks the lovers in overnight and then confesses. Hedwick and Iliana offer to take the boy to his mother's house in the Sierra Nevada. Sibilla agrees, fights off the clown Joao, dances once more, and stabs herself backstage.
Cast & crew
More about El Dorado
Marcel L'Herbier sold Léon Gaumont an original Andalusian melodrama and began shooting in March 1921. The allocation was 92,000 francs; the finished picture cost nearly 400,000. The company was allowed to film inside the Alhambra, and Holy Week processions shot in Seville were cut into the story. Gaumont disliked the soft-focus devices and broke into a screening.
Themes
Background
L'Herbier set the melodrama against Spanish landscape he had read through Maurice Barrès, and he shot it while American features were the films most French critics measured themselves against.
In film history
A tinted print at the Cinémathèque Française still carries the original colour scheme, which marks present time off from flashbacks.
Making
Georges Lucas and Georges Specht photographed it. Faces in the cabaret are warped to read as drink and appetite, and the same bend appears when Joao attacks Sibilla. When Hedwick paints in the Alhambra, the architecture shifts toward the picture he is making.
Reviews
Louis Delluc's line on it was 'Ça, c'est du cinéma!' Bonsoir gave the press show a full page, with three critics. Ricciotto Canudo thought the pictorial effects were not tied tightly enough to the story.
Look
Sibilla's first dance holds her out of focus while the other dancers stay sharp, and the same blur returns when she is thinking of the child. The camera, not the sets, supplies the distortion.
Technique
The colour tinting and the selective soft focus were planned shot by shot rather than applied as a uniform bath.
Music
Marius-François Gaillard wrote an orchestral score to the finished cut. L'Herbier said it was the first film score timed as an exact counterpoint to the image.
Preservation
The Cinémathèque Française holds a tinted print. In 1995 the CNC restored the film with the Museum of Modern Art, the Cinémathèque française, and the Swiss Film Archive. Gaumont issued that restoration on DVD in 2002.
Notes
- Ève Francis plays Sibilla, Jaque Catelain plays Hedwick, Marcelle Pradot plays Iliana, and Philippe Hériat plays Joao.
- Georges Paulais is Estiria. Claire Prélia plays Hedwick's Swedish mother.
- L'Herbier insisted the subtitle 'mélodrame' stay on the film.
- Press saw it in July 1921. Some spectators later objected out loud to the visual effects.
- It was little shown outside France in the 1920s.
- Alain Resnais later cited the film when he talked about the silent-film style he wanted in Last Year at Marienbad.
Scenes
- Sibilla locks Iliana and Hedwick in their meeting place in the Alhambra.
- She dances to applause and then stabs herself behind the curtain.
Influenced by
- Maurice Barrès's writing on Spain
Influenced
- Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
Also available
- Internet Archive (eldorado-marcel-l-herbier-1921)
- Gaumont DVD (2002)
Quotes
Ça, c'est du cinéma!
