El Dorado

'Sibilla is troubled by conflicting emotions,' reads one inter-title. Audiences may feel likewise, faced with a movie in which the spirit of 1920s avant-garde is brought to bear on a tale of deepest Victorian bathos. Sibilla is a dancer at the El Dorado, a penurious single mum with an infant wasting away in the back room. Also figuring are a sensitive artist, a clown who loves her from afar, and a cad who behaves despicably simply because he's the story's designated villain. L'Herbier gives every scene the works - subliminal cut-ins, subjective distortions, split screen - effects which lack any consistency but which cumulatively achieve considerable intensity by the blood-spattered finale.