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L'Argent

1928·165 min·FR
Director: Marcel L'Herbier
Drama
French Avant-Garde

Marcel L'Herbier's monumental final silent film — a sprawling, visually dazzling adaptation of Émile Zola's novel about financial speculation, corruption, and the human wreckage left in the wake of unchecked greed. A charismatic banker builds a financial empire on fraud and manipulation, destroying lives on his way up and on his way down. L'Herbier stages the stock exchange sequences with a kinetic energy that makes the trading floor look like a battlefield, and the Art Deco production design is staggering in its scale and beauty. The film's parallels to modern financial crises are uncanny — Zola's nineteenth-century story of market manipulation and moral bankruptcy could have been ripped from twenty-first-century headlines. A grand, ambitious work that serves as a fitting capstone to the French silent cinema's extraordinary decade.

Marcel L'Herbier's monumental final silent film — a sprawling, visually dazzling adaptation of Émile Zola's novel about financial speculation, corruption, and the human wreckage left in the wake of unchecked greed. A charismatic banker builds a financial empire on fraud and manipulation, destroying lives on his way up and on his way down. L'Herbier stages the stock exchange sequences with a kinetic energy that makes the trading floor look like a battlefield, and the Art Deco production design is staggering in its scale and beauty. The film's parallels to modern financial crises are uncanny — Zola's nineteenth-century story of market manipulation and moral bankruptcy could have been ripped from twenty-first-century headlines. A grand, ambitious work that serves as a fitting capstone to the French silent cinema's extraordinary decade.

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Explore Further

L’Argent
Article
On rewatching L'Argent (1928; Fr.; Marcel L'Herbier) — The Realm of Silence

Critical reexamination of L'Herbier's visual virtuosity and financial themes.

Article

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Cast

Pierre Alcover

Pierre Alcover

Nicolas Saccard

Brigitte Helm

Brigitte Helm

Baronin Sandorf

Henry Victor

Henry Victor

Jacques Hamelin

Marie Glory

Marie Glory

Line

Alfred Abel

Alfred Abel

Alphonse Gunderman

Antonin Artaud

Antonin Artaud

Mazaud

Jules Berry

Jules Berry

Huret

Yvette Guilbert

Yvette Guilbert

La Méchain

Pierre Juvenet

Pierre Juvenet

Raymond Rouleau

Raymond Rouleau

Marcelle Pradot

Marcelle Pradot

Roger Karl

Roger Karl

Alexandre Mihalesco

Alexandre Mihalesco

Armand Bour

Armand Bour

J

Jean Godard

Crew

Marcel L'Herbier

writer

Jules Kruger

cinematographer

Arthur Bernède

writer

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