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In short, this film tells in quasi-mythic terms the struggle of a father with his son. The father is a simple man, who earns his living on the sea. His wife brings two children into the world: the first a saintly daughter, and the second a boy, who has nothing but disrespect for the humble lifestyle of his parents, and who longs for nothing more than to booze and carouse in the taverns of the local town.
In story terms, the film could hardly be more timeless and classic. However, L’Herbier’s sophistication in telling the story rivals the greatest of his contemporary peers. The understanding of light and shadow, the editing, the framing/masking of shots, the use of tints, images edited into the frames of the film, all kinds of things applied to the lens to create effect and atmosphere. And, on top of that, the great use of authentic locales, and especially the presence of the violent sea in so many scenes. And, even down to the way that L’Herbier finds ways to integrate the titles of the film into the very flow of the images.
I have tried to see a lot of what is available in terms of the early silent cinema, and up until 1920, I can only really think of a handful of other films that are as impressive in cinematic terms as this one. The stills below should go some distance in illustrating the visual richness of this film.
L'Homme du large Web-dl 1080.mkv General Container: Matroska Runtime: 1 h 25 min Size: 5.25 GiB Video Codec: h264 Resolution: 1440x1080 Aspect ratio: 4:3 Frame rate: 25.000 fps Bit rate: 8 551 kb/s BPP: 0.220 Audio #1: French 2.0ch E-AC-3 @ 224 kb/s
https://nitro.download/view/6BF3DA93B9353D9/L’Homme_du_large_Web-dl_1080.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/CC5472E600E9EF0/L’Homme_du_large_Web-dl_1080.srt
Language(s):Silent, French intertitles
Subtitles:English