52 - JACQUES CATELAIN AND EMMY LYNN

JACQUES CATELAIN AND EMMY LYNN Scene from Marcel L'Herbier's silent, modernist film *Le Vertige*, 1926. Photograph, silver print on vintage card stock, unmarked on the back. Image: 16.5 x 22.5 cm; 23 x 29 cm. Note: Adapted by Marcel L’Herbier from Charles Méré’s play, *Le Vertige* tells the story of a passion rooted in memory and duality. Emmy Lynn plays Natacha Svirsky, the wife of a Russian general who, at the start of the Revolution, kills her former lover Dimitrieff. After fleeing to Nice, Natacha meets Henri de Cassel, the dead man’s double; both characters are played by Jaque Catelain. This resemblance reawakens both her desire and her trauma. The melodrama is part of L’Herbier’s artistic and technical explorations: the sets were designed by Robert Mallet-Stevens, Lucien Aguettand, and Robert Delaunay, while Hans Theyer and Jean Letort handled the cinematography. These collaborations give the film its resolutely modernist aesthetic.