Germaine Dulac

Seashells and Clergymen

La Coquille et le clergyman (Dir: Germaine Dulac, 1928)

In August, I watched Germaine Dulac's gorgeous La cigarette (The Cigarette) (1919) on The Criterion Channel. The film, about a man suspecting his wife of adultery and a poisoned cigarette he intends to smoke himself, is a wickedly dark, gorgeous and murderous fifty-one-minute film within the remits of both silent and avant-garde cinema. I'd like to write about it at length at some point. La cigarette reawakened my hardly dorment belief that Dulac was a vital and under-recognised talent whose work deserves a whole lot more recognition in contemporary society. It also got me thinking about my introduction to this filmmaker.