Au Bonheur des Dames (Das Paradies der Damen)

Denise (Dita Parlo), who has just been orphaned, comes to the metropolis of Paris for the first time, where her uncle wants to take her in. But his fabric store is threatened with bankruptcy by the new department store "Paradise of Ladies" ("played" by Galeries Lafayette). In order to survive, Denise applies for a job there and falls in love with the owner of the empire ... With a tour de force that is both highly condensed and monumental, Duvivier once again celebrates silent film as an art form in its own right, which disappears at its climax (the sound version made at the same time has been lost). Even the opening montage has the protagonist and audience shaking in a metropolitan frenzy, later expressionist fireworks are set off or a Russian film staccato is unleashed as worlds collide. Duvivier's vision of a total cinema that bundles not only narrative art forms, but also the plastic ones, even painting and architecture. The plot, which modernizes the Zola material, only plays second fiddle, even though the theme announced at the beginning as "enduringly topical" still shapes society a hundred years later: the horror and inevitability of progress. (Christoph Huber)

Photo: Austrian Film Museum