La Mort du soleil (1922, 83m, 35mm)

Written by André Legrand, this drama stars Denis Lorys (who had previously played a liberated countess in Dulac’s La belle dame sans merci) as a scientist trying to find a balance between her domestic responsibilities and her work at an orphanage for tubercular children, allegorizing the plight of the modern woman after World War I. Dulac deftly uses an array of visual and editing techniques to conjure her protagonist’s inner life, once again striving to create a cinematic language that could do justice to the collective psychology and social issues of her time. Print courtesy of the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC).