Preceded by Gaumont newsreels of 1920. . L?n Poirier was artistic director of the Pax collection, launched in 1919, intended to modernize cinema aesthetics in films aimed at a popular audience. Many of France's greatest directors and actors worked with him in their early years. Narayana, based on Balzac, was among a group of Poirier films with an Oriental flavor (shot in Nice) which "narrated tales of brutal, mysterious, tragic passion; and the Oriental woman was consistently typecast as the deadly seductess....Louis Delluc described (Narayana) as 'an enticing dream-more suggestive than complete.'...What fascinated French audiences as much as these tales of forbidden, destructive desire, however, (was) the composition of the decors (in sets) designed by Robert Jules Garnier..." (Richard Abel, French Cinema)