Preceded by Gaumont newsreels of 1921. "That's real cinema!"-Louis Delluc, 1921 Marcel L'Herbier was the master of French film impressionism who experimented in avant-garde narrative expression. El Dorado is regarded as his first masterpiece. It is set in a seedy cabaret in Granada, Spain, against an actual backdrop of Holy Week and its festivities. The star dancer, Sybilla (Eve Francis), obsessed with concern for her young son, attempts to get aid from Se-or Esteria, who had seduced and abandoned her years earlier. Rebuffed, she takes revenge by compromising Esteria's grown daughter and her artist lover before a tragic conclusion. In what he called "a cinematic melodrama" L'Herbier simulates the subjective experience of his characters through visual distortions, tinting and editing, effecting what he termed "a dialectic (between) the real and the unreal."