Made simultaneously in German, French and English, Pabst's L'Atlantide is the sound version of Pierre Benoit's famous novel, of which Jacques Feyder made a silent in 1921, and is generally considered to be the better of the two films.

Filmed in Germany and North Africa, L'Atlantide is a mixture of dream and reality, the story of the search for Atlantis based on the theory that the lost land was once in the midst of what is now the Sahara. Lieutenant de Saint-Avit tells his tale of a city peopled by a strange race, the meeting of a dapper Parisian friend therein, and the mysterious, goddess-like creature who reigns over the land, Antinea (played by Brigitte Helm, who played the young girl in Lang's Metropolis).

In his book, “G.W. Pabst,” Lee Atwell comments: “Pabst's treatment of it is cool and Germanic, without sacrificing the sensuous aspects that become more emphatic in the French version.... (E)mphasis is shifted from the exotic and spectacular to a controlled ritualistic atmosphere, bringing into relief certain social motifs and psychological tropes that are peculiarly Pabstian.... Pabst finds his medium in staging the bizarre, surreal experience of Saint-Avit....”