L'Herbier was, along with Abel Gance, the master of French impressionism, but, as historian Georges Sadoul notes, “populism was in fact...one of the major contributions to the cinema of this group of directors, over and above their characteristic impressionistic technique. The note is struck in all the key films of the movement (including) L'Homme du Large.” The story, loosely based on Balzac, tells of a Breton fisherman who despairs of his son's attraction to the big town. “L'Herbier makes nature itself the protagonist--the Breton sea with its storms and immense stretches of glistening water--which in turn influences the characters.... And here we see him preoccupied with his two main obsessions, documentary and stylization, merged into a pantheistic poem of man and nature” (National Film Theatre). Intertitles are missing from this rare print, which will be presented with an English synopsis.