L’Atlantide

G. W. Pabst’s adaptation of the Pierre Benoit novel is far rarer, and far odder, than the better-known silent version by Jacques Feyder. 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 Antinéa (Brigitte Helm), who reigns over the land. The film was shot partly in North Africa, but like Josef von Sternberg’s “locations,” it offers a highly artificial world, at once sensual and dazzling, yet coolly filmed through a scrim of social and psychological observation.