Jacques Feyder's Therese Raquin 1928

Jacques Feyder's 1928 adaptation of Emile Zola's Therese Raquin is the next film featured in my review of films shown at the Cambridge Film Guild in 1929/30 while Lowry was a student.

Jacques Feyder's 1928 adaptation of Emile Zola's Therese Raquin was also released in Germany as Du Sollst Nicht Ehe Brechen and in the U.S. as Shadows of Fear. Produced in Berlin, with Gina Manes in the title role, the film is regarded by many cineastes as Feyder's best effort. The director perfectly captured the bourgeois stuffiness of the Raquin household and the unspoken passions of the faithless Therese, who despises her small-minded husband and wishes him dead. In concert with her lover, Therese arranges for Raquin to "accidentally" drown in a boating accident. Subsequently, Therese marries her paramour, but their union is forever blighted by the memory of their horrible deed. Upon stumbling onto the truth, Therese's mother is shocked into muteness, but the couple knows that she knows. And in the end, it is the mother who is the sole and silent witness to the couple's downfall. All Movie.com

Again, I couldn't find a clip of Therese Raquin to show with the post so I fell back on Feyder's classic 1921 film L'Atlantide.


The actress in the above film was called Renée Claire Angèle Élisabeth Napierkowski usually known as Stacia Napierkowska, who was a French film actress and dancer.It struck me as a coincidence that I chose this clip before I knew her name and the similarity to René Clair of the previous post.