L'or: A Strange, Golden relic from 1934

Is this worth your time?

Honestly, only if you have a soft spot for pre-war cinema that feels like a fever dream. If you need pacing that moves faster than a tectonic plate, stay far away. But, if you like watching people in sharp suits argue in cavernous, metallic industrial rooms while the world feels like it's crumbling, pull up a chair.

It’s the kind of movie that assumes you’re smart enough to keep up, or at least patient enough to wait for the next explosion of drama. Brigitte Helm is in it, which is the main reason I sat through the whole thing. She brings this intensity that makes everyone else look like they’re just waiting for lunch. She doesn't waste a single frame.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of L'or (1934) through its definitive frames.

The Gold Problem

The whole premise of making gold from scratch feels like one of those old-school science fiction warnings. We’ve seen these themes before—man playing God, the destruction of the economy, the usual suspects. But there’s something genuinely eerie about the way the machinery in this movie is filmed. It looks heavy. You can almost smell the ozone and the grease.

The investigation part of the story feels a bit like a side dish to the main course of watching the machines hum and clank. Sometimes I forgot why the investigator was even there, but then he’d pop up in the corner of the frame looking worried, and I’d remember. Oh right, a murder.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of L'or (1934) through its definitive frames.

It makes me think of other era-appropriate oddities like Mordprozeß Mary Dugan, where the atmosphere does more work than the script. It’s got that same stiff, formal energy that weirdly draws you in.

• The lighting in the lab scenes is absolutely wild.
• Some of the dialogue sounds like it was written in a hurry.
• I spent five minutes just staring at a light fixture in the background.
• The way they handle the 'artificial gold' reveal is surprisingly understated.

There’s a moment where a character walks across a floor that looks like it’s made of glass, and you’re just waiting for it to crack. It never does. It’s that kind of movie—building up tension that sometimes just drifts away into the rafters.

If you enjoy comparing versions of the same story, looking at this alongside the German version is a fun way to spend a rainy afternoon. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s a fascinating snapshot of how different crews used the same space. It’s weirdly hypnotic. 📽️