El Dorado (1921 film)

El Dorado is a French silent film directed in 1921 by Marcel LHerbier. The film was notable for integrating a number of technical innovations into its narrative of a cinematic melodrama. It achieved considerable success on its release, as a groundbreaking film that was distinctively French at a time when the cinema was felt to be dominated by American productions.

An initial budget of 92,000 francs was allocated, but in the end the film cost nearly 400,000 francs.In Granada in Spain, Sibilla works as a dancer in a squalid cabaret called El Dorado, struggling to earn enough to care for her sick child. The boys father Estoria, a prominent citizen, refuses them both help and recognition, fearful of jeopardising the engagement of his adult daughter Iliana to a wealthy nobleman. Iliana however slips away from her engagement party to meet her real lover Hedwick, a Swedish painter. Sibilla, in desperation after a further rejection by Estoria, sees an opportunity to blackmail him by locking the lovers overnight in their meetingplace in the Alhambra. When Hedwick learns the truth next day, he and Iliana decide to take refuge at his mothers remote house on the Sierra Nevada, and they propose to Sibilla that they should take her son Ilianas halfbrother with them so that he can be properly cared for in a healthy climate. Sibilla reluctantly agrees, but she is distraught as she returns to her empty room at El Dorado where she even has to fight off Joao, the cabarets clown, as he tries to rape her. Knowing that she will not see her son again, she performs a last dance on stage to rapturous applause before going backstage to stab herself. ........

Source: Wikipedia