A year after The Jazz Singer revolutionized movies, French director Julien Duvivier said goodbye to silence with Au Bonheur des Dames (1929), an adaptation of an Émile Zola novel set in then-contemporary Paris that is a kind of compilation of the Silent Era’s greatest hits: it’s got a little of Eisenstein’s montage, a little of Lang’s crowd compositions, some of Murnau’s fancy point-of-view camera work and opticals, even a Lillian Gish type as the Griffith-like distraught heroine. She’s Denise (sloe-eyed, plump-limbed Dita Parlo), an orphan dazzled by the bustle of Paris, where she has arrived to work at the shop of her Uncle Baudu (Armand Bour). Alas, progress in the form of a vast department store across the street, the " Paradise of Ladies " of the title, has all but put Baudu out of business. So lured by the neighboring " Temple of Temptation, " Denise takes a job next door as a model (Duvivier takes great delight in satin-chemised bottoms), where she wins the heart of the store’s ruthless but idealistic owner, Octave Mouret (Octave Mouret).

Duvivier chooses as the theme of his last silent film the conflict between old and new modes of capitalism and its likely resolution; he would go on to be one of the new industry’s biggest commercial successes, though nowadays he’s remembered most for the haunting Pépé le Moko with the brilliant Jean Gabin. Au Bonheur charms and surprises, but its sentiment gets lost in the inventory; it’s a bad sign for cinema that the vision of the future Denise and Octave share should be a giant shopping mall.