In a small coastal town Ludivine, a fisherman's daughter, falls in love with Delphin, an orphaned boy who comes to live with them. But her father wants her to marry Lauderin, the lecherous manager of a local cabaret-bar.
L'Herbier had originally made an agreement with the Gaumont-British company to film Labiche's stage farce Un chapeau de paille d'Italie with the popular English actress Betty Balfour. When that project was delayed, the filming rights were ceded to René Clair who was also eager to adapt the work, and L'Herbier proceeded with an alternative adaptation of a novel by Lucie Delarue-Mardrus set in a Breton fishing community.[3]
Filming began, in November 1926, on location at Honfleur, and then at the Studios de la Villette in Paris and the Victorine Studios in Nice, but the production was beset with problems. Soon after filming began several leading members of the cast became ill, including Balfour, and the production had to be halted for a time, incurring greater costs. When they had resumed, the actor Auguste Mévisto, playing Ludivine's father, suddenly died, and several scenes had to be refilmed with his replacement Roger Karl. Further difficulties were caused by the panchromatic film which was being used for the first time in a French production, and technical inexperience with this filmstock produced a number of unforeseen problems. L'Herbier subsequently felt that, despite the film's appealing elements and the vivacious humour of Betty Balfour, the finished product lacked rigorous consistency.[4][5]
^Richard Roud. Cinema: A Critical Dictionary: the Major Film-makers; volume 2. New York: Viking Press, 1980. p. 624.
^Le Diable au cœur at British Film Institute collections database. Retrieved 31 May 2021.
^Jaque Catelain. Marcel L'Herbier. Paris: Vautrain, 1950. pp. 99-100.
^Marcel L'Herbier. La Tête qui tourne. Paris: Belfont, 1979. pp.146-147: "... malgré des aspects séduisants il n'était pas d'une homogénéité implacable.".
^Noël Burch. Marcel L'Herbier. Paris: Seghers, 1973. p. 167.
^Laurent Véray, ed. Marcel L'Herbier: l'art du cinéma. Paris: Association française de recherche sur l'histoire du cinéma, 2007. The book also contains an essay on the film, by Éric Thouvenel, "Le Film fétiche: remarques sur une climatologie du cinéma d'après Le Diable au cœur (1926)", pp. 109-117.
