AllMovie

Fernand Léger is best known as a cubist painter, but he also had some involvement in French cinema. Inspired by a Chaplin feature, Léger was most interested in film as an expressive new medium on which to create his art but showed little interest in the technical aspects of filmmaking. He worked on his first film L'Herbier's L'Inhumane in 1923 as a set designer. Léger made his biggest contribution the following year when he made the classic avant garde short Le Ballet Mecanique with technical help from Dudley Murphy. In 1936 Léger designed the costumes for the fantasy Things to Come a British adaptation of an H.G. Wells story. He came to the U.S. during WW II and there helped to make a documentary biography of his own life The World of Fernand Léger.