After the success of L'Herbier's previous film, Le Carnaval des vérités, Gaumont allowed him more resources for his next project, and in the spring of 1920 he drafted a scenario based loosely on a philosophical short story by Balzac called Un drame au bord de la mer.

Years before... Full of contempt for mankind and life on land, Nolff has built his house on a remote cliff-top, and devotes himself to his fishing and to his wife and children: his daughter Djenna, hard-working and dutiful, and his son Michel whom he idolises and is determined to bring up as "a free man, a sailor".

But Michel is selfish and exploits his father's blind affection, and as he grows up, hating the sea, he becomes addicted to the pleasures of the town, lured into bad behaviour by his friend Guenn-la-Taupe.

Needing money to spend on Lia, Michel steals the savings which his mother had kept for Djenna, but he is caught and denounced by Nolff, who vows "to return him to God".

In June 1920, L'Herbier took a large crew to Brittany for location shooting around the coasts of Morbihan and Finistère, where he sought the wild landscapes which would establish the story's moral contrast between the pure grandeur of the sea and the corrupt temptations of the town.

L'Herbier rapidly devised a pastiche of a tale of Oscar Wilde and a parody of a detective story which was called Villa Destin: it carried the subtitle Humoresque.

[7] While some critics were troubled by the contrast between the film's natural environment of coast and sea and its aesthetic use of frequent editing wipes, irises and superimpositions, there was broader appreciation for the rhythmic structure of shots and sequences, forming what L'Herbier saw as a "musical composition".

One week after the film's release it had to be withdrawn from screening because of objections to parts of the scene of the "bouge" which showed some lascivious kissing and caresses between two women.