Sunday 19 January 2020

Forbidden Paradise (1924 Ernst Lubitsch)

IMDB lists as an hour and a quarter - the extremely low quality copy I have is 52 minutes. (Halliwell records it as 60 m.) Despite vision problems (reading the intertitles for example) film is nicely perky and great fun, and moves on fast. The acting is great, subtle looks rather than theatre style grand gestures. Adolphe Menjou in particular has a wonderful ironic style, Pola Negri also great as the Czarina, Rod La Roque the object of her affections.

Loved Menjou going to the revolutionaries and buying them off (close ups of hand on sword vs. hand going for wallet), and congratulating the Spanish Ambassador for his new medal (a sign he's had it away with the Czarina).

It's written by Agnes Christine Johnston and Hanns Kraly from Lajos Biro / Melchior Lengyel play. Good design by Hans Dreier, photographed by Charles Van Enger (not that these credits are on my print).

Biro wrote for Korda - his name's on The Drum, Rembrandt, Knight Without Armour, The Divorce of Lady X and The Thief of Bagdad, and Five Graves To Cairo was adapted from his play. He also wrote the Emil Jannings / Josef von Sternberg silent The Last Command. Lengyel wrote the source stories for Ninotchka and To Be Or Not To Be.


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