The Indian Tomb (1921)

Joe May’s 1921 silent epic The Indian Tomb was based on Thea von Harbou's very successful 1918 novel The Indian Tomb. Thea von Harbou was of course married to Fritz Lang. Lang and von Harbou wrote the screenplay for the film.

The novel, although extremely good, contains one very serious flaw. Interestingly enough that flaw is corrected in the movie. I don’t know whether it was von Harbou or Lang or May who made the change but it was very much a change for the better.

The movie is in two parts, Part I: The Mission of the Yogi (Die Sendung des Yoghi) and Part II: The Tiger of Bengal (Der Tiger von Eschnapur). It is in fact a single story with no obvious break between the two parts and the only reason it was originally released that way was the 3 hours and 40 minutes running time.

The story begins with a prologue. A yogi buried alive is resuscitated by the fabulously rich Ayan III, the Prince of Bengal (Conrad Veidt). According to legend when this happens the yogi must grant the person who revives him one wish. The prologue is important because it establishes that the yogi, Ramigani (Bernhard Goetzke), has supernatural or at least paranormal powers. And it establishes that Ramigani is compelled to carry out out the Prince’s commands even when he disagrees with them.

The Prince instructs Ramigami to persuade famed architect Herbert Rowland (Olaf Fønss) to travel to India to build a tomb for him. Herbert understands that the tomb will house the body of a princess, the beloved of the Prince. Herbert is persuaded that he must leave for India immediately without informing his fiancée Irene Amundsen (Mia May). Herbert departs on the Prince’s steam yacht. Irene is however a resourceful woman and she sets off for India as well.

On arrival in India Herbert discovers that there are very important things he hadn’t been told. The tomb is not to house the body of the Princess. It is to house the memory of a Great Love. A love betrayed. The Princess is alive. She has betrayed the Prince with a dashing but unscrupulous British officer and hunter, MacAllan.

The Prince has plans for revenge but his plans are not straightforward.

Herbert suffers several misfortunes, the most serious being that he is infected with leprosy. Nothing can save him. Or perhaps something can. But the price will be terrible.

MacAllan is a hunted man.

Irene is more or less a prisoner. The Prince’s feelings towards her are ambiguous. It’s possible that he desires her but his feelings about women are more than a little distorted.

Herbert and Irene become involved in attempts to rescue the Princess.

There is plenty of action and adventure. Narrow brushes with hungry tigers! Crocodile-infested rivers. A desperate escape across a rickety rope bridge over a chasm. A shootout at MacAllan’s bungalow. All filmed with style and energy.

This is however mostly a story about love. It’s a story of love betrayed, of misguided misplaced love, obsessive love, unhealthy love. But also noble love and faithful love.

Conrad Veidt is perfectly cast. He could play heroes or villains or victims or mysterious ambiguous characters and the Prince is all those things. He is probably mad, but he was probably once a very good man. Veidt also had tremendous magnetism. He’s in top form here.

The whole cast is good.

There’s plenty of interesting ambiguity. The Prince is not a mere villain. He is a man so shattered by emotional betrayal that he is no longer quite sane. The Princess is no innocent victim. She did betray the Prince’s love. And MacAllan is no hero. He not only seduced the Princess but boasted about it afterwards. Hebert Rowland is perhaps a little ambiguous as well, a man who allowed his artistic ambition to override his judgment. The yogi seems sinister at first but then we start to wonder.

This is a breathtakingly lavish production. The sets are jaw-dropping.

The movie might be better remembered had Lang directed it himself but I can’t fault May’s direction. This is a stunning emotionally complex movie and it’s very highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed Thea von Harbou's novel The Indian Tomb and also Lang’s own 1959 version, Fritz Lang's The Tiger of Bengal and The Indian Tomb (1959).

I’ve also reviewed another worthwhile Joe May movie, Asphalt (1929).

Anna Boleyn (1920)

I’ve been watching lots of early Ernst Lubitsch silent movies. At this stage of his career the man was a crazed visionary genius. You just never knew what he’d come up with next but you know it would be weird and exciting. Which may be why I was disappointed by Anna Boleyn (1920). I wasn’t prepared for a very conventional historical melodrama.

It starts of course with Henry VIII (Emil Jannings) becoming obsessed with his queen’s new lady-in-waiting Anne Boleyn (Henny Porten). The king is also concerned that his queen, Catherine of Aragon, has only given him a daughter and is clearly not going to have any more children. Henry feels that he absolutely must have a male heir. From the point of view of the future stability of his kingdom he is quite justified in fearing that a female heir might not be strong enough to hold on to her crown. So Henry is motivated both by lust and by reasons of state and the movie succeeds in making that clear.

English church leaders are willing to grant Henry an annulment but this is blocked by the Pope, which leads Henry to declare himself head of the Church of England. Now he can free himself of Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne. The movie takes no interest in the details of these church and political dramas - the focus is on the human dramas.

Anne already has a young man with whom she is in love. That will lead to problems. Anne produces an heir but it’s a girl. Queen Anne is accused of adultery and we all know what happened to her next.

Of course such a familiar story can only be made interesting if we get a sense of the personal motivations of these people. This movie does make some attempt to do this, and to be a character-driven historical film.

Jane Seymour is definitely cast as the villainess in this movie. She’s a ruthless schemer. She is motivated by pure ambition and has no scruples.

We never really get a totally clear sense of the King’s motivations. Obviously he’s motivated partly by reasons of state. And partly by lust. As to whether he feels any genuine love for Anne, we have to be pretty sceptical. It’s not easy to make Henry VIII a sympathetic character and this movie makes no real attempt to do so.

Anne Boleyn is of course the primary focus and she has at least some complexity. She comes across as a woman swept along by events. She knows she should resist the King’s advances (she’s in love with another man) but lacks the strength of character to do so. While the movie suggests that she is not actually unfaithful to the King she is somewhat indiscreet, and a queen cannot afford to be indiscreet. A queen must be above suspicion. She really has no idea how vulnerable a queen is to malicious accusations, or how dangerous her position could become.

Of course no-one could really have predicted Anne’s fate. Henry was now head of the Church of England. He could have divorced her for adultery. In reality Anne was under suspicion of treason, which would certainly have given the King grounds to have her executed (assuming there was any validity to the charge). The movie makes no mention of this, which is interesting. This may have been deliberate. The movie seems to intend to portray Henry as a man so corrupted by power that he will have a woman executed purely out of personal spite.

It’s also clear that the movie is intent on portraying Anne as a tragic victim (which she may or may not have been in reality). Whether the Anne Boleyn of the movie actually loves the King remains uncertain, perhaps because her feelings really are conflicted. Initially she is both horrified and flattered (mostly horrified) by his attentions but she is quite attracted by the idea of becoming queen.

I’m not much of an Emil Jannings fan but he’s perfectly cast here. One major problem is Henny Porten’s lifeless performance as Anne. No matter how hard the movie tries to make her the sympathetic heroine it’s hard to care about such a dull character. She is totally overshadowed by Aud Egede-Nissen as Jane Seymour - Jane is a bad bad girl but she’s lively and much more fun to watch.

It’s by no means a bad movie and my disappointment with it is mainly due to my hopes that we would see more of the wild imagination and visual splendour of Lubitsch’s other movies of this period. Anna Boleyn doesn’t really feel to me like a Lubitsch film. There’s no trace of the famed Lubitsch Touch.

Overall I thought Anna Boleyn fell a bit flat. It’s a by-the-numbers historical tragic romance epic and it just lacks the necessary vital spark.

This is included in several Lubitsch in Berlin boxed sets (both DVD and Blu-Ray). They’re worth buying because the other early Lubitsch movies are so fabulous. If you’re buying the boxed set anyway give Anna Boleyn a look by all means but set your expectations fairly low.

I’ve reviewed some of Lubitch’s wild crazy early movies (all of which are better than this one) - The Doll (Die Puppe, 1919), The Wildcat (1921) and Sumurun (1920).

The Thief of Bagdad (1924)

The Thief of Bagdad, released in 1924, is the greatest of the 1920s Douglas Fairbanks swashbucklers. It’s one of the greatest swashbuckling adventure movies of all time, and in my opinion it’s the greatest Hollywood movie of the silent era. Fairbanks considered it to be his best movie, and he was right.

It was not the huge box-office bonanza that had been hoped for. It’s an ambitious demanding movie and audiences looking for pure escapist entertainment found it a little bewildering. It has long provoked conflicting critical assessments, but then great works of art tend to do that.

There have been many movies since that have been inspired by the Arabian Nights but none have surpassed the Fairbanks film.

By 1924, in the wake of box office blockbusters such as The Mark of Zorro (1920) and Robin Hood (1922) Fairbanks was a huge star. He had a great deal of creative control. He conceived, produced and wrote his 1920s swashbucklers and had major input into every aspect of these films. For The Thief of Bagdad he was also lucky to have very talented collaborators. Raoul Walsh directed and William Cameron Menzies was the art director. But there is no question that this is Fairbanks’ movie. The idea was his and the movie is his vision. He supervised every aspect of the production. Fairbanks was very much an auteur, possibly the outstanding example of a producer-star as auteur.

Fairbanks plays a thief in Bagdad. The Caliph’s daughter is to be married but her husband has not yet been chosen. Three of the greatest princes in the known world have arrived as suitors. They are not merely keen to marry a beautiful princess. Marriage to the princess will make the successful suitor master of Bagdad one day. One of the suitors, the Prince of the Mongols, intends to take Bagdad by force if his suit is unsuccessful.

The princess is superstitious and believes that the man who first touches the rose-tree beneath her window is the man she should marry, and she knows that her father will accept her choice of husband.

The thief sees an opportunity to enrich himself. He steals expensive clothing and presents himself as a fourth suitor, the prince of an entirely mythical land. Of course when he meets the princess he genuinely falls in love with her. And of course his imposture is revealed and he is whipped for his presumption.

A holy man tells him that he must earn the right to the princess’s hand by undergoing a series of quests. If he succeeds then he will surely be enable to marry the princess.

The princess, in order to buy herself time (she dislikes the other three suitors intensely) proposes a quest for the suitors as well. She says she will marry the man who bings her the most fabulously valuable gift. The suitors set out to find suitable gifts which naturally must have magical properties.

The princess has a spy in her midst, a treacherous slave-girl (played by Anna May Wong) who serves the Prince of the Mongols.

It’s a fine story but it’s the way Fairbanks unfolds the story which is entrancing.

In 1924 techniques for moving the camera did not yet exist. F.W. Murnau and his cinematographer Karl Freund are usually given the credit for inventing these techniques in Germany at around this time although the truth is slightly more complicated. In the case of The Thief of Bagdad it doesn’t matter. There are many ways of bringing a sense of movement and dynamism into shots without moving the camera and both Fairbanks and Walsh were keenly aware of the importance of avoiding a static feel. With a star like Fairbanks that was easy. The man was a human dynamo who never stopped moving. If he did stop moving he had the ability to make you think he was about to burst into action again any second.

All the cast members are constantly in movement. Also utilised is the very effective technique of having things happening simultaneously in different parts of the frame. The editing is also lively and very modern. While Walsh must be given some credit it is clear that his job as director was simply to help Fairbanks realise his vision.

One of the most impressive things about this movie is the extraordinary sense of scale that it achieves. You know the sets cannot possibly be that big and yet you find yourself believing that you’re seeing enormous palaces and vast caverns. And in fact the sets really were enormous - the biggest ever built in Hollywood. The movie is extraordinarily successful in achieving a genuine sense of a fantastic world of unreality, a world in which you believe even while acknowledging its unreality. This really is the Arabian Nights brought to life.

The look of the film was heavily influenced by Léon Bakst’s designs for Diaghilev’s ballets, especially Scheherazade.

When watching movies from this period you have to remind yourself just how new was the technology of motion pictures. Motion pictures were being made in the late 1890s but in 1924 the feature film as we know it was only a decade old. Taking this into account the special effects in The Thief of Bagdad work pretty well. How well the special effects work is unimportant. It is the beauty and grandeur of the images and the soaring imagination required to create those images that is breathtaking.

It’s interesting to compare this movie to Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen (1924), made in Germany the same year. Fairbanks had been impressed by Lang’s films, especially Destiny. Fairbanks set out to surpass the German masters, and to a certain extent he succeeded.

Fairbanks brings power and manic energy to the rôle of the thief but also extraordinary grace. He is like an athlete and a dancer rolled into one. Julanne Johnston is both sweet and clever as the Princess. Most reviewers focus quite a bit on Anna May Wong but while she’s fine she has no more than a minor supporting rôle.

The Eureka Masters of Cinema release includes the movie on both Blu-Ray and DVD, with various extras. The transfer is excellent and most importantly it preserves the tinting. Tinting was an important technique is silent film and Fairbanks used it to perfection.

Fairbanks was one of the grand masters of cinema. The Thief of Bagdad is very highly recommended indeed.

The Sign of the Cross (1932)

Cecil B. DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross (1932) is one of the most notorious of all Hollywood pre-code movies. It can be interpreted in various ways, which makes it also one of the most fascinating pre-code films. It’s a story of faith and it also offers a smorgasbord of sex and sin.

1932 was the worst year of the Depression and it looked like being a dismal year for Hollywood. Movie theatre attendances had crashed by half. It was also shaping up to be a bad year for Cecil B. DeMille. He was being pursued by the IRS and after a couple of not-too-successful movies no studio would touch him. His career was on the skids. DeMille however had no intention of fading away or retiring. He had come up with an idea. He had bought the rights to Wilson Barrett’s religious play The Sign of the Cross. Everybody told DeMille he was crazy, that audiences wanted breezy fluffy entertainment, that it was the wrong time for such a project. But DeMille made Paramount an offer they couldn’t refuse. He would put up half the money for the project out of his own pocket.

It was make-or-break for DeMille. If the movie flopped he was finished. It was pretty important for Paramount as well. They desperately needed a hit.

Barrett’s play dates from 1895 and strongly resembles the very popular novel Quo Vadis, published at around the same time. It’s a basic story that has been filmed more than once, and in more than one way.

The movie is set in Rome during the reign of the Emperor Nero. Rome has just been devastated by the Great Fire of AD 64 and Nero decides to make the Christians the collective scapegoats for that disaster. Christians are to be hunted down and executed.

The Prefect of Rome, Marcus Superbus (Fredric March), is the most powerful man in Rome after the Emperor. In many ways he’s a typical Roman (or at least he conforms to the stereotyped view of Romans of that era). He is loyal to Nero but Marcus lives for pleasure and he’s clearly very fond of women. In fact he’s notorious for his obsession with women. On the other hand it’s obvious from the start that Marcus is not an especially cruel man. In fact he has a definite soft-hearted side.

He meets a pretty girl, Mercia (Elissa Landi) and it’s love at first sight. She’s very keen on him as well. But Mercia is a Christian. Falling in love with a Christian girl is a very dangerous thing to do. It’s even more dangerous for Marcus since Nero’s empress, Poppaea (Claudette Colbert) is in lust with him. Poppaea means to have Marcus and she’s not going to let a Christian girl get in her way.

A secret meeting of the Christians is broken up by the Roman soldiery, with considerable bloodshed, and the survivors are destined to be executed in imaginative ways in the arena. Marcus is determined to save Mercia while Poppaea plots to get Mercia out of the way.

It’s not the story itself that is so interesting. It’s the way DeMille handles it. On one level it’s a pious Christian story of faith. On another level it’s a fun-filled romp of sex and debauchery. The debate about this movie centres on the question of DeMille’s actual intentions. Was he sincerely trying to make a morally uplifting religious movie or was he more interested in presenting us with a sex and sin extravaganza? I’ve always tended towards the view that DeMille was trying to have his cake and eat it too. That he was consciously making a movie that could be enjoyed on both levels.

The Catholic Church at the time had no doubt what DeMille’s intentions were. They went ballistic. They were so outraged that they formed the Catholic Legion of Decency to combat this kind of Hollywood wickedness.

For me the main support for the theory that DeMille was trying to have it both ways is that the Christians come across as being rather dull and even rather sanctimonious while the wicked pagans are attractive, sexy and fun. On the other hand DeMille does not in any way gloss over the cruelties of pagan Rome.

There’s also the question of casting. DeMille was pretty careful in his casting choices so it’s reasonable to believe that he mostly got the cast he wanted. And the actors playing the Christians are pretty dull. Those playing the sinful pagans are colourful, entertaining and great fun. This doesn’t just apply to the players in the main rôles. The actors playing minor Christian characters are dull and those playing minor pagan characters are lively and attractive.

Of course it’s possible that DeMille believed that Christian audiences would like the fact that the performances by the cast members playing Christians are terribly terribly earnest.

What’s also interesting (and daring in a way only pre-code movies could be) is that DeMille presents the Christian side of the argument but he gives us the pagan side as well, and the pagan point of view is presented without demonising it.

Enough of this. There are other things that need to be talked about. Such as Claudette Colbert. And her famous bathing-in-asses’-milk nude scene. And yes, you do clearly get to see her nipples. This is a full-on pre-code movie. Colbert is at her sexiest, and Claudette Colbert at her sexiest is something to behold. She’s superb and she sizzles.

Charles Laughton goes totally over-the-top as Nero, which is as it should be. Fredric March is an actor I’ve never been able to warm to. That might just be me. Elissa Landi is painfully earnest as Mercia.

Then there’s the spectacle, and the sin and debauchery. The arena scenes display DeMille’s absolute master of spectacle and his gift for the outrageous and the outlandish. The battle between thirty African pygmy warriors and thirty amazon women warriors is a major highlight. There’s also the nude girl and the crocodiles, and the nude girl and the gorilla. DeMille was never afraid to go for maximum outrageousness. I haven’t yet mentioned the lesbian dance scene.

Cinematographer Karl Struss shot the entire picture through red gauze filters to give it a luminous quality. Surprisingly although this is one of the most visually impressive epics ever made it wasn’t particularly expensive. Given the dismal economic climate DeMille knew he had to keep the budget down and he did. The gamble paid off, the movie was a hit and DeMille was back at the top.

The print used in the Cecil B. DeMille collection DVD set of a few years ago (which is the own I own) is excellent and it’s uncut. That’s important. Paramount butchered this movie in 1938 in order to make it acceptable under the Production Code but the DVD presents us with the completely uncut original release version in all its depraved glory. This movie is also available (uncut) on Blu-Ray from Kino Lorber.

The Sign of the Cross (1932) is pre-code Hollywood at its most decadent and outrageous. It’s a must-see movie.

Abdul the Damned (1935)

Abdul the Damned is a 1935 British historical drama/biopic directed by Karl Grune. It is the story of the latter days of the reign of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II, the last Sultan to possess effective power over the Ottoman Empire. More specifically the movie takes place against the background of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908.

As the movie opens the Sultan has caved in to pressure to restore the constitution and has appointed the Young Turk politician and reformer Hilmi Pasha (Charles Carson) as Grand Vizier.

Fritz Kortner plays Abdul Hamid II and also plays Kelar, an actor who serves as the Sultan’s double (there were numerous assassination attempts against the Sultan’s life so having a double was a sensible precaution).

Yet another assassination attempt fails, with Kelar being shot and wounded instead of Abdul Hamid.

The Sultan may have appeared to have given in to the demands of the Young Turks but he intends to destroy them, and his plans to do so are devious and subtle. His plans are to be carried out by his ruthless Chief of Police Kadar-Pasha (Nils Asther).

There’s also a romance sub-plot. A beautiful Viennese opera singer, Therese Alder (Adrienne Ames), has caught the Sultan’s eye but Therese is in love with a young Turkish officer, Captain Talak-Bey (John Stuart). When the Sultan decides that he wants a woman he expects to get her. There is some subtlety to the relationship between the Sultan and Therese - her feelings towards him are a mixture of horror, repulsion, sympathy and affection.

It’s Fritz Kortner’s performance (or rather performances) that provide the main attraction. He’s delightfully sinister but with a certain roguish charm. Abdul Hamid is cruel and ruthless but he is a fighter and we have to have a certain respect for his determination to survive. And, in his own way, he does believe that the empire needs him. Kortner makes him a fascinating and magnetic personality, with a surprising but genuine element of tragedy.

Nils Asther as the Chief of Police is just as impressive - smooth but utterly devoid of scruples. The whole cast is extremely good.

There were no less than six writers involved in this movie, including Emeric Pressburger and Curt Siodmak.

Karl Grune had an interesting career as a director from 1919 until 1936 after which time he turned to producing.

Abdul the Damned is visually very impressive. The sets and costumes are marvellous but Grune also adds some imaginative touches. There’s a very clever scene early on, with Fritz Kortner as both Abdul Hamid and Kelar being reflected in multiple mirrors. And there’s a wonderful tracking shot at the opera.

This is a very lavish production. There was some serious money spent on this movie, and spent well.

The trick with an historical movie is making the ending work without making a mockery of the actual historical facts. Abdul the Damned pulls off this trick very adroitly. I liked the ending very much.

It should be noted that this is not an adventure movie as such, although it does have some suspense. It’s more of a historical drama with international intrigue set against a backdrop of revolution.

Abdul the Damned is included as a bonus movie in VCI’s three-disc Special Edition DVD release of the bizarre but intriguing 1934 British musical Chu Chin Chow. Since Chu Chin Chow is well worth seeing and the Special Edition is well worth buying you might as well give Abdul the Damned a watch since effectively you’re getting it for nothing. The transfer of Abdul the Damned is reasonably decent. Abdul the Damned has also been released individually by Network in the UK.

Abdul the Damned is an excellent and very handsome historical drama with a great lead performance by Fritz Kortner. Highly recommended.

The Prodigal (1955)

In 1955 the Hollywood studios were in big trouble. Television was slowly strangling them. They tried a number of gimmicks to tempt audiences back to theatres. Things like Cinemascope and 3D enjoyed some success but the studios placed much of their faith in big-budget blockbusters. Preferably costume epics. Shot, of course, in colour and Cinemascope. Some of these epics were box office bonanzas and won acclaim from critics. Some were popular with the public but disdained by the critics. And some won acclaim from neither the public nor the critics. Some films in the latter category did go on to become cult favourites for their considerable camp value.

Which brings us to MGM’s 1955 offering The Prodigal. It was a dismal failure at the box office and was regarded with contempt by critics. It hasn’t quite made it to cult favourite status but it has potential in that area - there’s certainly plenty of camp value, the premise is absurd, the script misfires badly, the acting is generally terrible. On the other hand it looks spectacular. It’s not so much high camp as high kitsch but visually it will get your attention.

And it has Lana Turner in full-on bad girl sex goddess mode, for a while at least.

It is, very very loosely, based on the biblical parable of the prodigal son. Micah (Edmund Purdom) is the younger son of the venerable and very pious Eli. Eli lives in a small sea port which is a stronghold of the strictly monotheistic followers of Jehovah. The rest of the country is dominated by polytheists worshipping a bewildering array of gods but the most significant of the pagan cults is that of the goddess Astarte. To say that the followers of Jehovah and the followers of Astarte do not get along would be a masterpiece of understatement.

Micah is to be betrothed to Ruth, the eminently respectable daughter of a neighbour. Ruth is sweet and pretty, she comes from a good family, she is pious and she is determined to be a good wife. She even assures Micah that she can cook. Since Ruth and Micah actually like each other it seems destined to be a successful marriage and Micah has every intention of making a go of it. Unfortunately the day before the betrothal Micah sets eyes on Samarra (Lana Turner). And all Micah’s good intentions go out the window. Samarra oozes sex from every pore. She is not a nice girl and she is most certainly not respectable. Whether she can cook or not we never find out but we’re pretty sure it’s not her skills in the kitchen that interest Micah.

Samarra is the high priestess of Astarte. Like all the priestesses of Astarte she is a temple prostitute. To the followers of Astarte it’s a religious ritual and they consider it to be perfectly normal but the fact remains that her religious duties involve selling her sexual favours for money. She might not be a common woman of the streets but she is certainly technically a prostitute. Surprisingly enough the movie is very explicit about this. There’s no hedging about, no nonsense about her being a dancing girl or anything like that. She is, not to put too fine a point on it, a whore. I have no idea how MGM got away with this in 1955.

In fact the movie goes even further than this. Temple prostitution is at least a religious obligation but in one early scene the high priest is negotiating a very large loan from a money-lender and throws in Samarra’s sexual favours to sweeten the deal (which doesn’t seem to bother Samarra in the least). So Samarra is apparently quite willing to sell her sexual services in any circumstance in which it might be advantageous to do so.

I’m also not sure how they got away with having a character like Yasmin. She’s a ten-year-old girl in training to be the next high priestess and given what we know about the high priestess’s duties that might be considered slightly disturbing.

There are several sub-plots, one involving a scheme by the high priest to enrich himself by starving the people. From time to time the film cuts back to life in Micah’s home town where we’re treated to some boring interludes with his sanctimonious father and brother. Of course the only thing the audience is going to care about is whether Micah can be persuaded to pay the price demanded to gain access to Samarra’s bed and whether Samarra will succeed in corrupting our innocent farm boy.

This movie relies very heavily on the sex and sin angle. In fact it relies on this almost entirely.

There’s plenty of decadence here. There’s the party in Damascus (apparent the Sin Capital of the region) with girls being auctioned off, there’s the card game with a girl as the stake. This is a wicked world in which everything is for sale and the most valuable currency is female flesh. Samarra as high priestess of Astarte clearly has skills beyond compare when it comes to the art of love, or so she assures Micah in order to torture the poor boy. And of course there’s the forecourt of the temple of Astarte, which is plainly and unequivocally a brothel where the temple priestesses/prostitutes service their clients.

The movie’s biggest asset is Lana Turner. I’m not going to try to convince you that Miss Turner was a great actress. She wasn’t. She wasn’t even a very good one. But she was a star. Once she makes her first spectacular appearance she dominates the movie completely. You’re watching her and you don’t care what else is happening. It’s not sexual allures (although she has plenty of that). It’s charisma. It’s old-fashioned star quality. And when she plays a bad girl she’s like a very beautiful very deadly package of pure sex.

Edmund Purdom is pretty awful. The film didn’t need a great actor as male lead but it did need one with the kind of charisma that Miss Turner had. It also needed a male lead who could convincingly attract Samarra’s lust. Someone like Victor Mature would have had great fun with a rôle like this. Turner and Purdom also simply don’t have any chemistry.

Could anything have been done to save this movie? Perhaps. One major problem is the character of Samarra. For the first half of the movie she’s a dangerous and wicked man-eater. Then the screenwriters seemed to lose their nerve. They tried to make her more sympathetic. Maybe she might even be Redeemed By Love. This was a mistake. Firstly, Lana Turner is a lot more fun when she’s being wicked. Secondly, it shifts the focus away from the Micah-Samarra relationship and onto Micah as Hero. And Micah isn’t a very exciting hero. Had they kept Samarra as scheming evil temptress the movie might have maintained its momentum more successfully. The first half, with Samarra as the queen of sex and sin, is fun. The second half drags badly.

There’s also the problem that Micah is not only dull, he’s thoroughly detestable. If you had any sympathy for him I guarantee that the ending will leave you hating him.

Warner Brothers have released this film as an individual DVD and as part of a camp classics set. The transfer is superb and there’s an audio commentary.

This is unquestionably a bad movie but the first half is visually lush thoroughly enjoyable slightly risqué nonsense (and at times very risqué). Lana Turner fans will certainly not want to miss this one. You have to be in the mood for The Prodigal. If you are in that mood it’s recommended.

Princess of the Nile (1954)

It is 1249 and Egypt is groaning under the heel of the Bedouin warriors of the wicked Rama Khan (Michael Rennie). The virtuous Prince Haidi (Jeffrey Hunter), the son of the Caliph of Baghdad, has just arrived on the scene and he is not pleased with what he finds. The people seem to be on the brink of revolt, his trusted aide and friend has just been killed by a slab of masonry hurled from a rooftop by a member of the disgruntled populace and he has just been knifed by the beautiful fiery dancing girl Taura (Debra Paget). This sets the stage for Princess of the Nile, a lightweight but entertaining 1954 Technicolor costume epic.

Rama Khan is determined to destroy Prince Haidi and the feeling is mutual. The odds seem to favour Rama Khan, or they would favour him except that Rama Khan has another deadly enemy in the person of Taura. And he soon finds himself with a new enemy, the Princess Shalimar, daughter of the nominal ruler of Egypt, Prince Selim (the actual ruler is of course the Caliph in Baghdad). In fact the two women are one and the same woman, Taura being merely a disguise the princess puts on so she can keep in touch with the mood of her people. Of course it’s absolutely obvious to the viewer that Taura and the princess are the same woman but we’re expected to believe that nobody has ever noticed the resemblance.

Rama Khan is in cahoots with the evil Shaman who is plotting with Rama Khan. Taura on the other hand has the thieves of the city behind her and they prove to be quite formidable.

Of course the brave and noble Prince Haidi and the brave and spirited Princess Shalimar fall in love, and of course the wicked Rama Khan has plans to force the princess into marrying him.

I must say I’m a bit doubtful that a good Muslim woman like the princess would be offering up prayers to the goddess Isis. I rather suspect that the writers’ ideas about 13th century Egypt were somewhat sketchy.

Mostly this movie looks great although some of the matte paintings make the limited budget a bit obvious. There are some reasonably good action scenes, although of course full-scale battle scenes would have been too much of a stretch.

The underwater secret passageway leading from her bathtub which is employed by the princess to leave the royal palace discreetly is a nice touch.

The movie’s biggest minus is that the plot is thin and at times stretches credibility (even by the standards of costume epics). There’s also Jeffrey Hunter, a bit too stolid for this sort of movie. Michael Rennie is not a favourite of mine but he does quite well as Rama Khan.

Luckily there are plenty of pluses. The costumes are gorgeous. The support cast is excellent and it includes Michael Ansara, a particular favourite of mine. Also look out for Lee van Cleef in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it bit part. There are lots of handmaidens so here’s a plethora of feminine pulchritude on display.

And there’s Debra Paget. First off she has a stunning figure and her costumes are artfully designed to ensure that we don’t overlook that important fact. She does a lot of dancing. Her dances are supposed to be sexy, and they are. She also gets to do some sword-fighting! And she’s perfectly cast. She’s tempestuous and passionate and headstrong and very keenly aware of her effect on men. She has the fiery temper you expect in beautiful princesses and glamorous dancing girls. Debra Paget’s problem as far as her career was concerned seems to have been that she was the right actress to play sexy temptresses in movies such as Princess of the Nile and when that genre began to fade her career faded. She gave up acting at the age of 30 to marry a millionaire. Princess of the Nile was her one real taste of stardom. A pity because she does the temptress thing with great style.

The Fox Cinema Archives made-on-demand release is an open matte transfer. Image quality is terrific. There are of course no extras.

This is very much B-movie stuff although it’s rather lavish for a B-movie (it was produced by Panoramic Productions which made lower budget films for 20th Century-Fox distribution). It’s a fun adventure flick but the main reason to watch it is to see Debra Paget strutting her stuff. Which she does so well that Princess of the Nile can be highly recommended.

The War Lord (1965)

The War Lord marked a new departure for historical costume epics. This 1965 Universal production starring Charlton Heston took a much grittier and more realistic look at the Middle Ages.

Chrysagon (Charlton Heston) is a Norman knight who has just arrived to take possession of his newly granted lands on the Normandy coast. It’s a bleak depressing place but Chrysagon doesn’t care. It’s his and that’s all that matters. His father lost all his lands, having been captured and forced to sell everything he had to pay the ransom. Chrysagon has served the Duke of Normandy well and his new lands are his reward. If he holds them successfully he may perhaps eventually be given a more attractive reward.

He soon makes a very disturbing discovery. Christianity has not much headway here. The people are still firmly in the grip of pagan superstitions. Chrysagon, who is a reasonably devout Christian, does not approve.

He has other problems. His lands are subject to regular sea-borne raids from Frisians. Protecting his new possessions and his people will present serious challenges. 

Chrysagon is determined to treat the locals fairly and kindly. Unfortunately another problem presents itself. He has become obsessed with a girl from the nearby village, Bronwyn (Rosemary Forsyth). Bronwyn is betrothed to the son of the village headman. 

At this point the film, sadly, resorts to the hoary old myth of the droit de seigneur - the supposed right of a feudal lord to have sex with a girl on her wedding night. There is no evidence that any such right existed in medieval Europe but I guess it makes a good story. In fairness the film does explain this right as a pagan custom and does point out that the Church firmly opposes it.

In any case Chrysagon is determined to avail himself of this right. He does however only intend to do so if Bronwyn is willing. In fact Bronwyn is very willing indeed. She has fallen in love with him, as he has with her. The villagers are perfectly happy about the arrangement as long as it is for one night only after which she will return to her husband. Bronwn has no intention of doing so and Chrysagon has no intention of giving her up. This not only precipitates a revolt - the villagers ally themselves with the Frisians and Chrysagon now has a full-scale war on his hands.

There is yet another complication. Chrysagon’s Normans captured a young Frisian boy after defeating an earlier raid. The boy is the son of the Frisian prince and the Frisians want him back. Chrysagon’s small force of Normans, ensconced in their forbidding but not very defensible tower, will now have to withstand a determined siege. Chrysagon also has problems with his ambitious younger brother Draco (Guy Stockwell).

The movie devotes a great deal of time to the Chrysagon-Bronwyn love story but luckily there’s also plenty of time for some marvellous action sequences. The Frisians come up with some very impressive-looking siege engines which provide exciting battle scenes as the Normans have to try to destroy these siege engines before the Frisians are able to use them to destroy Chrysagon’s tower.

Visually this film offers superb spectacle as well as atmosphere. The War Lord is a long way from the romanticised idealised vision of the MIddle Ages seen in earlier Hollywood epics such as The Knights of the Round Table (although it’s not quite as gloomy or as squalid as many later period films). One thing I certainly appreciated is that these Norman knights actually look like Norman knights of around the 11th century - they aren’t wearing the anachronistic 15th century full plate armour that appears in virtually every earlier Hollywood film about the Middle Ages.

Charlton Heston gives one of the best performances of his career as the complex and haunted Chrysagon - he’s just as good as he was in Anthony Mann’s magnificent El Cid a few years earlier. Rosemary Forsyth is adequate but rather insipid. Richard Boone is splendid as Chrysagon’s faithful retainer Bors. Guy Stockwell is suitably cynical as the untrustworthy Draco. It’s great to see the underrated Henry Wilcoxon, the star of so many of Cecil B. DeMille’s epics, giving a fine spirited performance as the Frisian prince.

Eureka’s Region DVD is barebones but offers a pretty satisfactory transfer in the correct 2.35:1 aspect ratio. I believe there is now a Blu-Ray release.

Director Franklin J. Schaffner was trying to make an emotionally nuanced and intelligent costume epic and he succeeds fairly well. He certainly handles the action scenes with a great deal of confidence and gusto. The War Lord might be more pessimistic and morally ambiguous than most previous films of its type but thankfully it doesn’t succumb entirely to the fashionable nihilism of the 60s. Highly recommended and Charlton Heston’s performance is a very major plus. 

The Crusades (1935)

Cecil B. DeMille’s The Crusades is one of those wonderful Hollywood historical epics that has almost nothing to do with actual history. As a movie, though, it’s hugely entertaining. 

Released by Paramount in 1935 and costing $1.42 million (DeMille uncharacteristically running over budget and behind schedule) the movie was one of DeMille’s biggest commercial flops. DeMille was mystified by its failure and always believed it was a good movie. 

Ostensibly The Crusades deals with Richard I of England and his involvement in the Third Crusade, although mostly it focuses on the relationship between Richard and his bride, Berengaria of Navarre. It incorporates certain incidents and characters from earlier Crusades and mixes real history with a good deal of extravagantly imaginary material.

In real life the disastrous defeat of the Crusader army at the Horns of Hattin in 1187 and the subsequent capture of Jerusalem by Saladin provided the impetus for the Third Crusade.

The subject matter was well chosen given that the Third Crusade pitted the greatest and most celebrated Muslim leader, Saladin, against the greatest and most celebrated Christian leader of the era, King Richard I (Richard Lionheart) of England. Both Saladin and Richard are heroes not just of history but of legend and romance and both certain qualify as larger-than-life characters.

In the film Richard’s motivation is joining the Crusade is rather odd - it is the only way he can be released from his betrothal to Alys, sister of Philip II of France. Unfortunately by the time Richard’s army reaches Marseilles he’s run out of money and his army has run of food. King Sancho of Navarre comes to his rescue, supplying Richard with all the supplies he needs. There’s just one condition - Richard must marry Sancho’s daughter Berengaria (Loretta Young). Richard agrees but there will be trouble as a result, given that Alys has decided to accompany him on Crusade.

The first half of the movie focuses almost entirely on Richard’s complicated marital difficulties and the plots hatched against him by jealous rivals among the many kings and princelings taking part in the Crusade.

The action finally kicks in when Richard besieges the city of Acre, held by Saladin. From that point on there’s a great deal of action, interspersed with an extremely fanciful romantic triangle involving Richard, Saladin and Berengaria. Richard has vowed to take Jerusalem and Saladin has vowed to stop him and neither man has any intention of backing down. The ending, about which I propose to say nothing, is likely to come as a considerable surprise.

Henry Wilcoxon is surprisingly good as Richard – he’s terribly heroic of course, but he does bring also bring out his fundamental irresponsibility and hot-headedness, and his somewhat shabby treatment of Berengaria, so there is more to the characterisation than you might expect. The only thing wrong with Wilcoxon is that he doesn’t quite have the charisma that a hero of an epic needs. Ian Keith is very good as Saladin, although again it’s a performance that lacks that vital spark of charisma. 

Both Richard and Saladin begin the story as ambitious and arrogant men of violence (although tempered in both cases by a sense of honour). As the tale progresses they become more human and eventually they develop a mutual respect. It’s perhaps a little surprising to encounter actual character development in a movie like this.

As Berengaria Loretta Young is very pretty and outrageously noble and self-sacrificing. Most of the supporting players are adequate, although C. Aubrey Smith is perhaps just a little hammy (as he always was) as a Christian holy man. DeMille’s adopted daughter Katherine DeMiIle is delightfully spiteful as Alys.

Visually this movie has all of DeMille’s many strengths as a director. His framing of shots is exquisite and imaginative. DeMille was not a great believer in moving the camera unless he really needed to do and mostly he didn’t since he was a master of the art of creating a sense of movement and dynamism within a static frame. As always the more complex his shots and the more extras he has involved in them the more impressive DeMille’s skills become.The siege of Acre in this film is one of his great cinematic achievements. 

The sets are magnificent of course. 

The most interesting thing about the movie is the message it conveys. For a movie about war it’s actually very pro-peace. And for a movie about a clash between religions it’s actually a plea for religious tolerance. DeMille hired Harold Lamb, an historian and a fine writer of historical fiction, as a technical advisor on the film. Lamb’s historical fiction is notable for its even-handedness towards other cultures and his influence can I think be seen in the script. 

The Crusades is a movie about war, love and religious faith. On the whole, despite the liberties it takes with history, it’s remarkably successful and it looks magnificent. A very underrated movie by a great director. Highly recommended.

The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)

The Fall of the Roman Empire was the second of Anthony Mann’s historical epics. El Cid had been a huge hit; The Fall of the Roman Empire was destined to be a major box-office failure. Both films were exceedingly risky ventures since both dealt with subject matter that  would have been unfamiliar to the average cinema-goer. Sometimes such risks pay off and sometimes they don’t. These two films remain two of the most interesting of all movie epics.

Both El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire were filmed in Spain under the auspices of the mercurial but notorious producer Samuel Bronston. Whatever his faults Bronston had no qualms about spending money. If he was going to make an epic he was not going to cut any corners. These were very very expensive movies. Unfortunately while much of the money was well spent a great deal seems to have been wasted or, even worse, simply disappeared into the pockets of some of Bronston’s less scrupulous associates. The commercial failure of The Fall of the Roman Empire led directly to the fall of the Bronston movie empire.

As the voiceover at the beginning of the film reminds us the fall of the Roman Empire was not a single event. It was a prolonged process that took centuries and it was an exceedingly complex process. The story that the movie tells is merely one episode in this process, albeit an important one. 

The Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Alec Guinness) is ageing and ill. He is well aware that he has not long to live. One of the chief problems facing the Roman Empire was that there was never a clear-cut method for determining the succession. The immediate predecessors of Marcus Aurelius had solved this problem by choosing a capable successor, adopting him as a son and naming him as successor well before they died. This was the period of the so-called Five Good Emperors, a period of stability and wise government. Marcus Aurelius unfortunately did not adopt the very sensible practice of his predecessors. He allowed himself to be swayed by his fondness for his son Commodus (played in the film by Christopher Plummer). He appointed Commodus co-emperor and successor. It proved to be a catastrophic error.

In the movie Marcus Aurelius realises too late that he is making a mistake and tries to make Gaius Metellus Livius (Stephen Boyd) his successor. The rivalry thus set up provides the major dramatic theme of the film.

Marcus Aurelius has been at war with the German tribes for seventeen years. He dislikes war and his one great hope is that he can achieve a lasting peace and that these tribes can be successfully integrated into the Roman Empire. What Marcus Aurelius needs more than anything else is time. Her needs time to achieve peace and time to solve the pressing succession problem, but time is the one thing he does not have.

Anthony Mann’s reputation as a director rests on a series of celebrated film noir efforts made in the late 40s and an equally celebrated cycle of 1950s westerns starring James Stewart. Mann’s forays into the epic genre in some ways represented a surprising movie by the director. Perhaps not so surprising really though. After all a successful film noir and a successful western require a certain flair for atmosphere, a quality that is equally necessary in a successful epic. The western genre itself has a certain mythic quality which would also be a requirement for an epic. 

On the other hand an epic requires something that very very few directors possess - an ability to paint not only on a very large canvas indeed but on a complex canvas as well. This is an ability that probably cannot be acquired. You either have it or you don’t. Cecil B. DeMille had it and it was in evidence from his very first attempts a the genre. Making a good epic requires one more thing - an ability to keep control over a staggeringly complex production. No-one could really have predicted whether Mann would possess these two attributes. Fortunately it turned out that he possessed them to an incredibly high degree. And no-one could fill a Cinemascope frame more splendidly than Anthony Mann.

Epics require acting on a suitably epic scale. That was no problem in the case of El Cid, with Charlton Heston in the lead role. It is a problem with The Fall of the Roman Empire. Stephen Boyd simply does not have the star power or the charisma that his central role demands. His performance is competent but competent is not quite good enough. He cannot convince us that Livius could ever have been a serious rival to Commodus, and he cannot carry the audience through a very long movie the way Charlton Heston could.

Christopher Plummer’s performance is interesting. In the early part of the story he plays Commodus quite sympathetically. He is obviously ambitious and somewhat vain, and irresponsible. There seems to be no real malice in him however. He is a man who simply does not possess the qualities needed to be emperor and his tragedy is that he does not understand this, nor does he understand why his father believes him to be an unsuitable successor. This approach on Plummer’s part works quite well since it makes the gradual worsening of Commodus’s character plausible - we can see that he resents his father’s lack of faith in him and he resents Livius because Livius does have the qualities to be a good emperor. We can understand, up to a point, that Commodus’s bitterness would cause him to want to undo everything that his father had painstakingly achieved. Plummer’s powerhouse performance dominates the movie entirely. That’s OK, but Commodus is after all the villain and the fact that the hero is so colourless and dull leaves the movie badly unbalanced.

Sophia Loren’s role as Marcus Aurelius’s daughter Lucilla is less interesting than her role in El Cid. For most of the film she is a peripheral character. Towards the end she finally gets the chance to do some real acting (and does so to good effect) but again there’s a problem of balance with the heroine being sidelined for most of the story. James Mason is wonderful early on as the old emperor’s shrewd and trusted adviser Timonides but as the tale progress Timonides becomes irritatingly preachy. Anthony Quayle has some fun as the brutal gladiator Verulus, one of Commodus’s boon companions and a thoroughly bad influence on a man destined to be emperor, but his part is badly underwritten. Omar Sharif is entirely wasted in what is little more than a cameo as the Armenian king to whom Lucilla is unwillingly betrothed - a pity since it’s a part that Sharif could have done something with.

Marcus Aurelius was, in addition to being emperor, an important philosopher of the Stoic school so Alec Guinness was a reasonable choice for the role. He does a pretty fair job of conveying the essential message that this is a man who would have preferred to spend his life discussing philosophy but also a man who (as a Stoic) accepts the hand that fate has dealt him. The trouble is that Guinness’s Marcus Aurelius is too good to be true and adds to the movie’s preachiness. This performance is almost a dry run for his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars - I keep expecting him to say, “Use the Force, Livius.”

The biggest problem of all is the screenplay. No-one objects to a few historical inaccuracies in a movie like this but blatantly distorting history to make political points is another matter. This is very much a Message Movie and screenwriter Ben Barzman bludgeons us with that message in an embarrassingly clumsy and tedious manner. Long rambling speeches in which characters mouth embarrassing platitudes do not make for entertainment. There’s no real focus to the narrative and there’s only one memorable character, and he’s the villain. The good guys are bland, lifeless and irritating. While Stephen Boyd’s dullness was always going to be a problem much of the blame for the ineffectiveness of the other actors must be laid at the door of the awful script. Mind you, Anthony Mann should have realised there were enormous problems with the script and should have taken steps - the best step he could have taken would have been to eliminate the incessant speechifying. It’s also possible that Samuel Bronston was at fault here - perhaps he wanted the speeches and the sledgehammer messages.

On the plus side this is truly one of the most visually magnificent movies you will ever see. In that respect it is vastly superior to any subsequent movie epics. Everything looks real because everything is real. The Roman Forum set is not so much a set as a complete reproduction of the real thing. The buildings are not façades. They’re complete buildings. It’s the single most lavish set in motion picture history. And visually it’s all astonishingly  accurate.  

Anchor Bay’s Region B Blu-Ray release offers a magnificent transfer and includes a second disc well supplied with extras. This is, like El Cid, a movie that really needs to be seen on the big screen but if you have a good large-screen TV this Blu-Ray release is certainly the next best thing.

As an historical film The Fall of the Roman Empire is laughably inept. This is fantasy, not history. There are far too many dull stretches and the script is a complete trainwreck. The positives are the breathtaking visuals and Christopher Plummer’s performance and they’re enough to make the movie worth seeing in spite of its egregious faults. Recommended, with those reservations kept clearly in mind.