Forever Amber (1947)

Forever Amber is a glossy Technicolor 20th Century-Fox swashbuckling historical adventure romance directed by Otto Preminger (who was brought in to replace the original director John M. Stahl).

It was based on Kathleen Winsor’s steamy and scandalous 1944 novel of the same name which had attracted a firestorm of controversy and was banned for obscenity in many U.S. states. The Production Code Authority initially made it clear that they would not in any circumstances countenance a film adaptation. But they later relented. This was a fascinating period in Hollywood history, with growing pressure from the studios for a relaxation of the Production Code and a willingness by the Production Code Authority to compromise just a little.

Obviously the story had to be sanitised considerably but it does get away with quite a bit. It is made absolutely crystal clear that the heroine’s relationships with a series of men are sexual relationships.

The Catholic Legion of Decency condemned the movie on its release which helped to make Forever Amber a gigantic hit which broke box-office records.

The setting is England just after the Stuart Restoration in 1660. Bruce Carlton (Cornel Wilde) is seeking financial support from King Charles II for a privateering expedition. The King has reasons of his own for wanting Bruce to be far far away. The king fears that his latest mistress may be a bit too fond of the handsome Bruce.

On his way to London, at a little village named Marygreen, Bruce had met Amber St. Clair (Linda Darnell). Amber lives in humble circumstances and is about to be married off to a farmer, much to her horror. She does not see herself as a farmer’s wife. Amber has much higher ambitions. Bruce is good-looking and he has a title. He would make a splendid husband. But Bruce does not want an entanglement and sets off for sea without Amber.

Amber might be a gold digger but it is possible that she really does love Bruce. It becomes increasingly obvious that this really is the case.

Everything then goes wrong for Amber and she ends up in debtor’s prison. She becomes the mistress of a highwayman. She embarks on a career on the stage. In Restoration England it was assumed that all actresses were whores. She becomes the mistress of Captain Rex Morgan. And the things really start go wrong.

And there’s the baby to think of.

Amber will bounce back, and she will get kicked around again by fate and she’ll bounce back again.

Amber is the kind of heroine that Hollywood filmmakers liked at this time. She’s a very bad girl. She breaks all the moral rules. But she’s lively, likeable, feisty, exciting and very sexy. Rather than disapprove of her audiences were naturally going to adore her. Linda Darnell, a very underrated star, gives one of her best performance. She has no trouble making Amber a sympathetic complex bad girl. And for all her wickedness we know that she still loves Bruce. And while she breaks society’s moral rules she is never actually malicious.

Amber St Clair is not quite Scarlett O’Hara but the two women do have several things in common. They both have guts and they both have physical courage, but it’s a woman’s courage rather than a man’s courage. And they’re very hard to break - they both have a great deal of inner strength. A big difference compared to Hollywood today is that Hollywood in the 40s made movies featuring strong interesting female characters but they were very much women.

Linda Darnell really did deserve a better leading man. Cornel Wilde just doesn’t have the charisma needed. He’s the biggest weakness in the film.

George Sanders is of course terrific as King Charles II. He doesn’t play him as a mere wicked debauchee but as a man weighed down by duty who has to keep himself amused in order to keep going. And he plays him as a man who does actually have a sense of honour. He wants to get Amber into bed and he could abuse his power as king to force her to comply but he never does. That would be vulgar and dishonourable. Sanders also adds a slight sense of melancholy. Sanders and Darnell are by far the most impressive cast members.

It might seem like an odd movie for Otto Preminger to direct but considering his passionate loathing for the Production Code he might have enjoyed seeing how far he could push things.

Forever Amber doesn’t have a huge reputation, perhaps because it slots into every film genre that serious-minded critics automatically despise - it’s a costume drama, it’s a women’s melodrama, it’s a romance. It’s actually very enjoyable and Linda Darnell makes it very much worth seeing. Highly recommended.

Daisy Miller (1974)

Peter Bogdanovich’s Daisy Miller came out in 1974 and pretty much wrecked his career. He had just had three major hits one after the other, What’s Up Doc?, The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon. He was seen as a bit of a bumptious upstart. He compounded his sins by casting his new girlfriend Cybill Shepherd in the lead role. And Daisy Miller was a very ambitious rather cerebral rather arty movie. Critics were only too happy to plunge their knives into him.

This movie also damaged Cybill Shepherd’s carer. Critics savaged her performance. One can’t help feeling that many critics were excessively hard on her merely because she was Bogdanovich’s girlfriend - it was a case of guilt by association (in much the same way as the trashing of Geena Davis’s career was collateral damage when critics went after Renny Harlin for Cutthroat Island).

In the case of Cybill Shepherd in Daisy Miller it was also a classic case of an actress giving exactly the performance her director wanted from her and then being savaged by critics for her trouble.

It’s easy to see why Daisy Miller bombed at the box office. It was out of step with public tastes in 1974. It’s also a movie that requires at least a very vague understanding of the social mores of the past. And it’s a movie that requires the audience to be fully engaged - it’s a subtle movie with some very subtle touches and those subtle touches are very important. And it is an art movie. It was just not a movie that was going to please a mass audience.

This is a story about misunderstandings and misjudgments and misinterpretations, all of which can add up and lead to very unfortunate consequences.

Daisy Miller (Cybill Shepherd) is a young girl from a nouveau riche American family doing the Grand Tour in Europe. In Switzerland she meets Frederick Winterbourne (Barry Brown). He’s American as well but he was educated in Europe. He understands the rules of respectable society. That doesn’t mean he’s respectable. We learn that he has just had an affair with a woman named Olga. But Frederick knows how to appear respectable and that’s what matters.

Daisy knows nothing of such social rules. She has not enjoyed the benefits of a good education. She simply ignores the rules. As a result she gives the impression of being vulgar and, even worse, she gives the impression that she might not be respectable. The crux of the story is whether Daisy really is innocent or not. Frederick fears that she may not be. In any case even though he is falling in love with her he is not going to take the risk of becoming entangled with a woman who is not respectable, or appears not to be respectable.

Daisy is obviously falling in love with Frederick but Frederick fails to understand this, as he fails to understand so many things.

This is a story of Americans in Europe, with American and European social mores being hopelessly incompatible, but it’s a bit more complicated that. It’s vital to bear in mind always that Daisy’s family are nouveau riche Americans. Blue-bloods, upper-class Americans, could adapt much more easily to European mores. But Daisy’s family have zero comprehension of the social mores of late 19th century Europe. They have no idea why they shock people.

Winterbourne’s family are Americans who have become totally acclimatised to European society. They are perfectly at ease in European society. They understand the social rules and they follow them. They have become so Europeanised that they no longer understand Americans like Daisy.

While some viewers might think the dialogue is anachronistic it was in fact mostly lifted directly from the 1879 Henry James novella. Some viewers might also think that some of Daisy’s behaviour is anachronistic but the movie follows the James story very very closely. Bogdanovich did not make this stuff up and Henry James did not make it up either. Henry James, as a 19th century American who lived in Europe, would have been very familiar with the social mores of the time among Europeans, among upper-class Americans and among nouveau riche Americans. Daisy Miller is not a fantasy creation. Such girls certainly existed.

It needs to be emphasised that both James and Bogdanovich are sympathetic to Daisy. She is certainly vulgar and uncultured but she’s honest and open. Winterbourne is a less sympathetic character. He is imprisoned by his prejudices which causes him to hopelessly misinterpret Daisy’s behaviour. He is also imprisoned by his fear of scandal. He loves Daisy but to marry her would be a huge social risk. But Winterbourne is not a villain. In his own way he is a tragic figure.

Cybill Shepherd understood exactly the performance the part required. She’s terrific. She's just right. Barry Brown is equally perfect as Winterbourne.

The visual approach of the movie is both subtle and ambitious. Bogdanovich pulls off some stunningly complex long takes with mirrors everywhere and he’s not being gimmicky. Seeing Daisy reflected in mirrors works - Winterbourne is never really able to see Daisy just as she is. He sees her reflected though his prejudices and his misinterpretations. But Bogdanovich is never showy for the sake of being showy.

Henry James has never been the easiest of writers to adapt to film. His fondness for irony and ambiguity are not easy to translate to the screen. Daisy Miller is not, as some critics have claimed, just a bold attempt that failed to come off. It does come off. It’s not a partial success. It’s a success. It’s a wonderful movie and it’s very highly recommended.

The Kino Lorber Blu-Ray looks great and Bogdanovich’s audio commentary is very worthwhile. There’s also an interview with Cybill Shepherd. Both Bogdanovich and Shepherd remained extremely proud of this movie, and rightly so.

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.

Serpent of the Nile (1953)

Serpent of the Nile is a low-budget epic about Cleopatra, directed by William Castle and produced by Sam Katzman.

It opens with Brutus and Cassius, the assassins of Julius Caesar, defeated in battle by Mark Antony. Lucilius (William Lundigan) is a serious-minded political zealot who wants to restore democracy. He’s on the side of Brutus and Cassius but once they’re dead he rather reluctantly agrees to serve Mark Antony.

Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, is determined to achieve an alliance with the strongest man in Rome and Mark Antony seems to fit the bill. She can offer him the gold he needs to achieve supreme power. In return (she hopes) she will be permitted to rule the world with him. She intends that eventually her son by Julius Caesar will rule the world.

Egypt is full of conspiracies and there are assassins everywhere. This is very confusing for poor Lucilius. He sees everything in terms of good vs evil. He soon decides that Cleopatra is evil. He had apparently loved her once but now he loves only Rome.

Mark Antony enjoys himself with Cleopatra in Alexandria, much to Lucilius’s disapproval (Lucilius is a man who disapproves of anything other than a fanatical devotion to duty).

Lucilius finds Alexandria to be a dangerous place. Cleopatra still carries a torch for him but she has chosen Antony because he seems to offer Egypt a better chance of survival as independent nation. She doesn’t see that she has much choice.

While Antony tarries with Cleopatra Octavian is building up his armies.

Robert E. Kent’s screenplay doesn’t bother with subtleties. Cleopatra is a queen so she must be wicked. Lucilius is a democrat so he must be the hero. Kent has managed to take a fascinating story and turn it into the plot of a second-rate western.

The one thing that really matters more than anything else in a movie about Cleopatra is the actress who plays her. Rhonda Fleming is just not in the same league as Claudette Colbert or Elizabeth Taylor. She doesn’t have Colbert’s overwhelming sexual allure. But she’s not bad. She’s beautiful and glamorous and looks reasonably exotic.

Raymond Burr is great fun as Mark Antony. He plays him as the bad guy in a gangster movie. Given that Rome was pretty much a gangster society that’s not a bad choice. He at least manages to make Mark Antony seem charismatic and dangerous. He also makes Antony a man of flesh and blood. He’s a bit of a rogue but we like the guy.

The big problem is William Lundigan as Lucilius. He’s awful. For the plot of the movie to work we have to believe that Cleopatra would be seriously torn between Lucilius and Mark Antony but nobody is going to believe for one second that a woman like Cleopatra would look twice at a dumb, uninteresting, self-righteous prig and bore like Lucilius. He has all the animal magnetism of a piece of soggy cardboard.

Lucilius is the hero but I found him to be a loathsome human being, a man who puts politics before people and will willingly betray love and friendship for the sake of abstract principles. He’s dull, humourless and without a shred of warmth or compassion. And like so many political zealots he always finds a way to rationalise his betrayals.

There is zero chemistry between Lundigan and Fleming. There is chemistry between Fleming and Burr, but that just serves to emphasise the ludicrousness of the film’s attempt to make us see Lucilius as a romantic rival.

Look out for Julie Newmar as the girl in the gold bikini (a decade before Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger).

The low budget is definitely a problem. I have no objections to the use of matte paintings but in this movie they’re just not very good. It’s unfair to criticise the movie for this. When you have a limited budget you can’t make an epic that is going to rival spectacular big-budget productions. William Castle does a fairly good job considering those limitations.

This is not an easy movie to find. There’s a Spanish DVD which includes the original English language version but the transfer isn’t great and it seems to be weirdly cropped. This is a movie that really needs a restoration and a Blu-Ray release.

Serpent of the Nile doesn’t quite make it. Rhonda Fleming’s acting is fine but she’s just not sufficiently mysterious, exotic or dangerous. Given the way the script demonises Cleopatra she needed to play her as a full-blown femme fatale.

The reason to see this movie is Raymond Burr. He really is a delight. Aside from that it’s moderately decent entertainment.

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944)

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is a 1944 adventure romance from Universal, starring Maria Montez. It was shot in Technicolor so this is no B-movie. By Universal standards (they didn’t have the kind of money that MGM or Paramount would have thrown at a production like this) it counts as a lavish costume epic.

You won’t be surprised to learn that the movie has very little (in fact almost nothing) to do with the original story Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (which is of course one of the tales of the Arabian Nights). The movie turns the pauper Ali Baba into the son of the Caliph of Baghdad and it turns the band of cut-throats, thieves and murderers into courageous freedom fighters against the evil Mongols (who do not appear in the original story at all). This allows the writers to add some clumsy wartime propaganda about the crusade for freedom and democracy.

In the movie version the Mongols have captured Baghdad and slain the Caliph. The Caliph’s son Ali escapes. Wandering through the countryside he sees a band of robbers emerge from a cave. The leader of the thieves utters a magic word and the stone portals of the cave close. Once the thieves have ridden off Ali uses the magic word to open the portals again and finds a cave overflowing with treasure. In the original story Ali proceeds to rob the thieves of their treasure but that would make the hero of the story a thief himself and that was obviously not acceptable in a 1944 Hollywood movie.

So instead Ali (renamed Ali Baba by the thieves) persuades the thieves to join him in freeing the land from the wicked Mongols, thus ensuring that freedom will triumph.

Ten years later Ali Baba (now played by Jon Hall) is the de facto leader of the band of thieves and freedom fighters.

The plot gets going when the thieves decide to kidnap the betrothed of the wicked Mongol Khan Hulagu. What Ali doesn’t know is that the lady in question is his childhood sweetheart Princess Amara (Montez).

Amara is Arabian and secretly hates the Mongols and of course she doesn’t want to marry Hulagu. Her father (the treacherous brother of the murdered Caliph) has forced her into it.

There are usual adventures and complications that you expect in a swashbuckler, with Ali and Amara not recognising each at first and not realising that they are destined to be together, no matter the cost.

Director Arthur Lubin handles the action scenes reasonably well. The film slows down a little in the middle.

It soon becomes obvious that this is more of a Robin Hood movie than an Ali Baba movie. The Mongol Khan can be seen as either the wicked Prince John or the equally wicked Sheriff of Nottingham, Princess Amara is obviously Maid Marian and Ali Baba is even more obviously Robin Hood (with the Forty Thieves being Robin’s Merry Men).

I must say that I’m very fond of Maria Montez. No-one is going to claim she’s a great actress but she has the fieriness and the exotic beauty to be perfect for this sort of rôle in this sort of film. Montez was Spanish (although born in the Dominican Republic) but that wan’t going to deter Hollywood from casting her as an Arabian princess. Spanish, Arabian - it was all the same to Hollywood. And in a way they were right. What they needed was an actress who could be exotic and Montez could do that with ease.

This movie reunites Montez with Jon Hall, her co-star in Arabian Nights (also an excellent adventure flick) and Cobra Woman (which is great fun). He’s not Errol Flynn or Tyrone Power but he was OK as a cut-price adventure hero and it’s Montez’s star power that carries the movie anyway (and yes, in this genre she really did have a certain star power).

Turhan Bey is good as Amara’s slave. Kurt Katch is a fairly effective villain as Hulagu. Andy Devine (with his distinctive voice) provides comic relief without being too irritating and without distracting from the adventure and the romance which is what the movie is all about.

I should mention that the opening credits are done in a very clever way.

My copy of the movie is the old Universal Backlot Series DVD which looks very good. There are now both US and UK Blu-Ray releases which I’m sure look even better.

Personally I prefer Arabian Nights with its more interesting visuals and its fairytale atmosphere. Montez also starred in the extremely interesting Siren of Atlantis which is also a bit more interesting than this one.

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is still a well-mounted second-tier swashbuckler. Recommended.

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.