There is, apparently, a restored version of this film floating around, but I could not find it. All I could find was an ugly print with Russian intertitles that only show up for a split-second while there are obviously missing scenes. It's contrasty as hell and just kind of ugly to look at and only fifty minutes long. I did find another version of the same print that slowed everything down to seventy-five minutes while providing English subtitles. This was in such bad shape that I considered not reviewing it at all, along the lines of John Ford's Mother Machree. However, having gotten through it, I think there's enough in the film to gauge the film's merits at least relatively fairly. There are heavy barriers to entry for audiences on top of just being a silent film, but I'm glad I got through it.
Catherine the Great (Pola Negri) rules Russia with the help of her chancellor (Adolphe Menjou). She needs the help because she is a horny creature with a long list of conquests, especially among her own bodyguard. Two major events happen at the same time: the first is the arrival of the Spanish ambassador (Fred Malatesta) whom the chancellor gives the advice of turning his mustache up to fit the czarina's personal preferences (there are several small comic moments stemming from this through the film), and the second is the brave, young lieutenant Alexei (Rod La Rocque) overhears the rantings of border troops intent on rising up in rebellion against the czarina. He rushes towards Catherine's palace in order to warn her.
Now, this print just starts with a shot of the chancellor talking to Catherine about the Spanish ambassador's visit, and I really get the sense that there's some contextual information missing. Running from the border to Moscow or St. Petersburg would take weeks, so is Catherine near the border for a reason, or is this just standard movie logic? The movie isn't a serious attempt at recreating the reign of Catherine the Great, so I wouldn't demand strict reality from it. However, it's more a comment on the obvious incompleteness of the print than anything else.
Alexei gets to Catherine despite the chancellor's efforts to prevent an audience, and Catherine is immediately smitten with him. She rewards him for his effort by making her a captain in her guard, offering him an ornate and large star to wear on his uniform. The seduction, though, means that she is making a conquest of a man dedicated to another woman, the commoner Anna (Pauline Starke), a pretty young girl that Catherine brings in as a servant, perhaps in a way to lord over Alexei more fully.
The film tries to balance heavier elements and lighter ones like most of Lubitsch's work, and it starts to get heavy at the dinner to celebrate Alexei's promotion with the rest of the guard where about half of them have the same large, gold stars. There are implications back and forth that lead to a fight. Now, this fight is completely cut from the film. We get the build up and we see the aftermath of Alexei reporting to Catherine as a dead body gets carted away, and the whole thing isn't edited like it was intentionally left out. It was obviously lost when this print was put together. It's a weird transition.
The reality of Alexei's situation grates on him to the point where he suddenly becomes supportive of the rebellion, helps progress it, and runs to take Catherine captive while the chancellor calmly shows up to the rebels and buys them off. The chancellor is perhaps the weakest character in the film because I feel like there's supposed to be a connection between his early efforts to keep Alexei from telling Catherine about the brewing rebellion and his later buying off of its leaders. I don't really get him unless it's just blind protection of his czarina and he didn't believe Alexei in the beginning, which would make sense but then take a potentially interesting setup and do nothing with it. That's very possible, but there's a bunch missing from the film, so who knows?
The finale is where I appreciate the film, even in the broken state of this print, the most. It's the kind of balance of tragedy and comic sensibilities that have come to largely define Lubitsch's output. Characters get rewarded. There are comedic bits of punctuation to help provide relief and a nice sendoff for the audience.
I've seen a fair number of incomplete films. Even Lubitsch has had a couple of others that have survived in incomplete form (like The Loves of Pharaoh). None has been as successful as Stroheim's Greed or Dreyer's Once upon a Time, but I think Forbidden Paradise is the one that I want to see a complete version of most. Perhaps it's the complete lack of a restoration effort on the print I saw that didn't even provide explanatory intertitles for what's missing, but I do have an inkling that a fuller version would be a much better version. The missing context in the beginning, the chancellor's thinness, and the large absence of Anna through the later parts of the film might get fixed in a completed cut.
As it is, despite the heavy barriers for entry, I came away with some small admiration for the effort. It's not the unwatchable disaster I thought the print would be, and enough of the original charm comes through.
