L'Atlantide

This is the 3rd, and most recent, in the three films I've seen by controversial director G.W. Pabst, after his extraordinary silent classics, 'Pandora's Box' and 'Diary of a Lost Girl', both starring legendary screen goddess Louise Brooks. It's the English-language version of 'L'Atlantide', itself a sound-remake of the '21 silent film by Jacques Feyder, and, by being mostly shot on location in the Sahara Desert, went against the grain at the time of shooting movies exclusively in studio.

In Brigitte Helm, mainly known for her starring role of Fritz Lang's sci-fi magnum opus, 'Metropolis', he had a stunning villainous female, who would have made a great femme fatale, had she continued on the following decade in film noir. The script is nondescript and a tad melodramatic, and the other actors are decidedly pedestrian, but Pabst's visual elan and directorial genius shines through and lifts an otherwise drab picture. Worth your time if you're a fan of adventure films of the era, however.

As I watched this, I thought, what a nice print. The sound is good. The images are nice. It's certainly good at capturing the desert and the lost city in the title. Then I got to the key element. I just could not get involved in the story. Try as I might, I never had any empathy with any of the characters. They seem to be pulled around by non sequiters. It reminded me a little of the TV series "The Prisoner." There seem to be random forces at work that cannot be fathomed. Throw in the fact that there is something missing beside these aforementioned motivations, and it just doesn't work for me. There are lots of close-ups. This seems to be part of a legacy from the silent film, a transition piece if you will. Maybe, what it needs is those speech boxes, telling what the characters are thinking or presenting their reasoning. As a period piece it's interesting. Maybe someday a person will clean it up and restore a few things.

I watched the French version of this film and the casting varies slightly to the German and UK versions. This film plays on the idea that Atlantis hasn't disappeared into the sea but lies buried under the sands of the Sahara. Why not? I have no doubt that those sands are burying secrets that could help us determine our origins and rewrite our history. For this film, the mystery of Atlantis is interwoven into the culture of the native Tauregs. From a garrison stationed in the Sahara, Captain Pierre Blanchar (Saint-Avit) recounts his story to Lieutenant Georges Tourreil (Ferrieres) of how he ended up in this mythical place where he met the evil Queen - Brigitte Helm (Antinea). Is his tale one of truth or is he bonkers?

The film has an interesting subject matter and a great location to keep you watching. It's full of mystery and you never quite know what is going on as characters that we meet don't say much. Well, apart from Vladimir Sokoloff who plays the mysterious European resident who is slightly camp and totally insane. However, the film sort of meanders along and the audience has no real sense of purpose as to what the aim of it all is. There are memorable scenes that are thrown in but they may all be red herrings. Is this just one man's lunatic ravings as he has been affected by the sun? Or has this stuff really happened?

I think the thing to do is smoke some "kuff" and find out. It's easily available in Atlantis - 40% hashish and 60% opium. Everyone - let's go explore the Sahara!

Two French Legionnaires discover the lost city of Atlantis in the middle of the Sahara Desert located in magnificent halls below the surface of the Earth.

This German-French co-production was a remake of a silent epic and was unusually shot in English, German and French in three different versions. This being an early solution to the language barrier problem the early talkies found themselves up against. It has more than a little in common with the film adaptions of 'She', in which an evil queen resides in a mysterious opulent place in the desert. The title character here was played by Brigitte Helm who has over the years achieved eternal iconic fame due to her earlier double role in Fritz Lang's sci-fi classic Metropolis (1927), her appearance as the android Ava being especially timeless. Needless to say, The Mistress of Atlantis is considerably less famous or good but it is quite an interesting production nevertheless. It benefits quite a bit from having elaborate sets and costuming, as well as on location photography. It also has some memorable individual scenes such as the chess game where one of our heroes plays against the queen while escalating Arabic music plays and dancers cavort in the background intensifying the drama; while it also benefits from the appearance of the eccentric mustachioed elderly English fop who bizarrely resides in this strange place. Overall, though, it is an interesting film which is middling on the whole. The reason for this is chiefly down to its slow pacing and uninteresting/interchangeable two central male characters, whose plight it is hard to care about very much. But it is nevertheless a film with some ambition and interest.

Note that the DVD copy from Alpha Video is a bit rough--scratchy and a bit blurry. So, you really must want to see this film if you bother buying this one! I was quite surprised by "The Lost Atlantis", as I expected quite a bit from it since it was directed by the famous G.W. Pabst--the same guy who directed Louise Brooks' famous films ("Diary of a Lost Girl" and "Pandora's Box") as well as the brilliant German dramas "Kameradschaft" and "Westfront 1918". Instead, I found the film to be quite dull and lacking momentum. In other words, it has an unusual but interesting idea but is so poorly paced that I found myself losing interest as the film progressed. My assumption is that this will happen to you, too, if you decide to watch.

The premise of this film is that Atlantis was not lost in sea but covered in the Sahara Desert. And, unknown to outsiders, this bizarre land still exists--and is ruled by a goofy lady named Antinea (Brigitte Helm). For the most part, folks just sit around in this land doing nothing while Antinea spends her time jerking men around because you assume she has nothing better to do. If she says to kill, they do--and it's all VERY slow and mysterious--with LOTS of staring from Antinea. In fact, she rarely talks (possibly due to her strong German accent) but lounges about and makes men dance because she is, supposedly, so exotic and enticing. Yeah,...whatever.

All in all, this is a pretty bad film. The plot is WAY too slow, the acting way too poor and you wonder how Pabst could have made such a film. I was hoping for a strange escapist sort of film (like "She", 1935) but instead it was just boredom from start to finish.

FYI--Helm was famous as the lady who was the evil robot woman from "Metropolis". However, in "Metropolis" her performance was much more human and emotive!