L'Atlantide

One of, if not the first version of the novel L'ATLANTIDE, concerns the story of two French Legionnaires who stumble upon the remains of Atlantis under the Sahara desert. There they meet various people including the Queen, played here by Bridgette Helm (Maria in Metropolis).

There have been at least six versions of the story brought to the screen and this is the second version I've seen.(The first on I saw was Siren of Atlantis and its pretty awful). Clearly filmed on location on the desert this movie is interesting to watch for a while, however once the pair ends up underground the film seems to get lost. I don't know if its because the print I saw is some 10 minutes shorter than the official running time on IMDb, or if there is something missing from the novel, either way the movie just sort of stops and runs in circles while I tried desperately to figure out what I was seeing. While it never gets really bad, it does get discouraging since its clear that there is a story here that would draw film makers back again and again, unfortunately what ever that quality is is missing. Running some 78 minutes this version feels twice as long.

I can't really recommend this movie since it just sort of misses the target. However if you're interested in old fantasy movies or ones that have been filmed repeatedly I'd give it a shot, if nothing else Bridgette Helm is easy on the eyes. 5 out of 10.

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.

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.

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.

Upon hearing theories that Atlantis wasn't buried in the sea but rather under the sands of the Sahara Desert, the French send two army officers by the names of "Captain Morhange" (Gustav Diessl) and "Lieutenant Saint-Avit" (John Stuart) to try to locate it. Unfortunately, once they get close to their destination the tribesmen they hired betray them and turn them over to the evil queen of Atlantis named "Antinea" (Brigitte Helm). Surprisingly, Queen Antinea falls madly in love with Captain Morhange while at the same time Lieutenant Saint-Avit becomes attracted to her. But because he is a loyal French officer, Captain Morhange is more concerned about the health and welfare of his subordinate and this results in severe consequences for both of them. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this is one of those old and rare films that is probably better appreciated from an historical perspective than from a more modern context. Yet even with certain allowances made it is still undermined by the rather bizarre plot and abrupt script. Of course, the fact that it was translated into three different languages (English, German and French) no doubt affected that to an extent. In any case, although it was not without its flaws I still found the movie to be somewhat entertaining and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.