The Merry Monarch

So far as I can gather this was based on a popular European novel the appeal of which revolved to a great extent around the various soft-porn illustrations in the numerous different editions; the costume of the nubile young ladies in the novel was said to consist of shoes and a turban, and nothing in between, which obviously offered plenty of licence (of the most artistic kind) in their depiction! Equally obviously this could not very well be translated onto the cinema screen, so the acres of female flesh on display are clad in what amounts to the scantiest of contemporary bathing costumes, and a large proportion of the film seems to be occupied by choreographed shots of the cast rushing around in a shouting, giggling, marching or otherwise hectically occupied crowd, in order best to show off their assembled charms. The effect is more reminiscent of a Mack Sennett 'bathing beauties' production than anything else, and once the sheer scale of the number of women involved wears off it turns out to be a lot less engaging than one might think.

I'm afraid the only character whose fate ended up by interesting me in the slightest turned out to be Taxis, the Prime Minister (played by Armand Bernard) -- and I think he was the one we were meant to hate! But he was also one of the few characters with any distinguishing features at all...

The women really are pretty much interchangeable. Confusingly, the King's daughter, Princess Aline, appeared to be pretty much exactly the same age as the Queen who was apparently supposed to be her mother -- and who, conveniently for the British censor, ended up being the one wife to whom the King was 'really' married by the end of the film!

On its original release in Britain the film had to be withdrawn from circulation after less than a week because of audience catcalls and clapping in response to the scenes on screen. (The unfortunate director was completely confounded as to why his 'harmless musical fantasy' should cause such unrest among uncultured English cinema-goers.) More recent critics have complained that it is impossibly misogynist. I'm afraid I just find it not offensive but incredibly boring.

It has no characters and no plot to speak of, the music is entirely unmemorable and the camera-work is nothing to write home about. And the prospect of watching a small fortune being dissipated on screen simply isn't enough to keep this from being a snooze-fest.

It's not *bad*. It just isn't good in any memorable way.

And I don't know where you'll see it. Just saw it at Cinefest in Syracuse, and literally watched with my mouth open. A pseudo-Ruritanian musical romance, and kind of a 1931 cross between "Song of Norway" and "Playboy After Dark," with traces of Lubitsch in it and an odd international cast (it was a French-British-German co-production) that looks lost. Filmed on some French island, which doubles here as a mythical kingdom where King Emil Jannings has 365 wives, and Sidney Fox wants to neutralize the other 364. So there are numerous sort-of- Berkeley-style musical numbers consisting of maidens in filmy garments running and giggling across the frame and singing some unintelligible Clifford Grey lyrics. It seems this kingdom is a happy one despite the presence of slaves and no discernible economy, and while all the wives are young and nubile and adore their porcine patriarch (Jannings looks a little like Karl Rove), women over 35 don long dowdy garments and severe tight-jawed expressions and become mistresses to the maidens. (One is punished by being hoisted on a crane and ridiculed by everyone, which the film regards as innocent merriment.) There's also a pilot from the outside world played by a rather dashing young Spaniard, and very little plot. This thing cost $2 million in 1931 dollars and made none of it back, and the producer committed suicide. Jannings, who evidently learned his lines phonetically, conveys no acting genius here, and it's meant to be whimsical and delightful but it's just incredibly odd. Still, it looks like no other movie, and it's fascinating, if not exactly competent.