A remake of the 1927 silent film, RESURRECTION now stars John Boles and Lupe Velez as the star-crossed Russian lovers. Based on a novel by Leo Tolstoy, this glum story has added a few songs for Boles and Velez to sing but it's not a musical.
Boles and Velez play innocent lovers on a Russian estate where he is the son of the house, about to go off to military service, and she is the ward of his aunt (Nance O'Neil) but treated as a servant. The aunt does not approve of their relationship. They swear undying love as he leaves. A while later he comes back on leave and the lovers meet.
While he lives the high life in the military and becomes a dashing officer surrounded by women and flowing champagne, she (now pregnant) is thrown out of the house by the aunt.
The years pass and she becomes a prostitute who gets convicted of murder after she unknowingly poison a client. Who should be on the jury but Boles. Unable to sway his fellow jury members, she is sentenced to working in the silver mines in Siberia. Wracked with guilt for what she has become, he follows.
Eventually he gets her conviction overturned and she is free, but it is too late.
While Velez and Boles are fine, the clash of accents doesn't help the believability of the story. A few songs by Dimitri Tiomkin (his first feature as a composer) are forgettable and lead the viewer into thinking this is going to be an operetta. It is not.
Edwin Carewe directed both this talkie version and the 1927 silent version (a lost film that starred Rod La Rocque and Dolores Del Rio), and he uses some footage from the silent version for the Siberian trek scenes. He directed only one more film after RESURRECTION.
