One Arabian Night

Today, in the UK at least, the word "pantomime" means songs, dances, dames, villains to be booed, out of work actors, "He's behind you", and generally a good time to be had by all. It has developed out of longstanding traditions of popular theatre common throughout Europe, known at one point as "low opera". Sumurun, a German pantomime with which renowned theatre producer Max Reinhardt had great success in the mid-1910s, is not a familiar story, but the wild and wonderful tone with which it is played bears some similarities to how we understand the genre today.

Funnily enough, in the US the term pantomime is often used as synonym for "mime", in the Marcel Marceau sense, and indeed highly expressive acting in silent cinema is often referred to as "pantomime". Looking at the film version of Sumurun, it seems this is perhaps not entirely coincidental. Like the majority of Ernst Lubitsch pictures from this period, it takes place in a gloriously hammy world where actors grimace and gesticulate with shameless glee. Thank goodness for Lubitsch's sense of humour. By peppering Sumurun with touches of his absurd genius, he prevents it from being over-earnest and unintentionally funny. The Lubitsch style of comedy is nowhere near as pronounced as it was in all-out farces such as The Oyster Princess or The Wildcat, but it serves to soften the silliness of the melodrama with which it coexists. The comedy and melodrama do not interfere with each other, because the situations in themselves are not funny. Instead there is a line drawn between serious characters, and characters who exist purely to be comical. Incidentally, the occasional moments where the line blurs and the comedy figures get swept into the tragedy are among the most poignant I have seen in all of Lubitsch's work.

You see, Lubitsch was not just a master of screen comedy, he was a real craftsman of screen drama. Integral to Sumurun is his use of movement in depth. From the opening shot of a caravan approaching us from out of the desert, virtually all the motion is towards the camera. Often when characters look at each other, we are shown reverse angles in which they are virtually staring into the lens. It's almost a kind of audience participation (think pantomimes again!), in that we are made to feel we share the space of the film's world rather than that we look in on it. Conversely however Lubitsch sometimes frames the more dramatic events deep in the background, giving us a kind of panicky feel of separation. At this moment we should take time to consider the exquisite and elaborate set design of Kurt Richter, which here establishes contrasting tones for the different environments – a stark and barren outdoors, the squalid clutter of the poor district, and the rich opulence of the palace.

This was the last appearance of Lubitsch himself as an actor, and one of the few examples of his acting that is easily available today. His eccentric performance lies at the hammy heart of Sumurun. It is a very Germanic style of theatrical comic acting, exaggerated to the point of being almost grotesque, but something great fun to watch in the right kind of setting, as those familiar with the best of Emil Jannings or Rudolph Klein-Rogge will know. However Lubitsch is outshone by his opposite number, the old hag played by Margarete Kupfer, who is again very overstated but in a manner that is entertaining, especially in her lurching drunk act. Paul Wegener is marvellous as the old sheikh, treading the line between pomposity and genuine menace, and thus very much in tune with the picture as a whole. Finally an honourable mention goes to the handful of black supporting actors, who appear in a number of Lubitsch pictures and whose names I have never been able to find. None of these guys especially stands out, but they are all clearly adept at the Lubitsch comedy form of sudden reactions and surprise expressions.

Sumurun is not without its detractors. True, the complexity of the interwoven subplots, the fast-paced editing and the lack of intertitles make it a little hard to follow. Also I accept that the acting styles may seem a little inappropriate and jarring to some. But I also feel that those who would demand comprehensibility or naturalism from a picture like this are really missing the point. You need to buy into the sweeping melodramatics and theatrical slapstick, and simply let it all wash over you without taking any of it too seriously. In fact, people who don't like Sumurun are probably the same sort of people who would not enjoy shouting "Oh no it isn't!" at a bunch of out-of-work actors in tights. Pantomime: A distinct art form that must be accepted it for what it is.

The richness of Max Reinhardt's stage direction of Friedrich Feska's play, THE ARABIAN NIGHTS, is transferred and adapted to the screen by Reinhardt's protege Ernst Lubitsch who, in his final acting performance, as the hunchback clown Buckliger, heads a sterling internationally flavored cast which he directs with his customary vigor in this German production, one of the last films made by Lubitsch in Europe. Upon the stage a masque, SUMURUN is remedied by Lubitsch of its static quality as he prescribes a non-stop folly of exuberance which the polyglot players are quite capable of providing, in particular Paul Wegener (Germany), Pola Negri (Poland), Aud Egede Nissen (Norway) and Jenny Hasselqvist (Sweden), each of whom performs strongly and adds lagniappes of interpretation to the scenario of Hans Kraly. Lubitsch, a veteran of the Yiddish stage, generally as Meyer the Jew, is a clear guide to his actors in this melodramatic tale of a sheikh (Wegener) who desires to add an itinerant dancing girl (Negri) to his harem because of his dissatisfaction with his principal houri (Hasselqvist) who in turn desires a young wandering merchant with whom she shares a strong physical attraction. Buckliger is in love with the gypsy dancer, but the mulatta role portrayed by the diminuitive Negri is one who has learned to trust only the adornments of wealth and is therefore most willing to become a harem resident, a prospect which she finds most cordial although, of course, many complications come about involving, among others, the son of the sheikh. Lubitsch's unique style, which incorporates the frequent use of innuendo, found favor in Hollywood, principally with Mary Pickford who, because of her viewing of SUMURUN, was able to entice the director to the United States, bringing Negri with him, as they had shared many Continental successes, and after her career was macerated by her emotional excess and strong accent, the director continued on to great acclaim, praised for his "Lubitsch touch". This touch is in evidence in this silent German film as it continued to be in his subsequent English language efforts and is essentially the conjugating of the lashes of one eye.

During the silent film history, there were famous and important pairs who worked together in varying degrees in their film careers: Herr Stiller and Dame Garbo, Herr Pabst and Dame Brooks, Herr Griffith and Dame Gish or Herr Ego and Dame Swanson. One of these remarkable silent open marriages was Herr Ernst Lubitsch and Dame Pola Negri, who worked together in many important silent productions, especially during the German period of the Teutonic director.

"Sumurun" (1920) was one of those early lavish UFA productions, based on a Herr Max Reinhard's 1910 stage pantomime, which gave prestige to Germany's greatest film company and provided the chance to decisively open the world film markets to the German productions, specially in Amerika, a distant and perilous country where afterwards, as many longhaired youngsters know, Herr Lubitsch will continue his successful career, becoming one of the most important directors in film history. In this same country Dame Pola will also make some films but with uneven results; for her, it was a short lapse in her career that she will afterwards resume in old Europe.

This German count mentioned that "Sumurun" was a lavish, opulent major budget film production as can be seen in the superb and astonishing décors and art direction due to the pair of hands, two for each one, of Herr Ernö Metzner und Kurt Richter. Such Teutonic magnificence and exuberance is just what the story demands; a tale involving a tangled love triangle set in an archetypical and fascinating East.

This German count also must mention that in addition to Dame Negri the film also features Herr Paul Wegener, Dame Aud Agede Nissen and Herr Lubitsch himself. Pola has a role that's perfect for her: sensual, adventuresome, defiant and full of untameable spirit. The film's parallel stories sometimes are confusing or digressive although it makes for a comprehensible mess since the various love conflicts in the film include unrequited passion, Eastern vengeance and unrestrained desires, all transpiring in an exotic landscape and making for a delicious extravagant film fantasy where the talent of the German director shines more that the Eastern sun.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count has an exotic appointment in East Germany.

Ernst Lubitsch made a handful of historical epics in a row in the late 1910s and early 1920s, and Sumurun is the second of the four. It is more fully a melodrama than Madame DuBarry was without the benefit of real history to help inform its dramatic and tonal swings. It also boasts a rather large cast of characters, to the point that I would call this an ensemble piece, but it manages that load much more deftly than in the previous film. Dotted with moments of farcical fun but weighed down by an unfocused narrative that often gets played way too seriously, Sumurun might not be some kind of disaster, but it is Ernst Lubitsch's least successful film up to this point in his career (save The Eyes of the Mummy, which I keep trying to forget).

The film begins with Yannaia (Pola Negri), a dancer in a traveling band on its way to a city ruled by two sheiks. Along with her is the jealous Yeggar (Lubitsch), a hunchback who wants the pretty young dancer all for himself and grows violent whenever another man, especially attractive men, try to get close to her. Met by the wealthiest slave trader in the country, Achmed (Paul Biensfeldt) who instantly has plans on trying to sell her to the sheik to add to his harem, they make it to the city to put on their show. On the inside, within the walls of the harem, is the titular Sumurun (Jenny Hasselquist), the favorite among the Older Sheik's (Paul Wegener) women. She yearns for the decidedly less powerful cloth merchant Nur-Al Din (Harry Liedtke) whom she throws individual flowers to from her window. Alongside the action is the Young Sheik (Carl Clewing). I guess the two sheiks are father and son, but the film never addresses it.

The story is essentially a laborious effort to get everyone into the harem so that we can get our final bits of action where confrontations, murder, and true love all happen. However, in order to get there, you have to get a penniless dancer to catch the eye of the Old Sheik, Nur-Al Din to find a way to sneak into the palace, and for Yeggar to fake his own death in order to, I guess, make Yannaia feel pangs of guilt but accidentally get his unconscious body sent on a roundabout path, starting with the unsuspecting theft of his body by Nur-Al Din's two assistants (Paul Graetz and Max Kronert) and ending with him being deposited, in a trunk at the harem's front door. How all of this happens is a mixture between straight up melodramatic motions, like the Young Sheik discovering Yannaia on the street and falling for her or Sumurun taking her entourage of other women to the clothing shop so she can spend some time with Nur-Al Din.

I will say this: the acting in Lubitsch's films up to this point have been surprisingly naturalistic, but it's here, in Sumurun, that naturalism is cast out the window and replaced by the big motions of waving arms all over the place for the smallest of emotional cues. I might have expected that from Lubitsch's own performance considering how he played Sally Meyer in his previous feature films starring that character, but it ends up infecting everyone, making more serious moments feel like misapplied scenes from a comedy. Some of these moments are meant to be comedic, but they end up reading like mugging for a laugh more than anything.

The movie ends up at its funniest in what is probably it's most disposable section: Act V (there are explicit acts in most of these early Lubitsch films). It's here where Yeggar is unconscious and being moved around from a sack in the tent to the top shelf of the clothing shop to inside a trunk and finally delivered to the front of the harem. It's also here where Nur-Al Din transfers from one trunk to another to hide his way in (without ever noticing Yeggar's supposedly dead body in one of them). It's also where Haidee (Aud Egede-Nissen), Sumurun's best friend and loyal compatriot, distracts the eunuchs with a physical display and messing with a fountain. As soon as all of this ended, I realized that it could have mostly been cut without hurting the actual flow of the narrative, but you know what? It was amusing, which was a step up from the largely self-serious melodramatics that had been the norm of the film. It must be where Lubitsch was able to insert farce the most, which probably delighted him.

Another curiosity is really that so much of the film is centered around Yannaia. From what I understand, Pola Negri was a major German star at the time, far outpacing Hasselquist who plays the titular character. In fact, it's Negri on the posters and her name that's the most prominent, though she's billed tenth in the actual film credits (it's honestly not the most unusual thing in the world for the time period). She dominates at least half of the film, completely distracting from the eponymous resident of the harem and her troubles. The two major storylines do, of course, end up intertwining at the end, but the long sections earlier in the film create a feeling of watching two separate films at once.

So, Sumurun is not a bad movie, but I wouldn't come close to calling it good. It's something of a brute force effort by Lubitsch to squeeze as much entertainment from a stone as possible. It also made me think back to the early silent efforts by Fritz Lang and how I found those to be largely inert exercises in melodrama as well. It seems like both directors were meeting with solid, possibly even great, financial success with them, though, and it makes me wonder if early German cinema was simply suffused with conventions that simply didn't endure or age well.

Disappointing. The chief problem, as Lubitsch was quick to acknowledge, is Lubitsch. His exaggerated, hammy acting is one that Lubitsch the director would never have permitted any of his players. In fact, he was so unhappy with his over-the-top histrionics that he vowed never to act again.

Admittedly, there are a few other major faults. All the characters are one-dimensional and the story tends to drag, especially in the comedy relief sequences provided by camera-hoggers Kronert and Graetz, who are just awful. Margarete Kupfer's repulsive old hag is also over- indulged.

On the other hand, the film does provide an almost equal number of pleasures. not only in its exotic sets and cinematography, but in the alluring presence of Pola Negri, who receives excellent support from Paul Wegener who cleverly underplays his ruthless, self-indulgent sheik and thus makes him a really terrifying figure.

And for lessons in how to play comic relief with style, I nominate Jakob Tiedtke and Paul Biensfeldt, who both do amusing wonders with seemingly impossible characters. A slave trader, a comic figure? But that's how Biensfeldt plays this despicable little heap of slime-- and it works!

This film is now available on a somewhat odd Alpha Video DVD. Someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to replace the original (presumably German) inter-titles. These new English titles look very swanky indeed, but unfortunately they make the movie itself look just awful, thanks to its rather muddy and extremely well-worn print.